I was in dodixie today, just after the server restart, and people were chatting in local about how there was a short breather to chat in dodixie before the spam/scams started flooding local chat.
A few people said ‘’ oh i just block them all the time ‘’, and i agreed, being one of those players.
Then i had an idea. What if there was a new and simple feature in the ‘show info’ tab.
A public counter, noting how many times someone has been blocked by anyone.
Thus, if someone is in local chat of a trade hub and receives 100s of blocks, it shows up in their public show-info-profile.
A small feature that i feel would help CCP target botters, but also improve the experience.
This wouldn’t help them target botters any more than normal as on their end they have this information. It would be mere fluff for the character window and a waste of dev time.
If CCP could use it to sift some of the spam sales traffic in the major trade hubs I think it’s a fantastic idea. Their tactics seem to be to make a new alt each day. It is a bit touchy making it public as you can well imagine that could be easily abused by members of rival corps much like our old bounties system. But as a tool for CCP to put a check on botters YES !
If it hurts the scammer-gameplay (Which isn’t breaking the EULA is a valid form of play to be fair) it would be a nerf in their direction.
However, i do feel it would be an improvement to the game if a block-counter was added publicly to profiles still, as it would add more character to , well, characters!
This feature seems separate from the anchor depots and stuff to be honest, and is more a local-chat-show-info-on-character-thing.
as to being used as a ‘tool like the bounties system’ i don’t think so.
I’m not calling for a change to the block system. the BLOCKING player BLOCKS the target for THEIR communication.
Adding a public counter simply informs other players, who are free to talk to that individual at their discretion, that the target has BEEN BLOCKED.
Very different from the bounty system.
Over the years we all have become quite good at judging pilots from their show-info tab, it becomes a subtle game of experience and game-knowledge.
The suggestion really does seem like an addition to game-play, for what i would guess would be relatively little programming, given that the block system already exists, and this would just be a ‘counter’ that goes up and down as new blocks are received and removed.
If ccp wants scamming or spamming gone from the game they can do that easily. What you suggest is branding, name and possibly shame. Cui bono ? The potential for abuse is not imaginary, given the delicate sensitivities of some pretending to play EvE.
You didn’t deserve that label in that case, but you still got it, which will have an effect on your reputation. Reputation is a thing in EvE. Imagine you apply to a decent corp, with that kind of label on you, as an example.
It’s worse than with the old “WANTED” label (which I think should come back to the game, lol), the one that indicated you made someone mad enough to cough up some bounty money in case someone else had an interest in removing you from your ship.
so it’s worse than the feature that should come back?
Anyhow, what was really broken with the wanted system was the fact your alt could collect it. In real life we don’t have clones we can teleport to, so rarely would someone let someone else collect a bounty.
They’d have to be willing to sacrifice themselves for an ulterior motive.
But in eve it’s as simple as killing yourself with an alt.
a Block-counter should be small and unintrusive, and not as heavy-handed as the ‘wanted’ thing, but it should still be a feature.
If was applying to a corp and had 100 block messages, it would be quite rare. It honestly feels like a feature that should maybe be given a trial, as it really does seem to be something that would effect high-sec scammers more than some other weird situation.
Think of the next step. Player with label tries to set up a genuine contract, a real deal …
With your new label you just prevented him a decent chance at normal game play, in fact pretty much wasted his character.
Imagine you, with the label you received just for killing a ship of a very vindictive person with lots of friends, trying to set up a legit contract. With that label ? Bye bye trading. That would be close to genuine harassment (making it virtually impossible for someone to play the game in a normal way), with ccp getting involved, etc etc. Let’s not go there.
Have to disappoint you, I don’t even trade, let alone scam. Looking for my motivation ? It was in my first post, your idea is akin to branding - which is genuinely a very bad idea. It’s too easy to abuse. I’d prefer not to give players in game tools to harass or bully by branding them and taking their option of normal game play i.e., what You consider acceptable game play away forever…
You have the option to block spammers, and intelligence to spot scams. All the tools you need are already available.
Are you a jita victim ?
Indeed, look at the possible repercussions of what you suggest, be honest about those.
Many people will care about their toon’s reputation. In the same manner, many people will care about a player’s rep when considering him candidate for recruiting, roles, etc.
You may not mind at all, but some will. So you would be giving carte blanche to groups of players to add a label to anyone they want for no reason at all.
It would 99.9% of the time be used to brand jita-scammers bot-posting their endless contracts and nonsense.
the weird 0.1% of the time when a CEO would get his group to spam the block button would prevent that person from…talking to them?
errrr
and then other people would still accept contracts from that person anyway…
Yeah i’m not really seeing how your use of the word ‘branding’ works. and harassing and bullying are part of life, and part of eve.
I don’t get what you’re saying.
Jita scammer get’s ‘branded’ with 300+ block on the public profile
Jita-scammer gets fewer success with his SCAM contracts, because people notice the fine print and go ‘’ oh damn, i almost bought that but i paid attention cause the block-ticker was high’’
This behaviour is Common and Rife in tradehubs.
…however…
Non-scammer gets ‘bullied and harassed’ by , i dunno, goon-swarm. They all block this one person.
They go about life, as normal, since they didn’t want to talk to goons anyway.
They go to jita, and ALSO just so happen to be someone who advertises legit contracts in jita (so yeah this is a weird scenario and rare already), the people look at the contract, and then accept it despite the person having 300+ blocks on their public profie, because the contract they put forward is legit.
random player reads contract carefully twice, goes ‘‘oh that’s legit’’ and buys it.
…what’s the problem here, the tool helps stop spam in trade hubs.
I gave a few examples of how your suggestion can and will backfire and could even make the normal use of the affected character impossible. All I can hope is that you read them attentively, put yourself at the center of those examples and reflect on how it would affect you in that case. More precisely, it wouldn’t take great effort to ruin the character you built up (and paid subscription for).
P.S. the label doesn’t help in figuring out if a contract is a scam or not.
The thinking you would still have to do yourself, unless you really prefer to be hand held by some mysterious, trustworthy and altruistic bunch of anonymous characters in New Eden who can throw out a label for a totally legitimate reason you know nothing about but accept at face value ?
“…even make the normal use of the affected character impossible…”
Ok, please explain.
You understand that the block function only stops them from contacting YOU tho.
Are you claiming that a charactor with a large number of blocks, publically visable on a show-info tab, is somehow unable to do some gameplay?
Which game play and exactly how/why ?
you asserted it as a hard fact, and therefore a reason why a feature that would benefit in other areas might be a problem.
I’m not seeing it.
I’d buy a contract from someone if the contract was legit.