It seems like recent medieval games are generating a following of undesirables

[Roccoflipside]

If "casual gamers" tend to banter more, than its more likely that someone who would quit the game due to insults/toxicity/whatever would be put in matches with the people who are saying those things. Therefore, much more likely to repeatedly run into said players and become frustrated by the community. Basically, your first paragraph is irrelevant to my post (no offense).

I don't have any data to which side would have higher numbers, but I would conjecture more people who don't particularly care about which game they're playing would leave due to insults than someone who is invested in said game leaving because they can't say things in chat. I could be wrong, of course, but, imo, logic would support my conclusion.

Anyway, the point is TW's doesn't want the negative attention that would come with the insinuation that "M&B community is full of racists/etc", so it's easier and more practical to have a moderation team ready and able to step in and make sure it doesn't get to that point.


All that said, I actually agree more with you line of thought on a personal basis, don't let them get to you and all. But from a business perspective, it's important for TW's o "cover their asses" as it were, rather than risk having their reputation damaged.

 

[Sundeki]

If "casual gamers" tend to banter more, than its more likely that someone who would quit the game due to insults/toxicity/whatever would be put in matches with the people who are saying those things. Therefore, much more likely to repeatedly run into said players and become frustrated by the community. Basically, your first paragraph is irrelevant to my post (no offense).

In this I was referring specifically to my region (Australia), I'm not sure about everywhere else.
And as long as players are aware of the mute function (it's hard to miss), then they don't have to endure anything.

I don't have any data to which side would have higher numbers, but I would conjecture more people who don't particularly care about which game they're playing would leave due to insults than someone who is invested in said game leaving because they can't say things in chat. I could be wrong, of course, but, imo, logic would support my conclusion.

People themselves being insulted is more likely to get them to leave. People seeing other people insult/abuse each other probably floats between slight amusement and indifference. Like I've said before; people that go around abusing other people and throwing racial slurs/etc., are a small, vocal minority who attack and insult people they have personal problems with primarily. 80%+ of the playerbase on servers I've administrated say nothing/almost nothing, and at the same time don't get insulted by other people either. They're just ignored. This of course is an anecdote.

Anyway, the point is TW's doesn't want the negative attention that would come with the insinuation that "M&B community is full of racists/etc", so it's easier and more practical to have a moderation team ready and able to step in and make sure it doesn't get to that point.

It only got to that point in e.g Mordhau because the devs had no moderators and originally had no mute function (I don't own Mordhau and am going on second-hand information, so correct me if I'm wrong). It got out of control and thus got the reputation from the other small vocal minority as being a "game full of racists" because there was no ability to remove any of the trash from the chat. It is also noteworthy that said reputation didn't seem to harm Mordhau's sales, which for the size of the game and it's development team, did very well.

 

[monoolho]

So: what is to be gained from having the moderators on top of the personal moderation function for chat activity? It seems completely redundant.

I may not have been clear enough. I am not speaking about having

MODS=GODS

in games or chat. I am talking about moderation, as in "to moderate activity and interactions between humans and game mechanics". That can be achieved by server admins. That's what admins do in game servers: they moderate. Depending on server activity and the number of admins, a few moderators may be required to moderate the in-game activity and interactions at all times. This can be done by always having an admin online, which is difficult on servers with few admins, but can be done by having select individuals to moderate, mods. Both work.

And as long as players are aware of the mute function (it's hard to miss), then they don't have to endure anything.

As I said, this is entirely in tandem with the personal tools to mute, and block. As Cap. Nemo said, not all people are expected to understand how to use them. And as the topic of "teachers" has come along this topic, you might recall from your years at high school and grade school or home school, that you haven't learned EVERYTHING your teachers taught you. If you did, you're exceptional, but that's most likely the case of bad memory overruling actual events - you think you learned everything, when in fact you did not.
That's not your fault, it's human nature, human limitations - you can't learn and remember every single topic ever. And that's equally true for games and gamers - the game may give you flashing bright arrows pointing at "HOW TO MUTE SOMEONE WITH A SINGLE CLICK", and people don't pay attention, because reasons.
Sometimes, people don't want to be bothered to waste 2 minutes of their limited gaming time just to mute someone.
Sometimes people prefer just to give up on the game because some players are idiots.
Not everyone has the time and patience to waste most of their waking hours, and some sleeping hours too, to play a game, sometimes people would rather only do something fun, instead of gambling their free time on a game: will there be idiots talking about immigration, or will it be fun? Maybe I should just play something else instead...

