I've been meaning to make this suggestion for a while now since I am confident in the necessity of bringing back this command . It's surprising that there has been very little mention of this so far but I know there are players and staff members alike who would like this feature to be brought back and improved. Here are the reasons why. Communication between players and staff hasn't made too much sense in-game. GMs are made to be invisible in game for a reason, but you will notice quite often a player in game smegaing for a GM. This doesn't seem like a good practice as players spend their own mesos or nx to call for a GM that isn't likely there to respond. Even on forums, requesting staff assistance on shoutbox doesn't seem intuitive or consistent on response. Staff members do answer to PMs most of the time but other times they can be swamped with them. I don't think PMing staff is encouraged either so it seems like the only way official way to contact for inquiry is through threads. Which isn't often convenient. Anonymity on reporting hackers/botters and other such reports will also result from this implementation. I believe it is discouraged to report cheaters publicly since the acting criminal can see the shoutbox/discord/smega if they've been found out and potentially prolong or escape. In most cases reporting has to be handled discreetly. Now, of course making a report thread is what players are encouraged to do and should do for certain cases. However, I don't believe we should expect every single player to take the time to write up a detailed report and gather evidence. It just isn't very practical for every player to be required to do this if they have to report an abuse. I have made a guide to try helping players on the reporting process, but I'm sure not everyone wants to go through with recording and such as the evidences required tend to be somewhat strict. General convenience and QOL improvements for players and staff members. This stems from what I previously stated, but I think things like hacking and botting for instance can be reported via in game ~gm command to free up reports clutter and players won't have to do very much. Since certain abusers will be tricky to gather evidence on, I think it makes more sense to report anonymously and have any staff member check whenever they have time. This should also benefits staff as often times, one staff member will be notified of something and then have to pass it on to the rest. With this, all staff should be able to view all the inquiries whenever they have time at will. This goes into some of the improvements I'll suggest over the older system. I believe the older command was limited with how many line of inquiries saved, so obviously the new one would need to expand the limit so they don't get lost like some shoutbox messages do. Of course there should also be an anti-spam measure so that players can't abuse this function. Possibly limit the command to 1-3 set line of inquiries every 15 minutes per PC. I also believe there should be a prompt that states certain inquires or reports are better off making a thread. Ones that require more details to convey if possible. I'm not sure how demanding it will be to implement a new and improved ~gm command, but I believe its a necessary feature that benefits both players and staff moving forward. Whether there will be priority put on this, I'm sure many will want this feature and hopefully encourage some more activity out of current staff. If theres more that can be suggested on this, feel free to post.
What we have currently is a cat and mouse game between the script writers and the community, and I fear the script writers are winning. Gathering evidence is becoming more and more difficult, and video is becoming a necessity. Being sure to use /find and ~mapowner at the right times while video'ing is also tedious, many of the videos I make show me endlessly fumbling around. I understand completely that GM's cannot ban people without sufficient evidence. But I don't think it's fair for the evidence gathering to fall on the community. GM's have an incredible weapon for evidence gathering that we players don't have: invisible mode. You can go into a map, observe the player, and see what they're doing, without them auto cc'ing or going into the cash shop. Sometimes I think it is overlooked just how powerful that is. So, instead of the current debacle, I want to see a system where we can put forward the names of "obvious" botters/ cheaters without the red tape that is the abuse report forum. A name being put forward is not grounds to ban that person, it is alerting a GM that they need to go and invisible mode to that player and just have a look at what they're doing. In most cases, indeed a ban would then follow. Anybody who abused the system (e.g. submitted names of obvious innocents) would just not be allowed to submit names to it anymore. There are plenty of us here who would NOT abuse such a system. This of course also means there needs to be more GM's. We're in a situation where, due to paranoia about the risk of bad hires, the community are effectively having to do police duties on the server... without the QOL tools GM's have, i.e. invisible mode. In a nutshell, that really is the situation. The reason we have a guide on gathering evidence is because of the admin fear of hiring GM's. Isn't that ridiculous? Isn't it sad that the very community that isn't trusted to be GM's, is the same community that has all this pressure to collect sufficient evidence to get obvious abusers banned? Where did this all go so horribly wrong? I frankly don't know how royals has managed to hire as many rogue GM's as it has, it's bizarre because there's so many good people in this community. And I for one, can honestly say I wouldn't even dream of abusing the power. It doesn't seem that difficult to just do the job and not be a fuckwit and ban people unfairly or spawn monsters (why did GM interns ever need that ability, ever? Why do GM's need to be able to buff, host events, and spawn shit?). I just can't even relate to the kind of person that would abuse the power in the way some have, and so perhaps the issue is actually that whoever does the hiring decisions, is just really good at hiring sociopaths for some bizarre reason? I'm serious. I don't get it. I don't get why this is being treated as the ultimate mission. It shouldn't be that difficult! Don't get me wrong, I love this server. I think all the frustration is BECAUSE people love the server. And all but the abusers would agree the few active GM's we do have do a great job.
