Notice Introduction of new game rule: Handling real world trade goods

https://royals.ms/forum/threads/staff-application-information.199821/

 

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aww, you're too kind!

 

Applying the rule retroactively for trades that were made before the rule existed is highly immoral. Even considering it should have been shouted down in a room of sane people. Actually moving forward with applying it, and gleefully posting in a ban appeal "don't worry, now there is a rule for this" is reprehensible. Applying the rules for an arbitrary amount of time before the rule existed, rather than retroactively for months or years, is also really bizarre.

To the staff: What would the harm have been if you didn't apply the rule retroactively to people who didn't break the rules at the time? Is it that you had to ban Lee and rnuse because you banned OceanJon, who, from the sounds of it, you were going to ban anyways? Did this whole rule come out of a way to ensure you could uphold the ban on OceanJon without "losing face"?

I know Staff are working hard and trying their best....but whether or not you agree with the rule, the immorality of the implementation is staggering and does not instill confidence in anyone in its future application.

I also echo the comments made earlier that you weren't "asking for the community's help"--which would have been received enthusiastically--you were threatening to either 14-day ban and claw back potentially hundreds of billions of items, i.e. Maple financial ruin, or permaban at your own very questionable discretion, anyone in the community.

 

Honestly this is asking too much of the players. this should be a game to relax after a day of work/school. instead we need to keep track of every trade and use a spreadsheet, this isn't Eve online lmfao
Plus rwters will always find a loophole, this only hurts your legit players

 

Just a suggestion,

maybe we can link accounts to mobile phones, and those need to get verified via code that sent through text to perform certain trades

or maybe develop a marketplace application for those specific transactions and handle the security measures there. Maybe sellers has to link their accounts at sign up so things like has a mage or not, time played (probably just grab it from database so it can't be faked), and etc are filled in once only. Maybe when a deal is reached both players most choose designated character to complete the trade, whatever was said in the deal must matched what is trade afterwards. This might be too much idk lol. just suggesting things

 

Days later and I am already not enjoying the game as much because I feel like I have to record every single thing I sell and the origins of it which is getting tedious af. I have started playing less and less now.
I kinda doubt I am the only one who feels this.

 

Whoever came up this this rule fails to realize MapleRoyals is just a simple game to have fun on to a lot of people and when you make rules like this its really unrealistic to expect casual players to go through this much trouble to buy an item here or there.

Scrap it

BTW!!!! DEFINITION OF FREE MARKET: an unregulated system of economic exchange, in which taxes, quality controls, quotas, tariffs, and other forms of centralized economic interventions by government either do not exist or are minimal. As the free market represents a benchmark that does not actually exist, modern societies can only approach or approximate this ideal of efficient resource allocation and can be described along a spectrum ranging from low to high amounts of regulation.

THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT TO FACILIATING A FREE MARKET

So you want to be harsher on RWT and because you cannot definitively prove that someone knowingly traded with an RWTer when you ban them so you decide to come up with this assinine rule. Honesty you GM's need to take a step back and listen to the community feedback and realize your not always correct. If over 90% of your end game loyal player base who worked countless hours for their gears or trying to upgrade them are telling you this idea dosent make sense and needs major rework and you dont listen to them well it just shows a lack of humility and honestly seems like your on a power trip

 

So do we just get radio silence now?
I know I said I would not quit over this but I am heavily reconsidering as days go by and nobody has any commentary aside from arguing with the community on why we're all wrong and this rule is great and fine. I am for SURE sticking to no more donor items.

 

Don’t worry. Staff will release clarification on this rule soon. All I have to say still is… lol

 

Greetings Royallers.

Over the past week we have taken a hard look at the feedback to our newest game rule. We appreciate that several players understand the intent behind the rule despite disagreeing with its original form, and we appreciate much of the constructive criticism provided. We would like to clear up some misunderstandings, answer your questions, and hopefully address the main concerns shared by everyone in this thread.

Why not make this a Notice instead of a rule?
Making this a 'notice' is the equivalent of what we've already had prior to this. Many players assist us with RWT investigations privately, with several going the extra step of ensuring they do not enable rule breakers by trading with them, regardless of the profit incentive. For that, we are incredibly grateful. However, this rule is necessary, in one form or another. We've found that a significant number of players have been taking advantage of this gray area. That is, they'd proclaim 'it's a gray area and the GMs responsibility to clean up the mess, not us', and then just go through with highly suspicious trades. Indeed, it is the duty of the staff team to catch rule breakers and enforce the rules. However, there must be some responsibility on the players' end as well.