That's also human nature - human interactions. If you go out on the streets, there is a chance someone will mug you, there is a chance you will meet that ex who hates you, or you might find someone with the disposition to give you a blank check just because they ran over your bycicle. There is also the chance that nothing eventful will happen.
That's why we may be able to ignore some stuff, but not all of it, because we're all humans as well. Having thick skin is a need for tough neighbourhoods, like where I live, yet it does not grant invulnerability. 578, you may be all tough as nails on the internet forums, yet you feel emotionally charged to come over here and repeat your argument, which is far from flawless. Your reasons do not interest me, your behaviour does. This means you are also human, and your "thick skin" has its softer points. As does mine, since I came here once again to type a useless wall of text. We come here because we feel a need to voice our opinions, our ideas, even when they are opposite to each other, which they're not entirely.

Yet we are being civil with each other, to some degrees. However, it is oft that civility is completely absent, people flame each other just for the sake of being rude. We have all seen this happen everywhere, especially on TW forums, that's why a ton of people get muted, watched and banned. And that's why the forums work, because there is active moderation. And that's why after 10 years I still keep coming here, because the community survives and regulates itself. Unregulated communities break and fall apart, and survive from periods of sporadic flourishing and ages of darkness, like 4chan, or the stock market.

And as Roccoflipside said, you are basing your arguments on an already established community, something which has stood the test of time - it survived and regulated itself, and we all grew with it. But when BL releases, there will be waves of new people, literally old ad young, trying to find their place in this community, and if it presents itself as a "tough-guy maker", people will just abandon it. If a game is unpleasant because it is bad, it is regarded as a bad game, if a game is unpleasant because of its gamers, it is also regarded as a bad game. Look at Counter Strike communities, most of it is painful, but some are really great. But the game survives because Valve wants it to survive, and they outright ban hackers, cheats, frauds and repeatedly toxic people. There is even a "peer-review" of possible cheaters.

The inverse is also the case: you say there's people who would leave due to insults (which of course there is), but what about the people who enjoy the banter and casual insults? Can you quantify the number of people who leave due to excess toxicity, and what excess toxicity even means? I'd be happy to accept that point if there was data to support it, but near as I can tell there's no data either way.
Also I think culture is important. "Casual Gamers" in my country are more banter heavy in real life than their "hardcore gamer" counterparts, anyway.

That's precisely the role of moderation - by admins, devs, mods and/or other players (the "peers"). To moderate between excessive, mild and minor, to distinguish between oportunistic, "innate" or eventual offenses - someone who does it because the circumstances allow them to do so, someone who does it every time because that's how they play, and someone who "offends" because that specific situation led them to do so. Think about punching another person on the street: someone who does it because no one is looking, someone who does it every time they can, and someone who does it because they were led to do it - either by passion or necessity. It's three completely different situations, and each requires a different "punishment", or analysis - they must be moderated accordingly.
And that's what TW will require once the game launches, because a lot of old and new people will start harassing. And the devs, admins, mods and experienced players will have to try to maintain a friendly, hospitable community, so it can endure. So we can go back to the game three years after its launch and still see there is an active community that survives and prospers, despite human nature (taking a hobbesian look of humans here, tho).

 

[Lord Milky]

Good grief! Can't you lot argue in shorter paragraphs? That's a ridiculous amount of words for thine eyes.

 

[monoolho]

Unfortunately no. As you may have noticed with your own eyes, i write textwalls, i spew forth word after word, searching the adequate lexicon to best fit the meaning with significance, avoiding the entropy of pointless haggling of perspectives.

As thou might've sees't for thyself, I am become verb, the harbinger of reading tiredness.

 

[Roccoflipside]

As thou might've sees't for thyself, I am become verb, the harbinger of reading tiredness.

Quote worhty

 

[Sundeki]

Response to monoolho:

Spoiler

So: what is to be gained from having the moderators on top of the personal moderation function for chat activity? It seems completely redundant.

