I'd have to wonder how the people at SOE feel about this - I mean the people who are paid to do these kinds of things. I've always believed that giving players the tools to control some aspects of creating content was a good idea, but I never thought about the other side of it. First it was finding abandoned structures and now tagging credit spammers. How much more will the players take on as content before someone at SOE loses their job? I know if it were me I'd be concerned with others doing my job for free.
I highly doubt the CSR's are going to be envious of people dealing with muting Credit Spammers. Especially since they get to do the more interesting part of actually banning the account
I never said envious, I said concerned. It seems to be a new outlook at SOE, let's get our paying subscribers to do it rather then our paid employees. Now don't get me wrong. It's actually kinda of brillant if you can find people to do this for you but if it was my job at SOE to do this I would be concerned about my future there. Will this be the last of the "downloading" of work onto the playerbase? Personally I doubt it.
Well, I consider a CSR's main job to be supporting players with their issues, such as items being lost, getting stuck, griefing, etc. These are all things they've been doing for years now. It's only in the last few months that they've been having to deal with credit spammers so it's only recently been added on to their job descriptions. Now that muting the spammers has been passed onto trusted players, they can fall back to helping people enjoy all aspects of the game as their main role like they used to. I don't think these other roles can be easily passed onto players so I don't think they have too much to worry about Besides, it's not completely "downloaded" to the Wardens, they can only mute the spammers - a CSR still needs to come along and ban them.
Or they could hire more staff to adjust to the changes in the industry.
Personally, I'd rather see no more money spent on credit farmers. I'd rather my subscription money went to things like additional development staff. With the barrage of spam they've been presenting in game for the last few months, I'm quite happy to aid in the damaging of their business at no cost
Personally, I'd rather see no more money spent on credit farmers. I'd rather my subscription money went to things like additional development staff. With the barrage of spam they've been presenting in game for the last few months, I'm quite happy to aid in the damaging of their business at no cost
Well hey, that's your perogative. Personally I'd rather someone get paid to do it, and be accountable for it. As a subscriber I would rather trust in a company that has a reputation to uphold then a player who may, pending a possible grudge against the company and it's players, abuse the power given to him. How is that person accountable outside of a banning?
The whole thing to me initially sounds like an intriguing idea, but the more I think about it the more I'm convinced it's a bad idea.
This is a great idea that (unfortunately) will probably have snags.
There's a bit of a history lesson here dating back to Ultima Online. In ye olde days of MMORPGs, UO, AC1, and EQ1 had a system of player volunteerism similar to what you described and they had varying degrees of power. in AC1, for instance, helpers were called Advocates (and the CSRs were called Sentinels). Advocates got a bubbly green shield with an armor class of 1 that was more or less used to light them up as a christmas tree, making them stand out to newbies. It worked brilliantly for a volunteer team. In UO, helpers called Counselors were more akin to your description and had similar powers. They more or less were the game's support system, and they had schedules. Compared to AC1, where advocacy was explicitly voluntary, UO was more structured and rigid.
What happened under that model is that some idiots sued OSI [gamespy.com] (the then-owners of UO, before Origin got bought out by EA) for back-pay claiming that since they were on a timed schedule that it was technically considered a job.
I don't know if they won or not, but the fallout pretty much killed off the "sponsored" volunteerism in all three games, and has since kept it out of games to date. There's too many legal issues involved to create a reasonably safe area to make something like this work.
If they get it working and have no issues with lawsuits, that's all good and swell - a step (back) in the right direction.
-- xpaladin
[MMOz] AC1/2, AO, DAoC, EQ1/2, SoR, SWG, UO, WAR, WoW
What a novel idea of outsourcing! Outsource elements of customer service to the customers themselves and for no wage or compensation.
Because promoting player involvement in a game is such a bad thing People like to be involved in the game to help it out - that's why we have the Senate, volunteer forum mods (SWGmod0x) and now the Wardens. People also enjoy doing evil things to credit spammers Which is why it's volunteer - those that don't "like doing something they should be payed for" never have to worry about doing it.
I do understand that there will be people, and good people at that performing such jobs. But it is a job and there should be a compensation to it. SOE and LAE are corporations. Conducting volunteering work for commercial entities has some, snags to it; depending on the state corporate laws (but I guess there is some legal way around it).
Now by compensation, there are a number of ways, for example as was done for EQ with Guides. Put in so many hours as a Guide and not be charged for one account for the month. Why not the same for SWG?
But I guess I answered that, because there will be people willing to do the work for no compensation.
