Shifted the following comments from meme thread to avoid derailing it https://royals.ms/forum/threads/mapleroyals-memes.6513/page-237#post-1532526 The topic of this thread: https://royals.ms/forum/threads/ban-appeal.245759/
I'm glad you said this cause I was also confused by the ban being 2 weeks as well. I went to the TOS to try understand where 2 weeks came from. In my head the ban duration for Joking/believable RWT claims has been 30 days, and has been for a while (Turns out it was 30 and changed to 14 days some time later). Reading over the TOS just made me more confused. As all fellow TOS readers know (wink wink nudge nudge) actual RWT is a Major Infraction and is a Permanent Ban, as it should be. No where in the Major or Minor Infractions does it mention Joking about RWT. There is a "Infractions by Extension" section at the very bottom of the TOS which gives more information and contains a "Believable Claim" section. I assume this situation would have fallen under being a "Believable claim" and it lists the punishment for "Believable claims" as being "Identical to actually breaking the rule" which would mean that since RWT is a permanent ban, and joking about it is a "Believable claim" the ban is not 14 days but Permanent. If I'm missing something in the TOS that states otherwise I apologize I would appreciate it if the TOS were shown to better reflect the shift in policy a bit more clearly to show that its not a Permanent ban but a 14 day ban. Something else I thought of after finding out the ban is now 14 days, is that Id like to see staff seriously discuss unbanning past players who were permanently banned for Believable Claims of RWT before the TOS change. If the ban for Joking/believable claims of RWT is now just 14 days then this actually makes me a bit disappointed knowing we've got players still banned for an offense that once was considered as being on the same level as all the unforgivable rule breaks like hacking, account sharing, Vote abuse mules or Duping items to now being on the same level as Glitch abuse and robotic play where just sticking a coin in a key can cause you to fail this and it just feels weird. You've obviously softened your stance on the subject. And was a rule you guys didn't like and changed to make an exception to Joking. You've lowered the ban duration of Joking/believable claims over the years from a Permanent ban to 30 days to 14 days and yet there's quite a few people over the years that were all permanently banned for Joking/believable claims and were never unbanned when policy was changed. I do remember players even reappealing their permanent ban years later after the 30 day and 14 day changes were made and they were shot down by staff saying that people who broke the rule before the change will not be retroactively unbanned. I feel like this is incredibly unfair and cruel to those players from the past who are not allowed to take advantage of this softened stance on Joking/believable claims on RWT.
Sometimes I wonder if I'm in the minority where I think previously banned players should be allowed back after a certain amount of time has passed. Like if someone's account/gear is wiped, and they come back to a fresh start who really cares. Let's just not bring back the sexual weirdo's and harassers.
tbh not the only one i rly think that account wipe and a fresh start can do really good to SOME people. ofc, the major ban evaders and HARD abusers and etc etc are diff. I opened a thread like that in the past but it didn't seem to hit the mark so.. can only hope 0.0 by the looks of it, they do show some leniency in the "believeable claim" section, as u can see by last ban appeals.
Honestly I remember this one APQer who technically was ban evading because I think she had vote abused in the past and ended up making a new account. She went back to obeying the rules and was hit like a year later when she was just trying to behave and abide by the games rules. I always felt like was this person really a danger to the server? I'm sure some people might've see it differently to me, but to me they seemed more of a net positive to the community rather than some of the hindrances you might find on the community blacklist. I don't know. Nowadays I find myself in favour of reforming offenders rather than shunting them.
As a former worker in court, i always saw people coming in, coming out, getting released, getting jailed and etc etc etc.. i've seen some wild criminals, and on the other hand, i've seen some CRAZY changes! some people just need the chance to reform. ofc this is not irl, and its just a 2d mushroom game, but some people deserves a second chance. having exceptions, providing some part of the community a second chance where truly a second chance is due, while keeping the really bad banned players out of here. i read so many ban appeals, it just sad to see someone (even accidentally) banned cuz he was banned at like 2015 for something. there are some "former-felons" that behave so much better than some players who are clean without any rule breakings.
