Improving Tower Unite's uniting with advanced community moderation

General Questions
1

AKA Getting the most out of Tower Unite’s “Unite”

(Before reading this, please keep in mind that i am simply being transparent here and not trying to make people upset)

So i decided to write this because i have been pretty concerned about some questionable workshop content and canvas content (and sometimes chat messages) that are seen in the game sometimes.

I feel like some people aren’t very comfortable with certain models, canvas images and some chat messages at times, which could cause them to back away from the game a little (offended, cringing, maybe shocked). Tower Unite is currently pretty diverse (which is a nice direction) and has all sorts of people together which sadly, due to different opinions plus anonymity, often causes fights (see: global chat). It’s not working very well yet at this current stage.

Community condos are coming up, and the condos will probably have some moderation tools to create communities, i expect these condo servers to sort the playerbase a little more instead of putting people in a room (plaza’s and global chat) together like repulsing magnets.

So I want to know what features are ‘highly probable’ and suggest a few of my own to make tower unite’s future communities manageable to minimise fights, make people feel safer and more comfortable but still keep the playerbase diverse.

Of course all optional, for all ya anarchy lovers out there.

The features:

  • Building zones, for the server owners to control where players can build, this feature seems important to me because it partially prevents griefing, keeps control and adds structure to the maps. The plots should either be customisable so that they can be assigned to a person who can add others to the plot, or open to everyone. And for the condo to be self-sustaining (and like gmt :wink:) players should be able to (optionally) claim a plot for themselves.

  • Model whitelists/blacklists, this one is a little controversial for some people, since some can’t let go of their favourite models. Communities are groups of people who often share the same opinions and/or interests, some communities are safe-spaces for people, which is why i suggest condo playermodel whitelists/blacklists. the model blacklist or whitelist is completely optional and so is joining a condo with one. The blacklist can be used to block unwanted models which could range from offensive to ‘cringy’,
    and the whitelist can be used to give the condo a theme (such as only gmt-models, or memes, anime, furries, mario, whatever you want).

  • Item blacklist (or even whitelist, but that’s a little extreme in my opinion), this one kinda speaks for itself, its mostly for moderation purposes and can easily be avoided by just adding rules to your community condo like ‘no nsfw canvasses’ or ‘stay in theme’ or ‘hula catsacks are illegal!!!’
    (I don’t care much for this one actually)

  • And last but not least: portal doors to other servers in the game, like VRChat’s portals, these doors can link to other community condos, the gameworld ports or official plazas. Maybe the owner of the condo can even toggle player-placeable portal doors (optional as always of course).

I know there’s more stuff planned like condo currency, but i’d love a full overview of what community condos will be like so far. And I would absolutely love it if my suggestions get added, it will make the game literally perfect for me.

Let me know what you think, i am not here to start fights, i love Tower Unite and really want to help to improve the game. Yes i am slightly concerned about some stuff but i won’t lose hope, stay strong and stay pure folks, let’s unite.

9 Likes
2

Building zones are confirmed features for Community Condos, along with a slew of moderation settings.

As for customizing the type of workshop models, it could become a feature for Community Condos to block certain workshop models.

I don’t think item blacklist would be very useful if we provide lots of other moderation tools like who can build.

The portal door concept seems doable and something that could happen with Community Condos as there is no host to the condo.

15 Likes
3

let’s unite these towers

2 Likes
4

Thank you Mac, that’s a surprisingly clear and quick answer and pretty reassuring to see, i think these features are important for a game like Tower Unite so i’m glad to see that we’re on the same page.

Now while we wait, let’s go catch some fishes :grin:

3 Likes
5

to add on to this, one last thing,
would it be possible to be able to connect to a mini global like chat,
lets say while the community condo is hosted, you can connect to its chat and talk in there so you can talk to any of your friends around TU,
like if they are in the community condo or if you are in a mini game and connect to it and someone else is in another mini game, using the Community condo chat as like a walkie talking around Tower unite,
like you can hold C while in the community condo and have an option to say
"Set this community condo as Walkie Talkie Chat
that way i feel you will have less people talking over each other in global.

3 Likes
6

And of course global chat moderation will probably help make the chat friendlier, altough i think it has been suggested a few times before. (so hard to arrange?)

2 Likes
7

It’s interesting,

Tower Unite’s community condos is like Garry’s Mod within an even better game.

1 Like
8

Absolutely love this post, having portal doors between servers would be a wonderful feature once community condos is finished. I can imagine how more connected it would make the game feel and I really hope it gets implemented.

Model Whitelists for condos also makes a lot of sense for me. I imagine most condos won’t need this but I can see it being a huge boon for any themed condos.

2 Likes
9

me, Link and some others were talking about this for a bit, and i feel it may help people have more fun on TU for a few reasons.

