Toxicity

[MattScott 15240]

Toxicity has always been one of APB’s biggest issues and this is yet another thing where things are simply getting out of control because of the fact that the Live game seems abandoned. I can’t go for 30 minutes without seeing someone being blatantly racist, homophobic or otherwise discriminating whether thats through chat, clan names or names themselves, in now 13 years of playing online games, mainly shooters, I have never seen a worse example of toxicity than in the recent year or so of playing APB it is simply out of control.

 

This isn’t the only form of toxicity either, a lot of members of the community that have a name for themselves whether it's through streaming or being parts of programs like SPCT get targeted by harassment or griefing every time they open the game. Things have gotten so bad that many of us who want to enjoy the game can’t stream and have to play on hidden characters, meaning we’re locked out of any meaningful endgame progression such as maxing roles. This form of harassment comes in the form of stream sniping, griefing or things such as toxic whispers etc. Not even GM’s are spared from this, making their life and volunteer duty miserable.

 

Toxicity is something that LO can fix now and it has been left to fester for way too long. Stricter rules and punishment handed out by both GM’s and Support are one of possible methods of handling this problem. Even if they don’t show it, people care about their accounts and I could almost guarantee you that a lot of the racist things that are being spewed would go away if it came with severe penalties to their accounts such as a 30 day ban for first offenders and a permanent ban for repeated offenders. Wipe everyone's ignore list and make it so ignoring players ignores ALL characters on their account rather than just the one, combine this with a GTA 5 inspired passive mode of sorts that lets you ignore collisions tied to that players player-owned car or car he’s currently in for a few hours of recently ignored players and you have a solution against targeted griefing that doesn’t require GM’s to step in.

 

“People are too used to it to a point where it has become part of the game. There are ways to be toxic that aren't even considered as violations. Huge changes and stricter rules, maybe stronger punishments that mean something are required in my opinion.”  -Community Member

[R3ACT3M 480]

On 12/5/2022 at 7:19 PM, MattScott said:

Stricter rules and punishment handed out by both GM’s and Support are one of possible methods of handling this problem.

There needs to be some way for the fear of god to be put into players. The feeling that what they say can have them be held accountable. I know overwatch does it, where it informs the player that text chat may be recorded for reasons related to such matters. Have some blatant words be sent to support (please don't over censor as that will definitely be more annoying that resolving) But words related to hate speech or real-world issues should not be allowed. This is a game not twitter.

[NotZombieBiscuit 3145]

There is already a tool in place. It is the mute/ignore/block function.

[mtz 496]

10 hours ago, NotZombieBiscuit said:

There is already a tool in place. It is the mute/ignore/block function.

Ignore tools are stopgap measures which put the responsibility on the victim of toxicity to block the toxic users instead of putting the responsibility on the toxic users to behave properly towards fellow community members. They work best as supplementary measures to other prevention systems.

Optimally we should be solving problems by working at their core instead of applying band-aids to bullet holes.

 

As @R3ACT3M put it, toxic users should be faced with consequences for uncivilized behavior – and an obvious starting point in this case is, for example, temp-restricting offending accounts from using in-game communication, much like the idea in the Open Letter crossposted by Matt Scott in the opening post here. If certain users can't utilize the in-game chat without insulting other users or straight up throwing hate speech around, I see no benefit to the community as a whole in letting them continue to do that.

Edited December 17, 2022 by mtz

[R3ACT3M 480]

On 12/17/2022 at 4:33 AM, mtz said:

Ignore tools are stopgap measures which put the responsibility on the victim of toxicity to block the toxic users instead of putting the responsibility on the toxic users to behave properly towards fellow community members.

Yea ignoring is only good for players who are harassing someone. And players shouldn't have to ignore so many people, Cause there are still ways to be toxic without using the text chat. (imagine tea-bagging one just to make yourself feel better)