Again, this is an excellent way to reduce the overhead and improve the bottom-line.
Yup, reduce the overhead and improve the bottom-line, pacify the whiners and look like they are actually doing something.
I'd have to wonder how the people at SOE feel about this - I mean the people who are paid to do these kinds of things. I've always believed that giving players the tools to control some aspects of creating content was a good idea, but I never thought about the other side of it. First it was finding abandoned structures and now tagging credit spammers. How much more will the players take on as content before someone at SOE loses their job? I know if it were me I'd be concerned with others doing my job for free.
I highly doubt the CSR's are going to be envious of people dealing with muting Credit Spammers. Especially since they get to do the more interesting part of actually banning the account
I never said envious, I said concerned. It seems to be a new outlook at SOE, let's get our paying subscribers to do it rather then our paid employees. Now don't get me wrong. It's actually kinda of brillant if you can find people to do this for you but if it was my job at SOE to do this I would be concerned about my future there. Will this be the last of the "downloading" of work onto the playerbase? Personally I doubt it.
Well, I consider a CSR's main job to be supporting players with their issues, such as items being lost, getting stuck, griefing, etc. These are all things they've been doing for years now. It's only in the last few months that they've been having to deal with credit spammers so it's only recently been added on to their job descriptions. Now that muting the spammers has been passed onto trusted players, they can fall back to helping people enjoy all aspects of the game as their main role like they used to. I don't think these other roles can be easily passed onto players so I don't think they have too much to worry about Besides, it's not completely "downloaded" to the Wardens, they can only mute the spammers - a CSR still needs to come along and ban them.
Or they could hire more staff to adjust to the changes in the industry.
Personally, I'd rather see no more money spent on credit farmers. I'd rather my subscription money went to things like additional development staff. With the barrage of spam they've been presenting in game for the last few months, I'm quite happy to aid in the damaging of their business at no cost
I personally don't see this damaging credit selling that much. Money is a powerful motivator, and the china farmers are poor and hungry, they will find a way to beat it, cause their motivation and tenacity to eat and get wealthy will be greater than some volunteer player muting do gooder that will eventually grow tired of the "job" after the novelty wears off.
The Warden program is such that once the spammer is muted the logs go to a GM and the spammer is banned.
I don't think the community will get tired of taking this on since there are many who signed up. If someone does get tired of doing the job there are others in line to take it on.
This is a great idea that (unfortunately) will probably have snags. There's a bit of a history lesson here dating back to Ultima Online. In ye olde days of MMORPGs, UO, AC1, and EQ1 had a system of player volunteerism similar to what you described and they had varying degrees of power. in AC1, for instance, helpers were called Advocates (and the CSRs were called Sentinels). Advocates got a bubbly green shield with an armor class of 1 that was more or less used to light them up as a christmas tree, making them stand out to newbies. It worked brilliantly for a volunteer team. In UO, helpers called Counselors were more akin to your description and had similar powers. They more or less were the game's support system, and they had schedules. Compared to AC1, where advocacy was explicitly voluntary, UO was more structured and rigid. What happened under that model is that some idiots sued OSI [gamespy.com] (the then-owners of UO, before Origin got bought out by EA) for back-pay claiming that since they were on a timed schedule that it was technically considered a job. I don't know if they won or not, but the fallout pretty much killed off the "sponsored" volunteerism in all three games, and has since kept it out of games to date. There's too many legal issues involved to create a reasonably safe area to make something like this work. If they get it working and have no issues with lawsuits, that's all good and swell - a step (back) in the right direction.
I think the situation in this case is different. There's no quotas to meet, times scheduled, etc. It seems to be purely voluntary in all aspects. It's hard to understand how someone could come into this and come to the conclusion that it could be technically considered a job. On the otherhand, I do come from a different part of the world where things are naturally different so maybe I'll be proven wrong
I think the situation in this case is different. There's no quotas to meet, times scheduled, etc. It seems to be purely voluntary in all aspects. It's hard to understand how someone could come into this and come to the conclusion that it could be technically considered a job. On the otherhand, I do come from a different part of the world where things are naturally different so maybe I'll be proven wrong
Maybe - I certainly hope so. Players should be allowed to volunteer to help out and be granted benefits for their time like in the old days.
America is litigious, no doubt about it. But in fairness, it was only a few bad apples that spoiled things for everyone else (as it usually goes around here). The defectors probably felt unappreciated and decided to turn their rage to legal matters to try and raise some money for it.
