The reason why our ToS needs to change

1000% agree with what Mirror said, if you’re getting yourself in trouble for harassment 4 times you’re just not wanted here and you’re probably gonna have issues with that IRL as well. Staff is very lenient too otherwise I wouldn’t be here.

I do respect the hustle of making this thread if OP already has 3 strikes though. I’d do the same

 

Please try to understand what i am saying. Right now the period of time between bans is very small, the chances of the player getting back after 7 days and do the same thing again is VERY HIGH, im just saying we need to increased the amount of time of the bans! Better than banning a player account is letting them away from the game for a year, six months... Of course if its not a big deal thing like discrimination.

 

I see, thanks for clarifying! I mustve misunderstood I think for first offenses a shorter period isnt too bad because it couldve been a "slip of the tongue" or "heat of the moment" even tho those are pretty bad excuses. Increasing the bantime to be a bigger slap on the wrist could work, but it does need to remain balanced.

 

One point that you might be missing is that nobody got banned because of a disagreement. Disagreements happens all the time and nobody can avoid that.
What the rules does is to punish when it escalates to aggressions and harmful behaviour that are detrimental to the community as a whole, and while I might agree that it probably could be better, the majority of the cases that I've seen seemed pretty fair, specially considering the vast amount of "warnings" players could take before the recent announcement changes (up to 6 I guess) but still was their choice to keep doing it, even after being warned.
If someone repeats the same mistakes after several warnings and punishments, well, it's a choice at the end of the day.

 

Ah ok my bad, I saw the original one first and didn't see this follow up. It's grammatically incorrect but I didn't see he explained it further. I apologize soulreload

 

As I’ve said, punishment should match the crime. If someone gets a strike for calling someone stupid, it’s quite a bit different than spewing discriminatory slurs. Yet a strike is a strike is a strike.
Apologizing for either case and showing sincerity for their own ignorance would warrant a lesser judgment, usually. If that’s not happening on either cases, I’d judge harsher.

 

I’m gonna try and answer this in a way that actually comes from the top of my head rather than trying to be as formal as possible. The biggest issue with 3.3.3 is that it feels like the maplelegends staff are trying to play god. Trying to control how people feel and control the social climate through the rules. Maplelegends is a social game and just like real life there are consequences of being able to socialize, express and feel. The social penalty for being able to do that is that people will either like you, not like, or will think you are meaningless to them. The REAL underlying problem with 3.3.3 is that it was implemented almost 7 years after the server has been launched. The reason why this is a problem is because players' reputation has already been established. So implementing this rule is pretty much asking players to drop and stomach all issues, problems or feelings towards other players they might have had in the past.. This is more on the “unwelcoming” part of the 3.3.3.. Because if people are being forced to be welcoming to people they are not fond of or have not been fond of for years then that's playing god through the rules and forcing people to either be on good terms or stomach how they feel about one another for the sake of maplelegends. That's just maplelegends, the more catastrophic part of this is that you can get banned for expressing how you feel about others outside of maplelegends platforms. I'm not sure if this is new to anyone reading this, but for some people maplelegends is an extension of their personal life, they make personal friends here, they find relationships here, and they do large meetups. Because of this, people find themselves submerged in this social community deeper than others. Expecting those people to NEVER talk badly or express really bad thoughts on some people in off platform discords is quite literally impossible… unless you implement a rule like 3.3.3 where then the staff have the ability to play god and attempt to control a social setting. These are my thoughts and I'm going into this with an open mind, it's possible I'm wrong.

 

To go into a rather crude real world example it might be worth looking at the reasoning as to why something like rape isn't more heavily punished in some nations. At the hands of a heinous individual, if the punishment for either rape or murder are similar, then what has been created is an incentive for the rapist to become a murderer. The punishment has to take into account more than a righteous fury in order to be deemed truly effective, where the immoral is recognized for what it is but not so overly punished as to create new problems for the justice system and society at large.

