With all that has gone on with vote mute campaigns, of which I have watched several times, sometimes even being started by someone in IRC that wasn't even ingame, versus the times I have seen it used the way it was intended, ie: a newcomer spouting obscenities, its used much more in the former.

When you can sit and watch a player convince other players to /vote mute someone, just because they want it to happen,most times not even for a real reason, or for a previous slight, that just isn't right and isn't what it was intended for I don't believe.

Since there isn't really a way, at this point, to stop its mis-use, I would vote to not have it at all and let each person utilize ignore until the devs can implement something that isn't abusable, at least not -as easily-.

One thing I might add to this, is that if /vote mute is removed, maybe /ignore should be made account wide. People may say "oh noes, but this will let me spot alts!!!!!!!111oneoneeleven" well, you can use /vote mute for that more accuratly. Lets face it, that person who you can;t hear might just not be talking :) But with /vote mute you can just get 5 or so pals together, anf for 24 hours, you can see who has 5 votes, by simply voting for them again.

Who needs blak hive, when we have /vote mute ;)

A point I'd like to make is another highly abused feature that was removed was called "Bounties".

Back in the day, players could keep aggravating a government, racking up their bounty. Then they'd let a friend kill them and split the credits. Process repeats again. This was determined to be unbalancing and abusive (if memory serves me correct).

While that was abusive in gameplay terms, and certainly not everyone with a bounty on them did that (I certainly didn't), it was removed nonetheless.

Vote mutes regularly degenerate into unpopularity contests. People have done something in the past, but the person slighted doesn't have enough friends on at the time to mute him (if it's even a real offense, as in harassment or some other EULA breaking action). So they wait for a few days, until they do have their friends on or worse, convince unknowing newbies to vote because "they're a very bad person". Is that the introduction that wants to be given?

My suggestion to fix this issue, if possible, is to leave vote mute in. But to corral it, when the server confirms that an account has been muted, send an email to the devs with the account names of those who voted, when they voted, when the mute happened, and who got muted. if you want to get fancy, include their emails and character names too, so they can be contacted.

The chief epidemic on the internet known as "asshattery" is the fact that people can be free to be less than nice for no particular reason, behind the cloak of anonymity. An action that may get you a call from an administrator would hopefully corral most of the miscreants. And those that continue anyway? Well, you know who the problem children are.

They already know who the problem children are, and I doubt very much that they want to oversee the system you describe, fungi-encrusted one.

Why not just have /vote mutes made public? If you're willing to cast a vote towards gutting someone's ability to interact, you should have the brass to tell the entire community that's what you're doing.

[edit]But of course it is--never underestimate the concept of extra-legal sanctions as an effective means of policing behavior. [/edit]

That's actually a really good idea.

Good idea lector. Having been the victim of many attempted vote mute campaigns, most recently after logging in and barely saying two (inoffensive) words, knowing who the voters are would do a great deal to hamper abuse. If the same crew starts the campaign every time, there will be a public record of it, and the players can hold each other accountable.

No more fuzzy bunnies in public who get away with it because they're publicly fuzzy bunnies. The secret assholes get exposed.

I like lectors idea, and I further encourage it to be retroactive. Lets see every vote anyone has made in the last 6 months. I'm sure it will be quite illuminating. Too bad the devs are too sissy to ever release it.

Do those even get recorded?

edit: Public chat confirmations of /vote mutes does sound like a good idea.

To Moldy:

I think I only ever did the split bounty thing with Lecter, once.

Mystic always had to put up a fight, and so did anyone else that collected a bounty on me, i'm sure I gave you the same offer once.

As for Lecters idea, well, I like it, but maybe it should be personal rather than public? IE, you get a PM stating who /vote muted you, and maybe they should have to add a reason.

I think that it should be accessable from the website. If you want to stop someone from communicating at all in-game, you should be darn sure about it.
Going along with auto-logging these things with the devs...

Perhaps you should make it so when someone starts a /vote mute it should highlight that area of the chatlogs? In different colors depending on how many people voted; so you can quickly find 'trouble' areas.

For /ignore, if you really want to polish that feature, make it so you can click on people's names off the chatbox. Then you can select 'ignore this player', 'vote mute this player' 'add friend', et cetera. It would be a pain to program, but I think it would be a really useful feature that would add onto the game. In my mind, the further you develop Vendetta, the less /commands you should make the player use.

While Yodar and I did split a 16 million credit bounty (or so, can't recall the exact number, but it was well into the double digits), we actually fought for it as I recall.

