Antiogonus: .

The possibly of Creative hiring volunteer moderators would certainly help, but I don't think CA can expect people to be online all the time in order to moderate that.

I would suggest a no tolerance policy, similar to what Ensemble Studios did with their online matchmaker, ESO. They have a clear no tolerance policy and allow for people who use to service to report those who misuse it (with screenshots, but I'm also pretty sure they keep logs to back up the screenshots with hard proof). They ban anyone who breaks their policy.

This is, of course, in addition with moderators who could be chosen from around the Total War community (perhaps at webmasters discretion - people who the site directors are sure won't misuse temporary ban power and that kind of thing). The moderators could serve as reporters, as it's unlikely most of the general populace will complain.

After a while people will realize that CA's serious, and not wanting to loose online capabilities, will stop.

Welcome Shogun and thank you for speaking to the community, it is rare that tw manages to pay attention to the mp aspect, and the community which enjoys it.

I must first start by saying that anything i say will be futile of course. I know its not your job to listen to us and take in our ideas but to rather keep us informed every once and a while when neccisary. So instead of trying to convince the management of this game to change aspects of it i will simply express my concerns.

This is just one amongst many of my concerns, what is the point of banning the chat? Do we need to suffer becouse you failed to properly test out all the aspects and logics of the game? Why wasn't this addressed BEFORE it's release? If the management decided to give it that rating it should of had sense enough to realize that a mp community given free reign will act what it is by nature. But what is done is done and i know your only doing this to safeguard against lawsuits but is this neccisarly the best action?.... can you not work with gamespy to ban certain words? Or if you can only do that by producing a new patch then do so, simply enable chat for anyone who gets the new patch, which has some sorta way of editing out cuss words and racial words. I'm no computer expert but i know this cannot possibly be the best action.

Now you tell us to arrange battles on the forums then meet up and play... you have no idea how silly that is... no thats just plain stupid. Ninety percent of the community will simply stop playing untill you take a smarter action. But then again i doubt CA caires. Afterall we already bought the game, were not the ones your thinking about.

I would like to say im sorry Shogun if i offended you or used the term "you" instead of using a braoder range of suspects since it wasnt "you" who produced the game and promoted the game and im sure you played a part but you arent soley responsible for any of the acusations im throwing around...

just wanted to make sure you understand that

lol paryia....

[This message has been edited by Drowningpool (edited 12-01-2005 @ 05:47 AM).]

Hi guys

Right first off I would like to apologise again for the situaion in the lobbies. I know that some of you feel we have used a Sledgehammer to crack a nut. No amount of petitions or letters of outrage will speed this up I'm afraid. Now, as I have said, we are working to get this sorted as quickly as possible. However, I am having to spend a lot of time online at the moment just trying to smooth things over on the boards and this is proving a drain on resources which could be better spent trying to fix the issues at hand. Due to the way things are currently implemented it's not just a matter of one super quick fix, if it was we would of taken this option already. So we don't need any more suggestions on how to fix the problem. The less time I have to spend running around all the forums making posts like this the more time I can spend chasing the people that can help sort this out. So please guys give us some time to fix this.

[This message has been edited by The Shogun (edited 12-01-2005 @ 07:10 AM).]

well shogun....

keeping the community which plays your game informed is one of the most important aspects of the game... if you do not like running around and responding to our posts then dont... its what ca has been doing for the last 3 years anyways

Look what the community thinks of CA's actions and there HORRIBLE customer service
http://new.petitiononline.com/totalwar/petition.html

and that petiotion just started recently..... check up on it in a weak or so

I BOUGHT THIS GAME FOR MP AND MP ONLY!... and i was under the impression that lobby chat would be allowed... nay its what was promised to me.... who do i contact to receive my refund? i know quite a few other people who will be seeking refunds as well

[This message has been edited by SilentPariya (edited 12-01-2005 @ 05:18 PM).]

Quoted from The Shogun:

That may be true, from a certain view within CA. But in community relations, perception is 90% of reality. Variations of this principle are well established, taught and now practiced in modern management academia, including the Military (our commanders on down are now explicitly schooled in ways to ensure and elicit suggestions from the lowest of ranks -- even the most junior 18-year loadmaster might have a great idea -- and the closed-door policy of commanders is now an arcane footnote in history!).

I'm afraid that having a good deal of influence as CA official and posting that is a double-edged sword: great weight is assigned to what you say, which only adds to the public perception that CA is distancing itself from the players who enjoy the game. People are looking to you, Shogun... you "are" CA, and even if CA has addressed the issue internally and made its decisions, then I firmly urge the powers that be in CA to consider the public relations side.

