PSA: Do not report particular instances overzealous chat or ship name censorship
- Thread starter Mephane
- Start date
None, however, you don't need to fix something that isn't broken.
When did "operations" become a swear word?
I used to fly around in a Python named afer the european stag beetle, its only just occured to me but others would have seen 'LUC****'.
I'll give you a clue its in the family Lucanidae.
I'll give you a clue its in the family Lucanidae.
Yes, it's hilarious actually.
Until it makes it near impossible to communicate with some of the people on my friends list who don't speak english as a first language, and so, trying to use other words that mean something similar, to avoid the filter removing entirely none offensive words, can cause serious communication issues, literally breaking the ability to communicate with people in game.
But yeah, it's funny until it stops you being able to talk to people.
If it just blocked swear words it would be less bad (but a toggle would still be the best option) however, it's a piece of trash, and filters out a load of other things that aren't in any way offensive.
A toggle allows people who don't care about certain words being displayed on their screen to avoid the junk heap of a filter.
That's not a detrimental effect of not being able to swear in the chat box.
Report it if its bugged and they'll whitelist it, Paige already said they were looking to tweak it so maybe the poutrage is premature. The forum swear filter was once a bit bonkers, but they fixed that its not a big deal.
the detrimental is, that they are NOT using a propper neural network trained algorithm to detect the "bad" stuff,
resulting in lots of unnecessary censored words
a simple blacklist just doesn't cut it for such a mechanic.
That's not a detrimental effect of not being able to swear, its a gripe about some minor teething problems that Paige has already commented on as being worked on.
It shouldn't be that difficult to include an option to turn off the vulgarity filter in the menu. Pretty much every single other multiplayer game has included it for years now.
I vote for a toggle for both chat and ship name filter (that is if there really has to be a filter at all)!
when i searched for the old topic i mentioned earlier, i found an alpha poll about how much filtering the playerbase wants for the "new" chat feature.
the result was pretty clear
Sure, the problem is that this could takes literally years to get anywhere near normal levels of communication.
I used some dictionary resources to briefly find which words had "Swears" within them, and for the letter A alone, it was.... a lot. It's impractical, a toggle should really be, fairly simple to implement (it has to call the filter somewhere, so a simple if statement there, then the needed UI work in options.) and solves the problem instantly for all their customers who don't need this feature immediately, and they can build up the filters knowledge over time for people who want to have the filter.
Also, even if I wanted to do QA's job for them, and sit there finding every word the filter wrongly censors, I would need to rope in another chump, because it doesn't even tell you that you have been censored, so the only way I know, is when people don't understand me, and tell me a bunch of my perfectly none vulgar text was stars.
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Yep, things that work properly are generally better. It doesn't mean not being able to swear is a bad thing though.
Anyone will still be able to swear to their hearts content, we just won't be able to read them.
Personally, I think the best answer is twofold:
1). Improve the filter so that it rarely if ever filters something it shouldn't. Perfection may be unattainable, but the filter can be a great deal better than it is right now.
2). Give us the option to turn the filter off. If I want to choose to see the unvarnished profanity of others' speech, it doesn't hurt anyone else for me to be able to do so.
2a). This may require implementing a proper parental controls system so that a parent can "lock" the filter so their child can't turn it off. That wouldn't be a bad thing, IMO.
As a note, if the filter is improved to the point that it rarely censors something it shouldn't? I might very well leave it on. I'm not a huge fan of the kind of excessive swearing that is commonplace in gaming. But I'm also not a fan of imposed censorship; players should have the ability to decide for themselves (unless they are children, and then their parents should have the ability to decide) whether what they see is censored or not.
1). Improve the filter so that it rarely if ever filters something it shouldn't. Perfection may be unattainable, but the filter can be a great deal better than it is right now.
2). Give us the option to turn the filter off. If I want to choose to see the unvarnished profanity of others' speech, it doesn't hurt anyone else for me to be able to do so.
2a). This may require implementing a proper parental controls system so that a parent can "lock" the filter so their child can't turn it off. That wouldn't be a bad thing, IMO.
As a note, if the filter is improved to the point that it rarely censors something it shouldn't? I might very well leave it on. I'm not a huge fan of the kind of excessive swearing that is commonplace in gaming. But I'm also not a fan of imposed censorship; players should have the ability to decide for themselves (unless they are children, and then their parents should have the ability to decide) whether what they see is censored or not.
In general it isn't.
If you need me to explain why it's perceived as undesirable by the developers of a PEGI7 rated game though, there's probably not much point in my explaining it because you'll disregard anything I have to say anyway.
Suffice to say that even if you're one of the people who wouldn't care about your eight year old kid reading someone's cursing in chat that's fine but you don't get to make that choice for other parents too.
Now OK, you could make an argument for an optional filter there but frankly, all that does is give support a load of work when people decide to use the unmoderated option and then discover that they aren't as unshockable as they thought they were. I can't even begin to grasp how anybody can get so worked up about their lack of opportunity to hurl dog's abuse at other players and I'm saying that as someone who has done more than their fair share of it himself. It's a pretty small hill to be dying on.
Note: I'm NOT talking about the current failfilter which is obviously blocking words which no sane game developer would want to be blocked. I've never come across a filter in my life which intentionally blocks any word that includes certain three letter combinations in any context, other than when the thing has been set up incorrectly to begin with. I'm sure that will be addressed. Honestly though, people's willingness to blame it on the Red Chinese and/or some kind of SJW/snowflake conspiracy is just risible. These are the same people who genuinely believe the EU ban either too straight or too bendy bananas; basically cranks.
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