OpenRA

Forum group: Love the game. Played it back when CnC first came out like 20 years ago. Its even better now. But is there any monitoring, banning or anything of players that are unbelievably offensive? Im not even talking about people throwing random insults. But some users that routinely go out of their way to disparage or otherwise directly target attacks on users nearly every game they are in.

To the point where one of the greatest games in my view is starting to lose all appeal playing. I honestly believe that if such targeted attacks did not happen so frequently, there would be 10x the number of users playing at all times of the day.

Anyways thats my 2c. I believe some sort of very basic user moderation is relevant to the success of openra

rat wrote: ↑Forum group: Love the game. Played it back when CnC first came out like 20 years ago. Its even better now. But is there any monitoring, banning or anything of players that are unbelievably offensive? Im not even talking about people throwing random insults. But some users that routinely go out of their way to disparage or otherwise directly target attacks on users nearly every game they are in.

To the point where one of the greatest games in my view is starting to lose all appeal playing. I honestly believe that if such targeted attacks did not happen so frequently, there would be 10x the number of users playing at all times of the day.

Anyways thats my 2c. I believe some sort of very basic user moderation is relevant to the success of openra

im surprised to hear someone would go to the lengths you're describing here as I haven't encountered that before in the ~3 years I have been playing OpenRA.

But if it's really that bad, luckily OpenRA allows you to easily change your name on the fly.. I would just change your name for a while until the mentioned person goes away. I would also expect someone nerdy enough to be playing OpenRA to already have a VPN, but if not, that would also help mask your IP so the person couldn't identify you.

I'm not sure I would expect much enforcement from an open source project maintained by volunteers unfortunately so I would recommend taking some precautions to anonymize yourself if its that bad of an issue.

I know several cases of overly offensive players, though not interact with them that often to notice.

Currently the game is completely open to everyone. Abarrat's servers have some self-made kludge tools to do minor moderation on them by dedicated people.
There were some suggestions to implement such tools for servers in general, though ongoing. So for now your only possibility is to enter an empty server (which makes you that server's admin) and temp-ban those in lobby you find offensive.

Other than that there is little you can do right now, if only to point those players' IPs to devs in IRC channel, and then some moderation can be done on master server side (there was a case recently), though proxies and anonymizers effectively diminish that.

A good way to deal with such people is hosting your own matches (going into an empty server and being the one who makes the rules/ chooses the map). Then you can kick-ban the people who you don't like.

In most gamer communities there are people who only seem interested in rageing about other people/openly show their prejudices because they think they are anonymous and untoucheable.

If you feel like it, tell them your reasons and then kick them and if you don't feel like it just kick-ban them immediately.

GL HF!

Try to play 1V1, it nearly never happens in 1V1.

Well, there is a case thought, netnazgul has been so mean to happy that he lost appeal to the game and retired.

You mean someone that has a vendetta against you personally?

Someone that attacks the other team?

Someone that attacks their team mates?

Fall outs between team mates aren't that uncommon, but it's still only an occasional thing.

Worst player I have seen would be "pinkman" who used to regularly attack his less experienced team mates.

As other people have said, you can always admin your own games.

Some directed at me yes, but at others as well. And its only a handful of bad eggs, but they are around, and take the experience from a positive to a complete net negative.

Theres a difference from getting upset with newbie players on your team, and just completely trashing on them until no choice but to leave.

I'm also not interested in ducking and hiding from these people by having to change my name and/or IP. I'm just pointing out that many other new players that try this game out don't stay because of it.

I could also host my own game, but there are many times at night where there is just one game in town due to the low number of players. Either take the game to play, or dont.

I'm sure I can also dig up some saved game chat examples if its something thats not believable.

Overall I think the openRA concept is fantastic, and the amount of freedom we have to do so much is really so appreciated and well received. I just believe there should be some very basic remediation for the most extreme outliers of the community. Maybe even something where there is currently now you can ban someone from a server for that games duration - have a ban for a whole day, or even just an hour, but only if multiple mods or some type of moderators agree 100%.

I just see other games/services out there, and there is a certain natural progression in some restrictions to grow, simply because its just ridiculous what a few players do and it does affect the growth of overall community.

I think a code of conduct for games off the master server might be a good idea. You never know, the mere existence of such a code may produce better behaviour regardless of any enforcement.

If any players are really trashing on newbies then yes, it arguably isn't good for the long-term growth of the game.

vote kick/ban feature would solve a lot.

But once again, go 1V1.

Play 1v1 get good, stomp everyone in teamgames solo 3v1 and all that, everyone will want to be your friend

Happy wrote: ↑Play 1v1 get good, stomp everyone in teamgames solo 3v1 and all that, everyone will want to be your friend

The OP is arguing that many people will never get to that stage. They just will not have the desire to continue playing.

Also, I'm not sure that 1v1 is even a good idea for many new players, as it likely throws them into the deep end. Maybe it works for some players to get good that way, but people do this for fun, and I'm not sure everyone will enjoy jumping into 1v1 games with probably much more experienced players.

Also, even if you are better than your team mates, if you lose a game, they can still sometimes want to put the blame on you! Jerks can always be jerks.

zinc wrote: ↑people do this for fun, and I'm not sure everyone will enjoy jumping into 1v1 games with probably much more experienced players.

Fun is subjective. While some might not find it fun to be beaten by better players, others players might not find it fun to be bad at the game they are putting hours into.

Sure it may depend on the individual. But that still means that telling people to stick to 1v1 games is a questionable solution.

zinc wrote: ↑Sure it may depend on the individual. But that still means that telling people to stick to 1v1 games is a questionable solution.

1v1 players are so far the least toxic. The best players. All of them are keen to teach anyone and tbh getting basic 1v1 skill means you can win 90% of teamgames straight away, theres a reason 1v1 players dont play them (too ez). Plus its where the competitive scenes at.