Most folks were happy to volunteer. I knew quite a few Advocates in AC1. A lot of them were in fact *pissed* when the program went away because they genuinely loved helping out. One such fellow I recall thought Turbine's Advocate/Sentinel statues were an insult in comparison.
At any rate, it might help things out for the game, but there's more than one avenue of risk involved.
-- xpaladin
[MMOz] AC1/2, AO, DAoC, EQ1/2, SoR, SWG, UO, WAR, WoW
They are now upset about this??... At one time, I can recall SOE not caring about this.... Wow, now if they could just come up with a combat system that worked,.. ok, ok,... a game that was worth playing.
Been there done that: Asherons Call,SWG,AOC,D&D,COH,Anarchy Online,DAOC,EVE,Guild Wars,LOTRO,POTBS,WAR,WW2, and Rift
This is a great idea that (unfortunately) will probably have snags. There's a bit of a history lesson here dating back to Ultima Online. In ye olde days of MMORPGs, UO, AC1, and EQ1 had a system of player volunteerism similar to what you described and they had varying degrees of power. in AC1, for instance, helpers were called Advocates (and the CSRs were called Sentinels). Advocates got a bubbly green shield with an armor class of 1 that was more or less used to light them up as a christmas tree, making them stand out to newbies. It worked brilliantly for a volunteer team. In UO, helpers called Counselors were more akin to your description and had similar powers. They more or less were the game's support system, and they had schedules. Compared to AC1, where advocacy was explicitly voluntary, UO was more structured and rigid. What happened under that model is that some idiots sued OSI [gamespy.com] (the then-owners of UO, before Origin got bought out by EA) for back-pay claiming that since they were on a timed schedule that it was technically considered a job. I don't know if they won or not, but the fallout pretty much killed off the "sponsored" volunteerism in all three games, and has since kept it out of games to date. There's too many legal issues involved to create a reasonably safe area to make something like this work. If they get it working and have no issues with lawsuits, that's all good and swell - a step (back) in the right direction.
Yeah, one of my friends was a Seer in UO, think that's what they were called anyway. The jackasses that started the lawsuit completely ruined a good thing in UO all for nothing. My friend didn't take part in the lawsuit.
This is a great idea that (unfortunately) will probably have snags. There's a bit of a history lesson here dating back to Ultima Online. In ye olde days of MMORPGs, UO, AC1, and EQ1 had a system of player volunteerism similar to what you described and they had varying degrees of power. in AC1, for instance, helpers were called Advocates (and the CSRs were called Sentinels). Advocates got a bubbly green shield with an armor class of 1 that was more or less used to light them up as a christmas tree, making them stand out to newbies. It worked brilliantly for a volunteer team. In UO, helpers called Counselors were more akin to your description and had similar powers. They more or less were the game's support system, and they had schedules. Compared to AC1, where advocacy was explicitly voluntary, UO was more structured and rigid. What happened under that model is that some idiots sued OSI [gamespy.com] (the then-owners of UO, before Origin got bought out by EA) for back-pay claiming that since they were on a timed schedule that it was technically considered a job. I don't know if they won or not, but the fallout pretty much killed off the "sponsored" volunteerism in all three games, and has since kept it out of games to date. There's too many legal issues involved to create a reasonably safe area to make something like this work. If they get it working and have no issues with lawsuits, that's all good and swell - a step (back) in the right direction.
Well you have to remember that there was some shady stuff going on back in the day on Ultima Online. As one of the Counselors back then I did see and hear a few things that, well I can understand 'why' EA/OSI shut our program down.
The 'morons' that sued OSI did it over the fact that they got free time on the game for helping out. And when it was taken away from them, they got all upset. I still think the ones that got all upset about it where in the wrong, but hell even back then anybody and everybody tried to find something to use scream about. Hell it's still going on today with people screaming about everything and anything with any game out there. Sadly those that don't like something tend to be louder, and sadly gaming as turned into a Monkey See, Monkey Do kinda thing.
Also add in that we had a GM back in the day doing some really underhanded things. We one GM and I believe a few Counselors that where found helping some of the more 'well known' Griefer/Hacker Guilds on UO. It's kinda sad programs like that really helped those games out, granted as a Counselor I found it to be a thankless job half the time... Still it just takes one or two people to ruin something good, in the case with UO it was a big cost as one part of the Volunteer Staff where the Seers. Namely they went around making Quests and RP content in the world. Sadly most got screwed over..
Originally posted by Suvroc How is that person accountable outside of a banning?
You have to realize at this point that banning would be a sufficient means of keeping players in check. Obviously they will be screening applicants, so anyone without a sufficiently invested account will be ignored.
