It saddens me to see a pattern repeating it self right now that is really unhealthy for this community. People constantly taking screen shots to cover their ass during conversations... People constantly taking screen shots to be able to report other people for offenses they feel they have unjustly been banned for and feel they need to do the same to other players. People that lurk for the right moment to screen shot something to have on someone for later when they do something wrong them selves... People that get info from their friends and then use it to blackmail stuff from them, maybe items the other person don't want to sell... People that report others just because they can and not because it is the right thing to do... People are so afraid they turn on each other because of unnecessary stupid reasons... I am not going to dig up lots of examples, you can look in the ban/ban appeal sections your self and see some real madness in there... Spoiler: Typical reaction to what "offends" some It has gotten to the point were you can be held accountable for every claim/statement you make ingame. A simple private conversation where a claim/statement is made or where you might say something hypothetically against the rules in some form can lead to a ban, even a perma ban. Just wanted to throw this out there because I feel it is getting out of hand and it is unhealthy short term and maybe in the long run. Spoiler: People need to chill a bit and...
From my experience, very rarely have people gotten banned when the conversation was in buddy or guild chat. Most cases have been through All Chat, Party Chat, or Whispers. The main reason, iirc is because when you talk in buddy or guild, you are choosing to be around the people who talk in a certain way. On the other hand, all chat, party chat, and whispers are NOT something that person has control over. Honestly, I don't see why people can't keep inappropriate conversations in buddy/guild/or whispers among themselves. Or hey, the maple messenger too (this needs a little more love imo). If you want to shout obscenities in public, that's fine, but you should also accept the consequences. I don't see why it's so hard to not be profane or rude in a public speech setting. To me, I just see it as people wanting to do whatever they want, but not have to take responsibility for their actions. Everyone is accountable for what they say and where they say it. No one forced you to say those things in that location. A private conversation isn't private if other people can see it and have to endure it! Also, I have a hard time believing your claims about how "sick" people are being because I have yet to see someone do any of those things. Perhaps you could point to specific cases as I have no clue what you mean, even while looking through the report abuse/ban appeals. Do I believe that sometimes people are trigger happy when a little conversation could have fixed it? Yes. Does that mean they were the one in the wrong? Not really. If there hadn't been anything ban/report worthy, then there wouldn't have been a problem in the first place ^^
I'm going to piggyback on this thread and say the shoutbox during this most recent SC was ABYSMAL. From the constant bashing of anyone trying to provide any sort of useful information, to people talking about Muslims being terrorists, to people spewing profanity directed at others, it was an abomination and while those I had to ban from the shoutbox probably show no remorse for what they said and did, I just hope others realize how disrespectful those users were as I certainly know I lost any and all respect for them.
In my eyes the issue isn't whether the people being reported get banned or not it's the fact that the are being reported at all. Here are 3 instances of people attempting to get someone banned for something they said, and a GM deeming it not ban-worthy: http://royals.ms/forum/threads/reporting-bad-lanugage.43621/ http://royals.ms/forum/threads/language-abuse.44501/ http://royals.ms/forum/threads/offensive-language.44321/ edit: (another report of someone reporting for not much at all) http://royals.ms/forum/threads/insults.45589/ edit: (someone clearly reporting for revenge as opposed to reporting for being offended) http://royals.ms/forum/threads/foul-language-tw.45540/ The issue is that because there is possibility for someone to be banned as a result of something they said in game, a culture has emerged where people are waiting to screenshot anything and everything that is spoken. If someone is not offended by something I said but they screenshot it and get me banned anyway just for a moments enjoyment, who is the bad person there ? Yeah I broke the rules and said something a GM deemed bannable, but you have an even bigger scumbag remaining on the server. This is supposed to be a nostalgic server yet I don't seem to remember ever feeling worried about expressing my opinion or arguing with people on gms. Here I have to worry about some weirdo following me around reading my every conversation praying that they'll be ready on the off-chance I use the n-word when referring to my friend. --> Even if it doesn't bother them in the slightest. I wouldn't be surprised of productive arguements/discussions between people that should be had are often avoided entirely due to players worrying about potential bannings. At the very least it's just an uncomfortable environment as far as discussion is concerned.
So you have seen it in MR or are you talking about Maple in general? Because this is part of the culture I'm talking about.
Do you have a hard time believing his specific claims, or the sick behavior in general? Because you posted this in a different thread: "Another reason that I personally am against instabanning anything that looks like a scam is because I have heard of times when people set up conversations in game to make it look like someone was scamming when that wasn't the case. Not saying most people would, but considering some of the petty revenge reporting I've seen, I'm sad to say that I believe some people would try something like this." That has indeed happened, and if that's not sick behavior, I don't know what is. This community has always had a tendency to report people for stupid and petty things (this report for example, always makes me laugh: http://royals.ms/forum/threads/i-do...-the-right-place-or-not-o-o.16693/#post-95932), but it's getting worse, and there's really no stopping it.
