Long term ban instead of permanent ban

In other words, the Royals staff doesn't care to look at these things on a case by case basis.

Because my appeal is a very obvious clear case of a completely casual person "willing to break the Terms and Conditions" of a game while not even playing the game or remembering what the rules were.

In other cases of hacked accounts, credentials could just be reset and people get on with their lives. Same solution could apply to me but nope, basically.

no. Let's just assume the worst

 

Er, when you say this, it's like those people who deliberately want to get points or maliciously break the rules.

After their account is locked, they basically won't appeal.

If they are locked, they will change a group of account and continue to do this.

So my point is that you may have to think of a mechanism to distinguish those who are really maliciously breaking the rules,

As well as those who are willing to repent or the poor man I mentioned in this article,

because now it seems that your practice is no different, I will forget it, but some people are dealt with in such a poor way.

 

I would be OK with that in a scenario where the vote abusers involved accounts gets terminated IF THAT MEANS they are allowed to play on the server with a fresh new start with zero advantages they can take off from their previous NX abused. There has been mentioned something about deleting their NX or turning their NX into negative which can be bypassed if you pass the abused NX/APR from Account A to Account B. In order to prevent this, staff may need to terminate ALL associated accounts within the same IP Address.

Major Vote Abuse - 1st Offense: Permanent ban on the account in order to prevent any unfair advantage. User is still allowed to create new accounts and have a fresh start.

Major Vote Abuse - 2nd Offense: Permanent ban and banished from the server.

This is not exactly true. What stops player from vote-abusing is their own morale.
You know, with enough data I could technically abuse the voting system to the point I get a quick sum of NX in a ridiculous short amount of time, then appeal for minor vote abuse and receive a 14-day ban. But I don't do not because it will eventually ban me, but because, It's not in my morale to break the rules to that extreme. Just to give you an example. The voting system is that easy to abuse, while still being able to retain the NX without receiving the permanent ban. Just wait 14 days and keep voting single day but... I don't have any reason to do that. I don't want to do it. I don't need to.

Since you are banned for Major Vote Abuse, no longer being able to play in the server, that leaves no option for the player if wants to continue to playing the game but to ban evade. No matter if you never break another rule besides ban evading, you don't have any reason to obey the rules because once you get caught you will get banned again. I know friends who abused, got banned and are playing and evading but this time they try to not break any rule, despite they don't have any reason to NOT break the rules as ban evaders, because regardless of that they will eventually get banned.

Lots of "permabanned" players continue to play in this server, some are smart enough and know how to evade, some are idiotic enough to use the same ign and they get caught because a GM will eventually recognize their names. The point is, once you are banned and you are not allowed to play in the server, you no longer have any reason to respect the rules, as you're not welcome anyways, so why not just vote abuse while ban evading?
Obviously from a ban evader standpoint, it's best to try to behave well and not break any rule as this will draw less attention allowing them to survive longer, as long as their disguises aren't unmasked and they aren't reported, a GM has no way to tell if a player is ban evading if they're doing it right.

Right now it seems like this is the case. In order to make work easy for staff. You just permaban everyone without giving them a chance to start over.
That way, you don't have to deal with more ban appeals, as it is right now that section is pretty demanding and there are just not enough staff members to handle all cases without forgotting some cases that can even take months to resolve. No Staff should ever take 3-4-5-6 months to resolve a wrong ban or a paypal chargeback.

 

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阿呃，你是不是中文打錯了"每天" 是指每一天都這麼做，他絕對沒有每天這麼做

Er, did you type it wrong in Chinese? "每天" means doing it every day

As far as I know, this guy even happened to be mentioned about voting.

On that day, he forget to voting for a long time, and then he came up to vote by someone remind him

and because he didn't know how to operate.(He doesn't vote very often, and he doesn't know how to vote successfully >>get stuck)

As far as I know, this guy is absolutely head to tail, without any malicious points

You even banned him forever

 

I think the system should catch them when they first time vote abuse.

Instead of they gained a lot of NX from vote abuse and you say this is not fair to other players who follow the rules.

And you say some vote abusers used their NX to buy APRS in order to get mesos from other players. If the system can catch them when they first time vote abuse immediately, you will not face this problem.

Mapleroyals team should think how to distinguish whether the player vote abuse intentionally. Or the mapleroyals will only fill with fixed players' other accounts.

 

I have confirmed that he only did this that day

And also confirmed with HIM

 

What I'm trying to say is that hp wash is (in my opinion of course) the main reason for people to abuse voting. Right now our community is on a point where they push every new player to hp wash or make a bish, some new players just want to casual pay the game and most of them just quit when realizes they need to invest a lot of their free hours (when they're supposed to be having fun playing) selling leech. Some have the time and likes to set goals, some others can get into a guild with nice people to help them out but from my experience a large number of new players quit after messing their first attacker and half played their first bish due to burnout, others just go under the table with vote abuse or buying mesos for real currency to accelerate the process to a point where they can "have fun" playing. I can understand your point about abusers liquidating all their nx and giving it to account b or even selling it on rwt but still there are some guys that doesn't hurt the game that much to deserve a perma ban... I'm not talking about hackers, rwt or these guys that voted on 20 accounts for years but the guy voting 5 days on 2 accounts or the guy that cursed 3 times on public chat and try to appeal every six months for 4 years straight. Do they deserves a ban? For sure they do, but permanent is a lot of time, like forever lol.
Anyways, I just want more people in the game so i can sell more leech and find more parties without sending 8 smegas, that's it lol

 

Wait, don't you have server messages like vote log to verify what I said?

