the only thing i got from your post is you kinda seem to blame the admins for not catching someone early in their rule breaks. "admin oversight" keeps coming up in your sentences...it shouldn't be an admins job to catch people so early on before it becomes a severe enough punishment. Admins do their part (making notices and implementing ways for people to read what you shouldnt do) , and the rest is up to the person to actually read the rules and follow them... so more like a "player oversight" and not an admin one
My take is that reform and second chances are commendable. However, in practice, and especially in small communities like ours, exceptions introduce significant risks. They can undermine the integrity of the system and lead to unintended consequences, like community division and accusations of favoritism. clear 0 tolerance policy eliminates potential doubts within the community and among players who knowingly or 'unknowingly' chose not to abide by the rules. Another downside we have to consider is the burden on admins. While this is not the only reason I believe this change should not be implemented, we must acknowledge that the resources required for such a change would likely be overwhelming. It is probably not feasible.
Hello, here are my two cents contribution! For now I have been somewhere else and playing, meeting new people and we always discuss how the bans should be handled, I even came to the conclusion that instead of giving permission to the stupidest players, it is leaving them without playing 3/ 6/12 months depending on the brevity of the issue, and in retrospect where I am it is working, there are almost no botters and the hackers have been almost eliminated, with the service giving rewards to Whoever catches it is by calling the GM (which by the way I don't consider it because the actions here are very limited) or by capturing evidence and monitoring, in addition to the fact that if a repetitive action is detected you would have to fill out a CATCHAP code otherwise you will be banned until you explain How did it come to that? With that said. I'm leaving. Happy holidays and one day I'll be back. Att Julius if you have something to tell me as a friend I will listen to you. :3
It pains us all to see the occasional ban appeal of someone who acc shared/vote abused early on in their career, which results in perma bans later. While on paper it would be good to unban these players and give them a second chance, saying that we should do it is simply incorrect in my opinion. There are 2 major issues with unbanning these people: 1) some players were banned for vote abuse because it was the easier and undisputable offense to spot, while in reality they did stuff like RWTing or hacking. While settling for just banning their accounts and letting them have a fresh start might make this problem a non-issue, it leads to problem number 2: 2) admins workload is going to be huge, having to handle all the ban appeals from old players will just simply not be possible. Admins can barely handle current ban appeals in time, and sometimes theres months of backlog of unanswered appeals or tickets. So while being a cute idea on paper and something that will definitely improve our server, it's just simply not possible if you are realistic. And for that reason my vote is -> no to both.
I wonder if the rules were defined and communicated back when these long ago bans were carried out just as clearly as they are now.
Definitely think there should be room for forgiveness or second chances no matter the hypothetical scenarios that some people have listed here.
Yes, the Terms and Conditions were clearly defined for previous bans. The only major change since many of these was the addition of the Shanks quiz. Staff is looking into more ways to highlight the T&C in game along with other announcements. Ultimately though, it is the player’s responsibility to read and understand both the Game and Forum Terms and Conditions.
This might be a controversial take but i'm just gonna say it, The issue of vote abuse will likely never be fully eradicated because, as far fetched as it sounds, the server is actually relying on players to vote abuse to substantial degree and my gut feeling tells me the boss already knows this. Without the vote-to-win system, more specifically vote abuse, MapleRoyals is likely to cease being the #1 maplestory private server. This ranking plays an important role in attracting new players (perhaps the MOST important), as people just are attracted to the #1 ranking, and new players are what fuels the population to be healthy and active. If royals is no longer #1, there would be lesser new players and since new content are being implemented slowly, there's not much to keep older players from staying and the downward spiral continues. So, my point being, if vote abuse were truly unacceptable and so heavily frowned upon that even vote abuse that happened half a decade ago are being dug up and used against players to fulfil a ban condition despite said player playing legit-ly for the latter half decade, wouldn’t it make sense to abolish the vote-to-win system entirely? If a player is hellbent to vote abuse, do you think Shanks is able to stop said player? Surely there are far better resolute measures that can be taken against vote abuse, but it would come at a hefty loss that royals isn't ready to bear, so here we are, handing out bans that feels terrible. It's like looking at covid treatments instead of covid prevention, oops your covid was diagnosed 5 years too late, you're already dead sorry. Spoiler: DISCLAIMER just wanna say these are solely my own opinions and could be untrue, dont friggin forum ban me for this MONKAS
Agreed. I do not find the counter-arguments presented by others in this thread to be convincing. I believe there are cases where ban forgiveness should be considered, especially if a significant amount of time has already passed since the infraction, or if they have already been banned for a while and have 'done their time' so to speak. Of course, this would depend on the serverity of the initial infraction. Given how much attention is already given to ban appeals, I do not think that considering leniency in a few extra cases would constitute a substantial increase in workload. Even if it did, I think it would be worth it since this would help inject some much-needed life in a server that is at risk of becoming stagnant. Cases like the recently unbanned Dezperadow for glitch abuse show that there are players that were permabanned in situations that do not necessarily warrant such a long-term and permanent punishment. As stated before, it is not always clear as to which game mechanics are 'glitch abuse' or not, considering that unintended mechanics such as telecasting are allowed. Instead of banning, these 'illegal' mechanics could simply be patched. Disclaimer: I am not promoting or encouraging rule-breaking behavior such as ban evasion or vote abuse, only advocating in favor of ban forgiveness and leniency in certain situations.