I think this system will work, as there are still a few games that use this system today. Runescape's player moderators are numerous, and while they don't always get it right, they do their best and they have real GMs to read the reports and check for errors. These volunteers are also unable to actually take action against an account, and are instead reduced to muting (although in this case, 24 hours) until the account is dealt with properly.
As was mentioned before, at worst a few players are muted temporarily. At best, SOE has killed two birds with one stone.
Comments
I highly doubt the CSR's are going to be envious of people dealing with muting Credit Spammers. Especially since they get to do the more interesting part of actually banning the account
Well, I consider a CSR's main job to be supporting players with their issues, such as items being lost, getting stuck, griefing, etc. These are all things they've been doing for years now. It's only in the last few months that they've been having to deal with credit spammers so it's only recently been added on to their job descriptions. Now that muting the spammers has been passed onto trusted players, they can fall back to helping people enjoy all aspects of the game as their main role like they used to. I don't think these other roles can be easily passed onto players so I don't think they have too much to worry aboutI never said envious, I said concerned. It seems to be a new outlook at SOE, let's get our paying subscribers to do it rather then our paid employees. Now don't get me wrong. It's actually kinda of brillant if you can find people to do this for you but if it was my job at SOE to do this I would be concerned about my future there. Will this be the last of the "downloading" of work onto the playerbase? Personally I doubt it.
Or they could hire more staff to adjust to the changes in the industry.
Personally, I'd rather see no more money spent on credit farmers. I'd rather my subscription money went to things like additional development staff. With the barrage of spam they've been presenting in game for the last few months, I'm quite happy to aid in the damaging of their business at no cost
Well hey, that's your perogative. Personally I'd rather someone get paid to do it, and be accountable for it. As a subscriber I would rather trust in a company that has a reputation to uphold then a player who may, pending a possible grudge against the company and it's players, abuse the power given to him. How is that person accountable outside of a banning?
The whole thing to me initially sounds like an intriguing idea, but the more I think about it the more I'm convinced it's a bad idea.
This is a great idea that (unfortunately) will probably have snags.
There's a bit of a history lesson here dating back to Ultima Online. In ye olde days of MMORPGs, UO, AC1, and EQ1 had a system of player volunteerism similar to what you described and they had varying degrees of power. in AC1, for instance, helpers were called Advocates (and the CSRs were called Sentinels). Advocates got a bubbly green shield with an armor class of 1 that was more or less used to light them up as a christmas tree, making them stand out to newbies. It worked brilliantly for a volunteer team. In UO, helpers called Counselors were more akin to your description and had similar powers. They more or less were the game's support system, and they had schedules. Compared to AC1, where advocacy was explicitly voluntary, UO was more structured and rigid.
What happened under that model is that some idiots sued OSI [gamespy.com] (the then-owners of UO, before Origin got bought out by EA) for back-pay claiming that since they were on a timed schedule that it was technically considered a job.
I don't know if they won or not, but the fallout pretty much killed off the "sponsored" volunteerism in all three games, and has since kept it out of games to date. There's too many legal issues involved to create a reasonably safe area to make something like this work.
If they get it working and have no issues with lawsuits, that's all good and swell - a step (back) in the right direction.
-- xpaladin
[MMOz]
AC1/2, AO, DAoC, EQ1/2, SoR, SWG, UO, WAR, WoW
Because promoting player involvement in a game is such a bad thing
People like to be involved in the game to help it out - that's why we have the Senate, volunteer forum mods (SWGmod0x) and now the Wardens. People also enjoy doing evil things to credit spammers 
Which is why it's volunteer - those that don't "like doing something they should be payed for" never have to worry about doing it.
I do understand that there will be people, and good people at that performing such jobs. But it is a job and there should be a compensation to it. SOE and LAE are corporations. Conducting volunteering work for commercial entities has some, snags to it; depending on the state corporate laws (but I guess there is some legal way around it).Now by compensation, there are a number of ways, for example as was done for EQ with Guides. Put in so many hours as a Guide and not be charged for one account for the month. Why not the same for SWG?
But I guess I answered that, because there will be people willing to do the work for no compensation.
Again, this is an excellent way to reduce the overhead and improve the bottom-line.
Yup, reduce the overhead and improve the bottom-line, pacify the whiners and look like they are actually doing something.
