As there are many toxic players that the community majorly dislikes and wants gone completely, all we can do for those is, put them in the Community Blacklist. This is somewhat useful but also, at the same time, very limited. Not everyone reads that thread or even aware of the fact that it exists. As for the person blacklisted, he/she can easily create a new account/character and avoid being spotted for his/her actions. As a community, for people like those, we have to patiently wait for one of them to do something (even the smallest) against the server rules in order to see some punishment. If not, then that person is allowed to play and harm the server/community. I recommend an opportunity for us, players, to ban a person completely, if enough people requested it. This can be seen as Disruption of the Community/Server in the rules, or "Don't be a dick" in the old rules version. On average, there are 1.2k -1.4k players online daily. We all know a significant amount are mules/multi clients. There are over 40k forum users and around 1k of them are active. For the community to suggest a ban, we'd need a significant amount of in favour signatures. For these actions to be deemed harmful to the community, we'd have to consider the community as a whole or vast majority. Therefore I'd recommend 1k signatures. Here's my suggestion. Give us the option to ban someone that we consider very harmful to the server. We'll create a petition (thread) for forum users to sign. As everyone can have 1 forum account, each signature can be considered as 1 person. An IP check within the signatures would also be good, for example if someone had already signed and tried to sign again by creating a new account, it would be lovely if it said "This IP has already signed". Give the petition a specific amount of time. For example 2 weeks. If it gets 1k signatures within that allocated time, then ban the person from the game. People who we can consider ban-worthy will be the ones who have multiple blacklist submissions and still AND will continue his/her actions. So we cannot ask for a ban for someone we dislike for whatever reason. This server is community's to look after. As we cannot ban players but only report them once they violate the rules, many people who're harmful are in the game. I believe as a community, we're mature enough, and have a say in such a thing, to suggest a ban for someone's actions. Thanks for reading, would love to see the feedback on this. You're all lovely.
I wouldn't see why not, but figured it would only be troublesome on our end. Take the White House petition as an example. Once it reaches certain signatures, the White House has to respond to it. So I am in favor of this idea.
I'm sorry, but I don't think that would be a good idea. We are in the internet after all, there are lots of people who would vote for bans just to see the world burn. Leave the banning to GMs only, because it should only happen if the player really deserved it, not because there are many other players asking for. Even GM's bans are too though sometimes, or even unworthy ("suspicious"), can't wonder how many other players would be getting wrongly bans with such thing. I've seen some posts on that blacklist, and most of them are for leeching scam or boss looting. I'm not sure about scamming, but looting is a bannable offence, and one could just report if had any proof.
Adding on to this, it would be awesome if they could have their mains publicly posted if they are banned by such a system, so we can see who is actually being a complete jerk to the community. I do think it should be in extreme cases though, and looking at the thread there's one only right now - goodkush scamming a ton of people and even admitting he is doing it.
If 1k players want someone gone from the game, they are obviously doing something very wrong. But they're walking that line close enough to avoid a ban. I'd say a community petition would be a viable option.
Would you really lose any sleep over someone like goodkush being banned? I think he's probably the only one that this would actually be used on. No one else that I've seen so far in this community has been able to generate so much hatred towards them. Also, I think a petition system would be great to have for other issues. Letting the Devs know what's the most important things we as a community want.
How long have you been using the internet? He could be the first, and reasonable, to be banned by that. But then, people will start throwing up names, someone scammed you, looted your stuff, swear your family, and you will want them banned. Then at forums, there are other people who will vote on them. Not because they also had being harmed by that people, but because they do it for fun. That's how internet works. If you been harmed by someone, just report to the GMs, and they will know if that person deserves a ban or not. They are the ones who have that power, not us. When you get harmed in life, you call the cops, not your friends to help you "punish" that one who harmed you.
Yoy really think that little of this community? Do you really think 1k players are going to ban someone because they said mean words? And let's be real, the only reason this is even being discussed is because the GMs can't ban goodkush under current rules.
Then let's discuss about the rules. Like you said above, there are 40k forum members, I DOUBT that there are more than 50% off of that who would trully vote for the reason statted. Because this is internet, you won't get accused of wrongly voting for someone's ban, and people will vote just for fun.
@godys I understand your concerns and yes it could be over-used by people trying to get signatures to get someone banned, but considering that, I suggested a time limit as well as 1k (almost all active forum accounts) signatures it is highly unlikely it'll pass. Also these can only be created for people who have multiple Blacklistings so a person cannot just create a petition for something easy or for having 1 blacklist submission only. If someone created a petition which matches the inscriptions but not a major offense or a situation where it wouldn't affect the community, the petition will result in nothing as it wouldn't get everyone's votes within 2 weeks. Also, I wanted this for extreme situations, not simple ones. It's possible we may only have 1 person who fits this but there's no certainty as there would be no other. A person who continuously harms the community AND will continue doing so on purpose is deemed harmful and petition worthy in my opinion. Considering all those, this system won't be used (hopefully at least) often at all. Maybe only once or twice in a Royaller's play-time. And for the unjustified signatures, yes there's no way to control why a person signs or supports the idea of banning one. I guess that is something to think over. Although in order to collect 1k signatures, hundreds of them need to be unjustified to have an affect on the petition. I have some faith in the community's maturity as @SmokerT69 said that there won't be that many signatures to unjustly ban someone based on this petition where 1k of signatures is needed. If a handful signs only cos they wanna see the world burn, that leaves 900-odd signatures in favour which is still almost all of the active community. Still thanks for the feedback, much appreciated
If this doesn't follow through to be anything, then I'll offer you guys this - If you can actually get 1,000 individual signatures suggesting that I be banned, then I'll request a self ban.