Just adding a clarifying note. Dezperadow’s situation is completely different. They were banned incorrectly long ago and we recently corrected that. This is different than players earning a permanent ban per our T&C and then we remove it because they are supposedly different. Sure some players may be reformed, but as stated in other threads, staff currently does not have the ability to monitor that situation which is why we rely on our current Terms and Conditions. I do see the points about adding players back into the community, but the community does not see the current flow we have of ban evaders going straight back to their old ways. So how would we deal with a mass influx of previous rule breakers? We’d need more work on our autoban system, more automatic checks in place, and more staff (especially more staff plus elevated permissions). This would take time away from planned content this year and further delay things like skill changes and future bosses. Just a few things to consider.
Then just leave the rules as they are. And the few cases of ban evading (that happened like 5 years ago) that comes to light, such as the one with Tyloo, should just be regarded as forgived. IF he has been clean since then (from major infractions at least). Banning someone at present time for ban evading a 10-fkin-years old hack (which by the way caused no damage what so ever most likely) is stupid, and inhuman. IF Dribble has been clean since then, not letting him stay and play is, sorry to curse, fucking retarded. Lets not forget everyone, this is a PvE game. We are not playing versus each other, we are playing together. I want to highlight that I dont even know Dribble.
Please read Bacon's post more carefully. At this stage, the rules are indeed going to be staying the way they are, for the reasons that Bacon outlined. Most ban evaders do re-offend, almost immediately in some cases, and some also try to be really sneaky with their offences (thus taking even more time and effort to deal with). So for staff, the only realistic option for dealing with ban evaders is to zap them on sight basically. As Bacon said, attempting to work out who is reformed and who is not (and who has offended on their new accounts, and who has not) would be a terrible allocation of resources. Staff have to do what is best for the community as a whole. Those who ban evade have either come back for at least the second time without bothering to read the T&C that they agreed to, or they have come back knowing the rules, and knowing that they will be permanently banned when caught for ban evading. --- Please also, let's not refer to banning people as "inhuman", as this is disrespectful toward the hundreds of millions of people in the world who are living in extreme poverty, or war torn countries. This is a mushroom game that is free to play thanks to the generosity of the team that voluntarily keeps it running, and although we hope it still has a lot longer left, there's of course no guarantees. There are far, far more inhumane things in the world than no longer being welcome on a mushroom game private server.
AGAIN, this woulda been like 10 years ago that he re-offended (IF he even did). Just look at your own life Heidi and check how much you've grown as a person most likely in the last 10 years. Because that's most likely what we all do. We grow and learn, both as individuals and as a community. EDIT: Want to highlight the "most" and "in some cases". No one said you had to deal with these case straight away. I'm sure they can wait a month or four to get unbanned while an investigation is ongoing at the phase the staff can manage. Just look at Solsticio, waited patiently to be unbanned for around a year while an investigation was ongoing and she didn't even do any rule-breaking. The meaning of inhuman is: lacking human qualities of compassion and mercy; cruel and barbaric. Because that's exactly what it is. It would completely lack the qualities of compassion and mercy for someone who has spent countless of hours when most likely being a legit player. You're the one bringing up war and starving when mentioning the word inhuman. This is EXACTLY why I think we should be more human and forgiving towards some of the people who spent countless of hours gaming, donating etc. Because we are playing a mushroom game and not sitting in a courthouse deciding on whether or not someone has been killed, starved to death or started a war on another country.