I may not have been clear enough. I am not speaking about having

MODS=GODS

in games or chat. I am talking about moderation, as in "to moderate activity and interactions between humans and game mechanics". That can be achieved by server admins. That's what admins do in game servers: they moderate. Depending on server activity and the number of admins, a few moderators may be required to moderate the in-game activity and interactions at all times. This can be done by always having an admin online, which is difficult on servers with few admins, but can be done by having select individuals to moderate, mods. Both work.

I might be missing something here, but; what does that have to do with my statement? What I said in that quote is that it seems redundant to have people perform task x, when you're already performing task x.

Not everyone has the time and patience to waste most of their waking hours, and some sleeping hours too, to play a game, sometimes people would rather only do something fun, instead of gambling their free time on a game: will there be idiots talking about immigration, or will it be fun? Maybe I should just play something else instead...

The problem with that as an argument is that it doesn't account for people saying things that are acceptable within the rules that still make people upset. I don't think I've come across a server that, for example, bans all talking of politics (I'm sure a few of them exist, but I haven't seen/been in one). For official servers the rules often regard a specific set of banned chat content (racial slurs, graphic expletives, death threats maybe, etc.). As long as those things aren't being talked about, one could discuss e.g immigration and other "hot" topic issues, and as long as they are following the other rules, they're allowed to keep talking about it.
As I've mentioned in an earlier post to someone else; there is certain content and a certain word that I really don't like, but I haven't seen a server discussing it that is against the rules. It's very likely that a large section of the community, perhaps almost all of it, has topics and words that they individually don't like, either. So if people are thinking what you use as an example there, it's going to happen regardless of anything and everything else anyway.

As I said, this is entirely in tandem with the personal tools to mute, and block. As Cap. Nemo said, not all people are expected to understand how to use them. And as the topic of "teachers" has come along this topic, you might recall from your years at high school and grade school or home school, that you haven't learned EVERYTHING your teachers taught you. If you did, you're exceptional, but that's most likely the case of bad memory overruling actual events - you think you learned everything, when in fact you did not.
That's not your fault, it's human nature, human limitations - you can't learn and remember every single topic ever. And that's equally true for games and gamers - the game may give you flashing bright arrows pointing at "HOW TO MUTE SOMEONE WITH A SINGLE CLICK", and people don't pay attention, because reasons.
Sometimes, people don't want to be bothered to waste 2 minutes of their limited gaming time just to mute someone.
Sometimes people prefer just to give up on the game because some players are idiots.

This is something that I can't really argue against in an objective way, because I legitimately think the Law of countries exists primarily as a means to protect idiots from themselves (yes I am aware this is cliche). "Idiots who are totally braindead might get upset because they are too stupid or disinterested to learn the most basic and obvious functions of the game" is a very true statement and a very good argument. Said idiots are also the cash cows in the microtransaction age because they are the group least likely to control their impulses (as a whole group). I understand TaleWorld's motivations to protect said idiots from their own inaction, in these cases.

Yet we are being civil with each other, to some degrees. However, it is oft that civility is completely absent, people flame each other just for the sake of being rude. We have all seen this happen everywhere, especially on TW forums, that's why a ton of people get muted, watched and banned. And that's why the forums work, because there is active moderation. And that's why after 10 years I still keep coming here, because the community survives and regulates itself. Unregulated communities break and fall apart, and survive from periods of sporadic flourishing and ages of darkness, like 4chan, or the stock market.

Well I've said I support moderation for the sake of mechanical rule breaking. So it's not like I'm saying "NO MODERATORS, CHAOS WOO" or anything. Only that the argument of subjectivity in regards to offense applies. As I said earlier in this post, and in other posts; people have different preferences as to what is or isn't acceptable, and what is or isn't funny, etc. Why does one group's subjective offense have priority over another when it comes to centralized moderation?
The argument about the forums isn't necessarily relevant as a comparison because it's a whole different beast (same as e.g Twitch Chats). Different core function, different number of users, different access method, etc. If the core function of the medium is talk and discussion, then obviously you require moderation of talk and discussion, or it doesn't fulfill it's function. If you're banned from e.g TaleWorlds forum, you can go elsewhere. The chat function within Bannerlord is secondary or tertiary, it's core function is the game mechanics itself. A game that people have paid for, and thus have some consumer right to play. If they're preventing people from playing the game, then they've lost the right to play it themselves. If they say something that hurts someone's feelings, they're still physically able to play the game. Offense is not quantifiable. The situations are completely different.
I've had to summarize everything because I'm getting a bit tired of typing the exact same thing out over and over.

