Imagine the MapleRoyals staff were running your country..

Yes, they should come up with a REASONABLE law, not an absolute one. Again, I'm not for no regulation, I'm just against total/over-regulation. Also, they don't really "believe" that these people broke the law. They literally just saw them making a joke about it. There's a difference between "beyond reasonable doubt" and a joke.

I think my comparisons have gone too far, I'm not a lawyer/cop and I don't know every single law in every country so I'ma just try to stop referring to real life cases after I respond to this. People who are detained for long periods of time to build a case against are detained because they did something suspicious that caused them to be suspected beyond reasonable doubt. Making a joke isn't suspicious. As for your question, I don't think RWT/hackers (smugglers/money launderers) are as dangerous as terrorists. I also don't see banning people for that long even after determining their innocence as reasonable.

I also don't agree that making obvious jokes should be punishable by ban in 99% of cases. The exception being when someone is being super malicious/being sarcastically threatening to someone in real life. Again, using reasonable judgement.

 

I feel like the real life comparisons are becoming too real. I made them so it'd be easier to understand but now we're like trying to deconstruct the laws of different countries and all that and it's getting a bit much.

My point is this: even if I post a snapchat story of someone saying "I'ma kill you" to a friend while they're all laughing and messing with each other I don't think they should be banned/arrested. Broadcasting it in this case doesn't make a difference because he would have been banned for saying it regardless, whether it was SSed in guild chat, fm chat, or smega chat. I guess we just disagree about whether people should be banned for jokes. I think reasonable effort should be made to check for at least SOME evidence of rule-breaking before banning people. This is a private server and the gms/mods can do what they wish, but I still think it's stupid.

 

This is what trials are for in real life, in case it's not blatantly obvious to you. The equivalent to a trial in MapleRoyals would be a ban appeal and every single person who has been banned is entitled to initiate a ban appeal.

Making obvious jokes shouldn't be punishable by bans but they can still be, as I have pointed out, to send a message to the public that even jokes of partaking in RWT and/or hacking is not something that is tolerated in this server. Also, what may seem like a joke to you may be seen as something more serious than a joke to others. They're very subjective. For example, if I were to make a racist joke among my friends who accept it and are fine with it, outsiders who see it may think that I'm just being a Grade A arse.

Admins and GMs issue bans using their discretion to do so, they're not overstepping and I'm sure that every single ban can be explained by the person who issued the bans. They have their reasons for doing so and all of these issues can be aired out in the ban appeals.

 

That's my point though - they should be. I think absolutes are dumb in most cases.

I also agree - jokes can be very subjective. But sometimes they're so painfully obvious (like in the screenshot I posted) that they can be pretty much labeled as objective. Also, joking about hacking harms literally nobody. Making a racist joke can harm people who don't know you're joking.

Why are you sure that every single ban is deserved? Are the GMs not human? They make mistakes too. Also, again, my point is that getting banned for RWT/hack joking shouldn't be a thing (or at least not as absolute) - so whether they're "overstepping" or not is not what I care about.

 

Absolutes are necessary in this case to show the level of tolerance of certain things within the server. For example, I have a friend who was banned for saying a word that sounds like the N word and I honestly had no sympathy for him when I heard about it, even though I know that he was only joking. You don't joke about these things when it's already expressly forbidden in the T&C.

I did not say that every single ban is deserved, I said that every ban can be explained by the person who issued the ban. There's a huge difference between the two and please do not ever attempt to put words into my mouth.

Again, RWT and hacking are offences that are heavily frowned upon in this server and it is only understandable that the people who even joke about it be banned for it until they show that, or the admins and/or GMs find that they really meant no harm, in which case, they still should be banned so that they know to never make such jokes again.

 

That's my exact mood reading this thread rn, Gert

 

Your friend using a word similar to the N word is not the same thing as what we're talking about here. Your friend made a joke that can actually harm people who hear that joke that don't know him - making a joke about hacking/RWTing does not harm anyone.

Unless my reading comprehension skills are failing me I'm pretty sure "Admins and GMs issue bans using their discretion to do so, they're not overstepping" implies that because admins and GMs use their discretion, they therefore do not overstep (aka ban people for bad reasons), which essentially means the same thing as "deserved."

Again, I think we just don't agree about this. RWT and hacking are offenses, sure. But in my opinion, joking about them shouldn't be. "Haha I gotta stop hacking!" is not such a grave/terrible sin that someone needs to "never make such jokes again."

 

What's wrong with a gm asking a player to explain a smega? He didn't sound aggressive or harsh to me.
Your thread is very odd. What do you even think it will accomplish? Do you think the staff will change the RWT rules because of this thread? To me it sounds like you are the one taking this game very seriously and you sound mad at the staff for enforcing rules. Muff didn't sound angry to me at least.

