You can also be banned for simply not being at your computer at any given time of the day regardless of whether or not you are logged into Royals.
The thing is, how would you prove that you weren't botting? Setup a camera to record yourself for situations like these? To any outsider, falling asleep on a key looks the same as botting. I get that this game encourages robot play, I mean just look at it, we have Mages with full map ultimates and bosses that literally sit there and do nothing (Krex and just about any boss if you're able to pin it.) I'm a victim of robot play myself. When I Krex or train my priest at himes for instance, I'd pay minimal attention to the game and be focused on something else on my second monitor. But if I were to get warped back to town by a GM for suspecting me of botting, there's no way in hell I'd miss that. Bottom line is, if you're dumb enough to not respond to players/GMs or fall asleep while playing, you deserve to be banned. Also, you shouldn't be playing this game if you're on the verge of falling asleep, it's a game not your job.
Something happened to me the other day which could've gotten me banned. I use a 360 controller to play with (using the program Xpadder to bind my keys). I went to grab something to eat and when I returned I found my character to be walking by himself into the wall at FM entrance. My controller had fallen off my table and landed upside down, resulting in the analogue stick being tilted in the > direction. So, according to the current rules this would be a bannable offense. What I'm trying to say is shit happens. You could clearly see Sh0ok didn't benefit whatsoever from spamming Dragon's Breath in Leafre. And it's fairly safe to assume he didn't leave something on the Dragon's Breath button inside Horntail. Yet he is treated the same as someone who would use a bot to automatically train/farm in a map.
After reading through this entire topic I personally feel that the initial ban procedure should be kept in place with the addition of taking out the strike on your permanent record like has been suggested. It seems the most fair while not sacrificing the ability to rid the server of legitimate botters.
I could have a solution for this, simply ban them for botting if they don't reply after a GM has reasonable doubt to believe the person in question was botting. That being said the appeal process should give the user the benefit of the doubt and simply have it on record for a future occasion. A person who bots regularly will do it again, and again so it's easier to catch legit botters to people who simply slept and hold down a key. Having an appeal process where the burden of proof lies on the accuser is not just. It's always wise to give the benefit of the doubt to the users, let alone a high level player who is known by the community. If it was some unknown spamming heal in GS2 it's understandable to be suspicious but I don't think someone of the caliber of Sh0ok would bot.
I think what you and many others are missing here is that a GM won't ban someone without proof. There's a process that goes into it, including warping the person to town, talking to then, and taking a screenshot. That's proof enough to ban, so during the appeal process it's only natural that the person who got banned has to show sufficient counter proof. There is already enough proof to ban them without giving them "the benefit of the doubt." As for banning unknown versus well known players, that should not matter in the slightest. Every person should be given equal treatment whether they just joined that day or they're a level 200 who everyone knows. There have been occasions in the past where well known players were caught breaking serious rules and banned. They shouldn't be held to any different standard than any other player.
But officer, don't you understand? I didn't mean to speed. My foot was tired so it pushed down on the accelerator. I shouldn't get a ticket for that.
I'll add onto that. Officer, don't you know who I am? I'm a very important person and well known in the community. I don't deserve the ticket. We get so wrapped up in society where people are "above the law" and how unjust it is. Yet when we treat everyone equally here, threads like this start because the person was a well-known, high leveled person. Yes I'm saying it. If the person this thread was started because of was a low level player or someone who didn't speak English as a first language, we would have never seen this thread start.
The fact that he is a well known member of the community obviously implies that he knows the rules to this server. So there really is no excuse of risking himself a ban by irresponsibly falling asleep while playing (which mind you is a very selfish act in itself.) I still have a hard time believing you can continuously hold down a key while asleep. Any registration to another key will cause whatever skill you're using to stop, you must be incredibly lucky your body clung onto that one skill! OT: This proposal serves no purpose. The few reports we have on botters are 90% of the time correct and cases like these are of the extreme rare ends. The current system is fine the way it is and I see no reason to revise it over 1 mishap. Moral of the story, don't be stupid.
No one really said that he should be unbanned because he is a well known high levelled player, people have been looking at the rules and other means of explanation. Most arguments against the rule don't argue that he should be exempt because of his level, but that the rule effects non-intentional abusers. I don't think it's fair that treating people who use programmes to bot and people that fall asleep on their keyboard (atleast they don't get striked) should be equally treated which is why I posted, not because I think he should be unbanned. This is feedback, not a ban appeal. It's because I don't agree with the rule. This can been seen by various threads over the two years, which have been exactly like this (proxy ban @Dustin you used to agree with me back then ), where I have voiced my opinion. And most people don't look at every thread on the forums, i'm only aware of Char falling asleep at Skeletons, and getting a 7 week ban, which I saw as legitimate, since he was still using genesis to get experience at a normal training map. So when Sweep posted this thread, I had somewhere to post my opinion. People voice their opinions when someone close is effected by something, I don't understand how that is wrong. You cannot expect someone to care about a ban that is effecting someone they don't know, people are naturally self-interested, and won't understand issues till they have experienced them, themselves. (but to be honest, I haven't really seen a situation like this, but I don't check every ban appeal thread). That example is pretty extreme, and different atleast in my opinion. There isn't a chance of you hurting someone, or killing someone by botting. Which is the reason for why the speed limit is enforced. Finding an exact life example is probably impossible, but in my eyes it is kinda like this: Homeless people get arrested on trains (subway), because you cannot sleep on them, it's illegal. However, if a normal white collar worker slept on the train, they would most likely not be arrested, because their intent is seen as different. It isn't really that unbelievable. Even after this thread was posted, my Krexel partner fell asleep at Krex, and AFK'd for about 20 minutes and was doing random shit for a few minutes (assuming he woke up but was just tired) before completely waking up. I have personally witnessed it plenty of times with other people. People make mistakes, and people enjoy the game way too much sometimes, so it happens, but the question is, is that mistake a criminal problem or a growing up kind of problem. I'm going to stop trying to explain my opinion, because I think the Admins already have a suitable and more fair decision, with considering sleeping to not fall into a permanent ban.
I feel a lot of the staff interactions has changed since the server started to grow, before and you can look years back and see even more leniency, it has moved from being lenient to have all rules cut in stone, I see the point off it but it's still sad, that was a big part of why I started here, sad direction.
How's that even relevant? That's probably one of the worst comparisons I've seen in a long time. It's futile to even try to make rule changes here since staff considers themselves as all-knowing and won't admit error or think of changes that could be for the better, simply because they seemingly lack the ability to think like human beings and actually enforce a rule in a humane and more lenient way. There's many cases where this shouldn't be done, but this is the opposite of that.
If that were the case no rules would have ever changed and no one would ever be unbanned. And you know very well that both have happened.
I actually disagree, it's more than that. Sure, it's rare, but the staff does consider it every time a feedback thread like this pops up. You ALSO know that a lot happens behind the scenes the people don't see. @Egonics Yes, but as more players join it becomes a lot harder and more time consuming too. The amount of ban appeals, report abused, character issues, and in game ~gm make it much harder.
I know what happens behind the scenes, doesn't mean I approve nor does it mean that suggestions are always treated in a reasonable way as they should.
If you give them a reasonable and workable solution they listen. Of course they won't listen when someone just says, let's change this rule because I don't like it! This thread has proven they're willing to listen when given options that can work, such as it not counting as a strike against you if your banned for falling asleep. You just have to think of a creative solution that doesn't require loads more work for GMs and Admins, which most threads fail to provide.
