Open Discussion/Suggestion - "Message Filter for Tell System"
My girlfriend and I joined the player-base for this community back in Nov of 2013, and for the most part we have thoroughly enjoyed most aspects of this game. The story is well written, there are thousands of little details that bring environments together to just make them *pop* and almost feel alive......and then as soon as the lines between in-game and reality start to blur, a little something dies inside with the prompt delivery of an offer to "sell" in-game funds to you from a character you've never dealt with.
We (as a community) have been plagued with this since shortly after the launch of 2.0 and with the expectation of releasing our very first expansion a few months from now, it is time to take a serious look at our options for preserving the experience this game gives us. We have seen THOUSANDS of accounts banned over the past year (both for advertising, and taking part in the transactions) in an effort to combat this problem.....groups of individuals still find ways to come back to torment legitimate players. Up to this point there has been only been two real courses of action for a player to deal with these unwanted messages...
#1 - Blacklist Character - ineffective/temporary /// characters are expendable in these endeavors, this only prevents 4-5 messages from the same person flooding our screen and our list is limited to 200 names)
#2 - "Busy Status" - some players have resorted to manually changing their status to Busy, in doing so all "Tell" messages to them are revoked thereby limiting their interaction with other players solely through General Chat/Party/Link shells/etc.
I'd like to propose making use of a piece of programming that is already in the game to help combat these problems while alternatives are looked into, because at this rate I'm sure I can't be the only one that has a slight feeling of dread mixed in with their anticipation of Heavenward.
Current Feature - The tabs for our chat window are customizable already allowing for us to decide what sources of information are shown where (ie - General shows Tells/FC/Party/Alliance/etc by default) by editing a series of "check boxes" in the associated settings menu. It should be relatively simple to utilize this same system to setup a "filter" for incoming Tell messages, shouldn't it?
Proposed Example - A player could choose to receive Tell's from their FC, Party members, Alliance members, and Friends but have the option to *not* receive messages from individuals that don't fit into the previously determined categories. No complicated criteria (Player is lvl 10 or higher, or any of that bypassable nonsense....) and there would still be interaction with "outsiders" through General and if someone wishes to talk privately they can easily do so by joining a Party or sending a Friend request (thereby placing themselves on the list). Alternatively, the player could still choose to receive outside Tell's from random people (at their own risk) and still have the same level of interaction.
What do you guys think?