Support Ingress urgently requires attention.

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Comments

  • TheKingEngineTheKingEngine ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited June 2021

    One solution for minor but effective improvement to be applied by Niantic Support as far as I can see is introducing punishment for collective abu.se of "COMM harassment". Yes it's OK for specific 1 or 2 players to feel hara.ssed by and report players saying to public "Hello", "Welcome" or to them directly of "COMM harassment" if they have some issues with those players.

    But when there are 10+ accounts at the same time filing reports and claim something and some speech that is 95%~100% positive and safe and polite or neutral regardless of countries or cultures to be "hara.ssing other players", it's a distinct indication of abu.se of the reports and exploits of the current system design. It's most likely done in order to ban specific players no matter what he/she said. It not only impairs the fairness of the gaming environment but also adds trouble to customer support staff and thus is worth punishing.

    It's a common knowledge that people will get into trouble by faking alarms for the police. It could be and should be putting their accounts at risks as well if they do massive SPAM reporting of totally normal words and not inappropriate behaviors. Of course this "punish spam reports" should not be applied to general reports of words that are not 100% positive and neutral, or reports of other kinds of in-game cheating behavior. And audits that leads to such probation should be triggered when COMM ab.use report attack victimes file a counter appeal request, calling for a manual review.

    In general: It's not good but OK for the system to send warnings/bans automatically for COMM hara.ssment reports. But when players file appeals of "COMM hara.ssment" that they did not do, please make sure customer support review it manually by real human. When the players are proven to be innocent but just framed up by some abu.sers, warn and ban those abu.sers.

  • AzhreiaAzhreia ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited June 2021

    Oh forgot to mention. Even incomplete tickets that get closed by the system after timeout have a ticket number, so those also account for the number of tickets received.


  • TheKingEngineTheKingEngine ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited June 2021

    Oh, here comes the "every report is carefully reviewed by customer support and they would send you replies that are appropriate and definitely not automatically" story again, while in many posts and complaints like https://community.ingress.com/en/discussion/15355/yet-another-open-letter-for-niantic/p1 we can see that massive players agree with the comments that customer support often just close the tickets with canned response and no effects.

    Along with the "if the player was warned or banned then he/she must have done something wrong" story. To prove or refute this, now that we just need a volunteer, with no previous COMM messages history, to ask his/her local community to report him collectively after he said "Hello everyone, welcome" in XFAC COMM. This is not exploiting the system, it's a security testing. Regarding cases like iOS13 Intel ban wave we should never suppose bans are always correct.

    Who would like to be the volunteer?

    Post edited by TheKingEngine on
  • TheKingEngineTheKingEngine ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited June 2021

    This story sounds really reasonable at the first glance but readers may feel strange by thinking twice because if customer support is really doing so then...

    If a player once said something wrong in the COMM but not reported or warned, let's say the FIRST TIME.

    Afterwards, that player said for example "welcome" in the COMM which is the SECOND TIME but was reported (regardless of the amounts of tickets). As described by this story, the whole COMM history would be reviewed manually by customer support, and thus that player was warned or banned if previously banned or if words in the FIRST TIME are extremely inappropriate.

    Now does anyone see the problem here? According to this story, no matter what that player would say in the THIRD or FOURTH TIME in the future, he/she would be continuously warned of banned for what he said in the FIRST TIME as long as being reported by just 1 another player.

    Does this sound reasonable?

    Not to mention that with 15K support tickets' increasing in a single day, does customer support agent really have time to review EVERY COMM hara.ssment report of players who actually have a quite long COMM messages history? Going through every piece of the messages that were not mentioned in the original report ticket?

    No, modern customer support system does not work in this way because mandays that company pays for the cs do not support such meticulous review for general tickets. It exists only in an ideal environment where there are not so many tickets.

  • AzhreiaAzhreia ✭✭✭✭✭

    You actually didn't read that right. Let me copy/paste and highlight.

    In January, Agent X was rude and aggressive on COMMS towards another agent and got reported. Ops reviewed that behaviour and issued a warning. Agent X took the warning to heart and became more civil in their COMM actions.

