Why do we have self bans?

Personally I'm against self ban, but did it out of courtesy (and also because it's already a thing that we do) because apparently self-control is quite hard for some unknown reasons. On a side note, gaming addiction is a serious condition. Please get help if necessary because staff aren't equipped with the necessary knowledge to help you out in this matter. And self-banning won't help either, in the long run.

My advice to those who are thinking of a self ban -- please don't waste staff's time and just uninstall the game and focus on what currently matters most. Once your mind is set on the more important things, you'll eventually not remember about MapleRoyals (or games or whatever that's generally considered "a waste of time" in general).

As for recovering deleted characters, it's also done out of courtesy and is a feature that Kevin implemented behind-the-scenes because we expect some players to accidentally delete the wrong character, or regret afterwards. By no means we're obligated to recover anything though. All these are done out of courtesy and by the admin's discretion. So far, the admins have been extremely kind and we have not denied any of such requests yet.

 

You're free to have an opinion on the matter. Can I ask two questions?

1. How would you define gaming addiction?

One great thing about Royals is the stability of the server as it's been up for so many years In real life, people come in and out of your lives. Personally, I play Royals mostly for the stable community. Despite playing for over 4 years, I don't even have one level 200 and only have one main. Yet, I have personally found it useful to self ban at times when I've had extremely busy and demanding times irl (70+ hour work weeks sometimes even while getting physically sick). It's sort of a trial by experimentation method. I've found it can be beneficial to self ban as it helps hone my focus, especially for account security reasons so I have one less thing to worry about.

Is it necessary to self ban? No, and if wasn't allowed people would just adapt accordingly, just like they do in every other game or activity that doesn't allow self bans. However, someone might also want to completely eradicate the possibility of any distraction for periods of their life for the sake of results, which to them is more important than the idealistic principle of showing impeccable self control.

In short, people have their own methods to try to best manage their lives and they shouldn't be judged for that. Gaming addiction is a complicated subject to throw around nonchalantly and more has to do with when people completely neglect their real lives. In many cases, self ban is just the opposite of that.​

2. What do you think of this hypothetical situation:

• A player has lots of time to play Royals in the summer before he starts medical school. He is pretty involved in a guild with lots of close friends he talks to every day.
• Just before medical school starts, he decides to self ban for the entire fall. His logic is that he wants to completely avoid Royals to better focus his time and energy to aim for better academic results in his very demanding studies and encourage him to try out irl opportunities he may otherwise abstain from if he was spending a lot of time on a computer.

Technically in a situation like this, the player wouldn't have to self ban. This is a common thought process anyone might go through with any activity. Even something like Netflix, someone might decide not to renew their subscription during times they will be busy to help them better focus. People just try out self banning because it's an option.​

 

I do think if someone can manage his life well, find something better to make his life better and more contented, he doesn't need a self-ban.

Gaming addiction is just one of the very common problems that youngsters/people who have themselves 24/7 with routine of game>sleep>wake>shit>game (and repeats this), not fixing your life problems, but spending most your time with game. It supposed to be a platform to relieve your stress and relax after hectic periods, stressful schedules etc... But people are abusing their own life and time on game... Game itself has no problem and has no responsible over these people's problem...

But I guess to some people, self ban is a way to "control" themselves. I don't understand them but self ban thing should be okay to someone else who still needs it.

 

Some people who self ban "to control" themselves tend to break after a few weeks and just find a new game to feed their addiction, repeating the cycle of game addiction. Self-ban is not taking care of the root cause, its just putting a band-aid on a stab wound.

 

I was directing my two questions at Kai but that's fine.

1. It seems you answered my 1st question about gaming addiction.

I think we agree. As I said, I think gaming addiction has to do with people neglecting their lives for games. Almost the exact same as what you mentioned about people not fixing their life problems and spending most of their time on the game. Almost all players fall way below that line. However, whether gaming has a net positive or negative effect on their life is a hard (and can be presumptuous) thing to evaluate or judge since everyone has their own views on what they want out of life. For instance, a common saying is: Time spent having fun is not time wasted. It's just a subjective and personal discussion.
​

2. As to my 2nd question about a hypothetical situation about a medical school student trying to optimize his life.

You didn't explicitly respond to this but I would contend that to some people self ban is not so much a way to "control" themselves but rather to "optimize" their lives. Even if they had impeccable self control or were a robot, they might still sometimes worry their account could be hacked due to database breaches, leaks, or something completely unexpected. Also, even by using the forums as we are now, checking discord or something similar, even that could be seen as a distraction that may be "unoptimal" to some people's visions for their lives to try new opportunities or focus 100% on their performance in other endeavors. So, self banning can present itself as a practical solution to avoid these worries and potential distractions to try to optimize one's life.​

 

Sorry but I think I did not mention spending time in game is wasted. I'm just trying to say that if someone can manage his time well, any games can be fun and relaxing way to relieve your stress periodically which I think nothing is wrong with some situation you've mentioned.

