Is my age showing?

[Mitaka]

I have been greatly disturbed by the decline of "intelligent" conversation going out over the shout channel in Uruga these past few weeks.

It used to be that you could grind on orcs and catch up on news and gossip and trade clean jabs at one anther. Now, sexual innuendos abound, and some are outright obvious, as well as the vicious and just plain mean comments flowing through the shout channel.

I know I can block the worst offenders, and trust me, I have. I have also taken to turning off shouts in Uruga. Why has the game conversations deteriated so badly? Is my age showing?

:(

[lordalden]

This kind of thing happens, even in Bijou. Last night, while playing in as tranquil a method as possible, I was unable to do so in total peace knowing there were people next to me using such terminology. I simply ask them to stop, and that if it is not, then I will report them(in the extreme cases of detrimental terminology used) summarily and that I'd appreciate it if they kept the game child-safe.

Hope this may help you a bit in fighting such things.

[reesiecutie]

Unfortunately, you can't really report people for being annoying. Asking someone, even politely, to tone down the suggestive and inappropriate chat is often met with being completely ignored, or even worse, an escalation in tone and language. The best we can do at this point is to report what we can when we can. More often than not, I filter everything but private chats; i.e. Guild, Party, and Whisper. *sigh* The Apoline community does seem to be devolving, and sadly it has little to do with our ages, nor does it have an easy fix.

[The-Sakura]

Well, I think the allowing of direct portaling also is involved.

Before, you needed to either be strong enough to get there yourself, showing that you had the grit and stanima to play this game for a long time, which older people, and the slightly more mature people, were able to do, and get to Uruga, allowing for fairly nice conversations when you got there.

With the new bug (the self-revival one) along with direct portals to Uruga, people have found that they can, regardless of level, get to Uruga- so alot of slightly less mature people just run there and hope to be power-level'd and do not have the same level as others.


Now, I'm aware that I got to Uruga as a level 34, and that can mostly (ok, all of it ^.^) be atributed to a friend helping me get there, who thought I was mature enough to be in Uruga. (BIG thanks to her!)

[Tyris]

Sakura, unfortunately the worst offenders have been some of the long-standing 'mature' players.

I completely agree with Mitaka, both Uruga and Elderine have been full of people shouting non-stop sexual innuendo over the last few days.

Kids, we all know you know how to do it, so show a little maturity and keep it to yourselves, it's annoying.

[Chouj]

Unfortunately I don't think that people will stop shouting immature comments on this game let alone any other game regardless of what people respond or shout back to them. I've already blocked two legit players, primarily I block the money sellers, because of their spams in Elderine. The only sad part about that is if I ever do a KQ or anything of that sort with them, I won't be able to see what they say because of the one incident which forced me to block them.

I even have yet to see Uruga and by the sounds of it, it's not somewhere that I'd like to hang out if the shouts are of that nature.

[SweetLavender]

Yeah that kind of stuff is all too common from what I've seen. Most of the time I try to ignore and go on to what I'm doing but sometimes I'm ready to cause a scene. But that's just me.

Thing is, there are immature people out there and there always will. That's life for ya

[Jhanniss]

Unfortunately it plagues every server. Instead of intelligent conversation we now have talks about sexual inuendo's, "LawLing", and Naruto (no offense anime viewers). >.>

There will always be short handed, cut-speech people as time progresses. I too am showing my age on that. :P

[AnnisTheMad]

okay... >.< ... <wincing as she hits the reply>

got to say it...

fiesta is a hypocritical b*st*d of a game.

in a game which chat filters "class" making it impossible to ask what profession a character is, a game which chat filters "clam" but allows an npc obsessing about how she enjoys eating unfiltered clam - is a game which Elderine storage keeper Kyle actually calls pirates "b*st*ds", even though he is very distressed, angry and hurt, he doesn't filter or even *** out his language either. used as an insult, the term is "strong language" and "off-colour", fiesta bypassing it's own filter...