Guys the solution has been with us all from the very beginning. Since the server is in the UK and Matt is from the UK. Just get a Royal Pardon. In the Monarchy we trust .
We staff have had many discussions about the ban evaders. Most, if not all, of us wish that it was realistic to have a system where we gave people a second chance who deserve it, while keeping out the many ongoing rule breakers who would damage and ruin the game's economy. However, it is just simply not feasible. This is just the unfortunate reality, and is something that everybody needs to accept. Unfortunately, putting tasks on a lower priority queue does not magically make more resources appear. You still need to make time for the task at some point. Resources are already stretched to the limit how it is. We would just end up with a continuously growing backlog of them. The best approach with our current resources is to do what's best for the majority of players: permanent ban = permanent ban.
Maybe it only makes sense to me but this is how I see things and maybe it can help someone - This is a free game and the staff are WORKING FOR FREE (afaik) to give the players a good experience. We, as players, are supposed to read the rules and play without breaking the rules knowing if we do break them we get banned (sometimes perma banned), doesn't matter if we like the rules or not, we choose to play or not that's all. If you break the rules, doesn't matter if you knew the rules or not responsibility is on you to read them, why would you seek forgiveness after being perma banned? Going around making noise and asking for change is in every way you look at it more load on the people WORKING FOR FREE!!! for you to enjoy the game. Those of us who have been around longer know more, I'm here roughly a year and I've seen some staff related posts so from my knowledge there is a huge amount of work to be done in every area, and again all of this without getting paid, on your own free time after you had to take care of all your other IRL responsibilities. More workload in the form of more time spent on being very very careful with bans and then keeping an eye on returning banned players specifically > less time to get to improving the game for us players > loss of players anyway (???) Sometimes people get wrongly accused, I mean they did nothing wrong but got banned, open ban appeal and be as transparent as you can and let staff do the work from there. No system in the world is 100% bug free and humans are no different so mistakes happen. I have no dog in this fight other than enjoying the server, this is my disclaimer I guess since people add that to posts?
And exactly how much damage to the economy does one do, for T-E-N years ago when getting banned the day after the account was created. That arguement truely doesn't work in the case with Tyloo. It is not something that is acceptable according to me because it is inhuman, such as the case with Tyloo. You had the resources to dig up a 10 year old ban. Surely you have the resources to check if that same person has been clean for the majority of those years that came afterwards. Otherwise, that makes no sense. --- Please tell me if you've read the ToS for using Facebook, Instagram, TikTok or what ever you are using. It is sooooooooooooooooooo easy for everyone to fall back and pointing on the rules in order to silence any discussion about stuffs like these. Just because someone is working voluntarily it doesn'y mean that you should immediatly do what is easy for someone instead of what is right from a human aspect. Wasn't gonna do this but can't help myself. You've been here for 9 months mate... Please come back when you've been here for 10 years of playing on and off, and then IF you would get banned for something you did 10 years ago. I'd like to see how you feel then.
Lock it because this is the microphone drop. People seem to forget that the ones actively making our community better are not getting paid to do so. Please review the blog for 2024 everyone. Look at how many rulebreakers were caught and punished by the limited staff on hand. Put yourselves in their shoes for a second here. Are they going to get it right every time? Of course not, but do they get it right the majority of the time without you ever knowing...? I've seen multiple cases that were reviewed with evidence and countless hours. Those people were compensated for the mistakes too in some cases. Unfortunately if their were any leniency it would only be abused and require more resources to monitor (Like with any other system of rules). I'm honestly amazed at the patience of the staff as a whole. Kudos to you guys - I couldn't do it. Feedback: Make Royals a subscription service for those who dislike the policies in place while those who play the game and abide by the rules get to play for free. If you don't like the policies and those who are upholding them you are always free to play elsewhere and enjoy your time elsewhere. It's kind of simple.
