General Ban appeals are a meme and need a clear rework.

Do you want me to answer with full honesty?
Edit (to elaborate a bit): Not "people" but very specific people
Yes. (there's at least a few instances where it hasn't worked but the answer is yes)
You don't have to "buy" it neither my "innocence" in your eyes, but neither i have to care about your particular opinion in this matter (well asides the fact that we are replying to each other of course)

 

Weaponizing ban appeals is nothing new on this server.

 

i think you quoted the wrong person for this , but ill answer it too.

It's not a guarantee that the reporter will get the person banned, but there's a CHANCE to get the person banned. Like i said in my previous post, the fact that a player can get banned for something he/she did YEARS ago, and not actually what they are being reported for, creates this opportunity for people to utilize it to get the people they dislike banned. You don't need hard evidence or proof, your report can be made out of entirely conjecture and speculations, as long as it is convincing enough for staff to do a background check, all they need to do is pray there's some kind of vote abuse / account sharing history. There are zero consequences to falsifying a report, zero. So long as there's a chance to get rid of someone you dislike, people will use it and this creates this weaponizing of report to get someone you dislike banned.

I would show you the behind-the-scenes on how refine got witchhunted by "Mr.J" which is entirely made out of speculations and complete bullshit, but pretty sure it will get deleted.

 

I can attest to lxlx's post since I've read through the entire conversation between Mr. J and the discussion about Refine, and it's extremely clear that Mr. J intentionally abused the reporting system in order to get Refine banned. I believe this isn't the first time he has done something like this. I've always wondered why some people are so determined to help the staff get other players banned, even though it's not their responsibility. Because of these individuals, I think most of the staff have become lazy and just rely on information from these "reporters," regardless of whether it's true or false. As a result, the server has developed a toxic culture of reporting that has caused a lot of drama. It's disappointing that our professional staff members don't seem interested in solving the issue or identifying where it's coming from.

 

Ding ding ding!

 

Matt i dont think staff doesnt care, but there are other problems:
1)are players who got wrongfully banned being *honestpy* compensated for the time lost? A player that doesnt care about xp as hes selling leech for income wouldnt care about 2x droprate and 2x meso and 2x coupon for example, especially if theyre like 1 day, as he potentially lost dozens of bills not being able to sell leech
2) wrongful bans - were all aware that wrongful bans will always happen, but why do innocent people have to keep logs of every drop they got, every trade they did etc - ive been vocal about this issue for years now.
3) witch hunt mentality - i think this one speaks for itself. Whether its coming from staff being swamped and assuming reported players are innocent or by them being too strict and go for the ban first ask questions later.

Its not healthy foe the server

 

Be FAIR TO ALL PLAYER

 

Thank you for responding @Matt , just some question(s),

Shouldn't there be statutes of limitations when it comes to certain abuse?

 

Outstandign reply. This cleared it up for me at least. Without you mentioning the two parties evidence. I take it, I shouldn't worry about screenshotting everything i do to back up my innocence. As you have the logs and see suspicious behaviour.

I appriciate all the hard work from the whole Royals team and wish you all the best.

// Jindu

 

Hello, @Matt thank you for taking the time to reply and elaborate upon what we know.

This is a good step acknowledging a flaw that has been ignored by the community because let's admit, banned players are in the rear end of things and a source of entertainment to read from, acknowledging such thing ain't a sign of weakness but a virtue that clearly shows that you still care regardless if this comes from truly caring about the status of the ban appeal section, the players banned or simply the public image of the server.
I do hope that the response time will improve sooner or later, more sooner than late tho for whoever has to appeal now and in the future regardless of their assumed innocence or
culpability.

I suspected that he had that ability because of his replies on some appeals that imply deeper knowledge than the usual and hopefully that's a sign that better things are to come or that at least again you acknowledge that the current state of the ban appeal section/Tim's workload and the current investigation pacing is just all messed up.

I'm sure Karven absence has been noticed but the impact may been overlooked, again lack of communication at its finest but this is a step.
Yeehaw is a chill and great guy all around, assisted me personally with few matters when he had no responsibilities or any duty to help me and i think the changes are noticeable since he joined as developer.

Agree, however you need to find a middle ground for this, the fact that this sort of complaint is the only way to raise awareness is quite telling.

