The old system was too easy to abuse and honestly was a privilege to have while it lasted. Dustin can't go to everyones house to make sure your 16 brothers vote on their own accounts. It caused too many problems. Dustin gave Royalers an inch by allowing the old method, but of course some Royalers took a mile. Blame them.
As someone who doesn't have a sibling or a spouse who plays RMS, I can understand where Dustin is coming from since there are so many asses out there who have imaginary brothers and sisters. But at the same time, I'm still going to disagree with the new rule because it puts those in the same household at a serious, permanent disadvantage. So I don't think those who have simply explained Dustin's PoV, without offering any solutions, have quite understood the magnitude of the problem it poses to them. They are effectively handicapped, with no way out of it, and that's why I wish you guys were more understanding of their situation as well. So I'm really glad that Kat has reassured us that they are indeed brainstorming solutions. Using the playerbase on the present whitelist should help, since the large majority of them are legit. Solution What I propose is that a middleground between the old and new be established. He can continue to allow those who PM him to be whitelisted. But those who "forget" to do so will not be entertained. There are a lot of people who suddenly talk about their "brothers" in their ban appeals, that shouldn't be allowed. They should have the initiative to send Dustin a PM first. If they have not done so, then they deserve the ban. Otherwise, those who do take the initiative to do so are fine. And to prevent Dustin from being overloaded with too many siblings to check, I think a cap of 2-3 per household should be sufficient. But this is only from a player's PoV, I've no idea how difficult it is for the staff, and chances are, they've probably already thought of what I just said. Still, it's a suggestion for you guys to consider.
My request to the admins is, please at least have some transparency regarding how this rule will be enforced. I do not want to be the butt of false bans. My girlfriend and I both live under two different households, and vote under two different households, yet we oftentimes visit each other and play together. Under this new rule, it is thus OK for both of us to be voting in the same 24 hour period since we live in two households, but oftentimes our IP will be the same when we play. How will the system determine that we are not under the same household and thus not vote abusing? ...I fear that the ban appeal section will be blowing up in due time over issues like these, which might become more of a hassle to the administration than what was originally put in place. And until this question is answered, I am very hesitant to even let my girlfriend play at my house when this new rule goes into effect. It's contributing to a toxic play atmosphere for RL friends, to say the least.
Yes I do. I am fully aware that I will be splitting NX now, but that is a minor sacrifice for what the new system will accomplish.
When you vote, make sure you are using your own homes IP/phone's 3G and when your gf votes, make sure she is using her homes IP/phone's 3G. As long as she isn't voting while at your house or vice versa, then you should be in the clear. There is a log of what IP is used when voting, so if she is over just to play the game, then there shouldnt be any problems. Of course wait for a GM to verify.
So how is this any different than one person using a phone 3g connection and the other person using the Wifi, while both playing in the same house? Both are separate IP's.
For the player: This is where integrity comes in. Don't do it. For Dustin: He has his methods on catching people who do this. I know people who thought they were slick and could get away with vote abusing by using this method, but were sadly mistaken shortly after. Doing this will end in a ban even though the game will technically allow you to vote twice using a home wifi and also a phone's 3G.
It accomplishes SO LITTLE, its going to catch such few people.Its more to make it easier on the Gms to catch vote abusers but theres a way to do both! Common admins and gms please talk with us and let us know how you feel about our ideas, wed like to come up with a solution where we could keep our nx and make less work for you, we need to know what your problem is with the current suggestions so we could tweak them and come up with new ones. Please dont enforce this rule.......Theres other ways of doing it and with all our ideas we can find one.
See but the problem is this is the same thing me and my bf are doing except his gf probably doesent sleep over all the time. How is it any diffrent if they vote at there own homes and then play with eachother at his house all the time? Me and my bf play with eachother at my apartment and he votes from his parents or i vote from my moms depending where each of us has voted! Its no diffrent just she doesent have the title as living with him? So its allowed? If so as i stated earlier if the rule goes in effect my boyfriend my boyfriend will not be staying with me any more, he can vote from his moms and come play at my house whenever he wants.