So I am going to make a suggestion about not needing any more suggestions: Start a thread in the 3 or 4 major Forums (e.g., like here at HeavenGames) asking for direct input from the community. Maybe start a MP suggestion thread in the MP section, and a SP thread in the SP section. You identified Time as the major obstacle... this will not take a great deal of your time, and you can do it without a big CA committee discussion. Explain the ground rules & purpose... I suggest something along the lines of:

CA takes an active and strong interest in the Total War community, and encourages players with responsible, constructive suggestions to use this public thread to communicate ideas about issues that affect the players and Total War playability directly to the creators of the game at CA. Our staff members do not have the time and human resources to read all fansite threads and posts -- but as our commitment to your Total Satisfaction as our Total War customers, we will review this thread for community input on a regular basis. Naturally, we will not necessarily be able to address every suggestion, nor guarantee that we will implement any given suggestion. But we will read and listen: your input will be used to help guide our efforts to improve Total War in the future.

Then ask the Board Owners and Mods to make a summary sticky of the issues raised, with a link to major suggestion post (this thread would probably grow to a few dozen pages), and ask the mods to prune/chop abusive, non-constructive, etc. stuff, in order to help keep the thread readable and usable by your CA game programmers, artists, managers, etc. who would be given the direct links and instructions to scan these 3 to 8 threads on say, a weekly basis. Serendipity. You never know how one of the CA staff might be inspired, even if they have all the answers. And it will help the community relations.

Maybe ask each board to maintain a "Top 10 Issues in the SP/MP Total War Community" sticky at the top of the thread(s). Task the Forum's community to keep it up to date. Tell them to figure out their own way to determine its contents. That this is what CA staffers read, even if they are not responding to each post. And keep a regular CA presence, particularly by OPRs (office of primary responsibility) at CA... for example, if an AI behaviour suggestion is in the #2 spot, a comment every week or two by one of the programmers would be great... even if the comment had to say something like "CA is not working on that issue due to xxxxx". Just be there and have some folks take a few minutes a week...

Quoted from The Shogun:

So ask for help from the various board owners... their board mods... you can do it in a PM or e-mail out of the public eye, and I'm sure that they'd be happy to help the community help you. You are in a unique position out of over 6 billion people to either help widen or help close what can be interpreted as a growing gap between CA and its loyal game supporters.

.
.

So there you have it. A suggestion about how to take suggestions.

.
.

It is worth the time.

When in doubt, observe and ask questions. When certain, observe at length and ask many more questions. -- General George S. Patton

Wartrain, do you need a quote for each post?.

Now, I do think this is rather disastrious. This game can be the next AoK but of a slightly different genre. And by the enxt AoK, I mean a game where there are still 1k MP users at a given time. Stopping people from communicating each other is certainly a total way of stopping it. Being able to turn off MP chat voluntarily would have sufficed.

Now hopefully this doesn't snowball into a PR disaster.

Alea Iacta Est. -C. Julius Caesar

The die is cast.

As I have said this is only a temporary measure and you will be getting chat back. I will be able to give you more info including timelines next week.

nevermind, i read it wrong, I thought he said they wanted ideas...thats what I get for scan reading.
Some ideas:

~You could issue a ban on the CD code or the names the player for offenses that are reported with screen shots or are spotted by the chat moniter.

~Give the option of turning on the chat system for each user (default should be set to off).

~make the user enter an age and if it is below 13(?) either don't allow them to acess the chat area or promt them if they want it, and allow all users to turn it off.

~promt all users and ask if they want it on or off, and let them choose once they are connected.

we need to assemble 1 list of all ideas, so lets go HGers!
And everyone who is part of a clan ask their members for ideas, I am heading to my clan now to ask them for ideas.

[This message has been edited by NA Lord Blaine (edited 12-05-2005 @ 02:18 PM).]

Ummmm...Blaine, Shogun just said a couple of posts ago that what they don't need is a list of suggestions.

oh...oops. Deleted. Muting players was an idea too, but I guess not

Ave, Shogan. I'll add my thanks to the many others who have been welcoming you here. It's nice to see some guys in blue everyone once in a while.

As for this discussion...I've also noticed that anyone trying to have a regular conversation in the chat lobbies are quickly overwelmed by one word spamming, racial crap, and overall nonsense from those annoying clans.

Personally, I like the ban.

Oh yes...
Drop it, Drowningpool

He can be quite annoying, I should take him off my xfire friends list, Ive talked to him twice and lots of people get really annoyed and starty wars with whatever clan he joins. I dont think that the spammers are all clans, only a few clans do it, and the 5 people who do it at all times can be easily blocked.