What purpose does this rule serve?
There are two components to this rule: accountability and protection.

There is now a template for how to interact with players when making trades above a certain threshold. This is enforcing accountability and responsibility which players should bear at a certain point in their progression, especially when they are dealing with high value trades. The burden is on Staff to fully investigate cases and enforce the rules of course, but there must be some accountability from the community. Asking the community nicely is simply not enough, and evidently, has not worked with regard to turning a blind eye to suspicious individuals.

While this rule proposes a new form of punishment, our goal with it pertains to more than just that.

It provides guidance. Players are now equipped with a way to protect themselves. It should be common practice to verify who you are interacting with when dealing with high value trades. As Tim stated previously, the work is minimal; when one does their due diligence, it will be saved in the chat logs. Players will not be receive a strike if they are successfully lied to by an RWTer. If a player is banned in connection with an RWTer, they are now given a solid basis for proving their innocence. That is, a strike and removal of items will only be issued if a player has not done their due diligence.

It could be argued that this rule should have already existed without the need to place a more concrete responsibility on the player base. That is, similar to how one would be banned for following a hacker and looting their goods, one should also be punished for actively seeking out suspicious individuals offering goods for significantly below market price. With this rule, we feel

1. It is now specified in the Terms and Conditions, and no longer a broad gray area.
2. Power is taken away from those knowingly dealing with illicit goods.
3. Should a player be suspected of wrong doing, they now have a way to say: 'I am unwilling to enable these actors. Here are the reasons I deemed it was safe to trade with them.'

A general statement about rules and enforcement.
No rule is 100% effective. No rule is airtight. Discretion will always be necessary. Rules are open to interpretation. These are all obvious things. The addition of this new rule does not mean that we've reached our wit's end with combatting rule breakers. This is not a last resort or act of desperation, as some of the sentiment seems to imply. We've improved many backend functions to deal with RWT and illicit activities. Today, MapleRoyals is leagues ahead of where it once was in regard to detection of rule breakage and rule enforcement. Behind most bans and appeals is discussion; multiple staff members chime in, admins ask for our experience and opinions often. We vote, equally, if there are conflicting opinions, as we all want the best outcomes for the server and community (which are, in many respects, one and the same.)

To imply that this rule was enacted to reduce a burden on staff and shift a workload to players is, by all accounts, incorrect, and quite honestly, a bad faith interpretation. We will be doing the same, if not more work to ensure that whatever bans result from this new rule and existing rules are reasonable and proper. There will always be gray areas in the Terms and Conditions, and that will never change. However, we feel this rule helps us to move forward in addressing what we deem to be the largest of these 'gray areas' that are impacting the game.

The staff team is not run by one individual's absolute motives. It is not subject to the whims of a single person. At this time, we strongly believe that we have built a team of players with diverse views, while also having one common goal: the betterment of the server. Players can speculate on the worst case scenarios of rule enforcement when it comes to staff discretion. However, there are many times when staff discretion has been used in a positive manner, and it is what ultimately leads to the leniency that occurs in some cases. It is what is necessary to fill in the gaps, to address the odd scenarios.

We will end this section with a word on staff roles and contributions. There are many responsibilities given to and contributions made by staff that players are not privy to. Forum activity, event hosting, and ticket answering are not a reliable indication of a staff member's contributions to the server. Further, our ability to enforce the rules does not increase with the number of people that join the team; the solution to most issues is almost never 'hire more staff members'. Players may notice that one bottleneck in our work flow is work that can only be done by an administrator, and it has been suggested to promote individuals to this role as well. We have been working on allowing staff members to obtain more information which can help them make decisions on issues that were previously only possible by an administrator. Currently, GMs and Interns have the ability to perform many checks as a first line of defense in regards to suspicious individuals. That is, they can check for account associations among other information, and make judgment calls in reports on suspicious individuals.

Retroactive Bans
The staff discretion rule was created to provide both the staff and the players the tools to address 'gray area' scenarios. Gray area scenarios are few and far between, and we would like them to stay that way, as that indicates the rules we have currently have are working. However, this type of scenario (purchasing an item or items from another player that was being sold greatly under its true market value, creating the scenario where the buyer would purchase the item or items for the low price, and then re-sell it at a higher price/its actual market price, and make a significant profit from the trade, sometimes knowingly with a shady character) has become too common. We wished to address this gray area, and it was due to these types of situations being common that the new rule was added to the Terms and Conditions of Maple Royals.

