ToS Suggestion - Account Sharing and Aggro Abuse should not be the same ban sequence

I'm glad somebody spoke up on this, I think this is super well said. Boss freeze abuse is whack and trash sure but is it really egregious enough that someone should get their entire account permabanned on the 2nd offense?

Recently a lvl 200 got account permabanned for their 2nd boss freeze abuse situation, and my initial reaction was that's just ridiculous. Yes they made a bad move twice in a row and they should face consequences, but 3 strikes seems much more reasonable than 2. I'm quite sure if somebody gets caught abusing twice - the first time maybe you can give them the benefit of the doubt, and the second time they get caught making a decision they know is wrong plain and simple - I think anyone would be damn careful not to cross that line a 3rd time.

I've thought about the flipside, and how a 3 strike system might open the door to people "taking the chance" on boss freeze abusing in order to clear a boss run more easily sometimes, but if the punishment is harsh enough nobody will want to take that chance (yes that logic can be applied to the current 2 strike system but still - people make mistakes). I just think permabanning the account off the 2nd mistake is a bit much, maybe a multi-month ban or something would be more fitting.

 

it used to be 3 strikes back in 2017 i think so it's just a revert

 

I believe there should also be some transparency between what is considered ''abuse'' and what is considered ''allowed''.
When a certain boss bugs, or if there are aggro changes, the wording should be simplified enough and announced both in Discord and in Forums to alert players whom are ignorant to the changes.

(And believe me, 90% of players are ignorant to long ToS essays when the whole reason of playing the game is just to have fun. It doesn't mean the laws still don't apply, but it is what it is.)

For example when the whole aggro bug occurred with Dunas and Nameless Magic Monster not casting spells due to aggro-lock on Mage casting ult, I believe most of us just followed a hear-say that it is ''allowed'' since the bug is ''known to the GMs'' and they are planning on fixing it later.

• I'm not entirely sure if there was an actual thread posted on it, but I believe 90% of players would not have even noticed the thread. What if the hear-say was not true and there was no actual transparency? - random ban 2 months later for it.

Second example would be the whole confusion about Horntail arm sed-aggro. It is pretty obvious to all Horntail slayers that when you step to the opposite side of a single arm, the opposite arm will not cast seduce (ie. if you stand on the left side, right arm will not cast seduce). Knowing this information, Horntail attackers will strategically clump onto one side while killing Horntail to minimize 50% seduce-chance (one arm not casting seduce at all).

The scenario becomes more apparent when there is a single arm alive and single head alive, and attackers choose to jump-shoot the arm from the opposite side while having Head cast spells & attacks on them. The confusing part is this is actually NOT considered an aggro abuse, and having arm not cast sed is actually allowed as long as the head is alive and casting attacks. But when the arm is the only part left alive, if you attack from the opposite side its considered abuse instead (because nothing is attacking you?)..

I understand the whole aggro thing is one complicated coding that I will never understand, but I think some simple transparency should be announced/declared to players. Players should be less ignorant about these too but if a simple announcement was made known to them, I believe we can minimize these ''I didn't know this was wrong'' ban-issues.

 

I think there should also be a distinction across bosses for agro abuse. Basically if you agro abuse Nib and then agro abuse HT I view those as two separate events and they should both carry first offense punishment (which imo should be a warning). This is because each boss requires different strategies to agro abuse so it's entirely possible somebody abused one boss while not knowing about how to abuse another. I also find the punishment in general for agro abusing is very strict. Idk if it's just me but if I was banned for agro abuse once I would probably stop bossing on that character because the risk is an account ban. IMO that isn't a healthy gameplay design so I think there should be some more leniency. I think agro abuse offenses should go warning (first offense), 7 day ban (second offense), 14 day ban (third and on offenses). I believe this would be enough punishment to deter while not being overly punishing.

Another thing I'd like to see changed is related to "association with abuser". The problem I find with it is that you can be an active participant or a passive participant and those should carry two different punishments. Say there are 3 people killing a boss and person A is the main abuser, person B is actively encouraging it, and person C is for some reason ignorant of what's going on. Why is person C getting the same punishment as A & B? It also seems in some cases person C can even be getting the worst punishment if it isn't their first offense. The ToS is also not clear with regards to punishment for this offense. The exact text is "Punishment: Equivalent Punishment as Original Abuser" which I read as all 3 abusers would get the same punishment but that doesn't seem to be true.

