the state of things

[XEET EN]

I agree with some of what cinn has said ... that said there has to be a base set of rules or people will try to run around them as much as they can

This post represents a real sore spot for members of Chaotic Winds. We were forced to rebuild our entire raid force as a result of our players being banned and/or quitting the game as a result of SoD policies and GM interventions. We're finally returning to form as a guild, but we continue to see ridiculous bannings involving CW and non-CW toons, and it really crushes our morale to continue activity on this server.

Funny when I see CW cry about things being unfair ... Nothing new that i know of but 2+ years at this point things were not 100% on up and up... Since my son was tryling stalker we both seen and heard things from CW members that were like WTF. I just hope CW turn a leaf from those days.

 

[Jotigidou]

I agree with you. Unfortunately, using 'guidelines' also promotes tinfoiling in a serious way. If GMs have discretion to give one person one answer but another a different answer, then players, who never see all the details in between, claim GM favoritism and corruption. All. The. Time.

This x100.

Guidelines are bullshit. If people would stop interpreting rules, it would be a start. But rarely do people admit any fault, GMs or players.

So it really comes down to rules.

 

[Silosobi]

People claim GM favoritism and corruption pretty frequently already (hey thanks nwaij).

Certain things need hard and fast rules, but others do not. I think emphasizing reason and understanding and compassion over 'the word of the law' could go a long way though. Regardless of the rules, people(GMs) are going to do it to some degree. This is made obvious by the item returns for player mistakes, if someone answers your petition and says no you can just petition later and some other GM or dev will often give the item back (because its just reasonable/nice to return items that were lost due to bugs/mistakes).

 

[fuwok]

Policing free internet games is a lot like policing real life, in that the people who really want to do it aren't the ones you want to have doing it.

That is the reality of this sad, imperfect internet world.

edit: take all the active players and have them GM one 4 hour shift each per year for 24/7 GM service

 

[jew_nose_it]

Yeah Solo, its like you expecting our little virtual world to function different than the real world despite them both containing the same people.

 

[Silosobi]

Huh?

 

[stral]

if someone answers your petition and says no you can just petition later and some other GM or dev will often give the item back

Have I told you that you're a terrible person recently? Don't take that personally or anything. Think of it as constructive criticism.

I mean, even if contextually you are referring only to glitches and whatnot, you could phrase this to not come off like a sociopath.

Here I'll even try it for you right here and now: "If a gm refuses to refund a glitched item that is no fault of your own, etc etc, then you should petition later and probably also bring this up to whoever would be in charge of taking feedback about gm staff if thats a responsibility for them to handle (I assume that would be and would go research it first)." Instead of, "Hey, you can manipulate the staff, here's how. I'm in no way single-handedly justifying this encyclopedia that is the rulebook here by epitomizing the terribleness of far too many people on this server."

 

[Jotigidou]

People claim GM favoritism and corruption pretty frequently already (hey thanks nwaij).

Certain things need hard and fast rules, but others do not. I think emphasizing reason and understanding and compassion over 'the word of the law' could go a long way though. Regardless of the rules, people(GMs) are going to do it to some degree. This is made obvious by the item returns for player mistakes, if someone answers your petition and says no you can just petition later and some other GM or dev will often give the item back (because its just reasonable/nice to return items that were lost due to bugs/mistakes).

It might be the nice thing to do, but it doesn't change the fact that most people around here condone idiots. As much as bending rules go a long way, like Allie said, this is exactly where tinfoiling starts. So on one side you have tinfoiling, which in the long run is much worst than not answering someone's call on an honest mistake. From my point of a view, someone who makes an honest mistake should suck the pill up and move on, not make any noises about it ( unless it's game-breaking mistake ) and not try to convince your friends GMs are asshole.

Not saying they aren't, but it's not a legit claim.

 

[Dimmi]

Glad tinfoiling is a thing of the past =\

Yeah Solo, its like you expecting our little virtual world to function different than the real world despite them both containing the same people.

I'm not so much agreeing with solo as I'm disagreeing with Driizz, but our little virtual world does function differently than the real world. Same people, impervious masks of anonymity. Poisonous combination.

 

[eqjenius]

I feel that the problem in most player/volunteer modded communities is that the mods end up erecting this little clique of secrecy and elitism that is very hard to penetrate.

More accurately, I would say that players get the impression that GMs hide behind rules because they don't want to deal with people at all really, but instead just enjoy having the authority of keeping people in line.

Here's an easy example.

A few days ago, I bumped an old thread in hopes that the suggestion made in that thread would get a fresh look. Apparently, there's a rule against this. Nwaij decided to edumacate me by quoting the rule at me in the thread, then trashcanning the thread altogether. When I checked back later I was curious as to what happened to the thread, and I had to look around a bit to find it in the trashcan (still there, if anyone's curious).