I like how you took a quote out of a different post and chopped off the rest of the statement. My original post said that while I believe most people would not, but you can't stop the few people who would. @workteam My argument, I apologize if it was unclear, was that for the most part the community is not sick. Again, I can't say anything is perfect though because there are always gonna be a few bad apples who have sick behaviors (such as the setup I mentioned). But just thinking of the recent major scamming (one individual) and the multiple people who have joined the fundraiser to help the victims, I would say that the community on a whole is great. Also, the person I saw revenge reporting is known to troll and be toxic so I again believe they fall into that category of a few. I don't agree with the way you call it a "culture" because in my opinion, it's more of an anomaly. UPDATE:: Updating because maybe I'm just overly optimistic. @SAKI I don't see why you're complaining about a "sick" community when you yourself are making it worse. You got involved in a report that wasn't even yours to say your opinions that someone should be banned when they were just trying to confirm that someone was attempting RWT so that they would be taken care of. You said you were just asking, but you didn't fail to mention that you thought the person trying to do a good deed should get permabanned first. I thought you were here to talk about how to make the community a better place and some genuine concerns.
It's 1.30am. I wanted to ask a question about The context of a SS in general. And as I asked Andreas in swedish, how can one statement on a SS be considered True and the other False within the same SS without anything else to go on. Must not both statements be considered either True or False? The whole post was supposed to be one big question, not a statement or any opinion but seeing as english is my third language the wording didn't come out 100% right. I tried to explain this to you in the chat but clearly you don't want to understand. I didn't think it was necessary to open a new thread about it but clearly I was wrong according to the sticky that I failed to read. About The community becoming unhealthy, I have been a member here since Beta, I saw a pattern arising and I wanted to raise the awareness about it. If you @injeenious can't see the good intent in that then idk. Idk how I offended you really. I wrote this on my tablet, it was Hell typing it all, I'm Im my bed, it's soon 2am, I will sleep now. I won't even read it through to see if it makes sense. Take care!
There's a lot of people in muh sekrit klub who won't continue playing here because of how bad the community is atm They're afraid they're gonna get banned for silly things; like walking through someone's map without doing anything, saying something totally non-offensive, having a certain buzzword in their ign, etc Not to mention there are people who will start arguments for literally no reason, get offended over the silliest things, lie for attention, etc, which also scares away n00bs and normalfriends who aren't cut out for "teh interwebs xD" I've probably directed more then 50 people here (lol exaggerations) and I've yet to see one come back in my group and say something positive about the Royals community (keyword : community; NOT staff)
Sick isn't the word I'd use to describe the MapleRoyals community. As the server's population increases, I'd expect to see reports like these become more common. People don't value each other as much anymore and I believe one of the main reasons is that the internet, not just MapleRoyals, has devolved into a breeding ground for pointless arguments. We're all behind a screen. If you verbally assault someone on the internet, who's going to stop you? No one. Why has it become such an issue in this server? Competition. People who play MMOs strive to be on top and sometimes without a second thought about who they'll hurt in the process. MapleRoyals is no exception. As more players join this server, competition increases. Whether it'd be to find a training map, attend an event, or finding FM spots, they will depend on the staff more and more to solve their problems. If we see this trend negatively impacting our server, why don't we try to stop it then? The short answer is we can't and we don't have to. There will always be new players who fail to follow the terms and conditions set by the staff. They're already forced to either familiarize themselves and comply with the rules or have the privilege of playing here revoked. On top of that, more players in our server have been spending their time helping others in contrast to the toxicity. If you don't call that healthy, then odds are you're missing the other half of the story. I'd like to bring up the community blacklist, leeching whitelist, and even @injeenious's scamming donation fund. These are excellent cases where the community have contributed to the welfare of the server instead of being complete parasites. There are players around the clock ensuring that questions are being answered and players are made aware of how the server is run. There's nothing wrong with taking screenshots as a precaution anyways. As for petty reports for harassment and hurtful language, a majority of these reports coming from those who speak English as a secondary language. The best we can do is give clear translations of how the rules were meant to be used. Considering that we now have Chinese/Korean translations for events and the staff are feeling comfortable handing threads in multiple languages, I think it's safe to assume MapleRoyals is slowly transitioning to a multi-lingual server. Give it time and (hopefully) it won't be much of an issue later on. Public Service Announcement: If you really want to make a difference, stay out of conversations you're not personally involved with and try to raise the same awareness in-game instead of on the forums where it's been mentioned countless times. There's more than enough people who complain and argue with each other on the forums and do nothing to stop it, but not enough who actually do something productive in-game where these issues originate from.
For more accurate poll results, make the choices binary. But in any case it looks like most people agree that the community is not healthy. I suggest that Mods stop being so anal about small things, and tell the crybabies to suck it up. I don't remember people in GMS being so sensitive that a cuss word would cause them to descend into complete rage and spam the forums with their petty reports. There's also the scaling issue. MapleRoyals right now has ~750 people online daily. That's over twice as much as a year ago, IIRC. If we assume an exponential growth rate, we will probably reach 1400 by next year, assuming Scotland hasn't been nuked. However, we already have a lot of reports right now. If we have much more people on the server, Mods will have to deal with much more reports. Best course of action is then to eliminate petty ones. Of course what Mods choose to do is up to their own liking.