The players who have been 'retroactively' banned were banned via the staff discretion rule, not via the new Handling Real World Trade Goods rule. We did not feel it would be fair to punish the players via the new rule, as it was not officially implemented as of their bans, and we decided on the 14-day ban without the removal of goods. Players who were recently banned in connection to this rule have not received a first strike. We apologize for the unclear wording and confusion in this area.

Feedback: What have we changed?
We've heard the feedback, and have made some changes to the rule. We've added some clarification and increased the meso threshold from 1 billion to 5 billion meso. Note that the threshold is not absolute; given the following updated wording in the appendix:

That is, while there is a 5 billion meso threshold, the core purpose of the rule is to combat nefarious actors that attempt to skirt around these limits in place.

We believe that these changes will cover a majority of cases, without putting a heavy burden or inconvenience on the player base.

Questions:

​

Q: What do we do in a scenario where someone wishes to conduct a trade with a mule character that they hold mesos with, but does not wish to disclose their main characters? I ask this because one of my main sources of making mesos in this game is flipping attack gears that I see people selling through smega, and a lot of the times, I'm met with trades from mule characters. For all these trades, I ask why they're not trading on their main character, and they respond by saying that this is where they hold all their mesos and they do not wish to disclose their main IGNs. What do we do here? If we can't find any information on them because they choose not to reveal, do we just not conduct the trade at all to be safe?
A: That’s correct. If they do not wish to show that they are normal players with main characters and activity that you expect from someone selling such items, do not complete the trade with them.

Q: What is considered sufficient with regards to the checklist?
A: Some scenarios may not require running through the checklist at all. For example, trading with notable community members, or a level 200 in a 'well known' guild. In these instances, all or most of the checklist would already be done for you.

Q: Are we supposed to run through this checklist for buying items sold in bundles totalling over 5b?
A: If there is a deal where items are totaling over this amount, the checklist should be completed. However, players are advised to exercise caution when dealing with commonly RWTed goods, including chaos scrolls, white scrolls, apples, auf haven miracle scrolls, taru totems, brown work gloves, stormcaster gloves, and facestompers to name a few. If you find a character is selling these items at a significantly lower price than the current market, you should report them. If a character approaches you privately to try and sell these goods in bulk, you should not deal with them should they not satisfy the checklist.

Q: I made a deal with a character that is now banned for RWT. Will I be banned or have my items revoked?
A: If the RWTer had satisfied the checklist items and you had done your due diligence, then you will not be subject to any punishments of this rule. If you had made a deal with a suspicious character, for example a level 30 character selling a perfect weapon with no main account, then you may be subject to punishment.

Q: How will this affect the staff’s workload?
A: We expected our workload to increase, and we welcome that if it helps to mitigate real world trade and those who are benefitting from real world traders. This would only involve the staff if the user making the purchase determines that the seller seems questionable and should be investigated. This could be due to the seller not providing any answers to the questions on the checklist.

Q: Who decides the market price now?
A: The market will still remain a Free Market. Market prices have proven to be stable enough to reasonably determine a price range for most items within a given time period. If you are making money with items below market value, it is fine as long as you determine the sellers are okay to deal with according to the checklist.

Q: Why not revert illicit trades instead of revoking the items? At what point in a trade chain would items be revoked?
A: We've discussed trade reverts and weighed out the pros and cons. Ultimately, we settled on the removal of goods without a refund. The player(s) who participated in this 'gray area' market do so to make profit, taking away their profit items without a refund would discourage them from attempting under the table deals. If you are successfully lied to, you will still keep the items because the chat logs will show that you have done your due diligence and were lied to by the suspicious individual.
It's also not always feasible to revert trades due to the items/mesos circulating elsewhere outside of the two parties. They are spread into the game economy further and sometimes consist of consumables like scrolls meaning we would effectively be duping items that shouldn't be in the economy just to revert a trade and remove something else.

Q: Why isn't the threat of having an item revoked enough? In other words, is the threat of a ban necessary?
A: Unfortunately it is necessary because some players have proven that they will repeat the same behavior. We expect the threat of removal of items to deter most players.

Q: What do I do if I am selling bulk services or services to the same person over the course of days?
A: Players should always question who they are dealing with regards to bulk services. While the threshold specified in the rule is 5 billion mesos, we encourage players selling leech, pre-quest services, boss item services, and so on to report individuals they find suspicious. There is currently no punishment involving services, provided the services actually occurred.

