For the love of Help, give the freebs a chat channel!
By
Aura_Familia,
Posted on: 2011-10-10 24:58 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
If you send tells to the people you are trying to help instead of answering in the /help channel you can be certain you are getting your answer to the person who needs help.
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Welcome to CoH's Barrens Chat. The "stupidity centrifuge" is already spinning past the point of control.
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Originally Posted by MrCaptainMan
Today it degenerated into first a rapid-scrolling rantfest about CoD vs Halo and Battlefield, and then morphed into a 'God Exists/doesn't exist' shouting match.
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I do, whenever I can, but honestly, today it was scrolling so fast, that when i scrolled up to find the person who had asked a question, by the time I scrolled back down to the bottom, a large amount of text had been enttered, and basically it was impossible to keep abreast of the actual help-requests.
Eco.
MArcs:
The Echo, Arc ID 1688 (5mish, easy, drama)
The Audition, Arc ID 221240 (6 mish, complex mech, comedy)
Storming Citadel, Arc ID 379488 (lowbie, 1mish, 10-min timed)
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
[The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."
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Yup. I used to love helping out in the Help channel. Now, I've taken the entire tab off of all my characters' chat windows. It's sad, but that channel's totally worthless now.
Also: it's not just the freebs doing it. Not even close.
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It's more a social phenomenon than any one group. Trash talk in an unmoderated global channel is the equivalent of graffiti in the NYC subway system. Persistent minor disorder in a social setting can lead to more problematic anti-social behavior.|
Originally Posted by Feycat
Also: it's not just the freebs doing it. Not even close.
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Either Paragon Studios needs to invest in GMs to moderate /help or provide the playing community with better tools for self-policing. I suspect, though, that the chocobo has already bolted the stables.
I like helping, always have, I used to add the help channel to my main chat tab so it was always viewable. In the past couple weeks I've moved it to it's own tab, then shortly after deleted that tab. It's no longer a help channel, and I feel sorry for anyone that does have a question, but I'm not wading through that garbage anymore.
I find it to be a rather lovely mess. Kind of reminds me of the old days in the alt hiarchy of Usenet.
Quote:
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Originally Posted by MrCaptainMan
I do, whenever I can, but honestly, today it was scrolling so fast, that when i scrolled up to find the person who had asked a question, by the time I scrolled back down to the bottom, a large amount of text had been enttered, and basically it was impossible to keep abreast of the actual help-requests.
Eco. |
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Originally Posted by Feycat
Yup. I used to love helping out in the Help channel. Now, I've taken the entire tab off of all my characters' chat windows. It's sad, but that channel's totally worthless now.
Also: it's not just the freebs doing it. Not even close. |
"How do you know you are on the side of good?" a Paragon citizen asked him. "How can we even know what is 'good'?"
"The Most High has spoken, even with His own blood," Melancton replied. "Surely we know."
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The thing that surprised me today was that until today, the Help channel (on Freedom server, no less0 was actually more full of help, advice and discussions about game mechanics and useful stuff than chaff.|
Originally Posted by Melancton
I like to help folks out, too, and the Help chat on a couple of servers I am on scrolls by so fast I cannot keep up, much find and have any dialogue with someone needing help. I have to agree with Feycat that the channel is unworkable now, and I have taken it from the tabs that had it.
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Maybe i was just lucky until today. Or maybe, as someone in a global said, today the Trolls got the day off.
Eco.
MArcs:
The Echo, Arc ID 1688 (5mish, easy, drama)
The Audition, Arc ID 221240 (6 mish, complex mech, comedy)
Storming Citadel, Arc ID 379488 (lowbie, 1mish, 10-min timed)
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
[The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."
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There really needs to be something. I had to explain to a friend today why he should try this game versus the other 4 or so free ones he was optioning. I decided to lie about chat (or at least conveniently leave off the fact that CoH has a very freebie unfriendly chat system versus at least some of the games he was looking at). We'll see how long he stays after he experiences it; I may have blown my cred as the reliable "gamer with good taste" whose advice he will actually follow though. I have avoided recommending the game to many other friends until this is cleared up somehow. I just can't see them sticking around under this system, and once they are gone I'm sure we'll never get them back.
I would like a f2p chat channel just to get them off help and keep help for answering questions.
The last thing you need when you are trying to explain something is 1001 randoms looking for farms or sewer runs.
Unmoderated global chat, completely free, where anybody can set up a new account any time they need one, is and always will be a disaster. Create another channel, and you won't have a good channel and a bad channel, you'll have two bad channels. Gresham's Law. Or, as the guys from Penny Arcade taught us, the G.I.F.T.
And since this isn't a shardless game, moderators would have to moderate the Help channel on, what is it now, 15 servers? More? I lose track. So figure 80 full-time-equivalent positions just to 24x7 monitor all the Help channels and push the "silence" button on anybody who gets out of line. This game doesn't charge us enough to pay for that.
I gave up on the /help channel a looooooong time ago.
Current Blog Post: "Why I am an Atheist..."