 

I didn't say that I don't believe you.

In fact, I hope you can give me some scientific or direct evidence.

Because I know that he almost does not touch the vote, and who will do so?

He will directly vote for his account three times so that he can be banned.

Generally, he will pretend to apply for three accounts.

I think sometimes the answer is on the opposite side of the question.

 

Feedback isn’t the place to discuss individual ban appeal

 

Yes, I know. So let's put this matter aside for the time being and go back to my topic.

It doesn't matter that we can talk about it later.

It's just that Dave mentioned the authenticity of what I said, so I'm sure you have a way to verify this.

 

Okay... alright...Let me hijack this post for a bit and let me try to be as objective as much as possible and also explain why I think the essentials of this feedback is worth considering.



The Elephant in the Room
First of all, we have to address the elephant in the room. This feedback was made by someone who was permanently banned and continue to be bump by another player who is also permanently banned. There is no way around it, for especially for players and the staff members who has being around this server for quite some time, that this is not new and in fact we might even feel we shouldn't put much thoughts into it given how often a feedback about the Terms and Conditions is written just because the thread owner was banned/punished or someone they know is punished.

We might feel these players might not be sincerely concern for the wellbeing of the server, but only trying to use the feedback section as an opportunity to overturn their ban or rant about the server for n number of times.

I will list some of these examples below.

1. About Ban (4 Jun 2020), the owner was banned for account sharing.
2. The Admins (5 May 2020), the owner was banned for 30 days for making a soliciting account trading.
3. This server is dying. Here's why (9 Sep 2018), the owner was banned for account sharing.

Hence, we have to be clear on this, so we are aware that we might have some negative biasness against this feedback. So let's address the idea and not the person itself.

Aging Playerbase
This is no secret, MapleRoyals is aging. This is an issue that I have personally witness plaguing other old school MapleStory private servers and is this not just a specially unique problem here. So yes, even other servers will get "xxx is dying and this is how the staff can fix it" and which I have also gone to elaborate on some lengths on the reasons for the decline over here, which I will summarise here again.

1. Limitation of Content: Because MapleRoyals is focused mainly on old-school content, content that the server will get is limited or controlled. Like no potential scrolls, level 275 or flash jump Bishops.
2. Aging playerbase: Most players here are considered young adults age (See Census 2020 Results and Census 2017 Results), so not everyone can afford to commit as much to the game as they want to because of school/starting a family/jobs/bills etc.
3. Fulfilling their dreams/goals: Once players get their fill and cross their childhood dream, whether that is finally challenging Horntail or reaching 200, they will tick off their bucket list and quit.​

Just take a look at this chart. While we are not exactly dying, but the trends do not lie, we are declining overtime.



Here is another private server with the similar premise showing the same decline.



Increasing difficulty to lure new players
Private servers are a tough and competitive market, new private servers are popping out every few months and each has their own unique selling points. Furthermore, there are increasingly restrictions where the server can advertise itself, (as seen with Youtube and Twitch copyright strikes, a dead Twitter account *cough cough someone please update*).

Making it increasingly difficult for potential new players to stumbled across and find us, as social media does contribute significantly to the server's discoverability. It means which we will have adapt our strategies and strengthen existing channels.



Based on the chart above, the players here also playing pivotal role in ensure this server's continued success. Making it ever more important to retain existing players, as they also provide an observed measurement of promoting the server to others.

Direction
Hence, I proposed that we can relook at certain offense and can afford to be more lenient. Taking the example on how this specific server does it (in case nobody wants to read it, I have left a super simplified summary table below), instead of a permanent ban (you are banned entirely as a person for life), we could opt for account ban (that specific account is banned) which is still harsh and forces them to reset their unfair gains but at the same time we are retaining them.



Another is for vote abuse cases, we could opt for the same or another idea was previously done by Tim, which the abuser doesn't vote for a certain number of days, as seen here and here according to their severity of abuse. The way I see it, this way we can continue to keep people who really wants to play old-school MapleStory, instead of losing them to other servers and later promoting them instead of us. As what my previously lecturer told me... "It is far more easier to retain a customer than acquiring a new customer.''

Adjusted the table according to Kenny's comments ~

 

The staff need to realize it's not about whether or not people break the ToC, it's if the punishment fits the crime and not applying blanket standards when administering bans.

What if one of the rules stated that you weren't allowed to drop mesos bags for more than 1000 mesos? If you did, you would be permanently banned and never allowed to play the game again. Staff could just wash their hands off by saying "it's in the rules."

Now it can be stated clearly in the terms and conditions, the crime and the punishment, that doesn't take away from the fact that such a rule/punishment is ludicrous and doesn't make it right.

It really just looks like the staff are fine with following their rulebook and not caring about anything else. It's like the thought of "would I reasonably permaban this person rules not coming into play" doesn't ever come to mind.

https://royals.ms/forum/threads/ban-appeal.128233/
^that's another one where punishment doesn't fit the crime

In Muff's words "it does not matter the amount of perceived gain".

Somehow that matters when it comes to vote abuse but not for other rules.