MP List of solutions to get rid off the toxic chat

[Emil]

• Game settings could contain an option to always automatically opt-out of enemy chat entirely upon joining a game. There's no real point of seeing enemy chat all the time anyway. This is mainly for competitive, thus maybe also separate the option to opt-out of competitive enemy chat, but remain opt-in on casual matches.
• Chat filter, there are intrinsic ways of removing the possibility to bypass a filter. Join the Discord server in my signature and attempt to write a filtered word. It isn't always fool proof, the lengths some players has to go to bypass makes it overall less likely they will write something that might end up filtered.
• Dedicated servers will have administrators with an active role in moderating behavior and un/allowed words. The servers still has to follow TW policy on racism from admins, but there's obviously going to be un/intentional divergence in handling issues with players.
• In-game report function, as well as the ability for Bannerlord MP moderators of issuing temporary/permanent game bans. In contrast of community servers, where server admins are able to keep a constant eye on language and behavior, it's not realistic in the official servers and the matchmaking system, thus an alternative way of reporting and punishing toxic individuals is required.

The first and second alternative were written from the standpoint of ''No-one has to be banned, no-one has to be unnecessarily bothered''. The third alternative leaves server bans for toxic behavior or purposeful flaming up to the server admins, but doesn't ban the player from the entire multi-player module unless a repeated pattern is detected and TW investigates the player.

 

[Joeriig]

Nice suggestions, certainly the opt-out option would be a blessing!

 

[Namakan]

A mild chatfilter would probably be the best option - I don't mind people saying '****' but I can very well do without racist bull****
and such.

 

[coc]

Enemy chat being an option, with opt-out as the default, seems like a good choice to me.

Word filter should be a toggle option, as well. For one, many people don't care or would rather know what was said, specifically, than to see stars. Second, having it be a toggle disincentivizes people circumventing it. It's pretty common for a mature language filter to be a toggle option in online games.

And yeah, a server admin should have control over the content of his server.

Seems all good, to me.

 

[Morlock14]

I like the idea of a toggleable chat filter
.

 

[Derped@Warband]

• Dedicated servers will have administrators with an active role in moderating behavior and un/allowed words. The servers still has to follow TW policy on racism from admins, but there's obviously going to be un/intentional divergence in handling issues with players.

Taleworlds doesn't have a policy on racism, per se. It's not listed in their ToS, and would therefore be up to the server owners to decide what is...

defamatory, abusive, hateful, threatening, spam or spam-like, likely to offend, contains adult or objectionable content

There will be servers that police more then others, and some that are more wild and untamed. It's their (the server owners) money they're dropping to host, so it's up to them, but if TW's policing of chat so far is any indication, I doubt they'll be policing people's servers. If warband is any indication, I doubt they'll care what happens on people's servers or take any actions.

The only other thought I have on the matter is that once private servers can be hosted, and admins can start admining, and this particular problem will become less of one. No matter how many people you kick or ban, they come back or new ones show up. No matter how good the filter is, they get around it. Only people actively working on keeping server rules consistent seems to have an effect. I've helped admin WB servers for years, it'll be a never ending struggle in BL same as it was in WB, but I'd rather TW not waste time working on chat filters when there are bigger problems to fix in MP. There is a mute person function, a mute all or mute enemy doesn't seem amiss.

 

[Emil]

I'd personally like to avoid this thread ending up as the now locked ''Racism in Multiplayer'', as compared to that thread, there's an actual list of suggestions here, highly relevant to the subcategory named feedback and suggestions. You may suggest a laisse-fairez way of handling matters, but truth be told, it doesn't feel very constructive to the whole point of finding ways to lessen the toxicity. ''No matter how many people you kick or ban...'', ''No matter how good the filter is''. You appear to like the third idea the most, however as I stated; it's not a complete solution, especially not for official servers or the matchmaking system. All of the suggestion go hand-in-hand though, and do ease things for admins. No-one here is arguing this is a top priority problem so I don't really see how that's relevant or contributes to the discussion either.

If warband is any indication, I doubt they'll care what happens on people's servers or take any actions.

If Warband is any indication, they do very much care what happens on people's servers nowadays and do take action;
Private Server Monetisation Policy (Mainly aimed at Persistent World/Kingdom, but unclear instructions for the rest of the servers).
Racism, homophobia and anti semitism 59th Jailbreak server (Admins explicitly racist/carefree, server-messages were anti-semitic, etc).
And an attempt to forge evidence against NRP (Early NRP had a lot of toxic chat, but not in the last four years and especially not from admins).

Taleworlds doesn't have a policy on racism, per se. It's not listed in their ToS, and would therefore be up to the server owners to decide what is...

TW considers forum rules a part of the in-game rules;

1.6 Defamation, Racism & Discrimination
This is an international community with members from many different cultures and backgrounds. Defamation, racism, or discrimination of any kind will not be tolerated. Breaking this rule will result in your immediate removal from the community. Note that this includes, but is by no means limited to, sexism, homophobia, religious-based hatred and similar.

We feel like we have given people plenty of time to become familiar with this policy and make changes to their service. So from now on, we will start to actively enforce the policy.

With that in mind, this server has now been blacklisted:

59th_Jailbreak

• Violation of Monetisation Policy
• Racism/Homophobia by Server Owners on Server & Homepage
• Asset Theft

 

[WhiteEyedSh4rk]

In-game report function, as well as the ability for Bannerlord MP moderators of issuing temporary/permanent game bans. In contrast of community servers, where server admins are able to keep a constant eye on language and behavior, it's not realistic in the official servers and the matchmaking system, thus an alternative way of reporting and punishing toxic individuals is required.

I support this suggestion.

 

[Derped@Warband]

Huh, learn something new everyday. I'm big on Laisse-fair, partly because I've been on the wild west of the internet from the early years, but the server I help admin isn't. They've rules and enforce them. I enforce them because that's what I agreed to do. I guess I never noticed TWs had a policy because it took TW, like, eight years to implement that? It's a generally positive step, I suppose.
But seriously, thanks for the links, I love looking through data and stuff like that, getting all the information I can. Digesting it, thinking on it.
The pointing out of it not being priority was so people wouldn't get their hopes up for an immediate fix, the point of incompleteness of a filter is that there isn't a silver bullet to this problem. But both also point to the importance of getting servers that can have admins enforcing rules, the quicker the community can police itself the less TW has to worry about this problem. It'll take legwork by actual people to make servers a place where a community can enjoy the game, and not just mute people.