 

The punishment would be the strike, which is the same for all three people in your example.

That said I hope this can get sorted. Having different rules for different bosses without them being stated anywhere is not a good look.

 

There is a thread Nise posted that covers a lot of examples on what constitutes as boss abuse and what doesn't (https://forum.maplelegends.com/inde...xplanations-precedents-interpretations.33574/), and for anything that it doesn't cover and I'm not sure on I'd just ask on ML discord.

 

I totally agree with this. Permanent ban for this reason I think is too much. People make mistakes and they must be punished, but we must consider that all this boss abuse scenario is so confusing, as AioriaX explained too, specially for non english speakers (we can get perma banned while trying to fight some bosses for the first time).

I honestly think no one would purposely try to take advantage of a bug that could cost like 1 month of play, for example.

 

Ah. Boss aggro abuse thread, thankfully someone is able to phase it a more presentation way than I did.

This is what I was saying all along. There is a lot of bugs exploits around these game because it's a 2003 mushroom game, that you came across willingly or unwillingly. Why should we be punished more for not knowing the bugs inside out, than someone who is obviously causing more harm by harassing other (5/10/account).

Maybe we need to have players read a consolidated thread of bossing abuse as a pre-quest as well, instead of a spoiler list buried somewhere deep in the ToS's sub explanation thread.

 

The person that reported it with an @gm doesn't get a punishment if a GM doesn't go over there and the party kills the boss then its passed but if people just attack it and not @gm saying the boss is frozen and a GM is there then it could get reset. People ignoring it and keep attacking it should get punished for what they did wrong, if a warning should be said the warning was in ToS or T&C but people are just too lazy to read.

 

In the quote it clearly stated there are 3 different types of people. How is it fair that all three type receives the same punishment?

 

Its not he same punishment as long as they sent in an @gm

 

Yes. But we are talking about the case of "person C is for some reason ignorant of what's going on".
Why should this person C have the same punishment as person A or person B.
This can be a very real scenario where new player are bring bought along into a boss run.

 

Because they are in the same party as the ones doing the crime, without notifying an @gm

 

Because every player is aware of every way to agro abuse every boss? Maybe they only ran HT a few times and don’t realize that having a dead player in the map can lead to a ban. Maybe they’re attacking the heads and can’t even see the dead player on the bottom. There’s also a lot of times a boss will freeze for like 30 seconds and then randomly start attacking again. Do you expect players to flood the @gm system every time a minor freeze happens?

 

A freeze is a freeze, once noticed it should be sent but not spammed. If theres a party let the party know you sent in an @gm so the command isn't flooded.

 

I don't know if you are trolling or you just can't read or what, but I think people above clearly said that new players may not know what or how to determine boss freeze abuse, or in the case of the following quote:

Which is also what Lumina said:

It's like saying somebody committed a crime and you so happened to be present at the crime scene, so you're automatically considered a criminal as well, just because you were there at the crime scene when it happened.

 

I agree that "Punishment: Equivalent Punishment as Original Abuser" might need a re-wording. It's not referring to the 'actual punishment of the original abuser' but rather it's referring to the 'punishment to the original offense' which differs for everyone if they have a prior history. I don't think this practice should change, because then people will abuse on multiple accounts to circumvent getting account/permanent banned by committing an offense on a clean account, while being in the same party to benefit.

As for MrPresident's point, it shouldn't be a problem if person C can defend themselves clearly on their ban appeal. Sure it's worse than not getting banned, but you can't deny that you're suspicious to the staffs when you're in the same party as someone else abusing the game. They probably should present themselves with more than "I didn't know" though, since it'd be pretty noticeable if a boss just stops working.

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It would be helpful to add "If monster(s) freeze without your intention, please contact the Staff Team by using @GM command in-game to resolve the issue." and the link to Nise's explanation within the Boss Freeze Abuse clause.

 

Ban appeal is very difficult to be sent for non-English player.
Knowing about "J>pt,S>,R>,LF>" is the only thing they know about ML communication culture.
How do we defense ourselves as a non-English player?
Is it acceptable if we just write down the other language in ban appeal to show our original explanation ?