I'd like to suggest that this thread and the remarkable amount of time spent in the last few months discussing the topic in appeal threads, on discord, and in general, is a symptom of the punishment being too excessive. The only reason for a permanent ban should be in cases of extreme targeted hatred, as for doxxing or personally targeted slur usage. Otherwise I personally think it is better to cap at 1 month full account bans and slowly diminishing levels of required evidence and restricted ability to appeal.

 

Talking badly or expressing opinion is one thing, spreading lies, false claims or being straight up offensive about someone is an entirely different thing. You CAN express your dislike for persons without crossing the ToS pretty easily, so I honestly dont see why not having the "right" to be rude af is a problem.

And no, staff doesnt want to play god. Im pretty sure theyre very tired of all the petty shit they have to deal with on a daily basis already. They just want to enjoy their time and focus on helping people. Theyd have more time for helping, if people stopped being babies

 

There is only one solution to this.

Login
Kill mobs
Interact with no one at all
Level up
???
Log off
Repeat

this way you’ll most likely never get any report at all

 

I'll actually reply to you directly. You don't know what you're talking about and you should because you have that "retired staff" tag on you. If you truly think no one has been banned for talking badly about someone or expressing an opinion on someone id highly suggest re-applying to staff and looking at some ban appeals, and do it correctly this time.

 

Literal sigma grindset

 

Believe what you will, some people simply dont want to see the truth. I have no interest in arguing more with you cuz youre not open to different opinions anyway. Keep enjoying your bubble

 

Raso: I have no interest in arguing more with you cuz youre not open to different opinions

Jake in his last line to his reply to Nise:

This is how I know you didn't read my post and just saw red the minute you saw me post something, have a good day

 

The policy changes only created more reasons for the players to be petty and ultimately more work for staff. Unless you mean to say the goal is to ultimately reduce the player pool to match the bandwidth at which staff can manage, which means good policy making is unnecessary. Just ban everyone who causes friction. Your community will be quiet and easy to manage, but it’ll also be shit.

 

Raso I respect your views and your service as a GA/GM in the past but I’ll have to say, some of the replies given here by ex-staff give me the sense that staff sees the community as babies (and to an extent I understand, we all have a childish side) whereas I think a lot of the unpleasant interactions in the game could be solved naturally. I got banned for an act of harassment where there was no attempt on the offended party to reach out to me and tell me what I did negatively impacted their experience in the game. I think as Dan alluded to, if the default were for players to reach out to one another to try to resolve the issue first, then if it escalates or one party refuses to cooperate, then I think it makes sense for staff to step in and enforce a punishment. The whole atmosphere of ML has devolved to that of a police state where more outgoing/colorful individuals feel like they’re constantly being surveilled, akin to Soviet Russia in the 50s and 60s.

 

Can I ask how exactly this TOS creates this and what would your suggestion be?
Just asking for plain information, without any intent.

 

They do and they’re very correct for thinking it

 

The fact is: we all really want to be dictators in this server, making and changing the ToS as we see fit to benefit the way we want to play/communicate.

The fact also is: Other people exist who want to play/communicate in a way that may go against what we personally want.

Staff (who volunteer their time) are doing their best to balance the needs of the entire community, and to make it a fun environment for everyone. I doubt that making ToS changes just happens on a whim, or to justify a recent ban. Rather, there was likely a long discussion internally on what to do, then a change in the ToS to better communicate the changes.

It’s easy to criticize the decision of staff when you’re not in their shoes. I’ve been a Jr. with a guild for ~1.5 years, representing at most ~2-3% of the server population. The amount of drama we’ve had to deal with, just internally within our guild, has been insane. I cannot even begin to imagine why staff stay on staff after having to deal with the drama that comes from this community day in and day out.

If you want to be the change you want to see on the server, you should walk the walk. Join staff. Volunteer your time. Be as convincing as possible to the rest of the staff who are veteran members of this community and who have just as important of a say in this as you do.

P.S. IMO, can we just stick to providing feedback and having a discussion on whether the current ToS changes should be adjusted, and, you know, stop comparing staff to tyrants/fascists/communists, cause it ain't constructive.