It would have been easy for Nwaij to simply quote the rule to me or send me a PM telling me about the rule against bumping old threads. Instead, he felt it was his duty to delete the thread altogether and force me to go in search of it in order to learn my lesson.

While Nwaij got his point across, he did so in a way that I felt was unnecessarily heavy-handed, and his action created a situation in which the thread no longer shows up in forum searches if someone is searching for past discussions of the idea in question, leaving everyone at a loss. Tears for me, tears for the community.

I wish Nwaij was the only GM out there that enjoyed flexing his GM authority at the expense of players, but other GMs do this kind of thing all the time. Instead of simply talking to players, a lot of GMs out there prefer to simply force actions on players, which sometimes succeeds in getting the player to follow the rules, but it also breeds resentment.

Imagine how the conversation between Tao and the nub 3-boxer could have gone:

admin-Tao: Hey, you got a second?
Nub 3-boxer: Umm... hello.
admin-Tao: Hello there! I'm admin-Tao, and I'm in charge of keeping the peace around these parts. I checked the server logs, and I notice you've got three toons logged in right now. Are you aware that there's a rule against 3-boxing in SoD?
Nub 3-boxer: Uh.. no I didn't know that. I just had the third toon in to do buffs for my other toons.
admin-Tao: Well, it's illegal on this server no matter what you were doing with them. You can only log in two toons at once on SoD. If you log in more than that, you can be subject to jailing or possibly banning.
admin-Tao: Fortunately, I'm in a good mood so I'll let you off with a warning if you log off the third toon right now.
Nub 3-boxer: k, done.
admin-Tao: I appreciate your cooperation.
admin-Tao: and hey! Have a free gate pot on the house. That should make your trips to the bank go a little faster for a while.
Nub 3-boxer: thanks
admin-Tao: no problem! Enjoy your time here on SoD.

Instead, here's how it probably actually went:

admin-Tao tells Nub 3-boxer, [ conversation not found ]
Nub toon 1 banned!
Nub toon 2 banned!
Nub toon 3 banned!
Nub 3-boxer tells himself, "WTF?? Why can't I log in my characters??"
Asks in-game friend what happened.
Gets pissed off.
Looks up rules on the forums.
Finds Tao's contact info.
Nub 3-boxer tells himself, "I wish I could still play. Is it worth sending this dude a polite email stating regret for my action against the server, and beg him to let me log in again?"
Decides against it, flames Tao and promises ugliness if they met in real life.
Moves on to one of the other myriad of online MMOs that are now free-to-play.

Yeah, you can make the argument that if the guy was that immature, we didn't want him around here anyway. I guess we'll never know.

Really, I would say this stuff is basic customer service. You can handle your customers in a way that makes them feel you're on their side, or you can handle them in a way that makes them want to piss in your cereal. I see a lot of cereal pissers around here these days.

 

[Silosobi]

@Stral, I brought up that point because it was already made obvious in this very thread. Idk how you read it as sociopathic, I'm suggesting that people be given a hand when they make a mistake. Maybe if it truely became a burden on staffers time I would see it as an issue, but I don't really think that is the case.

@Jad, pretty much what dimmi said: tinfoiling is gonna happen either way. I'm not trying to convince anyone that GMs are assholes, I'm suggesting that some changes to policy might be good.

 

[ttime123]

This is my 1st mmo ever and i'm 55years old, and this is my 3rd year playing. My 2nd year i started giving as a platinum donator. My guild is doing Cod events to get better gear. Last week one of our tanks decided to help me. They hardly ever let me loot, he said you loot, i freaked out and started to delete some shadow shurikins that i summoned. I accidentally deleted my pack of shadow shurikins. I sent in a petition. I told him the truth of what happened, was honest. He said no can't replace raid gear. So i said to myself thats ok those are the rules well thats fine i will not donate no more.

 

[Allielyn]

if someone answers your petition and says no you can just petition later and some other GM or dev will often give the item back

Back when I was an admin this was a jailable offense.

It was never codified though, because nobody ever actually did it (well - that I knew of), so I never thought to write it down. I wouldn't be surprised if Tao does it soon, though.

There is a VERY clear route to petitions, which starts with the normal petition, and if you don't get what you want, moves on to an appeals process through Tao, and then Wold. It does not include playing 'momma said no, I'm gonna ask daddy'.

 

[fuwok]

"Tough shit you deleted your item, but I want to laugh at you instead of help you" is bad policy for deleted items, and that is why you have some rogue GMs and Devs who will give your items back.

Allielyn's post saying we should punish the people who re-petition try to get a sensible reimbursement of accidentally deleted items (these accidents do happen, believe you me. The players are tired/have similar items/have been playing for 4 days straight/smoked 5 banana peels whatever) is a good example of what people are talking about in the thread. It isn't a massive effort on the part of a GM to reimburse items. When you get a friendly GM to give you back your accidentally deleted thing that looked like a modrod or food or whatever, it takes them about 30 seconds start to finish.