    In March, Agent X becomes aggressive once more towards another agent on COMM and gets reported. Ops will see the previous warning on the account, and look for inappropriate behaviour AFTER the first warning up to the new report. They see the inappropriate behaviour in March and issue another warning. Agent X goes quiet and returns to being civil.


    And you missed the whole bit regarding teh 15K support tickets. Let me copy/paste again


    First of all, I don't believe the 15k daily tickets are purely from Ingress. Niantic now has 3 games live and 2 more in beta. I highly doubt that they have a separate Helpshift ticketing system for each one. It's much more likely that they have one Helpshift system/license with an internal filter per gaming platform that the relevant Support staff then deal with.

    So the ticket numbers you see would be indicative of ALL the tickets that their Helpshift system generates. Not just for Ingress.

  • TheKingEngineTheKingEngine ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited June 2021

    which means agent X has reached an dead end because he/she would be warned or banned no matter what's said in the future, because of his/her words in the past and it seems not possible to appeal for it to be exempted, as follow thoughts:

    If agent X said A,B,C as inappropriate in April and D in May...There is no guarantee that customer support will warn him/her of C and then looking for inproper messages after C for reports in the future. What if customer support located A and starting from A next time? In this case agent X surely will receive 3 warnings successively which are predestined regardless of what agent X will say in the future.

  • TheKingEngineTheKingEngine ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited June 2021

    Yeah, that's why we need a volunteer with ZERO COMM messages history to say hello, which guarantees that he/she has no prior history of warnings of COMM inappropriate behaviors because of no behaviors at all.

    If he/she was not warned then you are right, if he/she still receives warnings then no need to prove further the problem.

  • That's not true. People aren't warned more than once for the same action. Try reading it again. Maybe take a bit more time and pay especially attention to the word AFTER.

  • You have no way to verify other people's COMM history.

  • TheKingEngineTheKingEngine ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited June 2021

    Yes in theory you are right. But in practice, not necessarily. That's because customer support agents do not have infinite time and energy to review every report carefully. Thanks for helping me read comments and if you could help find a volunteer for the security testing that would help even greater. Facts speak louder than words, especially when many players that are not limited to me are doubting "why warnings/bans for welcome messages".

  • Again, the test you suggest doesn't prove anything since there is no player with verifiably zero COMM history. Nobody can find such a volunteer, because they don't exist.

    Your assertion that Support is accidentally evaluating a longer stretch of COMM history than they should, because they don't have the time to restrict themself to a shorter stretch, is questionable at best. In any case it's pure speculation and shouldn't be presented as a fact.

  • TheKingEngineTheKingEngine ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited June 2021

    Then just recruit a new player help him/her upgrade (to lv4?5?8?) and make the very first COMM message. It's nothing difficult and can be done within 1 or 2 hours, much simpler than our debate here.

    If he/she got warnings for that after 10+ reports simultaneously then it's sufficient to prove the problem of current system design.

  • That gives you yet another case of "someone claims that this player never used COMM". We have plenty of those. For the third time: to learn anything new, we would need someone with VERIFIABLY ZERO comm history. And only Niantic can verify that. Everything else is just rumors and conspiracy theories.

  • AzhreiaAzhreia ✭✭✭✭✭

    You are going to end up having to eat your words, just like those guys that tried to prove the Earth is flat with a scientifically proven experiment, ending up proving quite the opposite.

  • TheKingEngineTheKingEngine ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited June 2021

    Haha, you really think that 0 comm history is not verifiable? No. It's quite simple to do.

    Now that we have a restriction for players to be lvl 4? 6? or certain level to be able to use COMM.

    Take a video during the end of leveling up and once reached lvl 4? 6? immediately write a hello in COMM which would be the first and only COMM message. Then within the video, immediately request for a faction change which will reset the level to 1 and can be done instantly and thus no more COMM messages could be made. Wait for a series of reports and warning emails. Afterwards, request for an account deletion and before the accomplishment of the deletion, take a video upon login to the game again to prove that after resetting the level, no AP was gained afterwards because profile data is not increasing as well.