NOTE THAT A LARGE AMMOUNT OF THESE REASONS CAME FROM LINK

Currently TU is filled with a lot of people with different interests and opinions on things, which lumping everyone together in one group causes people to either not speak their opinion which makes it hard to talk to people and find new friends with similar interests, or if they do then it can cause arguments between people who have different opinions, not allowing you to have a conversation with them to understand more.
With the community condos, it can allow TU to be sectioned into more user created and controlled communities, this way for furries they can have the furry community with a set of community hubs connected so they have their big community without being in someones view in global who doesn’t like furries, so then the furries can talk freely about what they want without arguments, this is the same for the more anime based community and the GMT type lovers, everyone can join what they want and have areas to talk about what they want without and trouble from people outside who has different opinions.

so if someone is new, they can find and root themselves into a community on TU that they most identify with and can make friends with, rather than causing a potential argument trying to find people with similar view and interests as them in global because someone else disagrees with their interests.

however the point of more hateful communities being created being brought up, such as a community that will raid other people, them hateful people have it easier to find other hateful people and group up together to cause trouble,
but then also a good point to this is that the grouping together allows the bad groups of people to be identified easier to have multiple bad people stopped at once, rather than just occasional random people all over TU doing it. (plus having the bad people in once place makes it so they wont be in other peoples communities causing trouble fro them.

plus people may think that splitting apart the TU community on TU to different communities will be less uniting, i say its the opposite since global will probably have less people spamming it with shit, so everyone from the communities can talk in global if they want to still, but the main focus i feel should move towards these communities, and overall it will make TU have a less chaotic feel to it allowing people to find friends easier and feel less censored by others with conflicting opinions.

yeah exactly the point i want to make, GMod has servers for different types of communities that you can join and find people like you easier on, rather than one big chat with everyone in one game mode list with different communities in it which would cause trouble.

One last thing i want to add is that it may make the “fun” that people miss from GMT come back since GMT had a mostly agreeing community on things.
Nowadays though there are a lot more different opinions, so a single big GMT like community cant work on TU, but multiple different ones connected or not can.
and even if you dont like this idea after all the points that have been made, you can still play TU how you want, its just an option for people who want to not deal with the current troubles of global and meeting new people on TU.

again a lot of these points came from link, we just discussed the good and bad points to see if its a good choice, which we agreed it is

1 Like
10

I’ll just throw it out there that if someone has valid points with, say, articles about events in which they can give a reasonable dissenting opinion, it’s not hateful. Otherwise consider letting whatever you might think doesn’t sound right go. It’s just a game, don’t let your feelings get the best of you.
I would like the ability to host or join a community in which said community can determine what can be said and what can’t be said. I can understand that Valve probably has a ToS now for developers that discourages features like global chat from being “the Wild West,” but if creating your own community condos to say or share whatever won’t get shut down, then that’s alright by me.

2 Likes
11

That is how community condos will work. Condos are not moderated and Pixeltail has no control over what you say and do. Global chat is moderated as it is a central chat hosted by Pixeltail themselves, so it makes sense to have rules.

So rest assured, you can have a community condo with no rules or as many rules as you’d like :stuck_out_tongue:

3 Likes
12

Works for me.

13

I think the controls for the community condo which link said and got confirmed by Mac are good and I’m glad they will com, I just hope the using the community condos servers chat as a mini global chat so you can speak anywhere in the tu with other people connected to it should be added, I hope at least.

1 Like
14

I know this was 5 years ago, but couldn’t we also possibly have customizing the types/kinds of player models allowed for regular Condos as well? Not all of us want to make Community Condos, but we still want to only allow particular player model types, such as maybe memes, zombies for zombie invasion themed map, aliens for alien invasion, a whole lot of things. And some, as brought up by OP, simply aren’t exactly comfortable with specific kinds of player models - This should be respected in a way that allows everyone to moderate what they do and don’t wish to see, no matter how they interact with Condos. For one example, I only want to open my Condo up as an Community Condo in the future for some close friends to build and do things together, but to keep it as an regular one for other, random people that may join up. Please give this some consideration - Love the game and the efforts that are being constantly put into it (Even if just as many of those things could use significant improvements), but the more inclusion we have for all kinds of people interacting with your game in multitude of different ways, the better.

1 Like
15

Honestly, a white/black model list
Would be great in itself.
It’s true some workshop models can get pretty annoying.
I’m guilty of doing a mass blocking model spree because I don’t like a certain series.

Having a white/black model list would help with this making me focus on the game then looking people’s workshop model choice.

1 Like
16

Really, there could be several uses for this. Both for models that some may perceive as annoying due to specific themes, maybe being oversized and obstructing view, making them cringe as OP brought up, I dunno, maybe someone has specific phobias or something and models resembling of things in that phobia could make those people not want to play because or avoid specific parts of the game because of that - But also, this would be useful for things that I brought up like simple themes - Alien invasion, zombie survival, memes, party (clowns/jesters, models with colorful clothing or hats/accessories, etc.), girls night (only female gender models allowed), a lot of things. So yeah, just an white/black list for models by itself would already be great. Sorry for responding again on something that was active a long time ago and what we both already addressed, just do think it’s worth bringing up properly.

1 Like
17

I mean it’s fine to feel cringe and stuff, we’re only human.
I really like OP’s suggestion of it. For more then condo.

This is definitely useful to combat people who really should just use the feature instead of crying at the person because they don’t like it.
Thankfully canvas has this. Unfortunately it only works on non Workshop condos. That itself disappointing.

1 Like