 

I've explained/answered pretty much every question you asked in my previous posts. If you actually care enough, you can read my answers there.

 

Tell me, how does joking about hacking/RWT not harm anyone when it would waste staff time to even start an investigation as it is essentially a confession?

And I did mention that the staff have discretion to ban people as they see fit, I'm not even going to deny that. I simply said that bans are issued for a reason. I also said that the staff are reasonable people who will listen to what the players have to say in their ban appeals. I did not ever state nor imply that all bans are deserved.

Then again, you seem to have tried to twist this whole thing into comparing this punishment with what Kim Jong Un would have done, then tried to say that this wouldn't happen in the real world, and then now you're falling back to the whole argument of "it's just a joke so it shouldn't be bannable" despite knowing that even jokes of RWT and hacking are not tolerated in this server.

I get that you're trying to stand up for your friend but your arguments fall so short that I don't think anyone is even going to think twice about the legitimacy of your complaint. From what I see based on ban appeals, MapleRoyals staff have been very civil and collaborative for the most part and they will admit it when they have wrongly banned someone. I have personally been banned for 30 days myself because of a vindictive person who has an axe to grind with me but I took it in stride because I knew it myself that whatever that transpired between myself and that person may be seen as something else by the staff. You and/or your friend should just accept the ban and move forward from there instead of harping on the fact that the ban was issued in the first place.

There are two types of people in the world: People who see a problem and address it by doing something about it and people who see a problem and complain about the problem, which gets them nowhere. Try to do the former and you'll find that your life will be so much easier. Forget the 'karens' of the community - just play by the book and you will be fine. We're all going to offend someone one way or another and we don't have to please every single person that we meet. Just make sure that you know how and when to pick your battles, and acknowledge that this is just the way things work in this server.

 

....what? "I don't see/understand your logic so basically your entire argument is flawed." I can see that our talk isn't really getting anywhere so....I'ma just stop here.

 

Havent read everything yet, just to point...rwt and hacking are pretty much the worse thong u can do here....if u want to make an equivalence....u should compare it to public claim of trying to kill someone or steal or perpetre a crime against ur own goverment.
I live in a democratic country, and here,if u publicly claim that ure betraying the state u get 5 years at least

 

Well if you care enough you should read everything. People just either don't seem to understand my point or are misconstruing it. Use your own judgement if you'd like. Also, I'm not about to look into every singles country's laws and my point about killing people was an obvious hyperbole. My point was that joking about something so obvious and harmless should not be bannable. There's obviously a difference between joking about killing someone and joking about hacking/RWTing in a game. Aside from the again, obvious difference of this being just a game, joking about hacking/RWTing does not harm anyone. Joking about killing someone can sometimes be scary without context.

 

Not sure if you're referring to me or not but I agree either way. Although I didn't make this post with the intention to argue, I just wanted to say what I felt about that ban..it just turned out this way.

 

A joke is only a joke if the listener appreciates it, which is why this is often done in private. Smega-ing a statement is not a "joke" to me, it is "making a public statement".

On your point which I quoted and highlighted, RWTing is equivalent to printing your own currency / using unapproved currency in a country context. I cannot think of any country where this is legal and I am pretty sure where I am from, joking about this PUBLICLY is an offence.

Then again, this a a game, a private server, if you don't agree with the way things are done around here, there are plenty of options out there.

 

Jokes can be done in public too.

I don't know where you're from and I'm not about to debate every single person from every single country about whether joking about "printing illegal money" is an offense, but I'm 99% positive that in any decently progressive country you would not be jailed. If I go out in public, hold out 100 $100 bills and say "wow, my money printing machine actually works!" I am absolutely positive I will not be imprisoned and I would absolutely detest any country that does have you imprisoned for that.

The whole "if you don't like it, pack it up and leave argument" is pretty moot here. I'm not gonna leave this server because I don't care that much about MapleStory anyway. I can still post about a dumb rule in a server that I play without wanting to leave it.

 

Well your title said if the staff were running my country.....

 

LOL touche I guess.

 

I will be honest, I didn't care about the rules or T&C when I joined at first, I only started paying attention to them since I read ban appeals

Back to the topic, I think it is very hard to identify whether the joke is obvious or not in this online environment. If we let the people who claimed "It was a joke" get away, the real hackers/rwters will abuse this to prove they are "clean".

In my country we have an idiom which means "We would rather kill the wrong targets than omission".

 

What's kinda ironic about this whole ordeal is I've been spending the past month hunting hackers, and managed to get 19 banned. Right now this ban over a joke is keeping me from logging on and actually catch more real hackers... Not that it really matters though, seeing as it seems these hackers manage to breed before they get banned anyways. I just wish whoever reported me would instead have spent their time on a real problem rather than an obvious joke (if you've seen what my smega looked like you know no one actually reads that and believes it's for real, and that's not even considering the context).