Lets discuss

With the arrival of new interns, there has been a spike in inconsistent ban appeals, along with other screenshots I have seen where proof of breaking TnC was clearly stated, but they still got to walk free. I feel that the staff are showing favoritism to certain players. Does this mean everyone who claims they did not read the TnC gets to be unbanned?


https://royals.ms/forum/threads/ban-appeal-harassment.185303/
https://royals.ms/forum/threads/ban-appeal.185326/

 

I personally think the GM Intern handled both ban appeals quite reasonably and didn't really do anything wrong.

Ban appeal #1: The reporter was forgiving and understanding about the situation, thus the appealer was unbanned.
Ban appeal #2: There wasn't enough evidence so I'm not sure what's wrong with this one?

I think you are misinterpreting the "I'm going to unban you now since you didn't know this was against the rules" because I'm pretty sure he was ultimately unbanned cause the reporter was forgiving... not cause he didn't know the rules.

 

As for the first ban appeal, I feel like it should be treated just like a self-ban post. Unless the report (which we can no longer see) stated before an intern (or anyone else) could get to it that he was willing to drop the report, it should still go through and that they should see through their punishment. If that was the case, why did the ban go through in the first place?

In the second report, you could be right, I don't know what other "confidential" information could be leaked from staff since you seem so inclined that there was not enough evidence as if you saw it for yourself; but to us, we don't know behind-the-scenes of how these things pan out. To me, I see someone who broke the rules by looting someone's map, refused to leave, got banned, but was able to walk free because it was "too harsh." Or perhaps, there actually wasn't enough evidence and it was just a bad report, but still got banned anyway and thus a wrongful ban that could have been prevented if it were just looked through with a bit more caring eye.

I still stand by what I say and that there are some inconsistencies with how things are dealt with.

 

It's almost like they're literally interns that literally just started and it'd serve everyone well to show some empathy and understanding to the fact that they are learning the ropes before jumping to nonsense accusations about showing favoritism when they literally don't know any of these people

The report was updated when the player was banned--this is standard procedure. The player who originally submitted the report then responded that they no longer felt the need to see the person they reported punished.

 

Can you like..... Give them some time?
The active GMs are still teaching them, and as evident from the second appeal, the interns communicate with the rest of the staff to get second opinions. If it wasn't the case, @Incentv wouldn't be admitting that his ban was excessive in relation to the evidence that was provided, and the ban would've stayed as is. If anything, i feel more transparancy from that interaction than if his appeal was denied on the spot without any further reevaluations.

And thank you @interns for you hard work, so far I've seen all the interns hard at work so i'm personally pretty hopeful with this new GM batch :3

 

Well, since I’m related and I think I’m ONE of the person who reported the first ban appeal cuz I didn’t say I forgive the person who KSed me I just said “I don’t care” it doesn’t mean I “forgive” his innocence.
Royals has taught us “not knowing is not an excuse” we deserve the consequences we made by our innocence. We cannot be unbanned after making RWT Jokes or Hacking by saying “I don’t know it is against the rules” Can we ?

 

Let's take some other ban appeal cases for example people who literally can't understand English and those who have literally just started the game. To what extent is there a "grace period" for people like these?

As for the latter of your statement, I still think that what has been sent and can no longer be taken back for punishment—the same as how self-bans are. I'm sure more than one of us knows of a certain someone who tried to bribe their way out of a self-ban but was denied.

As a staff memeber once said, "we all know how much you guys love consistency."

That's good that the active GMs are still teaching them! I applaud those that are actually active in the first place and have kept their announced devoted time to the game. However, I still feel that there were previous candidates that were potentially WAY better off being staff (those who actually know the rules, and don't mind rule sharking [setting their foot down where the line ends]). Personally, I feel that if one does apply to be a staff member, they should be more familiar with the TnC than most players.

I myself have sent in a few reports that have gotten denied with hard VIDEO evidence of macro-botting, but yet the player is still roaming around at this moment.

 

Unfortunately easy to wish for and difficult to achieve in practice- your guess as to why.

 

Thanks for the hardwork as GM on handling appeals. For GM, I'll say, for upcoming appeals, choose your word wisely while replying so it won't cause any confusion.

That's being said, they are literally just an intern, their mistakes can be forgiven, but what about current GM? Do y'all cross checking before they reply o.o? This "since you're not aware of rules so I decide to unban you" is very misleading. Will active GM take note on this?

 

Its the same as for new players that just joined the server account sharing, joking about rwt & even actually vote abusing.
Would any of the staff show empathy to them?

Lots of appeals have been declined with an reply somewhere across, saying, “You agreed to the T&C when first logging on to MapleRoyals.”

Isn’t it similar to how staff should familiarise themselves with the T&C and how strict the server should be when handling the report abuse?

 

Let's not forget the "Well Behaved Child" medal that was put into place!

