Alright, everyone just go completley off topic and shut down my idea instead of telling me the problems you have with it, thanks everyone.
Sarcasm from someone who hasn't put in a single positive comment on the subject, kindly find some professionalism. At least i'm trying to find a solution instead of refusing to even think or try because it's "work" there hasn't been a single suggestion from any member of the staff about possible ways to fix this. Because you all refuse to because you do not care. You do what you want and what the community wants be damned.
I didn't need to add anything because John already made all the points I would have wanted to make. I was being completely serious. If you have something written up that would work for us then kindly PM it to us. We would be happy to discuss it being implemented. We have brainstormed a new system in the past but it just doesn't seem likely at this time. If anyone has any actual ideas please let us know.
Yes, we totally don't care. We and the staff replied and posted opinions in this thread for no apparent reason at all... I've yet hear you come up with any good idea other than complain on the current system and suggest we remove it completely but no good ideas on what changes would make your so called new banning system any better than the current one. Honestly, I can't take you seriously with that avatar...
As nice as it would be for there to be a reduced punishment for account sharing, it's not going to happen. It would just be too much work for the staff to handle. How would they be able to tell the difference between someone who is account sharing to powerlevel, and someone who's just logging onto their friends account to help them out? It's much easier to just make it bannable to account share than have to take all of those possibilities into account when dealing with ban appeals. The staff already deals with enough stuff and this would just add to it immensely. And no, they didn't "sign up for this." It's a volunteer job that they don't get paid for and if they don't feel comfortable taking on an added work load that's their choice. This is something they do because they enjoy, not because it's a job.
Ok did anyone even read my original post? ANY ACCOUNT SHARING= ACCOUNT BAN/TEMP BAN. If you power leveled, went on your friends account to get an item, went on your bf/gfs account to fix their inventory DOESENT MATTER WHAT YOU DID ON THEIR ACCOUNT. Im not asking them to go through and treat every situation diffrently this causes NO MORE WORK for the gms, all it does is keep people who do something as harmless as account sharing from being PERMABANNED. So John I replied to your post earlier with my solutions, can you please tell me what you think about them or what else is wrong? Im tired of people fighting on my fucking thread instead of talking about it like i wanted! enough! Im really serious about this idea and 1 post telling me 1 thing thats wrong i dont consider enough! Take all your fighting into Pm's!
How about a forced T&C quiz upon character creation to prevent accidental vote abuse/account sharing/etc?
This is a very important point, and a large part of the reason why account sharing has such a heavy penalty. There's a lot of things we can figure out from the database, but finding out exactly what someone was doing on another person's account isn't easy. There are certain things that would be easier than others to spot, such as power-levelling, taking someone else's valuable items or - I think - doing a friend's ZJQ for them. However, that's not to say that they're easy to spot, and if two or more people are logging into the same account from the same house and computer, yes, it's going to be hard (although not necessarily impossible) to tell if that happens without following everything they do, in painstaking detail. The other reason for account sharing having such a heavy penalty is that if the ban was a 2 tier one, there are some people who would take as much advantage of this as possible until they got caught the first time. Although they can do this with other rules too, account sharing is harder to detect and clearly prove than - for example - botting. Having said this, though, my own preference would still be to make account sharing into a 2 tier ban to bring it more in line with the relative severity of and penalties for other offences. If the penalty was to be two-tier, the penalty for the first offence would have to be at least a 14 day ban (unless there was evidence of any major abuse taking place, in which case it would be a permanent ban). I also feel that the option of a 14 day ban should only be available to those who have the decency to own up to account sharing when caught, on the grounds that people who lie about a difficult-to-prove offence are a huge waste of staff time - time that would be better spent on helping other players and making improvements to the game. Please note, this are my own personal thoughts and do not necessarily represent the views of the staff. I also love Ague's suggestion of a quiz on the rules. =)
Thank you so much kat for this. I really appreciate you taking my suggestion seriously and taking the time to give me your thoughts.
TotalGlamour, the reason why most people are shooting this idea down without regard for the points you've raised is because they all understand why the rule still is what it is; permaban for account sharing. They all understand that it would be rather annoying to have your leveling accomplishments beaten out by three blokes who decided to share a character. They're not shooting it down because they don't care about making positive change, they're shooting it down because they understand exactly what we feel about this rule; it's a fine line to walk that could be highly abusable just to save the minority who may have been mistreated by this rule.
If you make the rule an account ban, what happens to the 2/3 of people banned for hacking that claim "my brother logged onto my account"? Do you enforce the ip ban hacking penalty, or the account ban for sharing? Changing the rule creates a grey area, and regardless of any gripe you may have with the staff (and chaossound clearly has one, at least) I don't think anyone can argue that they're inconsistent. grey areas are 100% a bad thing in my opinion, and for that reason alone, I wouldn't want the rule changed. Additionally, the argument that people may not realize what they're doing is wrong is a poor one. It's your own responsibility to be aware of the rules, as is constantly reminded to players in game by a royalstip. You agree to them qhen you sign up, and if you dont know what youre agreeing to, you have no one to blame but yourself.