2. Er... I just click reply and lazy to delete whatever I didn't want to reply ><... But I didn't really answer your second question too much earlier because I mentioned this

But oh well... I feel everyone has their way to handle their life. Although I believe the medical school student can do a better job, I don't want to judge nor comment him...
I have no comments about "worrying accounts getting hacked" too.. Gonna be neutral in this problem which I think there are many ways to cause this happen....

 

Some of my reply wasn't directly based off your reply. I was expanding a bit to explain how gaming addiction is a complicated matter, but most people here probably fall way below the line of addiction. From average to dedicated players, it's hard to evaluate whether gaming has a net positive or negative effect on one's life and it can be subjective or presumptuous to even try to evaluate this for someone else. So the term gaming addiction can be often misused.

I think it's mostly best to keep irl to irl and games to games lol.

• Even if you have flawless account security like never reusing passwords and having long passwords, here are a few ways you run a risk.
  • If you play other servers especially newer or less known ones, they might package some kind of malware or keyloggers in their clients. There is a history of things like this happening before in other games.
  • If Royals database is breached or leaked, which happens sometimes even to huge companies (see Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Barack Obama, Bill Gates twitters all being hacked). Royals has a pretty good track record when it comes to account security but it's not impossible. Also, there's a history in some other games that sometimes information can be leaked internally. What if there was an internal dispute and an admin or dev went rogue? You never know what could happen.

• How would the medical school student do a better job? Out of principle, it might be better to "practice" exerting self control by completely abstaining from any distractions rather than self banning which is kind of an easy work around. But the best thing in practice can be different than the best thing ideally. Not everyone is perfect, and though in the example a medical student might be held to a high standard, most people self banning are probably just trying to better optimize their lives.

 

Hmm I rather put my brain cells worrying my bank accounts are not hacked... That’s all... I didn’t think this far... I’m sorry that I am in the same line with yours. So if my game account is hacked or Royals go byebye, then I’ll just leave the game and move on...

Like I said, everyone has their way to handle it.
How would the student do better job, actually I don’t really want to talk or care about it.

It is great that you have many things running in your mind, but let’s keep it simple from before... If someone needs to ban himself for his own reason, then just do it.

Lastly, I will only just say this to conclude my words and maybe your questions: There are always better options.

 

I agree in any other circumstance, but the OP of the ban appeal met extraordinary circumstances as we all have. Requesting the self ban assuming she would have something else needing her full attention. COVID and the way it has impacted many of us, OP being a student, myself being military (military example was brought up). I think an active staff should be taking things like this into consideration.

I think in a tight knit community such as a private server the staff should learn to sympathize more. The staff should be a representation of the community and values of Royals, OP is a Well-Known Member having played since 2017. Someone who has given so much time and dedication to this server and being active in the community, deserves nothing less in return from the staff that represents the server as a whole. I have donated and played back In 2017, if I went on a 6 month deployment and requested a self ban for security reasons, only for it to get cut short due to my ship breaking, or COVID, or any unforeseen circumstances and asked that it be lifted so I could return to enjoy the community and server again, and I was denied that?? For someone who has spent years supporting the server and can’t even be offered a few minutes of a staff members time is worse than Comcast customer support.

 

Then can't people just make up an extenuating or unforeseen circumstances? Also, it seems the hacks occur from leaks on other sites -- if the primary reason is account security, maybe the effort would be better spent making sure that the account has unique and not super simple info. That way it would require a leak on Royal's end, and in that case that would mean everyone's account is compromised and extreme measures would have to be taken.

 

Everyone's account would be compromised, but if you are extremely inactive due to being a student, military, or other reason, then your account is at extra risk because you can't log in to check if you were hacked. Maybe, you got hacked and the staff says everyone who got hacked make a forum post and they can look into it. Well, if you're not there to check on your accounts everyone once in a while you run more risk.

 

I highly disagree that self-ban is an unnecessary system considering that I know a player who got their account swooped clean by a hacker while he was on a vacation. Yikes!
Those situations are nonreversible btw, The staff cannot refund or track those items! Eventually, the frustration caused the player to quit the server altogether, leaving me questioning the security of my own account when I am away.

