Good, I went to bed and woke up and this thread hasn't become a firepit over night. Keep up the debate and input. This will be your chance to give you what you think needs to be changed; once we've seen what everyone wants, we can try to make change for the better.
I have to strongly agree with harder definitions of harassment. "nerd" and just... whispering someone should not be bannable offences. Michael said to leave old cases out of it, but these aren't "old", they happened like 4 days ago. These cases are modern evidence of where the rules were enforced unnecessarily, they are reasons for the change. I've been thinking of scamming and how it's handled here. If a buyer looted all the zak drops and paid for nothing on GMS, they would not be banned, BUT they would be KS'ed into the ground. If defames were dollars you would have a bunch of dollars idk. HERE its backwards because KSing and mass defame is not allowed but looting / some(?) scamming is. So what do we do about it? The best we have is like.... the community black list. But it has like 6 views and the old one had to be closed, its just a flawed idea. Especially if you wanted to put down someone that posts in those threads, they argue and it turns to a shitfest KEEP IT ON TOPIC FRIEND :::::::^^^^^^^)))))))))))))))))))))))))
I must agree a bit with this, if scamming is allowed/steal loot then you have to be able to do more than accepting it and move on, this community is too friendly, and "let the community shun them" it don't work cause either they don't care or are to forgiving. Leaving the victim having to accept it.
A lot of people here have the notion that because this isn't GMS, we shouldn't have similar rules, which strikes me odd because this server is directly based on GMS. Granted some rules should be modified because our population is much, much smaller than that of GMS and we're able to review case-by-case reports unlike the thousands GMS gets. That being said however, I do still believe some of the things that goes unchecked in GMS should remain in our server. I'll try to keep this as short as possible. 1. Mass defame should not be a punishable offense. Most people view fame as a status and as Sila said numerous times, a single defame serves its purpose. But the same could be said about fame. How is it any fair that a single individual can fame someone up to 10+ times? It's the same as voting 10+ times on a poll for a contest. If you're able to mass fame someone because you like them, you should be allowed to mass defame someone if you dislike them. Also, chances are if you're getting mass defamed by someone or a group of people, you've probably done something to anger them. Nobody in their right minds would go out of their way to defame someone for no reason. An eye for an eye if you will. 2. Killing people using summoning bags should not be considered harassment. The only way you would die from summoning bags is if you were afk. When you go afk, whether that's for leech or whatever, you're acknowledging the fact that you're leaving your character vulnerable in the open. Summoning bags in GMS were primarily used to kill people, ever seen those videos of people summoning Crimson Balrogs at Kerning City? It was a fun culture back then so why should we take that away? 3. Smega spamming. Unlike GMS where smegas cost real money, in here smegas are dropped by every monster and can be purchased through the CS with daily vote NX which means they are easily obtained. However, smega spamming still comes at a cost. When people are having smega wars, those people are willingly using their smegas to participate in it. Most of the time, these smega wars will die off within minutes, a GM isn't needed to calm the situation. Not to mention we already have an in-game command to toggle on/off smegas, it might not be the most optimal way but it's there. 4. Killstealing. The whole ~mapowner system is flawed in many ways mainly because it doesn't give enough time for people to leave their map for a split second (not literally). If you have to use the washroom or go back to town to repot, you could lose your map right then and there. In popular maps such as GS2, ULU2, and Skele, you will lose your map if you're gone for even a moment. If you have to brb because your dog is starving or if you suddenly disconnect, well tough luck. Another thing to mention is that ~mapowner creates an unfriendly environment. People often times type ~mapowner right away when they see another player in their map to assert dominance. This can come off as being a dick because you're immediately telling them to leave. As for general harassment and racial/homophobic terms go, Doritios summed it up perfectly. Most people on this server don't care about racial slurs. How do I know? Because very few people make reports on them. We have about 300 average players everyday and you'd only see like 1-3 reports a week regarding racial slurs. It doesn't make any sense to blacklist these words for a very small minority of the community. To quote Doritos' again, no word is racist/offensive/whatever without a context. Referring to your friend as the n-word is not offensive whatsoever if both parties are on mutual agreements. If you're a bystander and happen to hear it being thrown out, you shouldn't even feel inclined to report it because it's none of your business to begin with.