Unfortunately i have to disagree with you here to some extent and i cannot remain silent any longer.
With "staff" we refer to Tim to avoid turning this into a witch hunt of some sorts, but since he's the one that deal with the heaviest workload and the one that is handling the most controversial bans together with the most sensible data then its logical that we do look upon him more, apologies if personally i did offend someone else in the staff but without any communication is impossible to guess where do you all stand and what do you guys stand for exactly.

Now back to Tim.

-Its widely known that "private reporting" exists, be it through discord or dming him.
-There's at least "two" well known players that do submit reports straight on to Tim, from mundane stuff up to very elaborate essays.
-Nobody can be sure if after said private report he's the only one that decides and issues bans and apparently seems that he is god almighty acting upon such "private" reports.

-Tim is overworked and overloaded or straight stopped giving a dime regarding the ones getting banned (again, who knows, how can you guess? communication at its finest)

-We (players) are being asked to do our due diligence now but apparently Tim is failing to do his own due diligence and is over relying on those "two players" which regardless of their reputation had good success pointing rule breakers but...
Unfortunately said players have turned this "newfound" power into a way to which hunt whoever falls under their radar as a suspect, whoever turns to be competition in a fictional range checking ego thread and whoever they might have a petty feud with in game and Tim either unknowingly or knowingly is taking part in this.

-The amount of bans that have been overturned after months pertaining "rwt" should be worrying and i don't think there's any compensation mentioned in any of those threads.

What do i have to think of this as a player currently banned?
Welp you tell me, because i don't even know.

I hope that you and the staff can prove me wrong regardless of the situation with very own appeal and personally i hope that the trust i did put in Royals the very moment i picked this private server wasn't a mistake.

But the current problem is not issuing a wrongful ban but how long it takes to clear and resolve a ban, i don't think complaints would be a thing if lets say appeals could be resolved within 3 weeks up to a month.
As for compensation, there needs to be consistency as well because i can point an appeal where the user was banned for nearly a year without any sort of compensation and others with different degrees of duration without compensation and only one with recent compensation only because it happened during X-mas event?

I want to believe and sincerely i hope you success and deliver.

 

#1 it will be deleted upon name calling anyone, why do you think people uses "staff" as synonym for Tim?
#2 it ain't a major state secret if you are active in game and somewhat social you'll find out.
#3 I haven't posted "proof" neither will anyone trying to discredit me.
#5 i will continue for a long as i want to, i'll go back and forth and this is my hill to die on.
#6 You seem quite invested to even recall my GIOYC for which i had obvious reasons to rant before moving into this later on.
#7 I skipped over number four.

 

Maybe I can help provide a little bit of insight.

Nobody receives priority when it comes to handling reports. It's literally handled in the order in which it was received, UNLESS, the staff member handling the reports at the time is only targeting specific kinds of reports (like KSing or hate speech reports), then they would jump over certain report topics.

As for how somebody gets banned by reports:

- User submits a report against another player
- GM looks over the report and determines whether it is something they can handle and close themselves or if it needs to be passed to admins
- If the GM "can" handle the report (there is sufficient evidence to ban without question) then they will proceed to ban the player and close out the report thread
- If the GM "can't" handle the report, then they will type up the details of the report, and their thoughts on the evidence being provided, and submit it to our administrators in order to review further
- The administrator will look into the case, verify additional details that they can view, and if needed discuss the case with the rest of the staff to form a collective decision
- Account will "then" be banned, where followup questioning will occur within the ban appeals
- There are plenty of times that reports are submitted without sufficient evidence, or evidence that does not meet the guidelines for providing evidence, so the report has to be denied

Nobody is ever just reported and banned due to being reported. Something suspicious has to be found before an account gets banned. I understand that the general public views it as "guilty until proven innocent", but typically there is "something" worthy of questioning.

I was on the same map as a hacker and looted some of his mobs drops over time. For Staff, it was reasonable to "question" whether or not I was associated with the hacker. So I got banned. Well, fortunately, I wasn't the hacker, so they asked me some questions, I complied and answered, they reviewed my answers, and I got unbanned. Did I have to wait a bit of time for responses? Sure. But did I blame Staff for having suspicions of me? No.

 

?

Don't tie me in with your mental delusions

 

what an insightful and well thought out reply, you really debunked me hard