I highly doubt the CSR's are going to be envious of people dealing with muting Credit Spammers. Especially since they get to do the more interesting part of actually banning the account
Well, I consider a CSR's main job to be supporting players with their issues, such as items being lost, getting stuck, griefing, etc. These are all things they've been doing for years now. It's only in the last few months that they've been having to deal with credit spammers so it's only recently been added on to their job descriptions. Now that muting the spammers has been passed onto trusted players, they can fall back to helping people enjoy all aspects of the game as their main role like they used to. I don't think these other roles can be easily passed onto players so I don't think they have too much to worry aboutI never said envious, I said concerned. It seems to be a new outlook at SOE, let's get our paying subscribers to do it rather then our paid employees. Now don't get me wrong. It's actually kinda of brillant if you can find people to do this for you but if it was my job at SOE to do this I would be concerned about my future there. Will this be the last of the "downloading" of work onto the playerbase? Personally I doubt it.
Or they could hire more staff to adjust to the changes in the industry.
Personally, I'd rather see no more money spent on credit farmers. I'd rather my subscription money went to things like additional development staff. With the barrage of spam they've been presenting in game for the last few months, I'm quite happy to aid in the damaging of their business at no cost
I personally don't see this damaging credit selling that much. Money is a powerful motivator, and the china farmers are poor and hungry, they will find a way to beat it, cause their motivation and tenacity to eat and get wealthy will be greater than some volunteer player muting do gooder that will eventually grow tired of the "job" after the novelty wears off.
The Warden program is such that once the spammer is muted the logs go to a GM and the spammer is banned.
I don't think the community will get tired of taking this on since there are many who signed up. If someone does get tired of doing the job there are others in line to take it on.
I think the situation in this case is different. There's no quotas to meet, times scheduled, etc. It seems to be purely voluntary in all aspects. It's hard to understand how someone could come into this and come to the conclusion that it could be technically considered a job. On the otherhand, I do come from a different part of the world where things are naturally different so maybe I'll be proven wrong
America is litigious, no doubt about it. But in fairness, it was only a few bad apples that spoiled things for everyone else (as it usually goes around here). The defectors probably felt unappreciated and decided to turn their rage to legal matters to try and raise some money for it.
Most folks were happy to volunteer. I knew quite a few Advocates in AC1. A lot of them were in fact *pissed* when the program went away because they genuinely loved helping out. One such fellow I recall thought Turbine's Advocate/Sentinel statues were an insult in comparison.
At any rate, it might help things out for the game, but there's more than one avenue of risk involved.
-- xpaladin
[MMOz]
AC1/2, AO, DAoC, EQ1/2, SoR, SWG, UO, WAR, WoW
They are now upset about this??... At one time, I can recall SOE not caring about this.... Wow, now if they could just come up with a combat system that worked,.. ok, ok,... a game that was worth playing.
Been there done that:
Asherons Call,SWG,AOC,D&D,COH,Anarchy Online,DAOC,EVE,Guild Wars,LOTRO,POTBS,WAR,WW2, and Rift
Yeah, one of my friends was a Seer in UO, think that's what they were called anyway. The jackasses that started the lawsuit completely ruined a good thing in UO all for nothing. My friend didn't take part in the lawsuit.
Good idea from SOE, too bad rest of the game sucks
The 'morons' that sued OSI did it over the fact that they got free time on the game for helping out. And when it was taken away from them, they got all upset. I still think the ones that got all upset about it where in the wrong, but hell even back then anybody and everybody tried to find something to use scream about. Hell it's still going on today with people screaming about everything and anything with any game out there. Sadly those that don't like something tend to be louder, and sadly gaming as turned into a Monkey See, Monkey Do kinda thing.
Also add in that we had a GM back in the day doing some really underhanded things. We one GM and I believe a few Counselors that where found helping some of the more 'well known' Griefer/Hacker Guilds on UO. It's kinda sad programs like that really helped those games out, granted as a Counselor I found it to be a thankless job half the time... Still it just takes one or two people to ruin something good, in the case with UO it was a big cost as one part of the Volunteer Staff where the Seers. Namely they went around making Quests and RP content in the world. Sadly most got screwed over..
You have to realize at this point that banning would be a sufficient means of keeping players in check. Obviously they will be screening applicants, so anyone without a sufficiently invested account will be ignored.
I think this system will work, as there are still a few games that use this system today. Runescape's player moderators are numerous, and while they don't always get it right, they do their best and they have real GMs to read the reports and check for errors. These volunteers are also unable to actually take action against an account, and are instead reduced to muting (although in this case, 24 hours) until the account is dealt with properly.
As was mentioned before, at worst a few players are muted temporarily. At best, SOE has killed two birds with one stone.