No matchmaking is hurting this game bad

[Cyborg]

The Tribunal? The biggest issue with it, at the moment, is that it creates a situation where people can troll in ways that don't involve announcing it and easily get away with it (bad item build, terrible coordination, things that annoy people and make them lose but aren't so easy to judge after the fact.) The upside is that few trolls have the self-discipline to troll without letting everyone know, since trolls are very interested in having attention.

I would say the biggest problem with The Tribunal are points of view like yours, where anytime you have a team disagreement on how you build a character or play the game is somehow bannable. It quickly creates mob mentality, where 3 out of 5 of the players on your team are sitting in the same room bullying everyone around. That kind of stuff doesn't show up on the tribunal, and I would argue that most people don't even know what mob mentality is.  I had a guy flip his feces for 25 minutes over the fact that I would not take the middle lane at the start of the game, and then submitted a ban report over it. I said nothing the entire game, I was completely quiet... that's not trolling. Play with people you know if you cannot handle other free minds making their own decisions in a public game.

The fact of the matter is, league of legends is full of disparate personalities playing a team game who are not always going to agree. You have to have a better definition of trolling besides just excluding everyone who is different or thinks differently. And that's why the tribunal fails, because most people will not be that magnanimous.

[BobTheJanitor]

Just beware of IRC trolls and spambots. You might want to require forum membership to use the in-game IRC function. You've seen the effect they had on the public wiki.

That's the only worry I'd have. I'm not sure how easy it is to manipulate an in-game IRC client to get some sort of security out of it. But it's been years since I've done anything with IRC except let it auto-load on startup and join a bunch of channels that I only look at once every 6 months. I think that's how most people use IRC.

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, this gets into one of the tough things with doing anything like an in-game IRC channel: we're pretty good at making things for people to use, those are generally solvable problems, but when we have to start putting in tons and tons of protections against some people abusing it... we get increasingly into people problems that cannot be easily solved by technological solutions.  For instance, having to log in to use the in-game IRC (beyond the standard authentication options available in IRC)... ack ack ack, danger will robinson.

[Echo35]

ack ack ack

SYN SYN SYN

Oh, sorry But the IRC in Frozen Synapse logs you in automatically, but you do have to log into the game. Maybe make an option to log into AI War with your forum account

[keith.lamothe]

ack ack ack

SYN SYN SYN

Reminds me of a guy who could dial the number of a 28.8k modem (back when we used those) and do a sufficiently good job of imitation as to get through the initial handshaking exchanges.  I don't think he ever tried to send data, though.

[Echo35]

ack ack ack

SYN SYN SYN

Reminds me of a guy who could dial the number of a 28.8k modem (back when we used those) and do a sufficiently good job of imitation as to get through the initial handshaking exchanges.  I don't think he ever tried to send data, though.

I just used a tape recorder Though only on the payphones to get free calls, I never did much fun with my modem.

[Wingflier]

League of Legends?

My background encompasses all the popular MOBA games:  So DotA, HoN, and League of Legends.  You will be hard pressed to find a nastier, more ruthless bunch of gamers.  (Which conversely dramatically increases my respect for the community of this game)

[BobTheJanitor]

IRC in Frozen Synapse logs you in automatically, but you do have to log into the game. Maybe make an option to log into AI War with your forum account

Yeah, I'm not sure how the FS guys do it but it's pretty seamless. Although I know you do already have to log in to a central server to play that game, which probably has something to do with it. Next time Chris goes to his secret indie dev clubhouse meeting, someone remind him to ask the mode7 guys how they pull off their witchcraft.

[Echo35]

League of Legends?

My background encompasses all the popular MOBA games:  So DotA, HoN, and League of Legends.  You will be hard pressed to find a nastier, more ruthless bunch of gamers.  (Which conversely dramatically increases my respect for the community of this game)

Fact. I have a better time playing Halo than LoL, which is fairly depressing. And I agree, this community rocks.

[Volatar]

Just beware of IRC trolls and spambots. You might want to require forum membership to use the in-game IRC function. You've seen the effect they had on the public wiki.

Oh thats easy. We just need some IRC ops. I'd volunteer, as I have previous moderation experience (non-IRC, but I am a fast learner), and I am always online during daylight US time.

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, I figured it would either work via community moderation, or not work at all

[Nalgas]

ack ack ack

SYN SYN SYN

Reminds me of a guy who could dial the number of a 28.8k modem (back when we used those) and do a sufficiently good job of imitation as to get through the initial handshaking exchanges.  I don't think he ever tried to send data, though.

I was never able to do that, but working at an ISP in the dialup days I learned how to recognize all the details of someone's connection just by listening to all the handshake crap.  I could differentiate far too many speeds and settings, and none of it was intentional.  I got so sick of hearing it that I literally bit the speaker off my modem at home with my teeth one day when I was too lazy to look up the command to disable it in software.  That entire section of my brain was blanked out and repurposed for something actually useful almost immediately after leaving there, thankfully.

As far as IRC goes, I've been active on the same channel on a nearly daily basis for about 16 years now.  That's kind of scary.  I guess you could say I'm kind of familiar with it.  Heh.

[keith.lamothe]

I got so sick of hearing it that I literally bit the speaker off my modem at home with my teeth one day when I was too lazy to look up the command to disable it in software.  That entire section of my brain was blanked out and repurposed for something actually useful almost immediately after leaving there, thankfully.

When I read that my first impression was that the act of biting the electrical device lead to the blanking and re-purposing of the brain section

[Nalgas]

I got so sick of hearing it that I literally bit the speaker off my modem at home with my teeth one day when I was too lazy to look up the command to disable it in software.  That entire section of my brain was blanked out and repurposed for something actually useful almost immediately after leaving there, thankfully.

When I read that my first impression was that the act of biting the electrical device lead to the blanking and re-purposing of the brain section

Nothing nearly as exciting as that.  It wasn't even plugged in at the time, and modem speakers are low powered and low voltage.  What does work rather well for that is head injuries, but that was also unrelated.  I don't really recommend them, as they're notoriously difficult to target at the parts you want and have a rather wide area of effect.  Heh.

[BobTheJanitor]

Nothing nearly as exciting as that.  It wasn't even plugged in at the time, and modem speakers are low powered and low voltage.  What does work rather well for that is head injuries, but that was also unrelated.  I don't really recommend them, as they're notoriously difficult to target at the parts you want and have a rather wide area of effect.  Heh.

Sounds like there's room for improvement. I'll need a government grant and a few hundred volunteers who don't mind random memory loss. This should be fun.