I think spectators ability to talk to players needs a review. The current system may be too heavily justified by the status quo. There are benefits and downsides and they should be reassessed. Discuss (that is, generate a list of effects via a big argument).
+4 / -0
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from @Rafal[ZK] I don't see much reason to disable spectator chat to players except in highly competetive battles (tourneys) or in battles very sensitive to revealed information (FFAs). And in both cases spectator chat is disabled already. In typical clusterfuck game what we call "spec cheat" is quite a rare occurence, with the rest of the chat being mostly positive things. If spec cheat happens, whether intentional or not, offending spectator should be warned (exactly how it happened in the OP example). If speccheat is serious or repeated, spectator should get kicked from game and muted if he continues. Thats all. No need to limit the whole community because of rare occurences. Having spectators in the game, you can talk with, is a very positive thing. They can reply to questions about game mechanics that players don't know. They can tell players about bugs in the game that neither of the teams can see (like AIs getting stuck). They can also spot disruptive behavior within your team, that players were too busy to see, and tell the players that there is a troll to be kicked. Finally they provide publicity that gives more statisfaction to the players, I love hearing "LOL"s from spectators when using some rare tactic successfully.
+8 / -0
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Leave as it is, introduce a new way of getting rid of the more pesky ones with !mute [spec player] (strange, but people seem to be more redundand to kick players (and specs) since new 5min kick was introduced).
+0 / -0
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Agreed with Connetable / Rafal. In the past I've seen spec chat -> all used much more often to foster a community through social interaction than to disrupt a game (either inadvertently or deliberately). If things have gotten worse lately perhaps that can be better addressed with stronger moderation.
+0 / -0
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Also, all chat is used for non-game / meta-game issues ("something's wrong" "what happened?" "should we exit?"). Spectators can usefully contribute to those discussions, and in some cases they even have a stake in them.
+1 / -0
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I frequently use(d) spec chat to teach (new) players. When I do this I avoid bringing up any very specific "game state information" and try to generalize, except in cases that definitely need exact instructions to stop a small disaster that can ruin the game experience for a new player. One such exception would be terraform instructions when a unit got stuck (eg. because of silly game mechanics like vehicle factories terraforming ground).   CrazyEddie's examples fall into this as well. For game concepts that require a lot of information and are not essential (eg. advanced economy) I sometimes, but not always, wait until after the game. Occasionally, when the game seems to definitely be decided, I like to provide "funfacts" to players. To give an example: yesterday there was a chaotic 11v11 game in which one team's base has been half destroyed, but they still had a Starlight. After it got destroyed I told everyone how much cost it made. I felt that this was interesting because from a certain point onward it seemed to be the center of every player's attention.
+3 / -0
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I've never been concerned by the conduct of spectators during any game I have played, beyond the obvious concern of spec cheating.
+0 / -0
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I think Rafal summed up my sentiments completely regarding spectators in general.
+0 / -0
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Spectator sediments from clusterfuck players seems to have been arrived by conditioning. Speccheat has been defined as "messages from spectators which have an impact on a game's state." If applying this definition, spectators should rarely, if ever, speak in all chat. There's already high pressure (even in the larger games) to perform and while some veterans ignore spectators altogether, I have yet to see any spectator commentary that has had a positive impact on my game experience. While spectator all chat can be beneficial to some degree, certain members of this community abuse all chat with their taunts, jeers, and other acts of heckling, which bring down the experience of the game. When a spectator makes a comment on something (in LOS of both players), it alerts both players that something is happening, which is technically speccheat by the aforementioned definition. While clusterfuck players may enjoy their spectator commentary, imagine as a new player your game experience was basically some spec constantly bagging on you for failure. Is that conductive to the goal of player retention? Is this presentable behavior? Whats worse is the alarming apathy towards this issue.
