Change the mindset around the game

[dbpeanut]

I took a quick scroll through a couple forum posts, and I felt the need to update this thread on it purely because it highlights a continuous issue(s).

One , I've seen multiple times that if you want actual changes, you have to email the devs.
This is heavily flawed- because then what's the point of the official forums? What's the point of the feedback and suggestion forums? Forums should be used as a way to deliver feedback/suggestions what have you to the devs. Not for you to still have to clog up the developer email (which might I add, is historically unreliable, even if theoretically these devs read it.)

Two , I've seen repeatedly the mindset that I talk about in this post. I've of course seen pure toxicity and clear joking around, but overall I've seen more often than not that the mindset is a long existing one. That spreads pretty far have you.

Three, I feel to need to also mention that while very few people who are actually active in the community talk in the forums, the mindset around the forums (within the community) is basically every mainstay is toxic. I bring this up, because I can clearly see why. It's not uncommon to see mod and random player alike jump on a thread to dogpile someone. I want to clarify, there's a clear difference between criticizing and dog piling. And there are some real weirdos from time to time, but that doesn't change that ultimately what I'm saying is true.
I also want to clarify very specifically that people actively check the forums, even if they don't speak in them. I bring this part up to emphasize how much of an impact seeing people consistently crap on actual feedback has.

Four, I, and a lot of the community, often feel as if the devs do not legitimately care about the game or the playerbase. Simultaneously, that's also the way the majority of the community feels about the forums.
What would go a long way to fixing this, is maybe contacting the devs, getting maybe like a list of actually commonly asked questions? Your thread doesn't answer what a lot of the community actually feels, just more basic questions. I don't think it'd be too hard to just go into a couple games, ask questions in dead chat, you know? Assuming of course you spread out on all modes rather than focusing on Coven or Ranked, as it seem a lot of you do.

Five , This is more structured towards the moderators specifically, as I realize that they lack a key element of what makes people have good experiences with them. They lack the human element. I'm not saying they're robots of course, but they're kinda forgetting they're dealing with human beings who have feelings, ask dumb questions, you know? I know it must absolutely suck to have to read that, but it's a necessary statement. You can't just snap back at people consistently or just read the rules verbatim, that's not going to get your point across. And it's certainly not going to help to be flat out dismissive. I completely get it- you're probably exhausted having done this for years and apparently having minimal contact with the devs from the looks of it. But how do you think the community feels then? When you're in a position of power, to any degree, you gotta have more self control than you normally would.

I get it. Nobody wants to hear these things, I've seen how you all react to genuine criticism, questions and whatnot.
Just know that people do read these forums, and they're primarily looking for any sort of meaningful input. And reacting poorly to something the community often supports rarely gives them good input.
Overall, I'd suggest working on the forum's image, right now and for as long as I've been a community member, it's never been good. It can change though, and I believe it should.

[dbpeanut]

I guess the two of you missed the fact that the filter quite literally got updated in the last patch.

And no, we're not going to add every single form of filter evasion ever to it, because people will keep finding ways to evade the filter anyway. It's a job that costs more time, effort and money than will ever be worth it.

I mean, I know it always seems easy to people on the other side of the screen, but trust me, it's really not that easy. There are a LOT of factors that go into updating a filter. And with 3 programmers, they should definitely not waste their time on that, because they would need to come up with every single possible filter evasion ever.

I can say with extremely reasonable certainty that this suggestion cannot and will not be implemented. However, if you see a hard filtered word that is evaded the same way consistently, you can always e-mail support and ask them if it's possible to include that combination in the filter.

Even though my longer comment covers yours ultimately, I feel a need to respond to this specifically.
I cannot see how you think the filter is fine where it is at, when it doesn't catch workarounds that have been around as long as I've been playing. In a debate game, having a working filter is one of the most important things.
While I addressed this very specifically, having to still email the devs when I am providing feedback on the official forums is a poor situation as it ultimately limits the actual amount of feedback they receive.

[SilverCruz]

I guess the two of you missed the fact that the filter quite literally got updated in the last patch.