The only problem with PMing is that it doesn't have the same impact: I vote mute Yodar because he just pirated me, he gets a PM indicating I did so, he tells 100 I'm a pathetic n00b... not as credible as 100 getting the message "Dr. Lecter has voted to mute Yodar." But whatever, I feel it shouldn't be a secret ballot. Either approach could work.

Thumbs down for having to either (1) leave the game to vote mute, and/or (2) type up some bullshit reason. Nobody likes showing their work, and you shouldn't have to break your game experience just because someone's mouthing off on 100.

I wasn't pointing fingers, yoda. I was just saying a less potent problem that was abusable was yanked out, but this isn't.

I have no problem admitting that I voted to mute someone. I wasn't asked to do it, I just did it because I felt it's right.

Seriously, what good is /ignore for when someone's constantly spamming 100 with garbage? The result is, you don't see what the player says, but you see hundreds of replies to his/her insults out of context and don't understand what happens anymore. Leaving 100 is the only option to prevent further headache.
So, who's getting penalized when I use /ignore? Me. The player I ignore isn't even aware that I'm doing it, and if, he doesn't care shit and continues his blabbering.
/vote mute is the way to show a person that you seriously don't like his behaviour and that he should change it if he wants to remain part of the community. /ignore is just like hiding under a blanket and doesn't change another person's behaviour.

Well, I don't know how mute works exactly, of course the person should be given a chance to change. I'd start with a few days, or only block him out of 100, and if that doesn't help, increase the mute further. All I know is that /ignore doesn't help, seriously, I tried.

I meant that there should be a part of the website that had all of the /vote mutes in the past month on it. Who voted for it, the time, who got muted, ect.

Ah, good idea. Paid subscriber access only, though; no sense in airing dirty laundry without getting GS into their bank accounts first.

Ok, so while I'm not against having a public record of muting, I think posting to 100 is a bad idea. Say someone is spouting off and 5 people vote to mute with no campaign. The group mentality will take over. 5 more people will see that the first 5 voted and think to themselves "I can vote now and nobody will remember me being first". This could easily continue until mute limit is reached. I personally think that posting to 100 would almost be worse than campaigning.

I like the idea of the website accessible listing.

Waldoze

EDIT for Lecter: My point is that it is essentially the same thing.

And how is that any different than five people getting on [100] and saying "I just voted to mute that Waldoze punk!"

Ok I must be really tired here cause I agree with Waldoze :P, on the stating it to 100 thing, wouldnt be hard for not only others thinking they can do it without people realizing they are first, but new members could see it and think "Hey this person must be bad, so I need to find out how to do this."

The website would be really good, just a simple page with the player name and who voted to mute them. Not only would it maybe curb certain campaign tactics, but also it could be seen if the same person is being voted against by the same people over and over, showing if it was personal or if the person really needed it. I also like the reason idea...

Aye moldy, I worked my butt off dying lots to earn the bounties I got..and I dont ever remember splitting one when I did get it. I just kept up with who had one and went after them as soon as I saw them...hehe. But yeah that wasn't nearly as bad as this and it was yanked pretty quick when it became apparent.

I don't know about the rest of you, but abusing bounties just ain't the same as abusing /vote mute. The bounty thing was a exploit that simply allowed players to co-operate to make money, much like ye olde money bugs. It didn't hurt normal people, and it didn't stop bounties from being fun. (though, it did unbalance the stats) However any abuses of /vote mute really just makes the game 'not fun' for the victems.

it not really comparable, imo.

Ok I have played this game on and off for a few years on various characters and think that the ability of /vote mute is great but it treads a very fine line Incarnate has stated his problems with it and I understand that and all I have to say is there have been times in this game where someone who has made a CHOICE has spammed 100 or 1 with a storm of abusive or vulgar language. These situations are rare and the only time I have seen people request others or make mention of the /vote mute function.

Laika makes a valid point because I know of several situations where I did /ignore someone and still got spammed by people responding to him and then i /vote muted because I didnt feel I should have to ignore EVERY SINGLE PERSON responding to it.

I understand that lynchings and vendettas are not fair but as incarnate has mentioned he already took that possibility into account when it considers guilds because he has limited to some degree the possibility of that happening *unless I totally misread that*

In summation /vote mute is a VITAL though still controverisal part of VO and I forsee it always being around in some form even if it is just relegated to the devs and guides. I have seen too many people get on and be abusive that deserve vote mutes not get them and I have also seen one or 2 occurences where it wasnt warranted but I believe those who have recieved it be it from a vendetta or something else generally do deserve it.

My 2 cents

I like Lecter's idea of publicly displaying who voted to mute whom, along with Impavid's corollary to keep those records for 6 months (or whatever) on a website. Perhaps have it be broadcasted not on 100 but on, I don't know, on or in the vicinity of 415.