There's clearly a storm cloud over things right now, and people are leaving the game in frustration. That's bad. I sincerely hope that those who left recently take some time to reflect on life, monitor these boards for signs that things are better, and then rejoin the community where they are welcomed by the vast majority of other players.

Even I started to lose my cool last night, but I'm feeling a bit more constructive now, so here's my suggestions on how to help make things better.

Problem #1) It is too easy to spoof a character's name and do or say bad things to make them look bad. Most notably, it is very difficult to distinguish between the letter-O vs the number-0, and capital-i vs lower case-L. I have personally witnessed Blackhole Goldclaw, Zhangjiagang, and Arolte all be victims of spoofers in the last two days.

Solution #1) Change the font. Also, it might be smart to include a player's guild affiliation (if any) next to their name in chat text.

Problem #2) Players have very limited options to self-police the player base in cases where another player is acting in an abusive manner and guides/devs are not online to deal with the problem. Additionally, there are times when the official rules are not sufficient, the developers/guides choose not to set precident by disciplining someone who they conclude didn't violate the rules, and yet the majority of the game community finds a player's behavior unacceptable.

Solution #2) /vote ban "character name" - a 24 hour player-initiated ban against a PLAYER (not character), similar to /vote mute. Naturally, it would be appropriate to monitor players that are constantly being banned as well as players that are constantly voting to ban someone, to curb abuse of the command.

Problem #3) Guides and the Devs are the official moderators of the game, but they are not always online and it is not reasonable to expect them to always be online. Without their moderating presence, small things that might easily be dealt with can blossom into big problems. When emotions are strong, it can be hard for players to accurately describe the nature of the problem after the fact, and this can lead to the guides/devs reacting differently than they might if they witnessed the problem at the time it is occurred.

Solution #3) /request guide - uses some modern technology (text message, pager, whatever) to ask a standby guide/dev to login and help resolve a problem.

Problem #4) Code has bugs, electronics go bad, fiber optic lines get cut. The Devs aren't always online to notice when something goes wrong, but it affects the game.

Solution #4) /request dev - similar to /request guide, but for technical issues such as sector crashes, etc.

I think the "vote ban" is a bit over the top, and suggest that votes to mute are for player (as opposed to character) instead.

Also, I belive that if a "Developer Summoning Spell" is released it might impact Developer Sleep, and that's a bad thing. How about it "just" leaves a message for them, but spills over to a "send SMS" when there are 10 messages waiting? A crashed sector (or similar) would easily generate 10 messages.
This ofcourse, implies that a player can only send one message every 24 hours (or whatever devs deem appropriate).

That would be about 8c worth? Allright, I'll go back to lurking.

Screwball I like these suggestions. I can't see any problems with /vote ban at this stage. Very few people get muted. I can't imagine that changing for ban (at this stage).

Edit : Votes by player, not by char obviously.

let me be a guide. no, I'm not kidding :)

but, really, you guys need to grow up and work things out yourselfs. Arolte will stop if you ask as will I, and if said player wont, call for help -ingame- and kick ass!

I'm still trying to read all of these posts, it's dizzying at the least. I've spent two days NOT playing VO to get a feel for what's going on. I do believe something needs to be done here, and Screwball seems to be going in the right direction.

Perhaps if a certain number of /vote ban 's occur, a log is generated on the server for devs to review. Perhaps if a /request guide or /request dev is called, a log of the last 5 minutes (or whatever) is stored and emailed to a dev or guide for immediate review...

Proof will certainly help over all of the emotions.

kernel.panic

Also /vote ban should only be able to be done once per PLAYER to stop people from coming on with alts

My friends requested I move my reply to IA forum, so I did.

I totally agree that any kind of vote system should be 1 vote per player, not 1 vote per alt. Further, the effects of a vote should affect a player (even though you have to specify their character name), because they could equally abuse alts to get around the vote results.