And as Roccoflipside said, you are basing your arguments on an already established community, something which has stood the test of time - it survived and regulated itself, and we all grew with it. But when BL releases, there will be waves of new people, literally old ad young, trying to find their place in this community, and if it presents itself as a "tough-guy maker", people will just abandon it. If a game is unpleasant because it is bad, it is regarded as a bad game, if a game is unpleasant because of its gamers, it is also regarded as a bad game. Look at Counter Strike communities, most of it is painful, but some are really great. But the game survives because Valve wants it to survive, and they outright ban hackers, cheats, frauds and repeatedly toxic people. There is even a "peer-review" of possible cheaters.

The high level of toxicity of players within a gaming community doesn't make it a bad game by any metric. Valve games (e.g Dota 2) have extremely toxic and angry players, and yet was one of the most successful games of all time. People still rate it highly. It's still considered a good game. And all of the mutes in the world don't improve that toxicity either, and if Valve went around banning people for talking trash the game would be outright dead. The most effective insult I saw was something that wasn't even banworthy: calling enemy players "virgins" when you killed them.
Mordhau did very well, and was rated very highly, and it had no mute functions whatsoever for weeks. It has begun to die down in terms of it's playerbase, but that is inevitable. If I remember correctly; it's active playerbase remained more stable than others of the same genre (War of the Roses, Chivalry, etc.).

A good game is a good game. Would a community that acts in a negative and insulting way cause people to stop playing? Sure. But to what extent, and to what extent it affects playerbase is difficult to say because there's no data that I've found that is relevant to the topic. It's also difficult to say to what extent heavy handed moderators can do to kill/hurt communities and servers as well, but I have seen examples of the latter myself.

That's precisely the role of moderation - by admins, devs, mods and/or other players (the "peers"). To moderate between excessive, mild and minor, to distinguish between oportunistic, "innate" or eventual offenses - someone who does it because the circumstances allow them to do so, someone who does it every time because that's how they play, and someone who "offends" because that specific situation led them to do so. Think about punching another person on the street: someone who does it because no one is looking, someone who does it every time they can, and someone who does it because they were led to do it - either by passion or necessity. It's three completely different situations, and each requires a different "punishment", or analysis - they must be moderated accordingly.
And that's what TW will require once the game launches, because a lot of old and new people will start harassing. And the devs, admins, mods and experienced players will have to try to maintain a friendly, hospitable community, so it can endure. So we can go back to the game three years after its launch and still see there is an active community that survives and prospers, despite human nature (taking a hobbesian look of humans here, tho).

All of that is problematic, because it's all based on subjective experience, it's based on moderators not having biases (they absolutely do, they're only human), and people getting banned from playing games because they hurt someone's feelings (which someone is getting their feelings hurt by one or several things every time I launch a multiplayer game, anyway). Nobody can quantify subjective experience, and doing so creates so many problems. The example of people punching each other is a false equivalency, because you can quantify physical harm. It's not the case with a chat. What one person thinks is funny, another person finds offensive. I keep asking this question because I don't get a response: Why does one person's subjective experience get prioritized over the others? And in cases of mistakes (there's going to be a lot of them, there always is), how can one justify people getting removed or muted over friendly banter between players, as well as cultural misundertandings on the part of the moderators, among the others on the long lists of misunderstandings. I've been banned for following the rules ...places to the letter. It's only that people have misunderstandings, even moderators (especially moderators who have to spend all of that time dealing with an absolute torrent of dog **** they have to review). It's not good for their mental state, and that makes them mistake or emotion prone, which causes even more problems.

...or the people playing the game can choose for themselves what chat content they do and don't want to see in the game they payed for. I'm not going to prioritize anyone's subjective experience over another's.