I do not have any problems with the staff never have. I was just upset with john for a moment because i felt he had ignored the my suggested solutions to his concerns, then even more upset by the all the fighting that was unnecesairy. Im not a closed minded person, i really do understand where everyone is comming from. I just felt that account banning would work out in all ways, its sad to see so many nice people banned over a rule that iv never seen enforced in any other server iv been on in the 7 years iv been playing private servers. Alot of people account share because they dont know its wrong because they arent doing it for the wrong reasons. Honestly this is my way of thinking of it, Its my account and if i want to let my boyfriend on to it to go look at my items, check out my skills, change some things in my shop, take back some items i forgot to give him, i should be allowed. I understand that i am taking a risk and if something happens and my stuff gets stolen it is my responsibility. Now if he goes onto my character and levels for me? That is what i feel would be wrong, not him being on my account but him leveling for me. We made sure to read the tos before we started playing this server and have not account shared, but i feel for the people who didnt check have and suffered a permaban because of it, which is why i made this thread. I know that the gms have a big workload but would it be possible to think of another solution for the innocent people that fall into that category? For example i think it was Thizo that just got banned because of it? I am all for permabanning power levelers but should the others that havennt dont anything wrong have to suffer the same punishment? Edit: Also to answer your question "If you make the rule an account ban, what happens to the 2/3 of people banned for hacking that claim "my brother logged onto my account"? Do you enforce the ip ban hacking penalty, or the account ban for sharing?". In that situation the rule of any hacking in the household results in a permanent ban would hold, because either way if it was on his brothers account or his its stil hacking.
I'm still not sure I comprehend why a reduced penalty of say a 7 day ip ban can't be enforced for a 1st offense regardless of ignorance or maliciousness etc. This would either act as a deterrent or a lesson to those to not commit the same mistake again? Obviously if the offense is committed once again a permaban would be required. I also want to add that I'm very grateful for what the staff go through to help the server. Regardless of the problems that have been raised with how everything is run, I feel that very hard work is being put in individually and collectively for the good of the community. _____________________________ SgtYellow - Lvl 12x Shadower - Stan
It's funny that all the rules that are unfair to one person are another always seem to be a "minority" If the staff is so sure that the majority of the server feels the same way they do why not put it up to a vote?
Because it's bad to always only think about what the majority has to say in serious cases like this. This is a more controversial subject which means both sides have a lot more to say rather then just cast a simple yes or no vote. Might as well boycott the whole thing so there won't be a high enough turnout to such a serious subject since we know the majority will win. While it is normal for the majority to win in most cases where the deciding factor will be the majority and that's only because there are more people backing up their own opinions and casting votes on the same option, however the best solution in this case would be to find a solution where all parties agree, to at least a certain degree, that we have reached a suitable and justifiable conclusion. That includes both the majority, the staff and the minority as their opinions matters as well.
Also for the record I don't have an issue with the staff at all. I have an issue with the rules which quite a few people feel strongly about. If there was what could be even considered an issue it would be that I find the staff unwilling to compromise to make everyone happy rather than what's the easy way out.
To some this isn't even considered an issue because many feel that it's fine as it is while to some this is a BIG issue especially for players like Chaossound and TotalGlamour who feel very strongly about this. And that's exactly why we need to raise more attention to the punishment of account sharing. No rule is hardly perfect but we can at least try and come to a conclusion. There are no easy ways out on this matter and there never were any. If the easy way was to just go on with the current system before having tried every possible solutions then more threads like this will keep popping up. GMs have no choice but to deal with it because sooner or later all the accumulated aftereffects will hit back and trust me, they will hit very hard.
It's impossible to make everyone happy. The best we can do is make it as fair as possible for as many people as possible. As for account sharing, yes it can be unfair for people who are just transferring items. But claiming ignorance of the rules is not a legitimate excuse, everyone agrees to the rules upon joining, everyone should know it's against the rules to account share. So unless you're blatantly disrespecting the rule, you should not do it. I wouldn't mind a tiered system, but how to you prove anything with account sharing? It's like Gi said earlier, we can't really track account sharing, and we can't really prove what who did on whom's account unless they admit to it. So how do we implement the tiered system? We can try to investigate, but that would take LOT'S of time and for very few results. We'd have to go on trust, and we regularly catch people lying to us about breaking the rules. So forgive us if we're not entirely trusting. If someone has a system that would work without spending days trying to figure out if someone shared, and what they did on another person's account we would consider it. The staff has talked about it at length and can't figure one out, that's why we may seem dismissive. But putting more brains together could provide an answer.