And no, we're not going to add every single form of filter evasion ever to it, because people will keep finding ways to evade the filter anyway. It's a job that costs more time, effort and money than will ever be worth it.

I mean, I know it always seems easy to people on the other side of the screen, but trust me, it's really not that easy. There are a LOT of factors that go into updating a filter. And with 3 programmers, they should definitely not waste their time on that, because they would need to come up with every single possible filter evasion ever.

I can say with extremely reasonable certainty that this suggestion cannot and will not be implemented. However, if you see a hard filtered word that is evaded the same way consistently, you can always e-mail support and ask them if it's possible to include that combination in the filter.

Okay, legitimate question. What do you know about coding? I mean, I'm not a career coder or anything, I'm a pretty dull tool for that job as a matter of fact, but nonetheless I still came up with a crude version of a reactionary word filter in a matter of minutes, and that was with having to look something up to make it happen. Granted, again, that was Python, and I'll grant you it can't catch its targets if they're not completely standalone, but I would imagine that career coders who have already made a complete game in whatever this is coded up in, and who already have a filter installed that can catch filtered words in between other words, would be able to add a new word to that filter in two seconds at maximum if it's a simple reactionary filter.

The thing about reactionary filters, which is what I'm talking about because they're the fastest to update at a moment's notice, is that they're whack-a-mole. You hit things as they come up, dealing with them before they even happen isn't on the menu. Maybe the game doesn't use a reactionary filter. I don't know and I'd only trust someone who has the tag of developer on the matter. But if it does, you're blowing things way out of proportion.

That all said, the developers seem to be set on what they want to do, rather than what anyone else wants them to do, which while there are bad suggestions, is not the way you make a product that people are happy with. There's a PTR. Use it for spur-of-the-moment balance changes, it doesn't need to wait for a major patch.

[SilverCruz]

Also, I feel like pinning a question here, maybe someone can uh, fill me in.

Does this game still let you get Classic Tickets from watching ads, and if so what are the limits, if any, aside from there only being so many allotted a day? Also are the allotments per account, or for everyone?

[WildCard65]

As someone who does programming for a hobby, I know for a fact that making a decent filter is very difficult, ESPECIALLY when Unicode is involved.

Take the simple ascii characters 'A' and 'a', from your perspective, they're the same letter but from the computer side, they aren't because 'A' is 65 and 'a' is 97, 65 is not 97.
Now take this character: 'Ą', from your perspective it looks like the ascii A (65), but it's not, it's actually a UNICODE character who's value is 260 (U+0104), if you had a simple word filter for "Ahole", it will fail on "Ąhole" despite it being "the same".
Would you be able to update the filter for EVERY SINGLE UNICODE VARIANT OF 'A'? What about the lowercase 'a'?

This is precisely why the chat was recently restricted to Ascii characters to filter out A LOT OF WAYS TO BYPASS THE FILTER!

And now take whitespace into account, there exists Unicode whitespace characters that are literally INVISIBLE, would you be able to successfully filter out those when they literally look like there is no whitespace in-between ANY of the letters?

[dbpeanut]

As someone who does programming for a hobby, I know for a fact that making a decent filter is very difficult, ESPECIALLY when Unicode is involved.

Take the simple ascii characters 'A' and 'a', from your perspective, they're the same letter but from the computer side, they aren't because 'A' is 65 and 'a' is 97, 65 is not 97.
Now take this character: 'Ą', from your perspective it looks like the ascii A (65), but it's not, it's actually a UNICODE character who's value is 260 (U+0104), if you had a simple word filter for "Ahole", it will fail on "Ąhole" despite it being "the same".
Would you be able to update the filter for EVERY SINGLE UNICODE VARIANT OF 'A'? What about the lowercase 'a'?

This is precisely why the chat was recently restricted to Ascii characters to filter out A LOT OF WAYS TO BYPASS THE FILTER!

And now take whitespace into account, there exists Unicode whitespace characters that are literally INVISIBLE, would you be able to successfully filter out those when they literally look like there is no whitespace in-between ANY of the letters?