 

[Honved]

In cases like this, there are two sides to the argument, and neither is entirely right, or entirely wrong.  Finding a balance, where blatant cases of causing offense against those who do not wish to be offended are removed, hopefully with as little impact on those who enjoy a little bit of "back and forth" banter in their multiplayer experience.  It's a balancing act, and either extreme can doom a game to mediocrity and low player participation.

If the servers get too toxic, players leave.  If the servers get too restrictive, players leave.  If you find a reasonable balance, players will STILL leave, but generally less than at either extreme.  I suspect that Taleworlds will initially crack down fairly hard on abusive chat comments, but that will likely ease up over time to something more balanced.  As said, muting should be able to handle MOST of the cases, but moderators will still be required to shut down a few of the most vocal and abusive players.  Hopefully, there will be some kind of appeal process so those who are reported can defend themselves from the spamming of random reports at the slightest excuse as another form of player abuse.  My own limited multiplayer experiences showed that there are extremes on both sides of the coin: those who seek to deliver offense and those who actively seek excuses to be offended.

 

[Sundeki]

In cases like this, there are two sides to the argument, and neither is entirely right, or entirely wrong.  Finding a balance, where blatant cases of causing offense against those who do not wish to be offended are removed, hopefully with as little impact on those who enjoy a little bit of "back and forth" banter in their multiplayer experience.  It's a balancing act, and either extreme can doom a game to mediocrity and low player participation.

If the servers get too toxic, players leave.  If the servers get too restrictive, players leave.  If you find a reasonable balance, players will STILL leave, but generally less than at either extreme.  I suspect that Taleworlds will initially crack down fairly hard on abusive chat comments, but that will likely ease up over time to something more balanced.  As said, muting should be able to handle MOST of the cases, but moderators will still be required to shut down a few of the most vocal and abusive players.  Hopefully, there will be some kind of appeal process so those who are reported can defend themselves from the spamming of random reports at the slightest excuse as another form of player abuse.  My own limited multiplayer experiences showed that there are extremes on both sides of the coin: those who seek to deliver offense and those who actively seek excuses to be offended.

Unfortunately "People should be banned for hurting another person's feelings" and "People should not be banned for hurting another person's feelings" are mutually exclusive positions.

 

[Honved]

Unfortunately "People should be banned for hurting another person's feelings" and "People should not be banned for hurting another person's feelings" are mutually exclusive positions.

The only practical way to compromise between those positions is to define what constitutes a bannable offense, and what is merely "rude".  Then you need some kind of review or appeal process to handle the cases that fall in the middle.

Screening for certain key words could be used as a trigger, so if you use them, your comments are saved for possible later review, and if there are complaints about it, then an actual review and possible action may be taken.  That way, you don't get banned just for using certain language among friends, but someone else who may be offended can call attention to it and have your comments reviewed.  If the comments were TO the complainer, that's a strike against the speaker; if not, then it should USUALLY be passed over as acceptable banter among friends, with a relatively mild warning, and the complainer marked differently as having complained.  Too many warnings OR too many complaints against too many different people (such as someone trying to use the complaint system to get an entire faction banned in a game) could result in action being taken.

The idea is to remove or silence the outright trolls and abusers, as well as to discourage the morally indignant from going on a crusade to hunt for offenses, without shutting down the player who occasionally lets a bad word slip out.

 

[Sundeki]

The only practical way to compromise between those positions is to define what constitutes a bannable offense, and what is merely "rude".

But how? Every bannable offense in the chat  is subjectively defined "rudeness". The one exception might be maybe death threats, but that constitutes a real world component, and I've been told that someone is going to find and kill me during online gaming at least 3 times now, and I'm still here, so it's just hot air. Like I said, the two positions are mutually exclusive. Either someone thinks a person should get banned for something, or they shouldn't. The moment we "compromise" and start banning people for something, it isn't a compromise anymore. The side that wants banning has priority.
So I'll ask again: why should one group's subjectivity be applied over another's?

 

[Roccoflipside]

I still think permabanning should be a "last resort" sort of thing. Just like on these forums, you can have varying levels of being "watched" (warned), muted for however long (with the ability to still use something like 578's ping system so it's not really hampering your ability to play), and finally banning for someone who has been warned and muted.

Even then, bans should mostly be for a short period, because a permaban is more likely to encourage the offender to find a way around the system, while a two-day or even week-long ban is more likely to be just waited out.