Three posts previously answering some of the questions here, and others.
https://royals.ms/forum/threads/int...-world-trade-goods.213575/page-3#post-1272659
https://royals.ms/forum/threads/int...-world-trade-goods.213575/page-4#post-1272680
https://royals.ms/forum/threads/int...-world-trade-goods.213575/page-4#post-1272687

We hope that this revision and statement have clarified many of your concerns. Thank you all for your patience and the care you've shown for the server.

 

Honestly, bad move afaict. Bad rule, bad doubling down.

 

Extremely pleased with the response by Nut, and very happy to hear that the communities voices have been heard.

This is a very welcome clarification.

While I am still not ecstatic that the rule was used in such a manner, I'm glad that this did not mean the first strike for these members.

I don't think I'll have any need to comment on this thread. Thank you staff!

 

There is no misunderstanding.

 

I had no expectations, yet I am somehow still disappointed.

 

I guess they didn't really read our comments .
As long as you strict the amount of profit we can get it is still not a Free Market.
Basiclly all you did is to increase the amount of trade limit from 1b to 5b.
GJ

 

Lmfao imagine getting banned as a legit player because you don't run a background check on your seller every time. We soon have more banned players then active players

 

What a nice stand. Way to go. Honestly I am nobody. I'm just a name, a number. But I will not spend a single dollar on RP again.
You've made a great stand of splitting this community. You've taken a stand where you, divide this community. This is no longer a fun , casual chill game. It's a control system.

Many people who conduct daily trades, spend hours after hours on this game yet they're now eligable to be banned for conducting trades where they can gain some mesos or benifiting items from people who actually RWT. (be it unintentional)

Do you not see what you're doing? Are you guys running the show some kind of Marxist? You have a crazy mindset that's for sure.

 

First of all really detailed staff feedback submitted by nut thats really great!

I am not sure if you staff really understood where the constructive criticism came from, by reading this I got the strong impression of "hell absolutely no!", but at least it is clear that you guys believe in this new rule and that it apparently seems to fix a problem.

Raising the bar to 5B will at least not compromise daily gameplay, so I think it is good that you heard community feedback about that.

I just think this rule is completely unnecessary, cause apparently it is only about several known individuals. Why do you not just contact them and tell them that they will get banned if they do not stop profiting from RWT instead of impacting like everyone? Hardly believable that we are talking about 5B items here, most probably we are in the range of 20B + here, but lets be honest we are most likely talking about ranges of 50-100B and more.

Just contact each of these players individually, this is the least work. Just ban them you can do whatever you want anyway, as you also showed us all by retroactively applying rules.

 

Honestly with the increase to 5b this rule makes more sense. Where the disconnect might be is in the communication of the rule:

1.Saying it's a grey area, then saying "there must be some responsibility on the players' end as well" is taking a stance on that grey area and alienating anyone who disagrees that profiting off of the RWT is their fault. Stating it as a matter of fact makes it sound like you aren't listening to those people. Ultimately you are the admins, you make the final call and it's likely internally it was a gray area for you guys too. Otherwise, this rule would have been put in place or not in place at all right from the start of the server. If you communicate that internally it was a gray area too, but people systematically taking advantage of this loophole caused too many problems for the server, then it's a much easier pill for the community to swallow. Remember that you're asking your most dedicated players with net worths over 5b to go out of their way to do a favor for your server because managing RWT is your job.

2. Tim's initial release of the rule was black-and-white, do this or be banned. Now you're saying rules are up for interpretation, no rule is airtight, etc. You could see why there's confusion here, especially considering we there's an entire career dedicated to interpreting rules in real civilizations (judges). If your decision is to have flexibility in the interpretation of this rule, then the problem wasn't that we misunderstood, it was that you miscommunicated initially, so admit that, clarify, and people will understand if not initially, eventually.

Thanks for all the hard work you do, GMs! At the end of the day I know most of the community and GM's are acting in good faith. The opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference, and what you're seeing in this thread is simply a group people trying to make things better. I hope the community and admins can continue to have this dialogue to get to the solution that makes sense for everyone

 

What about adding a small reward if the reported suspect turns out guilty?

The reward can be a random box or 2, identical to the reward players receive when exiting a GM event - which can range from crappy ores to cs/ws/taru/podium etc.

Wouldn't that motivate people especially when they are placed in an ambiguous situation?