Yes, but now that they've changed it, there's no excuse to not include na&#÷=, no$%÷=, n*gro and so on.
Actually there was no excuse before either. These are basic, English characters bypasses that have been around for the entire time I've been playing.
They have no excuse.
Well besides the fact they're making a new game and leaving this one behind.

[SilverCruz]

As someone who does programming for a hobby, I know for a fact that making a decent filter is very difficult, ESPECIALLY when Unicode is involved.

Take the simple ascii characters 'A' and 'a', from your perspective, they're the same letter but from the computer side, they aren't because 'A' is 65 and 'a' is 97, 65 is not 97.
Now take this character: 'Ą', from your perspective it looks like the ascii A (65), but it's not, it's actually a UNICODE character who's value is 260 (U+0104), if you had a simple word filter for "Ahole", it will fail on "Ąhole" despite it being "the same".
Would you be able to update the filter for EVERY SINGLE UNICODE VARIANT OF 'A'? What about the lowercase 'a'?

This is precisely why the chat was recently restricted to Ascii characters to filter out A LOT OF WAYS TO BYPASS THE FILTER!

And now take whitespace into account, there exists Unicode whitespace characters that are literally INVISIBLE, would you be able to successfully filter out those when they literally look like there is no whitespace in-between ANY of the letters?

I mean what do the developers care about how hard it is? They don't even care about this game.

[Flavorable]

As someone who does programming for a hobby, I know for a fact that making a decent filter is very difficult, ESPECIALLY when Unicode is involved.

Take the simple ascii characters 'A' and 'a', from your perspective, they're the same letter but from the computer side, they aren't because 'A' is 65 and 'a' is 97, 65 is not 97.
Now take this character: 'Ą', from your perspective it looks like the ascii A (65), but it's not, it's actually a UNICODE character who's value is 260 (U+0104), if you had a simple word filter for "Ahole", it will fail on "Ąhole" despite it being "the same".
Would you be able to update the filter for EVERY SINGLE UNICODE VARIANT OF 'A'? What about the lowercase 'a'?

This is precisely why the chat was recently restricted to Ascii characters to filter out A LOT OF WAYS TO BYPASS THE FILTER!

And now take whitespace into account, there exists Unicode whitespace characters that are literally INVISIBLE, would you be able to successfully filter out those when they literally look like there is no whitespace in-between ANY of the letters?

Yes, but now that they've changed it, there's no excuse to not include na&#÷=, no$%÷=, n*gro and so on.
Actually there was no excuse before either. These are basic, English characters bypasses that have been around for the entire time I've been playing.
They have no excuse.
Well besides the fact they're making a new game and leaving this one behind.

Why would nagger and nogger be filtered? Nagger is a normal english word, and nogger is a brand.

Also, this game is not even remotely being left behind, so please do not spread false rumors just because you're unhappy.

[dbpeanut]

As someone who does programming for a hobby, I know for a fact that making a decent filter is very difficult, ESPECIALLY when Unicode is involved.

Take the simple ascii characters 'A' and 'a', from your perspective, they're the same letter but from the computer side, they aren't because 'A' is 65 and 'a' is 97, 65 is not 97.
Now take this character: 'Ą', from your perspective it looks like the ascii A (65), but it's not, it's actually a UNICODE character who's value is 260 (U+0104), if you had a simple word filter for "Ahole", it will fail on "Ąhole" despite it being "the same".
Would you be able to update the filter for EVERY SINGLE UNICODE VARIANT OF 'A'? What about the lowercase 'a'?

This is precisely why the chat was recently restricted to Ascii characters to filter out A LOT OF WAYS TO BYPASS THE FILTER!

And now take whitespace into account, there exists Unicode whitespace characters that are literally INVISIBLE, would you be able to successfully filter out those when they literally look like there is no whitespace in-between ANY of the letters?

Yes, but now that they've changed it, there's no excuse to not include na&#÷=, no$%÷=, n*gro and so on.
Actually there was no excuse before either. These are basic, English characters bypasses that have been around for the entire time I've been playing.
They have no excuse.
Well besides the fact they're making a new game and leaving this one behind.

Why would nagger and nogger be filtered? Nagger is a normal english word, and nogger is a brand.

