Echo VR | Code of Conduct & Social Tools
From Closed Beta to Open Beta Testing
With the launch of the Open Beta for Echo VR on Quest, the Echo VR community has seen tremendous growth over the last few weeks. After months of working hard to make the Quest port as fun, smooth, and vibrant as Echo VR on Rift, we are incredibly grateful to see so many players enjoy playing Echo VR.
Now, more than ever, a variety of players are meeting up with friends in the Lobby and competing in fun filled matches. However, as the player base grows, we recognize that will also bring challenges in play styles and player behavior. Players are expressing their desire to play with others who have similar styles and approach. In addition to hearing about these preferences, we’ve also heard reports of players being harassed in-game and feeling they have no option but to quit to avoid such behavior. We’re sorry to those of you who have experienced this and wanted to let you know what we’re doing to address your concerns.
Our team believes there are three main pillars to building a fun and safe VR community:
1) Social tools to customize your social experience so you can feel safe and play how you want to play.
2) Reporting and moderation of the community.
3) Helping you form social relationships and play in healthy sub-communities you can maintain.
In the past we’ve tackled each of the areas with features like muting, ghosting, customizing VOIP options, and building an internal Account Administration Team to manually review and process user reports. However, it’s clear that more needs to be done in each area so we’ll be detailing some of our plans and goals below in this Dev Log.
Tools for Customizing Your Social Experience
It’s been clear that even though we have a lot of features in-game for customizing your social experience, they are hidden in menus or hard to access in the moment of need. We’ve listened to your feedback and wanted to share some of the features we are aiming to implement for launch.
Change Voice Pitch
- The ability to deepen the pitch of your voice through the Settings Menu.
Easier access to Muting/Ghosting
- Added and changed the first page the User will see when opening the Arm Computer to allow immediate access to Mute All and Ghost All.
Persistent Comfort & Safety
- Changing Mute/Ghost to persist on players until removed by the User.
Personal Bubble
- This bubble will give the User the space they need to feel comfortable in zero-g.
- When turned on players will fade away if they get too close to the User.
- The distance in which these span can be adjusted in the Menu.
In-Game Friending/Partying
- Users will now be able to add Oculus friends from the Arm Computer.
- Users can now join parties with players not on their Friends List from the Arm Computer.
Customize your experience on first boot
-Users will now be prompted to customize their social experience the first time they boot the game to ensure comfortability in the early moments of zero-g.
Reporting and Moderation
A crucial component for making Echo VR a fun and welcoming place for all players is to continue to enforce the Code of Conduct and following up on player reports. We’re working closely with Oculus on creating an integrated, in-game Echo VR reporting system in the future. However for now, reports can be emailed to our Account Admin team at report@echo.games, with any evidence you have (videos, photos, audio, etc) and a description of the incident.
Our Account Admin Team manually processes reports daily (except for holidays or studio closures) and responds in 1–2 business days to let reporters (players that send in reports) know if action has been taken or if more information is needed.
All reports should be sent to both our Ready At Dawn Account Admin Team (report@echo.games) and Oculus (https://support.oculus.com/report-user/) for review.
Reporting in your headset
Looking to record and report toxic behavior without taking off your headset? Oculus has built in recording and reporting tools that can be easily accessed as needed. More detailed information about these tools can be found here, however we’ve highlighted steps for you below.
Reporting on Quest
1. Press the Oculus button on your controller
2. Click “People” and select “Report”.
3. To record video on Quest, click “Record Video”. You’ll be taken back to your game/app and will continue to record until pressing the “B” or “Y” buttons on your controller.
4. Select the user you would like to report, or search for their name in the search bar.
5. In the “Let Us Know What Happened” drop down menu select the reasoning you’re sending in your report.
6. Click “Submit Report”
Reporting on Rift
1. Press the Oculus button on your controller
2. Point to the clock on your toolbar and select “Report Abuse”
3. To record video on Rift, click “Video Report”. You’ll be taken back to your game/app and will continue to record until pressing the Oculus button on your controller or when 2 and a half minutes have passed.
4. Select the user you would like to report, or search for their name in the search bar.
5. In the “Let Us Know What Happened” drop down menu select the reasoning you’re sending in your report.
6. Click “Submit Report”
Moderated Groups
Echo Units come from all walks of life, and we believe it’s important to help different gamers connect and play with other like-minded individuals. Whether they are connecting to talk strategy at the highest level or just want to meet other players with the same gaming mentality — we want to help out. With that goal in mind we are introducing a new pilot program called Moderated Groups. When a player joins Echo VR they can choose to play in one of our normal social lobbies or join one of the two new experimental groups:
o A group for casual mature gamers
o A group for competitive gamers
After clicking on a group and accepting the rules, you will match make into the social lobby for this group. Please note that playing in public Echo Arena matches will still follow normal matchmaking rules. However, we are making it easier to group up together from inside or outside of the game and play with people you meet. These groups will follow the Echo VR Code of Conduct, have rules set by the community, and be self-moderated by the community. After all it’s just as much your game as it is ours.
This is an initial launch and limited to the first two groups, but we see a future where players of all types can build new communities and easily play together in Echo VR.
Thank you all for your love and support, and for always sharing your honest feedback with us too.
-Echo VR Dev Team
