Gee Doak, why don't you stop flaming for a minute and try making an actual arguement?

No, didn't think you could...

/me looks sadly at a 'now concluded but enjoyable whilst it lasted' flamewar...

*ahem*

Anyway, Tumble makes a good point as a general matter: outside bridges should be either terminated or confined to a non-general channel.

However, Steve's point about viability may be controlling; I dunno enough about such things to say.

Perhaps the compromise would be to retain IRC itself and limit it to Channel 101? Most people interested in bridging in would accept that limit, allowing those in game to join or not join a bridged channel. Easier switching between channels would help this, too. The current system necessitates typing a lot or binding several channels to hot keys =P

Finally, even granting Tumble's point as a concept... VO has consistently had to compromise ideals in the name of retaining a cohesive player base for its survival. The presence of outside bridges to general chat may well be such a necessary evil. For now.

I don't think technical considerations are relevant. It's easy enough to see <irc> <character name> and know that it's a bot bridge, and autoban.

So tumble,

IF you can make a point of WHY IRC cannot co-exist with VOchat without it being a whining session, or even some kind of selfish reasoning... i would be more willing to listen to your arguement.

so far, all you have done is complain about people NOT being ingame to flame you, but in return, those same people could do it while staying in station and logged in for the entire time.

my belief is that you are feeling "attacked" verbally, and that you also feel you cannot retalliate physically due to the VO/IRC connection.

if our roles were reversed and i was the target that couldnt "fight" back, the complaining would be there too. but every flame/insult/cheap-shot i threw out, i would accept the insuing verbal destruction coming my way. wherever it was coming from.

as for now, just ignore IRC and you wont hear us.

yah ignore the thing, it wont cause a problem. if the problem is channel 100 then you can leave it. and dont give some kind of bs about that being the only fun thing in the game, cause if it was we all would chat in IRC

>> "Actually, I should rephrase a little. I don't have much of a problem with the other bots in the game (#sigma, O'Malley, etc) but the IRC bot is very public and very active in game, and it shouldn't be. There is no reason to allow people, some of them not even ACTIVE in game, to be able to chat ingame. Keep the IRC channel, lurk all you want, just don't allow it to monitor or chat to the in game chat channels. They're for players who are PLAYING the game, not for flame griefers to camp and wait to pounce on any comment they don't like.

The chat bots do not belong in VO. They only increase the number of flames an exacerbate issues that might otherwise fade away, all the time not adding anything positive to the game.

You want to chat to ingame players, LOG IN."

Mod Parent Down: Troll.

Uhh, news to Tumble, it's not hard to change the format of IRC's messages, or even change its name. Or put it on a different account.

Trolling is all well and fine, but at least do it in a way that might be viable.

Meh. I think IRC is fine and dandy. In fact, I think there should be MORE "quasi-ingame" functionality like:

web-based guild controls (invites/expels/lists/etc.)
web-based guild banking
web-based ways to check out your character, as if your PDA was accessible outside the game. (not just levels but detailed kill stats, inventory, etc.)

And, when they are available:
economy updates via some kind of RSS feed (when the economy is dynamic)
hive expansion notifications
ingame news releases available on the web

As long as these things don't open up any holes for cheaters.

Hrm, but what is a cheater?
Someone who writes software that allows them to gain an inherently unfair advantage on ingame events or situations.

An alt-checker bot would not be cheating. A script that AFK mined would be cheating.

haha what a garbage thread...
... only tumble ...

We're not having this in the Suggestions forum. This needs to be a place for respectful debate. Disagreement is expected, but we must keep it civil.

Fair warning: any more flamey or off-topic posts in this thread will be deleted with no further explanation or discussion.

Lever, probably better to not classify things you can't verify or even observe as 'cheating'.

Probably true, but that's never stopped me from making broad sweeping generalizations, blind comparisons, or lying outrageously before, right?

I say that IRC brings an added "feature" to the game, however minor it may be, and it should be kept.

Isn't there a way to 'monitor' a IRC channel and stuff? If so, we could have mods ban/ mute that person.

If not, usually people use their screen names on IRC. They should get their accounts muted on VO.

I think it's good, but it does have it's flaws. If worse comes to worse, the IRC Charectors can get muted.

Kill Kill Kill!!!!

On topic : Dr Lecter's 101 channel idea sounds ok, except that everyone will just migrate to 101 as their "standard" channel and we'll be back to square one.

Just create a "VO Lounge", where people not playing in the game can chat. While flying/trading etc.., there should not be a universal wide chat which interact with the outside world.

Meh, personally think that there should be a channel (at least in nation space) that should be universal. But of course, that would be screwed up when 1000+ people join (perhaps "stagger" the noob's chat channels? like, 100, 200, 300, ect? and they can change later?)

Tumble may have a point, but I disagree that the bot(s) are the true problem. The bot(s) simply magnify the problem, by making the problem features commonly accessible.

Banning known bots, will simple make the bots go underground, limiting the features to a select few. There are any number of players that could have their own private irc bot operating in short order. Further more, you don't really need an irc bot, to exploit the problem features.

I suggest that if specific features of the game are fine tuned, bots will become a non issue, and I intend to redirect this thread from a "ban bot" thread, to a "minimize bot intrusiveness" thread.

Suggested feature changes:
Active Player link: Change the the Active Player link to only show the totals. I am very tired of having to track the IRC bot's refresh time, and then having to log in, score my kill, and then log back out, in less than 60 seconds, to keep from showing up in the irc log. The problem is not really the irc bot. The problem is the real time list of active players.

Vote Mute: The irc bot is fairly conscientious in it's implementation, with features for limiting it's annoyance factor. But we should not always expect all bots to be so well behaved, and even the IRC bot sees periods of abuse. The current vote mute system is very difficult to activate, and impossible to cancel or oppose. A more democratic method, such as requiring %30 of on line players to vote, and requiring a 2/3 majority of votes to enact a mute, would make the system much more available. Making a vote only count while that character is on, and allowing a character to change his vote at any time, would help limit the duration of mutes.

There may be other features that could be fine tuned, but in general, these problems are not really specific to bots.

I think the problem is the lack of regulation, for which commands to ignore and/or vote-mute an IRC player would help. Tumble's point seems valid (I don't know about the specific circumstances described, but there is potential for a problem that IRC brings). However I also remember leading IA assaults from IRC when I wasn't able to be ingame. If IRC-ers are held to the same expectations and regulations as ingame players, there shouldn't be a problem, right?

/msg IRC mute "name"

And for those on IRC already and want to ignore someone ingame:

/msg vo ignore "name"

Both only last ten minutes.

or until miharu decides it's been long enough

not to mention that command doesn't work. It returns ("that player cannot be found") no matter how you type the name.