    How about that? Conspiracy? I've seen enough of "only Niantic can verify so your suggetion's useless" stories. No, we players together strong and players are wiser than your imagination.

  • TheKingEngineTheKingEngine ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited June 2021

    Volunteers have arms. They can do a self-proving procedure.

  • AzhreiaAzhreia ✭✭✭✭✭

    0 Comm history is 100% verifiable. But not by you or any other player. The only one capable of doing that is Niantic.

    An experiment like the one you're proposing will fail because no party outside of Niantic has access to the information, and they will not participate in this experiment by delivering that information to the public.

    And even if they did and presented their results, I expect you will then simply claim they removed or edited whatever they wished for a favourable outcome.

    As their information is not public, you cannot conduct a 100% verifiable experiment.

  • TheKingEngineTheKingEngine ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited June 2021

    Volunteers have arms. They can do a self-proving procedure which is 100% verifiable by everyone because readers can see that it's technically impossible for that volunteer to have other COMM messages sent during the whole process. Players are more clever than you might think.

  • AzhreiaAzhreia ✭✭✭✭✭

    And if they log into intel over the Pacific Ocean and post offensive comm messages where no-one will be in range to see them? Sure. Yes. 100% Verifiable. BY NIANTIC, not you or any other player.

    Having arms means they can also do just what I said above here.

  • AzhreiaAzhreia ✭✭✭✭✭

    And another way to sabotage that. Share the account login with someone else to post comm messages.

    Give it up.

  • TheKingEngineTheKingEngine ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited June 2021

    Even simpler. Ask the volunteer to use Apple ID to join the game. Not possible to use Intel due to unable to login, or share accounts to say something via Intel then. Any more obstacles? Give it up. Players are more clever than you might think.

  • AzhreiaAzhreia ✭✭✭✭✭

    Quite simply the biggest one. Trust. I don't trust you or anyone in your circle of friends to conduct this experiment. None of us can verify your results either, so the point is moot.

  • COMM restrictions for low-level account don't apply to the scanner, only to the intel map. You would need a continuous video all the way from account creation until the warning e-mail arrives. Good luck with that.

  • TheKingEngineTheKingEngine ✭✭✭✭✭

    Yeah, I don't really need your trust. With the help of revised process I mentioned, the experiment could have trust of all general players by reviewing the videos carefully and then everybody can see that it's impossible to do tricks during the process.

    The only obstacle I could see is that you may contact Niantic to remove those videos and relevant posts if we do prove to have received unreasonable warnings.

    Any volunteers?

  • And by the way @LuoboTiX: if you change your posts after people have replied to them, don't expect that anybody can follow the conversation.

  • GoblinGranateGoblinGranate ✭✭✭✭✭

    I am incredibly dissapointed with these words, given the examples shown in OP, but if that was the case, then it sounds fair and issue is not the amount of tickets but the poor resolution of tickets. Also, @LuoboTiX point is fair too: how can I expect support to not apply the sanction again for something that I am supossed to have been sanctioned already? Am I sentenced to forget about COMMs once I get the warning? Not an asumption that any agent would bet their account on, and that might be one reason for a lot of them to just quit using it.

    Ticket ID was stated to be an assumption from the very first moment and that is why someone from Niantic was requested to participate. Not sure why do they have separate support websites and channels if underlying system is shared. Minor extra costs, but costs nevertheless.

    I don't think this test would work as abusers only tend to game the system upon those agents that do not quit by regular "dirty gameplay". Usually veterans or hardcore players are the main targets of this kind of abuse, just like Wayfarer abuses on couch portals or spoofing actions after high mobility agents.

    Perhaps COMMs are not the door to fix Support, but Support DEFINETELY needs fixing. I said myself that I'm not pleased with my own "solution", but I'm willing to make sacrifices if that helps to improve the game. Because after all this years and bad experiences I still love this game, never forget that.

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