Also, this game is not even remotely being left behind, so please do not spread false rumors just because you're unhappy.

One, both words are literally only used as a way to subvert the filter. People do not use them otherwise. It's that way with a lot of words, such as black. While black is not a cussword necessarily, there's no actual use for it in TOS. That being said, when black is used to subvert the filter, it's in a much more obvious way.

Two, I realize now that while they are not leaving this game behind necessarily, they aren't putting such statements out as openly as they should. I apologize for spreading rumors but it's genuinely how I and others felt at the time.

[Flavorable]

*If* people use it to evade the filter, report it. But actual English words will not be filtered, plain and simple. If the Trial System decides the words are used in a manner meant to evade the filter, people will be punished accordingly.
Also keep in mind that solely because *you* feel people would, for instance, only call someone a nagger to evade the filter, keep in mind that it is an extremely common word and we don't go around pretending to be mind readers. Your own references are not everyone else's.

Also, filtering the word "black" is just ridiculous. Black is not a derogatory racist slur.

[dbpeanut]

*If* people use it to evade the filter, report it. But actual English words will not be filtered, plain and simple. If the Trial System decides the words are used in a manner meant to evade the filter, people will be punished accordingly.
Also keep in mind that solely because *you* feel people would, for instance, only call someone a nagger to evade the filter, keep in mind that it is an extremely common word and we don't go around pretending to be mind readers. Your own references are not everyone else's.

Also, filtering the word "black" is just ridiculous. Black is not a derogatory racist slur.

I'm not even suggesting you filter the word black, but you know I'm right about it being used to avoid the filter. Maybe your lobbies are different, but it's extremely common in US lobbies to use nogger and nagger to avoid the filter.
Also, people do report filter evasion. I'm merely suggesting that it's one of the many things that needs to be looked at.

[WildCard65]

*If* people use it to evade the filter, report it. But actual English words will not be filtered, plain and simple. If the Trial System decides the words are used in a manner meant to evade the filter, people will be punished accordingly.
Also keep in mind that solely because *you* feel people would, for instance, only call someone a nagger to evade the filter, keep in mind that it is an extremely common word and we don't go around pretending to be mind readers. Your own references are not everyone else's.

Also, filtering the word "black" is just ridiculous. Black is not a derogatory racist slur.

I'm not even suggesting you filter the word black, but you know I'm right about it being used to avoid the filter. Maybe your lobbies are different, but it's extremely common in US lobbies to use nogger and nagger to avoid the filter.
Also, people do report filter evasion. I'm merely suggesting that it's one of the many things that needs to be looked at.

And that's another thing, it's also difficult to create a context aware filter, how would a program know if you're trying to bypass the filter or not. Would it be able to differentiate the phrase, "You are SUCH a nagger!", as being racist or calling someone annoying?

[dbpeanut]

*If* people use it to evade the filter, report it. But actual English words will not be filtered, plain and simple. If the Trial System decides the words are used in a manner meant to evade the filter, people will be punished accordingly.
Also keep in mind that solely because *you* feel people would, for instance, only call someone a nagger to evade the filter, keep in mind that it is an extremely common word and we don't go around pretending to be mind readers. Your own references are not everyone else's.

Also, filtering the word "black" is just ridiculous. Black is not a derogatory racist slur.

I'm not even suggesting you filter the word black, but you know I'm right about it being used to avoid the filter. Maybe your lobbies are different, but it's extremely common in US lobbies to use nogger and nagger to avoid the filter.
Also, people do report filter evasion. I'm merely suggesting that it's one of the many things that needs to be looked at.

And that's another thing, it's also difficult to create a context aware filter, how would a program know if you're trying to bypass the filter or not. Would it be able to differentiate the phrase, "You are SUCH a nagger!", as being racist or calling someone annoying?

Where did I suggest that?
Context aware filters are crazy rare for a reason.

[Joacgroso]

Does that even exist?

[dbpeanut]

Does that even exist?

Actually, yes. But generally it's a lot bigger of a time investment and money investment for anything save for a multimillion company. You've probably seen Facebook, YouTube and Twitter use a similar thing for their bots.