You know a game that has like real admins, policing their servers from the obvious out of control botting and spamming?

Do you get sick of the pm's, in game emails, and spam in chat from gold sellers?

Why does it seem like no one cares about their game once it goes online?

I quit GW2 because of it.. not that I was having fun anyway but when I hit 30's, every dam zone was broken and every person that ran by me was a 3 bot loser smashing everything in site... And not a sole employee in the world to fix, just fake promises on the forums in which several months have gone by and it only gotten worse... To me, games just don't see worth the effort to spend so much time on this stupid grind, and watching others just skip right by.

Did you ever quit a video game because of the lack of polcing from a game? Would you be more likely to play a game if it was policed better?

If it was a proper roleplaying game you'd better believe it.

I wouldn't care so much in a functional normal MMO but I wouldn't need to. In a less functional normal MMO it would become more important.

It also needs to be said that the quality of the server admins is also a big factor. Not much use having them if they cannot help you.

So GMs in a real roleplaying game, absolutely. Server admins in a functional MMO, not as necessary. Server admins in a less functional MMO, yes. But all that is said with the assumption they can do their jobs properly.

The problem with this idea is the amount of server admins you'd actually need in order to make a difference in a modern MMO.

It worked in MUDs because you would have, at most, 1000 players (and after the top 20, the number drops to about 80 per game).  You don't need that many admins to handle problems from such a small playerbase - on most games, all you'd need is a PR team of two to three admins.  And they best part?  These guys are volunteers!

In an MMO, we need to scale this number in a relatively proportional amount.  That means you'll need anywhere from hundreds to thousands of server administrators to cover the demands of your playerbase.  In the MMO world, these admins need to be polite and well-trained if they are to represent your company, so chances are this isn't something you can outsource - as a dev, you're gonna be paying a lot for an admin team.

Then you have to make sure admins aren't doing sneaky things like secretly altering their own character's gear stats to make them have better stats than any other character in the game (in an undetectable fashion - LOL SHADOWS OF ISILDUR), or abusing their powers against rival players or those they simply do not like.

A game dedicated to roleplaying might benefit greatly from admins, but other than that, it simply isn't worth the cost for the dev.

The last time I played Fallen Earth going on 2 years, they had admins with in the game chatting to players but I'm not sure if they interacted in the game it self.

But yeah I would definitely give it a shot if they came in and joined us, I remember one time back in WoW TBC we were doing Karazhan and something happened with the loot and so the RL sent the GM a ticket, but instead of the GM replying he/she popped into the instance and turned the raid into Goblins and even turned him self into a Demon and then added the missing item to the instance which one of the players deleted. It was brilliant. lol

Originally posted by Ban_Khaeros

The problem with this idea is the amount of server admins you'd actually need in order to make a difference in a modern MMO.

 

It worked in MUDs because you would have, at most, 1000 players (and after the top 20, the number drops to about 80 per game).  You don't need that many admins to handle problems from such a small playerbase - on most games, all you'd need is a PR team of two to three admins.  And they best part?  These guys are volunteers!

 

In an MMO, we need to scale this number in a relatively proportional amount.  That means you'll need anywhere from hundreds to thousands of server administrators to cover the demands of your playerbase.  In the MMO world, these admins need to be polite and well-trained if they are to represent your company, so chances are this isn't something you can outsource - as a dev, you're gonna be paying a lot for an admin team.

 

Then you have to make sure admins aren't doing sneaky things like secretly altering their own character's gear stats to make them have better stats than any other character in the game (in an undetectable fashion - LOL SHADOWS OF ISILDUR), or abusing their powers against rival players or those they simply do not like.

 

A game dedicated to roleplaying might benefit greatly from admins, but other than that, it simply isn't worth the cost for the dev.

 

 

Oh I am totally against a admin who can give loot or alter characters, I mean more less online support / running around even as a ghost, just looking for those exploiters etc, answering problems etc... rallying the troops etc type stuff..

I seen a cool game Face of Mankind (in its earlier days) and the corruption that can be dished out from a volunteer group of players.. it was so corrupted the community choked itself into failure.

I loved the game becaues it was very political, and I very dilligently was overthrowing the obvious corrupt leadership of the mercenary faction so I could gain the power and the people play under me.. A totally fair tactic, even notifying others i was in complete RolePlay mindset which others can't always realize.. I was being so successful (in serious roleplaying fashion) that the "server admins" actually banned from the game in real life... They were claiming all sorts of erroneous stuff aginst me, because I could see they're silly ploy and outwit them.. I obviously learned the entire game at that time was 100% corrupt admins and playerbase, and this totally destroyed the great cloak and dagger game it used to be.

Yeah, volunteer admin dont work.... Fact.. And I hear about rogue employee's like the cybersex scandal of AOC...

Don't think you need many admins, but geezus, please log in and boot the spammers and cheaters...

I doubt I could afford to play a game that could afford constant manual policing.

Originally posted by muffins89
is the game fun?

Witnessing bots and exploits in action saps the fun away in a hurry.

Originally posted by mikecackle

You know a game that has like real admins, policing their servers from the obvious out of control botting and spamming?

Do you get sick of the pm's, in game emails, and spam in chat from gold sellers?

Why does it seem like no one cares about their game once it goes online?

It probably seems that way to you because you aren't aware of the scope of the issues or the number of people actually already filling the roles you want filled.

Originally posted by Quirhid
Very inefficient, very expensive and not very lasting solution either. Better to design games and systems that are resistant to exploitation and tools (perhaps automated?) to handle with offenders.

Originally posted by Quirhid
Very inefficient, very expensive and not very lasting solution either. Better to design games and systems that are resistant to exploitation and tools (perhaps automated?) to handle with offenders.

I think we have all witnessed the automation attempts and how ill effective is is.

And I think all the systems implemented to stop exploiting have made games the borefests games have become, although i do believe proper concept design from the beginning can help, but only from the begginning and making some core changes to how games work

Originally posted by Loktofeit

Originally posted by mikecackle

You know a game that has like real admins, policing their servers from the obvious out of control botting and spamming?

Do you get sick of the pm's, in game emails, and spam in chat from gold sellers?

Why does it seem like no one cares about their game once it goes online?

It probably seems that way to you because you aren't aware of the scope of the issues or the number of people actually already filling the roles you want filled.

 

You don't believe that because it has been unpoliced for so long it has grown exponentially? And that if policed people would wake up and change their ways...?

Originally posted by Ozmodan
The really sad state of affairs,many gamers don't think twice that botting is cheating.  So many of the crowd that came from consoles use the cheat codes, so they think it is natural to do it in MMO's.  And yes it bugs the heck out of me when I see botters, report them and nothing happens.  On top of that the constant gold seller messages and no one does one thing about that either even if you report them.

In my opinion, any gameplay which can be exploited with a bot, is not good enough for a human. For example, resource gathering is often done with bots because it is repetitious and boring. Bots should do this task (even supported) unless the developer is willing to come up with something better.

Originally posted by Loktofeit

Originally posted by Quirhid
Very inefficient, very expensive and not very lasting solution either. Better to design games and systems that are resistant to exploitation and tools (perhaps automated?) to handle with offenders.

      

As they said, hiring humans to manually combat bots is a losing cause.

Originally posted by maplestone

I doubt I could afford to play a game that could afford constant manual policing.

That was my first thought too.