 

As for the first post, I'm personally not a fan of comparing self bans to retracted bans due to an reevaluation.
Self ban is an action done by a player, asking for staff's time to lock their account. Hence, they have the responsibility to use this tool properly, as they LITERALLY AGREEING AT THE START THAT A SELF BAN CANNOT BE REVERTED.
In comparison, a wrongful ban like your exmple start with a report that shows at least some evidence for a wrongdoing (kill stealing), but due to either the intern not knowing where past GMs drew the line, or him taking the rules as literal and assertive as possible, saw it fitting to give a ban. After the appeal was made, other gms looked into it, and told @Incentv apparently that the evidence wasnt strong enough or that the offense wasn't worth enforcement.
Either way, after they realized their error, why should they keep the person banned? There was a big thread a few months ago that literally asked staff to own up to their errors, and now you complain that they do?
This is nothing like self bans, and trying to paint it as such is downright a falancy.

 

The whole point of why I started this thread is about consistency. Wrongful bans are something that SHOULD NOT happen because posts like this will appear. As I have said before, staff—or anyone applying to be staff—should be way more knowledgeable in TnC than the average person.
The reason why I paint it as a self-ban post is that the reporter had SUFFICIENT evidence and that the ban was through. He even said himself, he did not "forgive" him. A rightful ban is a rightful ban and I believe the ban points should stick.
Trying to grab words from another ban appeal and sticking it to another for your own post to prove your point is downright a fallacy.
So what if there was a big thread a few months ago? You expect me to keep up with EVERY post?

 

Oh, actually, seems like i misunderstood you, i thought you compared the second ban appeal to self ban... This as an example makes a little more sense. My bad scoop.

I still stand by my opinion that the second ban appeal was handled properly once they discovered the error though.

 

I'm glad everyone is being active about this. I would like to reply to this one post in particular.
I did misinterpret your "don't care" as "forgiveness" because that's what I would've said (and I would've implied forgiveness) in your situation. I apologize for that. If you believe my decision was wrong, you can ask another staff member to review the appeal.

Is for the rest of the feedback, I would like to thank everyone who is giving me feedback here and will work on everything that was said. I'll start by reading more ban appeals.

 

The "carebare" (soft) side of staff was never shown in previous ban appeals. I feel like this post is no different. I have seen some ban appeals that do seem biased or wronged by certain staff, but only a select few are eligible to actually handle such cases. To my knowledge and a lot of other opinions, only one is present enough to be shown to be doing hard work.
Maybe it's the majority of us who are biased?

I never said anyone was perfect, but there are ways to minimize such mistakes happening, familiarizing the history of Royals is one way.

 

Why are we discouraging an environment that brings common sense to an equation? Both bans were less than 2 days, worse case is they are repeat offenders and get disciplined again.

 

Curious, was there an effort to reach out to the staff member before making a thread about it?

 

I'm just here to give my two cents. None of what I say here represents what the entire team thinks or feel, and these are my personal opinions.

I think we should give credit to the new batch of GM Interns for diving into reports under the Report Abuse section and for assisting the team with Ban Appeals.

Mistakes are bound to happen as it has already been stated multiple times on this thread, they are still new. Heck, even I make mistakes sometimes and I personally think that everything can be worked out as long as we learn from our mistakes.

This also begs the question on why we don't offer leniency to new players who break the rules - we do. It's just not for the more serious offences that people ought to know are wrong.

For example, a new player joins a guild and asks if anyone knows a person who can sell them good gear in exchange for real money and anyone in that guild would be able to chime in and tell that player that RWT is strictly prohibited in our server. It takes a lot more effort for someone to actively source 'trustworthy' sellers than to simply pose a question to their friends and/or guildies (not that I am encouraging this, I'm simply using this as a comparison!).

Then we also have those who vote abuse. We are rather lenient towards vote abusers who simply didn't know any better. More often than not, these are the ones who own up to their vote abuse history and come clean with us, and they would have done a slight bit of it before realising that it was wrong. This shows that Staff does show some leniency and give a certain degree of benefit of the doubt but this simply cannot be overlooked for major vote abuse cases, as every single time someone votes, there will be a text on the page that states that only one person per household can vote every day, unless they have been whitelisted.

Let's now go on to the obviously wrong things, such as kill-stealing, hacking and whatnot. Common sense is meant to be common but throughout my life, I have learnt that it's not exactly that common. Even so, you'd have to be a pretty ignorant person to do these things without feeling any remorse, or you simply had bad intentions in doing them anyway.

In dealing with reports and ban appeals, I personally tend to ask the team for any opinions before I handle cases that I have doubts about because I don't want to be making a mistake that could have been avoided. I trust that majority of my teammates also do the same thing and if the GM Interns make mistakes, it is on all of us too. So please, please do not single anyone out, especially if they are still new.

Can we just take a step back and acknowledge that GM Incentv has actually apologised for his mistake and just trust that he will learn from it, as will all of us? There's simply no need to put him in the spotlight like this and just understand that he is doing his best to help lighten the workload for Staff. Please show a bit of kindness and compassion for a new GM Intern who just wants to make a difference in the community. Give him this opportunity to learn and develop his skills as a GM and I trust that he will be a great GM in due course. Be patient with him and the rest of us