When a GM tells you they can't reimburse an item, they are saying to you, "Player1, I know you spent 10 hours raiding that night to get that item, but I can't spend 1 minute to give it back to you because you should be more careful."

Punishing people who need just a little bit of help sucks.

 

[neonovas]

Imagine how the conversation between Tao and the nub 3-boxer could have gone:

according to woldaff he only had 1 character banned (Otcho pasted irc logs in the trashcanned "Banned?" thread) and other than Tao commenting he got nasty emails no other GM has commented about it. I imagine it is somewhere between the two extremes you posted.

Posting in old threads is a fairly common no-no. Though i agree its pretty stupid to post "dont do that" then trashcan the thread where you cant even find it and not tell you the rule. You obviously didn't know and you probably wont find out about if its hidden somewhere heh.

Allielyn's post saying we should punish the people who re-petition try to get a sensible reimbursement of accidentally deleted items

It wasn't about re-petitioning to get an item back, it was about petitioning multiple times until you got a GM to give you the answer you wanted. I was under the impression that if you petition and you disagree with the answer the correct thing to do is email the head GM about your problem (or the guy over the head GM if thats who already answered it), not hope that GM logs off and your repeated petition gets a GM that agrees with you.

 

[fuwok]

Not that you're talking to me neonovas, but my point is mostly that the rules themselves are heavy-handed and poorly thought out, and these rules lead to bad customer service interactions. Not that people should do whatever they can to circumvent the rules, although I understand why people do not want to be governed by these rules and would try to avoid the letter of the law.

 

[ttime123]

It was told to me if i asked my petition a different way, i would have gotten my item back. So i told the person, so if i lied i would have gotten my item back. So by that statement we are supposed to lie instead of telling the truth.

 

[neonovas]

Not that you're talking to me neonovas, but my point is mostly that the rules themselves are heavy-handed and poorly thought out, and these rules lead to bad customer service interactions. Not that people should do whatever they can to circumvent the rules, although I understand why people do not want to be governed by these rules and would try to avoid the letter of the law.

I agree with both that and and Allielyn said earlier about guidelines. Either way will piss people off.

 

[Animand]

Imagine how the conversation between Tao and the nub 3-boxer could have gone:

ASININE DRIVEL

Instead, here's how it probably actually went:

ASININE DRIVEL

You have no idea how this actually went down other than what that guy was claiming, and you assume Tarutao was just being a tyrant drunk with power. This kind of kneejerk reaction is terrible and unwarranted. You have no basis for such an opinion, but you don't hesitate to sling mud because you hold some grudge from who-knows-what. All the regulars here already know you're a moron because of posts like this, Aelias, but all you're doing is scaring off new players by trying to create some GM bogeyman. Stop posting. While you're at it, put your character name in your sig, so people can know to avoid you in game as well. Your anonymity is a crutch, stop being a coward.

 

[stral]

@Stral, I brought up that point because it was already made obvious in this very thread. Idk how you read it as sociopathic, I'm suggesting that people be given a hand when they make a mistake.

'Gm's are people and it's possible at times they might be kind and bend a rule' (rephrasing more or less) which you read, processed in your brain, and then came to the conclusion that this means you can bend this to work for you. Then through either ignorance or arrogance, you post this interpretation in a public space. Put yourself in the shoes of the guy who would be in charge of writing the rules here. This is exactly the type of shit that leads to more hardcoded rules.

<The guy who writes the rules thoughts here> "Ok, so now new players who aren't instinctually creatures who try to make people and rules work for them, might now, where they wouldn't before, think this is a valid approach to making their problems go away. If they try and succeed at this, they will likely tell their friends, and they theirs, and so on. This could cause a growing sense that rule skirting is ok, and this will spark an adversarial attitude towards the staff members who just follow the guidelines of their job as to not get in trouble for being nice in seemingly harmless situations. How do I make this problem go away before it starts? Right, ok, now I'll just hard code it that you can't petition about the same thing twice."

There have always been a handful of people who skirt around rules and grey areas, but it's the ever increasing arrogance about this perception you and a handful of other people hold, that has caused the rulebook dynamic to shift into what it is now. When you start hard coding rules, and then you start poking them for weakness, you're only going to cause more rules to be hardcoded.

Also, I mean you're just the most vocal in public places about this sort of thing. That's at least good in it's own way, rather than coming up with borderline interpretations and telling only your friends or keeping it to yourself. I've seen that go down too. Cw comes to mind. Some shady people in there a while ago. Hey guys lets wall jump up this completely vertical wall and start this xp group at the upstairs of citadel instead of taking 5-10 minutes to clear to it. There's not a rule against wall jumping. Also stral don't say anything about this. Woops.

tldr: Think before you speak, or think harder or something.