I have been using the name drowningkittens in the multi-player barbarian invasion. I will not play anymore. I have spent my last penny on CA. Gamespy is horible enough as it is.

Crying shame. I really liked this game. Didn't you guys already have an ignore button? Oh well, I refuse to hang out with anyone that handle a few bad words.

Thanks for speaking out DP. These are weak men and no matter what you tell them, they will not hear. Weak men will give up anything in order to be liked. This really sucks because I liked the game. I don't even think I will play campaign anymore. I'm sure u won't lose to much money from me but I will never recommend or play anything from CA again. I doubt I will ever play on GameSpy.

Oh yea, that crowded theatre crap doesn't fly. Freedom of speach and freedom in general are only alive for as long as we have the freedom to be offended. In your games we kill people.

Thank you. and adios.

[This message has been edited by helmeteye (edited 12-04-2005 @ 09:32 PM).]

*rolls eyes*

My god.....this really isn't that big of a deal....I don't understand what everyone is crying about. Is it really so bad for you guys? I've still been playing regularly with no problems. Just click a game, ask for rules and if it really doesn't fit you leave...sheesh.

I don't see what the big deal is, either. The chatting was never really needed, IMO. It was impossible to have a conversation from the beginning because of people spamming, babbling, and arguing incessantly. There was never anyone on there to actually play the game, it seemed.

Besides, they said that this is a temporary measure. I don't see what all of the fuss is about. They're trying to make a better gaming environment and people complain and call for boycotts? What kind of nonsense is that? All change takes time. So stop with the cerebralproctosis and give them a chance to test their ideas. They're working for a better gaming experience and you want to punish them for it. Get real.

Do the people complaining about the ban actually play online after the ban? As I follow the discussion I get the impression they don't. If they did then they would have noticed that in the competitive lobby there is no ban on chat. In the Friendly lobby where all the abuse took place there are still a lot of players playing a lot of games without having chat. If you want to chat you can go to the competitive lobby and if you want to have lots of possible opponents you can stay in the friendly lobby. I think the ban is no real problem and it is just a temporary measure.

Friesian

Quote:

Over reaction.

^I agree. It's ROME TOTAL WAR, for Pete's sake, not LIFE AND DEATH!!!
Oh yeah, I didn't welcome the Shogon in my first post, so WELCOME SHOGON! Feel free to post on other forums,too

EDIT: Took out God so not to offend anyone. Sorrry!

[This message has been edited by EnemyofJupitor (edited 12-06-2005 @ 02:07 AM).]

Oh, and BTW, you can still send private messages. Freedom of speech isn't curbed. You can still talk to anyone, you just don't hear anyone by default.

The problem I have is that of unintended consequences. When people can't just push ignore to ignore the racists or spammers they are being nothing but cry babies. This game is about killing people for crying out loud. I always thought it would be fun to fight people that were offensive. In war a good leader will dehumanize the enemy.

It is funny that I can't even cut and paste passages from some great works of literature without some thought gestapo filtering words.

I am a catholic. Should I be offended every time I hear or read someone thinks that my G*d is really my boogie man? Just how far do the thought police need to go before u find out they are coming for u? In most forums I go to, I am in the minority of thought. I was banned from one forum, NationStates because I dared suggest that I believe abortion is a sacrament of the left.

As long as there is an ignore button what is the problem? As long as someone isn't inciting to violence what is the problem? If there were threats of physical violence, there would be reasons to ban. While I don't like racists, I can still atleast talk to or argue with them. I can call them idiots. We can all see who they are and not play with them or shun them or whatever. I can't believe free men are so afraid of the words of fools.

I don't really consider this a free speach issue. Only the government can steal free speach, CA is a corporation. CA is over reacting in this instance. I consider this a weiny man issue. If you can't handle a dim whit(was a pun intended?) racist, you are a weiny and shouldn't even be allowed on the internet or outside of a padded room for that matter.

Blaine, I may be over reacting, but, this is one of the things that p's me off more than anything. I hate when free men can't handle offensive talk. Visions of "1984" flash through my head. Wasn't there an ignore button after all?

[This message has been edited by helmeteye (edited 12-06-2005 @ 01:53 AM).]

Well your last post wasn't an over reaction IMHO. Your first one definitly was. This one was a nice clear argument.

I'd give a rebuttal..but hey, I'm not going to convince you..you're not going to convince me and in the end the chat function is going to come back anyway...

Edit: sorry, wrong thread

[This message has been edited by EnemyofJupitor (edited 12-07-2005 @ 12:05 PM).]

lol they gave me a warning for outspeaking agsisnt CA what tools....