The Problems with Region Chat in Warframe

Region Chat, Recruiting Chat and Trade Chat are all very weird things and very different beasts. Recruiting Chat is filled with the same bunch of people trying to get others to join their Rad Shares, sprinkled with the odd recruitment for clans. Trade Chat is mostly filled with people wanting to buy Prime sets for next to nothing or trying to sell their riven mods for huge amounts of Platinum (even if they’re not very good). Region Chat is… a different beast. Because that is where most of the moderators live.

Most of the time, moderation in Recruiting Chat and Trade Chat are done by Kickbot and other automated bots. They detect words that aren’t supposed to be in those chats, delete the message and send a private message to the sender informing them what they’ve done. For example, if you type “WTS [Seer Shittyriven] 1000p” in Region Chat, you’ll get an automated message saying to post in Trade Chat. It’s not a very good system but it does an okay job in the otherwise very busy Recruiting and Trade Chats.

Region Chat has both moderator bots and volunteer moderators. The moderator bots are much the same as the Trade/Recruitment, they’ll kick and message you if you post in the wrong channel but they also respond to various phrases. Typing one of the many variations of “When is Baro Ki’Teer coming and where?” and one of the bots will reply, in purple, with his current location if Baro Ki’Teer is around, or when he is next expected to arrive. A similar trick is used for Warframe components, being told where you can get the parts for Warframes, but for other items (e.g. Plastids, a common thing newbies need), the replies are less helpful. Any questions about resources are generally replied with “go to the star chart, click on a planet then hover over the extractor icon and it’ll tell you” when really, just saying that you can get Neurodes from missions on Earth is easier. Generally, you get better answers from randoms in Region Chat if you want to ask more than just basic questions.

The automated moderator bots though also have a habit of automatically kicking and banning people if they come across various phrases. The most notorious of these is saying “Nezha is a Trap” (referring to how Nezha looks less masculine than other male frames) but there are plenty of others, like pressing F to pay respects and things like that. This is all automated though so if you get kicked or banned, there’s not much you can do but wait it out.

There are also human moderators.

Human moderators are hit and miss. And all of them are volunteers. They’re not staff, they’re not paid for, they’re just volunteers. People with purple text and the ability to kick and ban other players from Warframe’s chats. They are not employees of Digital Extremes. The only people who are employees of Digital Extremes are people with the [DE] tag in their name.

These moderators can also be misleading. For example, there’s a moderator who goes by the name Server. They have absolutely nothing to do with Digital Extremes or their server setup, but the way they write, you could easily believe otherwise. More importantly though, moderators can be misleading in when and where they enforce rules, and what rules they are even enforcing. I’ve seen some moderators be absolutely fine with non-Warframe discussion while some moderators will clamp down on any off-topic discussions as soon as they pop up. Some moderators will be helpful and give advice, some will just point you towards the Codex and tell you to work it out yourself. Some moderators are clear about what rules you broke, some moderators won’t tell you what you did wrong and then get annoyed when you repeatedly ask what you did wrong. It’s also pretty common for moderators to crack down on overly negative criticisms about Warframe as well.

But this wouldn’t be a problem if all they could do was kick you from the chat. Moderators have the power to ban you from using chat.

A chat ban doesn’t just mean that you can’t use Region Chat. A chat ban stops you from sending or receiving ANY AND ALL communications. Trade and Recruitment Chat? Gone. Clan chat? Gone. Private messages? Gone. IN-GAME MISSION CHAT? GONE. You can’t even talk to other players inside missions! How insane is that!

And because there’s no obvious set of rules, just a very vague sentence that appears when Region Chat loads or when you go to relays, you might not even know what rules you’ve broken or if you even broke a rule!

So how do you avoid any of this? There’s two ways.

The first way is to avoid using any memes, never mention anything political, never talk about things people often disagree on (anything from religion to gender issues to the right to clean water), only ever talk about Warframe and save your criticisms for Clan Chat. If people are spamming something (e.g. phrases like “RIP”) then don’t repeat them. Never type phrases like WTS, LF and WTT in Region Chat. Don’t argue with moderators because you can’t win. Oh and NEVER use more than 5 capital letters close to each other. Make sure Capslock is off. Because that’s the most common thing I’ve seen people being kicked for, using too many capital letters.

The second way is to avoid using Region Chat.

But that’s not exactly useful now, is it?