If others have different reasoning such as self-control or needing the time to focus on something else, I think they should be allowed to do so as well.

 

If you read ban appeals you will notice the pattern, More often then not the owner of the hacked account has been taking a long break from the game.
I think it's likely that those hacking attacks are not targeted ones but random ones, I can assume the hacker would choose from a long list of accounts that have been inactive.
Royals got a large community and many players quit or take a break from time to time right? The average player wouldn't have much meso on him, which can lead to the hackers offending multiple people at once.
Also, Targeting inactive accounts means the gms would take longer to catch up with the offender, which can give him time to do as he pleases with meso/scrolls/items.

If this speculation is accurate the Self-ban system prevents inactive accounts from being targeted by those individuals.

Tbh I am not sure how one's account could be hacked in the first place, especially with the new control panel which should help your account security

 

If hackers use different bots to hack mobs, your account security can be compromised in many methods as well. I don't recall my friend playing on any other servers but Royals but I guess it can't be ruled out.

I have nothing but speculations based on my personal experience with the person who got hacked, his interaction with the staff, and reading trough the ban appeals.
There is a low chance that the average player will get his account hacked as those ban appeals are uncommon, so being paranoid about it is probably pointless.

With all that being said, I just really appreciate that in case I want to self-ban I have the liberty to do so, And perhaps with the ongoing development of autoban system, eventually the staff won't find it as time-consuming to deal with.

 

its not about addiction and/or not being able to resist, if i truly know that i need to have a break from gaming to better more important things in my life, i will, without a self ban, BUT i will have royals in mind at times, and i will think about how i could just login to say hello, and how inhuman it is to not use my free time i got(even if its just one hour) on the thing i love, i will not login because im not an addict but it is only human to feel and have those thoughts,those are distractions that making you lose FOCUS, it has nothing to do with addiction. if some dont feel this way it is fine, but not everyone is the same, some are different then others which is a good thing.
when you know in your mind that you have a plan and a goal it is way easier to accomplish anything you do.
what i am saying bottom line, it is simply reassuring to know what your goals in life are in that selfban time period, this reassurance help focus better on your goals.
and i also do not think it is a waste of time, if it took more then 10 minutes to fulfill a selfban request i would defo agree, but a 2-3 minutes once couple of days is a courtesy that is easily done and is very appreciated for many people, do not misunderstand me for not valuing staff's time, obviously there will be some extreme cases like the one provided, but thats really rare, if it wouldnt be rare then sure id agree with it being a complete waste of time, but in a scale of time spent for reward gained i see it as a great positive.
again not everyone sees or feels the same and this is my opinion.

 

I have requested for a self-ban once. Honestly speaking, requesting for self-bans would be one of the many ways that people could address their ‘addiction’ to the game.

I requested for one because I noticed that my relationship was deteriorating due to the fact that I was spending way too much time and putting in way too much effort into the game and I started neglecting my relationship. I also felt that my ex boyfriend was not happy with the people that I chose to spend time with on Royals and I am guessing that he felt insecure about it, hence the self-ban to somewhat ‘reassure’ him that I will put him and our relationship above any game.

I don’t think it’s solely about self control - sometimes it’s about making a point to people around you that you are taking the break very seriously. Try to see the contrast between a person who self-bans for say maybe a maximum of 6 months vs someone who keeps saying that they’ll quit and just show their face a few days later. I would say it takes a lot more to be banned for 6 months and not have the option to even come back than for someone to simply say that they’re ‘quitting’ and resurface a few days later because they simply didn’t have the willpower to stay away.

Obviously, this is just my two cents on this topic as I’ve personally requested for a self-ban before and believe that it is definitely not a waste of time. The thread that OP linked in his initial post is exactly what makes self-bans so good, because a person is bound by their words when they say that they understand that the ban cannot be lifted. I think it’s just holding people to their words, which is actually great for character building. It teaches people to never say what they don’t mean and to not make promises that they can’t keep

 

I haven't read through this thread really, but I've self-banned twice already so I could focus on classwork and finals for some things. When I get into something a lot, I tend to let it distract me from more important things, so I wanted to avoid that possibility while I worked.

 

Is it possible to implement account deactivation/lockdown in the control panel such that forums won't be flooded? Possibly add 2FA to the decision and use of PIN code. This way you can type in the # of weeks into a submit box with multiple confirmation checkboxes and rules plastered over it in multiple languages. I don't think it would be too hard (?) to implement. It would definitely take up development time but considering the amount of time saved in the future, it might be a worthy investment.