The reason why our ToS needs to change

*account ban

punishment was pretty arbitrary tho lol

 

This pretty much spot on, imo. The only things that should be addressed off of official ML platforms are things that are criminal in nature (doxing, sexual harassment, etc).

 

You’re missing chunks of the argument because I didn’t bother repeating what has been said in this thread already. Dimez has already articulated it pretty well. This is a social game. Friction is a natural occurrence in these types of social settings, and trying to prevent all is wishful thinking.

The current harassment ban policy incentivizes a first mover advantage - where you ban your offender first - this doesn’t leave room for conflict resolution.

Nobody learns anything from a perma ban.

 

Just because negative social occurences happens doesn't mean we have to accept nor allow them.
I don't believe staff acts on the "first comes first serve" mindset as well. I still don't see how this policy incentivizes a first mover advantage as you defined.
Conflicts resolve when both parties agree to resolve it, if someone is actively harrassing me I might be open to resolve the issue but others don't have to.

 

Even with VPNs and the impossibility of truly banning a particular player, banning accounts is still quite a heavy punishment and serves a good purpose as a heavy discouragement to coming back. Not everyone is going to want to come back to the server after losing multiple accounts they've invested a lot of time into, this only strengthens the point I'm trying to make here, which is that account banning very much is a good way to deal with such individuals.

Any added hoops a player has to go through to go back to a place they were removed from add to the aforementioned discouragement.

I'm not even going to bother with the second half of that sentence that I left out of the quote. Hiding behind you supposed poor english doesn't really work when you've made very few mistakes in your writing within this entire thread, you've already gotten away with bad behaviour by using that excuse, and it doesn't really hold up to scrutiny...

 

Well I mean duh, of course. The permaban means the person has fucked up 4 times at that point. It’s clear that nothing is gonna help that person “learn” and staff should just remove them before they cause anymore issues or cause people to leave the game. Do we need to give people twenty strikes so they have even more time to learn? This is why staff thinks we are babies, it shouldn’t take 4 strikes to learn this.

 

Which is what I've been saying. A strike system doesn't lead to reconciling. It leads to tip toeing around lines.

 

idk i feel like mirrors got instantly aggressive and agitated that a person of not higher authority in ML staff was criticizing their decisions and question their integrity of the ban of said player. feel like GM and staffs are here to listen and provide feedback instead of saying something like "its weird that a law student would view this as...." i feel like the response from the GM kinda gave me a realization that ML is going to continue to lose players and were already at a shortage of REAL new players. How many people really get upset at one person to get banned 3times and still come back to harass said player for the 4th time? Isnt this example of an extreme and an outlier to what really happens? I understand some players are beyond help but feel like theyre taking the easy way out by saying "some players are just like that so were just gonna ban him/her.
"However, if you were to be punished for, say, a roll scam, a general harassment case, a racial discrimination case, and a community harassment case, you would be back in slightly more than a month"
so youd rather have a thief, and a racist come back earlier than a person whose had an argument and is frustrated in the moment? idk id rather have those people not in the community than people whose upset with 1 person. And lets not pretend some players are closer with GMs and Staffs and they may view said case in a bias.

 

I'm not a GM nor have I been in weeks, and nothing I say should reflect the current staff team or their stances on anything in this matter. Nothing I say has any impact on what staff team will do. For all intents and purposes you should treat me like a retired grandma and a normal player

 

Did you read anything I posted or are you quoting me just for the sake of interjecting your own thoughts?

 

No need for the hostility but you just aren’t making too much sense in your critiques. Nobody ever said that people are supposed to be learning from a permaban so that’s why I bring it up

 

I think I've been pretty clear with my critiques and have already pointed out several times why the strike system is stupid.

 

First you said the new ToS system is bad because it creates a rigid black and white system but then you were corrected because everything is still handled case by case.

Then you said the new ToS system is actually because we need to reduce the server population (lol)

Now you’re saying that the permaban doesn’t give players a chance to reconcile or learn. (Doesn’t make sense, why wouldn’t they be still be able to apologize assuming it’s not the 4th time)

I don’t want you to think I’m not reading what you’re saying because I am, it’s just all kind of grasping at straws and I don’t understand why you’re trying so hard

 

4 strikes till out seems too generous. 2s are enough.
Mistakes can be happened but if you learn nothing from it repeat again, its habit, not mistake anymore.

Just personal opinion.

 

If everything is actually being handled case by case, there is no need for micro adjustments to a ToS. A blanket policy should suffice because every case is unique, and no precedence needs to be established. Staff is setting itself up for failure by using ToS as a means to establish precedence and micromanage behavior through preventative policy. If you draw more lines, there are more lines to cross, more reports to be made, and more work to be done.

This was in response to Raso that staff is tired with dealing with petty shit -- petty shit which they've directly caused with the ToS changes. Again, I ask, why does the ToS exist? Is it to give players general guidelines to follow? "Don't be a shithead in game" is a pretty good one that can be managed pretty easily if things are handled case by case. "Don't offend other players in or outside of the game" is a bad one and is pretty difficult to manage.

Also, I never said that we need to reduce the server population. I proposed a scenario in which staff has nobody left to deal with and opined that it'd be a shit community.

Spoiler

Because a strike system doesn't really incentivize reconciliation at all. A strike system is gameable. Triggering people into saying something that can be reported and lead to a permaban is now a thing, especially if precedent has been established that ToS purview reaches beyond MapleLegends, its discord, and forums and into personal/private discords. Should staff now have the authority to request access to every one of your chat logs? No, that's fucking ridiculous. But that is the trajectory of this server with the micromanagement and policing going on since the 3.3.3 change.

Spoiler

Elements Required for a Community Harassment Ban
1. The existence of an offended party
2. A series of repeated actions or recurring behavior across various platforms or different points in time
► Intention of the offending player does not matter (even if it was meant as a joke)
3. The series of actions or recurring behavior
4. The individual must have contributed to the creation of an unwelcoming or unsafe environment
► The standard for “feeling unwelcome or unsafe” is based on what a reasonable and objective person would feel
5. The actions do not need to be done exclusively on a MapleLegends Platform (in-game, forums, or Discord) so long as there is a noticeable impact within the MapleLegends community

Because uncontrolled spread of authoritarian-like changes needs to be challenged and tested for faults.
I respect staff and the time and effort they put into the game, but they should also be open to criticism from their players that keep their server lively. There are recent happenings that have lowered my confidence in how staff handles things in general - not even related to Skar - and that's because they've painted themselves into a corner with all of these rules and established precedence.

 

to staff:
1) how do you ascertain that discord messages are not edited? One can easily impersonate another in discord and fabricate evidence.
2) if someone not in the guild infiltrates your guild discord for the purpose of digging bannable evidence, is that reportable and bannable?

 

1 is honestly a huge concern. It’s incredibly easy to fake discord screenshots.

 

I’m sure it’s not hard to prove that it’s fake either. A simple screen share is enough to disprove it.

 

That’s not always an option. Say you screenshot a private chat, and then are kicked from the chat after. Now there’s no way to verify the screenshot without contacting the people in the chat.

 

Honestly, the entire talk about whether discord should be considered evidence and what not just seems silly. There’s already real life examples of text messages being used in court cases, I don’t see why discord messages are free from liability.

If you’re afraid of your messages getting leaked, be more selective on who gets to see them. If it’s a sensitive topic, don’t post it in an accessible place like guild discord groups. If it gets leaked, it’s still your fault for posting it in the first place. Free speech is free speech, but not without consequences.

If it’s in a personal message and they hacked into the account, then they have violated laws. That’s a different issue.