A more usable report function

[Warmarrer 0]

I think it would be a great idea to have a player report system that doesn't require open tickets or forum posts.  Reporting a player action only really requires three text fields.  Character name, reason, and a text field for any additional info.  That's not an overwhelming amount of data to keep track of, and if the "reason" field were a pre-set drop-down menu of valid report options it would allow you to very easily track how many reports a character has for what issue without having to dig through a lot of salty paragraphs.  Reports could be organized under the name of the character reported, and in a drop-down menu with a number indicating how many reports in each category a character has.  The report function could time-stamp as well which would make it incredibly easy to verify before taking action, and you could have a sorting option to prioritize characters with large numbers of reports (as well as a "resolved" bucket to dump cases that were dealt with).  

If for instance a character was gold spamming, this is how the system would handle it.

-Reporting character navigates to the report screen

-Reporter enters character name into field

-Reporter selects the reportable offense out of a pre-set drop down menu (in this case gold-spam)

-Reporter enters any additional info

-Reporter clicks send

-Database receives report and checks for existing tickets under character name

          -If no existing tickets, create ticket bucket using character name

               -Log time-stamp, category of ticket, reporting character's name, and text fields, adding +1 tally to reported category

          -If prior ticket exists, use current bucket and log time-stamp, category of ticket, reporting character's name, and text fields, adding +1 tally to reported category

Optionally, you could set the ticket system to flag a character as priority and send an alert to a GM if they receive a certain number of reports, allowing you to prioritize really critical issues.

You could limit reporting to in game characters, and limit reports per character per hour.  This would help avoid any targeted abuse to the report function. 

 

I'm not very accomplished with programming, but this seems something as simple as spending a few hours creating a UI, a sorting function, and a table.  It shouldn't be resource intensive in the slightest, and it would streamline the process for GMs allowing them to handle a greater volume of tickets and identify problem characters very quickly.  

 

I think the community really does want to help police itself, and assist the dev team in stopping gold sellers/botters/whoever.  One good feature is that this tool would allow the devs to decide which issues to focus on, as the devs can control which categories are in the report tool.  So if the community management team wants to crack down on gold spammers? Put it in the report function.  Is chat getting super out of hand racist?  Plop a category in the report tool.  It's adaptable and lets you decide the focus, and then lets us help.

 

 

*EDIT*  Also, if adding this into the game files itself would be a pain, you could release it as an optional add-on via the forum for those who wish to help out. 

Edited January 15, 2017 by Warmarrer
Random idea

[Warmarrer 0]

The same tool could be adapted into a bug report system as well.  The only hard part would be integrating a screenshot function into the tool and then sending the image alongside the bug report.  I think you'd have a lot more visual data and engagement in bug hunts though if there were an in game tool to report bugs.