The reason why our ToS needs to change

I am an attorney and a very serious law student in my country and i will try to give some feedback on the Maple Legends ToS, specifically on the harassment topics, because, respectfully, i think the "account ban" is very unreasonable in its current state.

I) The progression should be longer for the "general harassment" reports to reach the permanent "account ban" penalty (its not reasonable or healthy for the server to ban an account after just a few days ban. Make it atleast an one month and a three month ban before that, in order to give that player more time wtihout playing to think about his actions);

II) We must have an "expiration date" on a "general harassment" ban and that information should be public in order to decrease staff discretion (i think its fair to forgive a player that for 60 days or 120 days followed the game rules and behaved).

In the end, my opinion is: I strongly disagree on players losing their accounts if its not a very serious topic, like discriminatory harassment.

The fact is that we cant keep losing old and new players because of some silly in-game fights, and by allowing that, even if its "habitual", we are slowly killing our player base.

 

I used to believe that MapleLegends' rulings were fair when I first started back in 2020, unlike Royals, which is known for its unjust environment. However, the recent bans have changed my mind. The staff chose to ban all Skarmory accounts instead of ruling based on their own laws. In the name of a "friendly" environment, discretionary bans will continue to occur. It's all about having people who don't like you and are loud enough (being endgame also works against you) because that's all it takes for the staff to trust reports.

Now the rules have changed to match the Skarmory ban, which is interesting.

To those few players who supported the ban, all I have to say is that injustice is a highly infectious plague and it will come to your gardens one way or another

 

Personally I'm under the opinion that if you have gotten banned for harassment and reported 4 times already, honestly, you kind of did it to yourself. You'd think that after one ban you would learn your lesson but if you're given 3-4 chances but still act the same way then maybe the problem is with you?

It's really not hard to not be an asshole, I actually think plenty of people don't care about the ToS changes because they don't get reported at all. These changes don't make a difference to them or their gameplay.

As for people reporting each other for petty reasons, it seems that staff have additionally expanded upon "false reporting" clause so if you just submit a report to get revenge on some dumb vendetta you'd probably get in trouble.

I would like to hear your thoughts on a player using this to harass people over and over once their previous harassment strike expired.

Honestly shocked to hear this from a "very serious law student" to say discriminatory harassment isn't serious. In many countries it is actually very illegal to discriminate against someone for anything from race to gender to sexuality. Not to mention if someone is repeatedly racist, yes that is "discriminatory harassment", why on earth would staff want to have someone like that on the server? What constitutes a "serious topic" for you if discriminatory harassment doesn't cut the cake?

 

Most people are in agreement that the harassment part of the TOS is laughable, extreme , and ridiculous. You’re most likely gonna be left with a response like “this is the rules , take it or leave it” or “just don’t be a dick”.

However , people don’t disagree with the “don’t be a dick” statement. Should you be a dick in maplelegends ? No.. But should you be allowed to be a dick in a private setting such as personal messages with a friend or a private discord Chanel with a community or friends… anyone with a brain would say that should be allowed. Once people started getting banned for things being said in discords that aren’t maplelegends affiliated and just discord servers that consisted of maplelegends players, everyone knew this was one of the stupidest precedents ever set in this game.

 

First, im sorry, english is not my mother tongue, i dont know if its me that wrote that wrong or you read wrong, but i meant that discriminatory harassment deserves to get a perma account ban, and not general harassment! Please, dont come in bad faith.

About the "expiration date", the solution is to just make it a longer period of time, 120 days sounds very reasonable to me, but thats just my opinion.

Also, you said that "you'd think that after one ban you would learn your lesson but if you're given 3-4 chances but still act the same way then maybe the problem is with you?"

In that topic, i would agree with you if the chances that were given had a reasonable period of time between them. To give just a few days to a person is not enough to make them realize how important this game is to them and they will probably come back a few days later unbanned and just do the same thing again.

 

He stated quite the opposite of this tho

 

been on the server since 2017 have not been involved in any drama lmao. just be a decent human being and stop doing dumb shit and you won't be involved in drama 4 times over to the point you get account banned on everything.

 

#FreeSkarmory
#FreeBird

 

If you get 4 strikes, that's not a coincidence. Take the ban, learn from it.

The way you phrased this question obviously isn't fair.

 

The thing is, you wont have room to learn from it since you were banned from the server, you are dead, the server maybe lost an active player that was good for most of the community and even recruited people to the server. Its reasonable to have a 3 month ban before that! A few days is not enough to get an account immediatly banned after that.

 

#FreeSkarmory
-Game Moderators being biased has to stop especially tweaking the meaning written in the Terms of Service. When it's written in black and white.
-This comment or the entire post will probably be deleted in 2 hours anyway gotta love admin abuse :'D

 

This trend of micro adjusting ToS is funny to me because clearly it’s creating more fractures within the community than it is serving any real purpose.

Why does Staff exist? Is it to wield power over players or is it to support and facilitate the player experience? Recently, it’s been feeling like Staff is trying to play god, and all they’ve accomplished thus far is sterilizing the player base - not for any better and only for worse. We’ve lost players who disagree with this new regime, people have established new grounds to meme on Staff decision making, and tension between players and staff have been pretty bad since recent staff agenda to micromanage and control behavior.

IMO, it would be best to have an open ended policy that leaves room for case-by-case interpretation rather than some clairvoyant almanac listing detailed instructions for staff to follow. There’s a wide spectrum for harassment cases that will never be contained with such rigid rules, so any attempt to make such policy is futile.

Players also need to know that harassment can be interpreted by staff and other players in many ways. What was meant to be funny and lighthearted to you might be interpreted very differently, and you should be mindful that your words can carry farther than you intend - whether by intention or audience. Perhaps using/choosing your words more carefully - in all contexts - would be the smarter approach.

This is Kimmy’s dictatorship, sure, but we as players also have the freedom to leave anytime things get to be unreasonable. Therein lies the balance.

 

Just playing devil’s advocate, there’s no way knowing if someone is loved by 95% of the community. Also, even if that person was, if you’re willing to do the crime, then you gotta pay the time. If they cannot learn from mistake, they can be put into jail permanently.

Status, popularity, and power should not protect players or staff from consequences.

 

It’s as you said, the staff is a dictatorship/oligarchy. Don’t anger them and you’ll be fine. If you wanna risk ban why memeing them, it’s your right. Just don’t be surprised when they retaliate, it’s their right.

 

This server strives to be a positive server with great community.

A positive community is definitely a good thing, but in my opinion, a overly-positive one makes it seems pretentious.

It seems that with this new ToS, the staffs wants to make sure the punishment is so severe so that no toxicity will ever exist in the game.

But I feel a little "toxicity" should still exist. It makes me feel like I am playing the game with human that have emotions, and not yes-man that only offers you kind words that they don't really meant it.

Not sure what the context with Skarmory is about, but it seems like there was a conflict with some other party, which the situation probably escalated bigger. I don't think the staff should interfere with these kind of scenarios because we are humans playing the game.

Harrassment should only be applied to people who, for no reason at all, starts to hurl insults at you etc. I think many have seen dickheads in your life so I shouldn't have to explain further.

All in all, I feel staffs should not implement too harsh of a punishment for these kind of cases. A 30 days ban should be issued to give time for reflection, and it should be enough.