This will not be changed ever. This was not added because of players, but because of Matt's personal preference. He does not like the word, and does not think it is a word people should be using at all.
I know most of us live in places where free speech is allowed, to include offensive language. However, John made a good point. His terms are in non-compliance to our social-standards, and since he is the owner of this server, he has the right to dictate his own standards. We could make suggestions, but personal preference is personal preference. To add to this, he gives us the freedom to express our concerns, and I appreciate that. It's nice when controversial topics like this do not get removed. Even if Matt or the staff do not agree, as long as it's constructive and debatable, they won't delete it.
To be clear, I didn't say that I thought there was a problem with having certain things not allowed to be said, I just said that there's no way to know what is acceptable, without reading a lot of threads in ban appeal/report abuse. Outlining more precisely what is deemed unacceptable in the terms and conditions, or even better just censoring/blocking messages automatically would alleviate this problem significantly.
IMO it's kinda obvious ( at least for me) what is not allowed, racism (even if you joke) calling people names, using proper language, not swearing at people. Showing people some respect is not that hard, when I encounter new people the first thing I mostly avoid is swearing at them. I don't think many of the people here, (who got banned) would talk like that to a person they just met. That censorship thing, it would probably help but i don't feel it's servers job / staffs job to tell people how they should behave, and there is no need, since 95% or more of the playerbase have not been banned.
Hmm This is true... but unless you have some awesome idea on how to judge defame harassment, changing up the requirements for a ban would be difficult, as most changes would require more work GM side, because it would make it more unfair to the person getting defame, thus more thought put into who should get banned and who shouldn't. Ex: I guess it's okay for 1 person to mass defame someone, but probably not if people gang up without every individual involved having their own unique reason for defaming. Then again people can make up shit about what their reasons were. See? More work.
This is just an idea I had, idk it might not be practical but just something I thought might be beneficial. Could we possibly have polls in threads for cases that are particularly subjective? So that all members of the community could vote, basically like a jury, when it cannot be definitively proven one way or the other whether or not the accused is guilty? Bruh's case for example. (Just throwing it out as an example of when a jury could've helped, please don't reply telling me Bruh deserved it, that's not the point.) Maybe include a requirement of having an account for over a month or some other requirement to vote so that people cant make multiple accounts to vote. One problem I see is the more popular a person is the less likely they'll be voted against, which isn't right, but idk, just a thought.
If we're going to have discussion about the T&C, can we please include this too? http://royals.ms/forum/threads/clarifying-the-rules.13815/ Some of it may be outdated by now as it's from a long time ago, but there's a whole bunch of stuff in there about a variety of T&C-related possible issues.
There is one thing I didn't find in the rules, making a fake report claiming you lost items/mesos you knowingly did not lose.
Just thought I would leave my 2 cents on a few things I've seen in this thread. The way you worded this actually changed my opinion on the matter. As long as it is just 1 person, and not someone getting their friends to gang up on them, then I agree. While most of the time the smega wars die down on their own, sometimes I feel a GM does need to get involved. I have (unfortunately) been dragged into one of these by asking a simple question, and it caused things on the other end to get out of hand, fast. A GM had to get involved in the matter, because said person would not stop firing shots at the staff, as well as players.
I don't think the use of racial or homophobic terms should be used, even if you are talking to a buddy. These words have different personal meanings to everybody, some people dont think it means really anything. But some people find it incredibly insulting even if the context it is used in is not insulting. These words have meaning and have history, these words by definition are insulting. I dont see why people feel the need to use these words, there are plenty of alternative words in the english language, why not use one of those instead of using a word which puts you at risk of hurting someones feelings and you possibly being reported and banned.