+2 / -0
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I see no problem with current spec chat system. It's very rare to see any spec-cheat, and even then, most of the time it doesn't result in anything meaningful. Specs might apathetically mention something without thinking, but big stuff like singus and nukes is inhibited by anyone that isn't being malicious. The whole issue of spec cheating seems over publicised here. It's just really not an issue. I remember several members who were uber paranoid about mumble cheat - when the closest thing to cheating was people being drunk and shit talking. Not exactly a performance enhancing strategy. I agree with shaman that the main issue is hecklers. I disagree that closing down spec chat is the way to go about fixing it. Rather, the behaviour of heckling needs to be addressed, aka the intense negative-critical vibe this community has. Every time someone gets called a lobster by specs the spec should be warned, if they continue there should be mod intervention. But this behaviour happens intra and inter team, not just in the spec's peanut gallery. Why the emphasis would be placed on specifically specs confuses me. Maybe some concept creep from the spec-cheating non-event?
+5 / -0
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It would certainly be good if you had more control over spectator chat. For tourneys I imagine you'd want to disable it, or only allow the tournament hosts to talk. This means that it shouldn't be possible to talk from ZKL's battleroom chat either. For custom games, I think it would be useful to be able to disable it with a vote. That said, I don't think it should be disabled by default, it's a useful element of keeping the "community spirit".
+1 / -0
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Who should warn spectators about their behavior? The apathetic general masses who have come to be conditioned to ignore the intense negativity? The nearly-inactive administration team? The admins who set a negative example? Some members are somewhat receptive to feedback, yes. The root, or high profile offenders, though... Perhaps with a threat looming of spec chat being disabled, people invested in keeping the current system might help fight this intense negativity. Perhaps we should make specific examples of what we're looking to cut down on.
+1 / -0
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Suggestion: tie ability to chat to players as spec to Springie rights. That way, players with proven good behavior will be able to instruct new players, whilst the troll clown brigade will not be able to spoil games.
+4 / -1
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I second ivory king, but these sanctions need to be based on data gathered over a long enough period of time to accurately measure someone's contribution. With my following statements i'm not saying that what shaman is illustrating doesn't happen, nor am i saying that he is hypersensitive. There needs to be protections for players that prevent the hypersensitive sore loser from lashing out at a spectator who may have said something critical but constructive however they either distort the truth, manipulate the evidence or dress up a none-event. As an isolated incident this isn't a big deal, but once you get a few hypersensitive sore losers jumping on the bandwagon it will turn into a witch hunt and while they might not win, they could slowly unbalance the conversation if they are given a platform. A more nuanced approach needs to be taken. If you base your decision regarding someone's net contribution on people reporting when they did something bad, then you will only see the times someone did something bad. If you have 5 recorded instances of unfair criticism or a harsh tone to their wording and you act on this, you're devaluing the 200 times someone gave another player a useful insight into the game. If you ban the player for this, then you're essentially taking an action that makes the game worse because that person isn't there any more with his net positive contribution.
+0 / -0
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I think there is too much focus here on "spec cheat" (put in quotes because it is actually a bad term). I do not think that spectators giving away information is the greatest issue because problem cases seem fairly rare. My concern is with heckling and newb bashing. This is something that old players are more likely to be blind to. Laughing at an outgroup can also be a type of community fostering and there is an issue when the outgroup is "new players". For example, is it good that a spectator can say this at the start of the game: "East team got one more nab than west, gg"? Surely this demotivates at least some of the players in the game, especially if they are new.
+8 / -0
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It would be better to address those issues with stronger moderation than with eliminating spec->all chat. It addresses the root cause of many, many community issues rather than a single symptom.
+0 / -0
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Springie rights seems like a pretty easy way to deal with noob basher. If someone bashes noobs, drop their rights a point into the category, mission: accomplished
+0 / -0
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quote:
Why would it be better? |
a) Spec->all chat has benefits, as discussed in this thread. b) Stronger moderation would address the root cause of multiple community issues, not just spectator heckling: hostile and abusive environment in general; hostility and abuse towards new players; selfish all-or-nothing strategies; selfish early resignation; griefing. This issues are not constrained to spectator chat, and would not be addressed by eliminating spec->all chat.
+4 / -0
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