This was a sad saga I really think they should give him a second chance https://royals.ms/forum/threads/few-years-ago-account.242328/ https://royals.ms/forum/threads/please-whitelist-my-public-ip.242422/ https://royals.ms/forum/threads/please-give-mercy.242437/
Sometimes people have to burn their hand first in order to learn those important life lessons. A lot of people when given a second chance choose to do the right thing and go on to be positive influences. Obviously you'll have the bad apples that dont change, but thats gonna happen. Stories like this, is partially why I've softened my opinion on zero tolerance policies. Its why I feel passionate about giving many of the permanently banned people a second chance, but would like to start with easier stuff first. As the saying goes, they didn't build Rome in a day. Those who joked about RWT seems like the easiest place to start since we already don't perma ban for joking about RWT. We just need to unban those who did it before the rules changed. I'd really like to see Staff look to unban those who were kept permanently banned for joking about RWTing. The vast majority of these people have been banned for at minimum 3 years now for an offense that is only a 14 day ban. Some of these people have been banned for close to and some over a decade. That's absolutely wild to me when 14 days currently is the punishment. Make things right Staff. This topic has me holding out hope that someday Royals staff also opens up a path for all people permanently banned for certain infractions like vote abuse, or account sharing but that's a conversation for another day!
Keep in mind that staff has limited availability and cannot police people who broke the terms and conditions on their own. I would love to see every banned player be a good “citizen” in the future, but the reality is when you get lied to almost daily in ban appeals it makes it hard to push for a blanket change of unbans. There are also sometimes other things not revealed in an appeal as to why a player was banned (2nd/3rd, etc reasons). Not trying to shut anything down, just throwing a perspective in the mix.
Imo for official servers I would agree unbans after a long time should be given to some people. But royals is one of many private servers and if people get banned here they can simply go to another one. Even though this is the best one, it's not like perma'd people cannot play any maple at all ever again. And looking at the amount of ban appeals here versus the number of active players, it does seem like even if 50% of players would not be repeat offenders (which would be an optimistic number) there would be a massive amount of work for the admins if they did allow unbanning of perma'd people after a while.
In light of this recent ban appeal [ context ] https://royals.ms/forum/threads/whats-the-problem-with-the-second-ban-now.245857/ I found myself remembering this thread and thinking about how unfairly some punishments are dished out. I personally feel like this individual has done something far more grotesque and abhorrent than simply vote abusing / or RWTing. Someone like Scotty [ who yes , cheated ] ultimately provided plenty of good to the community through his web application thingy. I'd much rather have someone like him reinstated and trade banned for a set period of time rather than allowing some creep to harass people on the server only to receive a light pat on the wrist. I am not speaking on behalf of Scotty and I don't want people to think I'm trying to defend a friend or alliance member. I opted to use a recent example.
It creates a lot of work to determine who should be let back, continuing to monitor them to see if they behave and of course the potential disaster of them just rule-breaking more (and in cases like vote abuse, the damage to the economy (regardless of your opinion on its current state) is already done even if the infracting character is wiped). "No take-backsies" is also a pretty good encouragement to actually read the rules and abide by them. (and I know this point has been made in a more detailed fashion in a few of the ban appeals themselves). Based on my obsession with reading dozens hundreds of ban appeals, it is very, very rare (imo) for a perma to not be undeserving (being caught up in a different ban not withstanding). The only real exception, as in the thread topic, is joking about rule breaking, which already has a reasonableness/believability carve out. At the end of the day, my very extreme opinion is that someone who is willing to break the rules (whether they claim ignorance or not) on a long-existing server played by other people (which means that their rule breaking directly affects others and the health of the server these other people play on) isn't the kind of person who should be playing with others period. Play single-player games.