seeing Kyle's outburst might well offend you if your parents were married. it might hurt too if your parents were partners rather than being married and you are from a culture which values marriage as a pre-requisite to child bearing. i'm illegitimate as my mom never had a clue which of her daily "friends" dropped her in it. i deal with it. but should i have to?

the language you see on chat here is no different and is even a lot better than most unfiltered, un-nanny'ed chat rooms. i hang out in irc channels and that gets worse than a biker's clubhouse sometimes. i know, i grew up in biker's clubhouses.

any abuse is bad but it could be a lot worse than it is.

yes - it is an age gap thing, true. every generation has an accepted level of conversation, they have their "tribes" and comradeship. good natured abuse can be just banter between friends. if i didn't colourfully insult my old biker friends when i met them, they might think i was getting ready to break news to them that i was dying! every culture, every religion, everybody has a different code of acceptable social behaviour - and the point about the internet is that it is worldwide, and playing fiesta introduces you to people all over the planet.

apart from the vague "if you do something bad the GM's will sling your *** in jail" the game comes with no written rules, you just download and play. for all the hoot in here about ks'ing, training etc. - you press the help icon and no explanation of the details of the game mechanics appears, no list of social niceties to be observed, nothing. if the game lets them, new players will figure it is okay to do it. some players will casually bypass the chat filter, young players will figure it is okay or cool to do so as well.

trying to impose your moral standards on young people playing the game will (quite rightly) get you the response "and who says where?" (or to that effect). you appear as just a "toon" - you have to be devious if you want to earn respect with a different age group - in an online game that takes doing.

a GM can demand respect and has a punishment lined up followed by the death penalty for any character out of line. that earns respect - quickly. but judging by the childish outbursts on the forums here, some players are just totally out of control and the public tantrums are annoying beyond belief to see let alone read.

me - i block. i do it without thinking now. okay, what if you have to interact with them later in the game. the majority of the people i block, i wouldn't want to interact with. what i don't want is to have my chat box full of racist, sexist and abusive language, gold spam, or sellers shouting about a +1 lvl 15 sword they have for only 20s, what a bargain! i'll live with it - and if there is a 0.01% chance that x number of levels down the line, i die or lose a kq because of it, i'll take the risk.

you don't have to "listen" to it so don't, report it if you want to by all means but i want to get on with the game. if the GM's want to deal with it - it's their job - they can deal with chat filter busters.

i'll just right click and block, and i'm grateful that fiesta now has that built in, and a big thank you to the dev team for it.

[Lomirei]

Sometimes, it is because of the difference in age and maturity levels, but sometimes it may just be because it's the internet.

Some people use it to get away from their real lives and pretend to be someone else so that they see how's it like on the other side of it all. Therefore acting out and saying things that they probably wouldn't normally say. And because it's the internet, where faces are hidden and emotions are hard to read and portray, people tend to not care about what they say.

I personally don't listen to the conversations in the normal chat because sometimes it really is just nonsense. I usually stay within the guild, party or whisper channels.

[Knifey]

i think its sad there isnt some sort of parent lock for the game (to turn on/off the swear filter), and a list of people who are blocked and their status as players (whether the account has been deleted aka old spammers) so i can unblock people. I feel a bit violated having my words censored against my wishes, and i feel out of control not knowing if i should block somebody or weather i will regret it sometime in the future. Basically I'm sick of the game being "child friendly" above all else, I AM NOT A CHILD!

[MissusDolly]

It is all of the server personally I don't mind it, but it sometimes is taken a bit to far and I believe that is what whispering is for and going off to a private place and talking among friends so as people don't have to here it over shout. The different maturity levels makes it quite difficult for all ages to feel comfortable. While some dislike certain words others may feel they aren't quite so bad, but that is the problem when it comes to a game of all ages. You can't find a perfect balance for all and sometimes older and younger have to deal with certain things as such as the filter, but such words as class and though they may have a "bad word" at the end shouldn't be censored. Really how many times will you find a person using class or other countless useless blocked words to curse at one another or use it to make something completely inappropriate. While I may I agree there are many words that should stay blocked I understand that just some words are a bit questionable to being censored.
-Dolly