I don't know if that title makes enough sense, but I'll explain. It's no secret that there are a lot of ~GM reports on a daily basis. As a result, it's not uncommon for some of said reports to go unheard (or at least heard in a timely manner), as there is only so much the GMs can do. Don't get me wrong, I'm not in any way complaining about the GMs responsiveness - I completely understand that there can be a triple-digit number of ~GM reports and only a single-digit number of GMs on to respond to them. However, with no way to discern the importance of said reports, it's possible that GMs could be sifting through loads of low-priority reports while hacker, botter, and abuser reports go unnoticed. By the time GMs arrive at said reports, the abusers would likely already have logged off or stopped what they were doing, with no evidence to implicate them later. I know that players should be taking screenshots of said abusers, but it's more likely that a hacker/abuser will get banned if a GM can see them firsthand (plus, there have been a number of report threads on the forum that contained unusable evidence due to cropped photos or cell phone video-capture). If possible, I think the ~GM function should contain a screen (before the actual part where you write the details) in which the user selects a general option under which their report might fall. Depending on what you mark will determine how quickly a GM might need to handle said situation. I'll try to "draw" out an example below: *Priority 1: Active kill-stealers, botters, glitch abusers, players stuck in maps *Priority 2: Boss refunds/rewarps *Priority 3: Item refunds (* NOTE: I can only speculate which issues need to be dealt with more swiftly than others, as well as other issues that I've surely forgotten. These are simply guesses. Obviously, the GMs and admins would make the options and decide on priority levels). Now, I know that frustrated users would likely select the highest priority option no matter what their case was, simply because people want to be heard. As a result, (repeat) abuse of this function could be labeled as a bannable offense (it's the GM's discretion to judge whether abuse was intentional or not - a warning for the first offense probably makes sense. I also understand that language barriers might be a problem as well). Anyways, yeah. I don't know how practical it would be to implement said options, but it's just an idea I figured I'd throw out. Discuss
My issue with that sort of system is that people will mismark their reports; it's already fairly obvious that people do it on the forums. They'll mark their CRITICAL ERROR with the fact that they can't move to the map before Amherst on Maple Island, and so forth. From my perspective as a member of staff, it's always a decision making process when it comes to multiple reports that need to be handled. If I take a phone call and afterwards see that there are five groups needing a boss warp, one hacker report and someone asking for item refunds, I whisper the groups that I'll be on my way, whisper the item refund person for their forum info/to check their availability so that I can open the forum thread, and then go right to the hacker. From there, it's knocking off reports one by one; I'd likely do the rewarps next (easy to hard to get as many people satisfied as possible as quickly as possible, so Krexel then Papulatus then Zakum then Horntail) and then finish up by dealing with the item refund request. I do like your proposition that we extend false reports as a bannable offense to include mismarking your ~gm request, but I think that, in this case, it's just a step that'll cause more players to be unhappy. The system you propose is something that any good GM (and I trust all of my peers to call them all just that) should be doing mentally as they take reports, and I don't think that putting the onus on players to represent their issues in order of significance is a worthwhile addition to the process on our side. I guess the tl;dr here is that, while the proposition is a good one, it's basically something we already do on our own, and while it could be moderately helpful, I can only see it being unnecessary the vast majority of the time. But of course, that's just my own personal view. As a side note, thank you for giving me the opportunity to explain a bit about how we (or at least, I) handle reports as staff. I think it'll prove helpful for people who don't know why they might have to wait a little bit at times when a GM is definitely around.