"And I say now these kittens, they do not get trained/As we did in the days when Victoria reigned!" -- T. S. Eliot, "Gus, the Theatre Cat"
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Paraphrased for the 'net as: "Bad posting drives out the good." Sometimes, though, the reverse is true. While a new unmoderated F2P channel would probably swiftly devolve into Barrens Chat, a usefully functioning /help channel would be enough of a resource to maintain its integrity if dedicated players contributed. The Fr00bs would flock to the former, while the more serious players would be able to make better use of the latter.|
Originally Posted by InfamousBrad
Create another channel, and you won't have a good channel and a bad channel, you'll have two bad channels. Gresham's Law.
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| So figure 80 full-time-equivalent positions just to 24x7 monitor all the Help channels and push the "silence" button on anybody who gets out of line. This game doesn't charge us enough to pay for that. |
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I don't believe the bolded in any way shape or form.|
Originally Posted by TrueGentleman
Paraphrased for the 'net as: "Bad posting drives out the good." Sometimes, though, the reverse is true. While a new unmoderated F2P channel would probably swiftly devolve into Barrens Chat, a usefully functioning /help channel would be enough of a resource to maintain its integrity if dedicated players contributed. The Fr00bs would flock to the former, while the more serious players would be able to make better use of the latter.
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For one, what would be the incentive to move form the help channel which they are currently ALREADY using?
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That's the problem with trying to shut the barn door after the chocobo has bolted. To herd F2Pers into the proper discussion zones, GMs would have to run a regular series of public reprimands whenever the help channel went off topic. The time to have implemented this dual F2P channel system would have been in the beta, but there was little interest in such things or attention to the more pessimistic predictions. Of course, doing nothing at this stage guarantees the help channel's decline.
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Originally Posted by Aura_Familia
For one, what would be the incentive to move form the help channel which they are currently ALREADY using?
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The past week or so, the Help channel on Protector has been working as intended.
People ask for help or advice, veteran players give it.
Sorry a bunch of loons are corrupting it for you on your server.
My Stories
Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.
Quote:
this
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Originally Posted by warden_de_dios
If you send tells to the people you are trying to help instead of answering in the /help channel you can be certain you are getting your answer to the person who needs help.
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It is my hope that an F2P channel would at least dilute the issue.
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All it takes is a $5 purchase to get Tells people, thats more than reasonable!!!!! This is what the Dev's want so it's what they get.
(this is sarcasm btw)
This issue isn't going to go anywhere. So all those against this simple suggestion can either get used to shooting it down in 5+ threads daily, or get on board.
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Actually Freedom's Help channel used to be very focused on help, unlike Virtue's which was always kinda chattery (well since I began at least in i9, i11 on Virtue). I always compared Freedom's AP broadcast to Virtue's help channel, in both people talk about anything. But nowadays Freem's help also turned into that, well worse since Virtue's help wasn't that bad, it just had some chat mixed up. Now both are moving so fast with all the chat that I see a lot of questions getting 2-3 answers and the person asks it again later because he/she didn't see the answer, or simply didn't get any answer because nobody saw the question. I also have removed help from both in the past week, as well as in Champion, because besides that, Help has also become a LFT channel it seems, in these three servers I play.
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Originally Posted by MrCaptainMan
The thing that surprised me today was that until today, the Help channel (on Freedom server, no less0 was actually more full of help, advice and discussions about game mechanics and useful stuff than chaff.
Maybe i was just lucky until today. Or maybe, as someone in a global said, today the Trolls got the day off. Eco. |
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The incentive would be that it wouldn't be labeled "Help" and they wouldn't feel any guilt posting improperly in it. I think a good portion of the people spamming the channel are aware of it's actual purpose and only do so because it's the only global channel they know of.|
Originally Posted by Aura_Familia
For one, what would be the incentive to move form the help channel which they are currently ALREADY using?
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Even if that doesn't work, the worst case scenario is some people use the new channel and some stick with the help channel, which would at least split the load and perhaps allow people to read the help channel without it scrolling too fast.
A good way of dealing with the spam in help would be to implement a 1 post/minute limitation on help channel chat. That way needless chatter would be amazingly difficult, someone can post their question and get a tell for an answer
problem solved.
edit: Many MMO's use similar limitations on dedicated channels
Help is more and more becoming impossible to use as a Help channel. Today it degenerated into first a rapid-scrolling rantfest about CoD vs Halo and Battlefield, and then morphed into a 'God Exists/doesn't exist' shouting match. Amid all the crud were people asking legitimate questions about the game, but the channel was scrolling so fast I'm sure my attempts to answer were lost in the mess.
Can't the freebs get a global chat channel? Call it 'f2p chat' or something, and then the help channel might be actually useful again.
I know we don't want gold-sellers spamming chat, but they can already do that with help, can't they? What would the difference be?
Eco.
MArcs:
The Echo, Arc ID 1688 (5mish, easy, drama)
The Audition, Arc ID 221240 (6 mish, complex mech, comedy)
Storming Citadel, Arc ID 379488 (lowbie, 1mish, 10-min timed)