But that still leaves people like me who *live* with our significant others at a large disadvantage. From the very start, the first day my boyfriend and i joined the server, I PM'd Dustin with our IGN's and said that we would both be voting from the same house. my boyfriend used his phone every single time, and I used the wifi. A whitelist like that can work, but people have to be proactive and actually get added to the whitelist as soon as the situation calls for it (ie: If they move in with someone who also plays, if their partner joins the server, etc). I'm sure they're working out logistics of an alternate idea. Give them time and patience.
But what's stopping people from claiming they have 7 brothers? How are you supposed to prove that? It's opening a whole new world of vote abuse.
1- Set a reasonable limit. 2 or 3 people. I doubt that anyone actually has 7 people all playing maple together in the same house unless it's some kind of LAN party- and even then, they wouldn't all vote together. 2- Prior whitelisting. They have to take initiative and get whitelisted right when they first start. Like I did- when my boyfriend and I joined the very first thing I did was to PM Dustin and let him know our IGNs. It's the responsible thing to do. Is it foolproof? No. Nothing ever is. Autoban catches legit players all the time too. But are you going to punish and impose unfair conditions on players who haven't done anything wrong but who happen to actually live with someone else and play with them, just because a few people abuse it? I joined this server with my partner specifically so that the two of us could play together, because Maple was the first game we played together 4 years ago when we first got together. We picked it back up on our 4 year anniversary and joined this server, and the both of us enjoy many many aspects of it- being able to vote for NX is one of them we both appreciate. I'm sure others are in the same boat.
Even so, I get one or two extra votes if I lie and say I play with others. That is potentially two votes that are unfair instead of the one vote you miss out on. I am the only one in my household that plays MapleStory, so you could give me the whole "you don't understand" spiel. That's all fine and dandy, but I do understand. People are pricks and will lie to get the extra votes, just how they lie and say their brother was using the computer and downloaded MapleGanja while they were on the shitter and used max damage hacks. I think the system put in place is the best way for the staff to go about it. It would be kind of them to casually learn who has multiple players per household and glaze over those when checking for vote abusers.
Regardless of what the point is, legitimate players are being affected and are put at a great disadvantage when it comes to gaining nx compared to everyone else. That's not how it should be, period. A compromise or something of that nature will have to come out of this.
Obviously it is not a black and white issue, as the staff here like to make most things. I agree that there should be a compromise, and I think it would be easy enough to just do what I said. Casually learn about people who are together as the issue pops up. Not everything has to be so formal when it comes to rules, believe it or not. And when it comes down to it, having people state whether or not they live with another when they first join is just a poor idea. Too many people can abuse it, and most likely will. I see it as being better having the system we have now, where only a few are directly effected, rather than having it where everyone is effected by a sudden increase in vote abusing.
I honestly don't think many of the players here realize the amount of work Dustin does each month when he checks for vote abusers. It is literally an entire day's worth of work for him to go through the list, make a list of potential abusers, find out which ones are on a whitelist, proceed to ban them, and then inform the staff of who's been banned, including which ones have been banned before and are thus on their second ban or now permanently banned. If that isn't frustrating enough to deal with, he then gets an influx of PMs with people claiming they "didn't know the rules", or "I PMed you about it already why was I banned?!?!", or "Oh, my brother also votes on my computer. We can't do that?" Needless to say, this rule change was implemented to ease the workload that has exponentially increased as a result of the (positive) explosion in the community. As Kat said, however, we are still discussing possible solutions which will allow both the players and staff to be satisfied with the results. Stay tuned...
I'd have to agree with the voting rule change, being that my brother is the kind that will come to my house, vote, and not tell me. Luckily that hasn't happened yet, but when it does, what will I do? Post a picture of me and him to prove that there's two of us?
Not entirely sure why you had to act snide in your post but I'll ignore that. They will be able to work out a way for players to prove that they play in the same household so that won't be much of an issue. I don't believe that "casually responding" to the situation as it happens is a good idea. Also, you're entitled to your opinion on "where only a few are directly effected, rather than having it where everyone is effected by a sudden increase in vote abusing.", however, the fact still remains that legitimate players are being hindered whereas they were not before and that's an issue.