Clearly you weren't around when everyone could look at (and before that respond) to the Report Abuse section. It was (and probably still is) filled with petty nonsense. I think we should stick with the way it is, as to avoid witch hunts.
There is no witch hunt though. Again, the only reason this is even being discussed is because of a single player. When someone becomes that infamous, perhaps the GMs should be allowed to act outside the rules to remove that player for the health of the community. Since you want to bring up the past, most of these players would not even be around right now. Bundle scamming in FM and the likes were bannable before. The GMs have actually relaxed a lot with the bans. So, again, we would not even be having this discussion if it happened in the past.
I'm not really famous, there's only a few people who actually know what I did. I scammed 6 people out of the entire community.
I'd like to make something clear very quickly before it gets out of hand. I did not make this suggestion to ban a single player. There's been so much hate over him, yes, especially due to the fact that he claimed he will continue his behavior after his ban expires, but again this isn't an attempt to get him banned. I've made this suggestions only because people seemed helpless when it comes to toxic players who avoided getting banned but continued and will continue their acts, regardless of what or who it is. I just wanted the community to have a voice in this when it comes to matters where it affects the gameplay of others so much that it hurts the community but still falls under rules where gm's cannot do much about it besides keeping it professional and giving him/her the same game environment as others even though they know it's bad. If this gets implemented, then it would obviously take certain amount of maturity to function. If this doesn't get implemented, then nothing will change and I'd still be happy that I tried it. Some will obviously be for the idea and some will be against and that's how it should be. This is a feedback/suggestions section for the community not a report abuse place. So again this suggestion isn't meant for 1 specific user but to be used (and I think would be useful) for the server and community.
It still chaps my backside when I think about the Report Abuse tab being hidden from us. If players are scared of repercussions from the community to their reports, send it in to a GM via DM where it is annonymous. We have people out in our community who have done shitty things, and have been banned for their actions, all the while unbeknownst to the wider community. When I could see the threads pop up about someone using nasty hateful language and they were punished, I felt good. Sure, you'll get a ton of petty threads from players wanting someone perma banned for calling them a dumby face or something but thats always going to be a thing. You could always add a note to reporting abuse where if a GM deems your report to be overly petty, you get a temp ban or something if thats the path you wanna go down. Seeing players actually getting banned for toxic or overly cancerous behavior has a pacifying effect on the community. You feel like people are getting properly banned for shitty behavior and it makes you feel better. On the subject of community wide votes to ban players, I definitely feel like a group of well known players have a lot more power over influencing people to a certain way of thinking and this could in theory be abused to get someone they didnt like banned. It has room for abuse I'd rather not go near. Mob mentality is a dangerous thing to deal with. Opening up pandoras box to something like that is just not something I'm willing to agree with.
To be perfectly honest, I don't trust the community with this level of power. As someone who maintains the current blacklist, sometimes I wish it did have more power (eg: Staff provide all IGNs of repeat offenders, or ban certain offenders when provided with enough evidence and/or accusations) in the community. Other times, I have to read through pages of complete bullshit (eg: petty guild drama) and it makes me want to delete the thread entirely. So I'm just thankful that Staff currently intervene enough to the point that truly heinous actions are punished accordingly. We all know who I'm talking about LOL. But more importantly, whether a community ban is successful or not is one piece of the puzzle. The second piece of the puzzle is the fact that one player went out of their way to create a petition against another player in the first place. Yes this system may lead to witch hunts and yes many players in this server are petty, so maybe we should consider very carefully how this system would function. But what really worries me is the very inherent basis of the idea that any one player has the right to initiate a process of mobilizing the community against any other player. This form of vigilante "justice" would not only undermine the authority of the TOS, I believe it would further contribute to the seemingly ever-growing hostility and "toxicity" within this server as well. At the same time though, I think that public abuse reports led to a lot of tension in the community. Sure there were some petty reports everyone laughed at and had fun with, but what really grinded my gears back then was how there would be huge, heated arguments in the shoutbox twice a day whenever someone got banned for using an offensive slur. It got to the point where the same exact people were arguing about the same exact asinine nonsense about PC culture and other bullshit every time I wanted to have an actual conversation in the shoutbox. I reported a lot of people during that time, and it was a major point of concern in a huge forum rule feedback post that I made later.
I think a much more preferable solution is: update the terms and conditions to handle whatever actions that would be hated so much by so many people. I don't trust the community with this amount of power either. For community bans to work well, we have to assume that most people in the community think critically, act rationally, and have the server's best interest in mind. I am not sure this assumption is true, based on the amount of drama I see in game, forums, and chat apps. Moreover, if the community ban system is implemented in English only, then people who cannot read English will be underrepresented. And a multi-lingual community ban system is probably just too much to do.