Funcom apparently doesn’t understand that the players have at least been its customers

I would argue that even if you did, they still have a legal right to do so at the very least (though it would be a bad move). Keep in mind that Valve does this very thing with people caught cheating and their Steam libraries. Not directly related to the discussion you are having (I suspect that by “right” you are meaning it in a moral sense), but I figured I would add it as a concern.

Indeed. There seems to be an inverse relation to the amount of bark to bite. I know when my account was deleted by Discord, I had some bark myself at how disappointed I was with their decision. That being said, the amount of barking by others was on a different level.

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Ok, taking that moral framework as a given boundary, then I can agree with much of what you are saying. Now we are moving from what is usually taken as ‘right or wrong’ in these situations into an expressed moral philosophy of ‘enlightened self-interest’. That is something I can entirely subscribe to as being good for companies, and what most companies endeavour to do.

It certainly would be the preferred choice by many of us (and many of us have argued for it for a long time - though witnessing first hands the results when they have tried to communicate more, and thus be more transparent, it becomes understandable when they hold back).

I don’t see that as quite the same thing - that was an instance of refusal of service due to an expressed reason and it was the reason that was controversial. Here the expressed reason is not so controversial - it is just enforcement of published rules. However - under the ‘moral’ framework of not wanting even the possibility of being in a similar position - I can see how that point of controversy can apply. I would argue, though, that then the question becomes one of balancing the potential long-term cost of whatever controversy may arise versus the (maybe shorter term) financial cost of extending and exposing the process. How much do a few disgruntled players complaining about bans actually effect the bottom line? And how different are those voices from the sea of similar voices complaining (usually without information) about bugs, changes, the colour of the water, you name it? Avoiding such ‘grey zones’ is certainly one good way to avoid the potential appearance of a problem - and maybe not doing so does put the brand in jeopardy - but given that gamers as a whole are never satisfied and always complain, I’m not sure how much weight anyone really applies to these complaints when they see them.

Almost certainly more ‘fair’, almost certainly better for avoiding whatever risk of controversy and reputational harm there actually is but almost certainly more expensive, complex and time-consuming. Which brings us back to whether a little (if any) reputational damage is worth the extra effort.

I’d add renaming the servers as an additional option :wink: The servers used to be unregulated, players complained about that bitterly. Arguably Funcom’s reputation was just as jeopardised by constant accusations that they ‘don’t care’ and arguably it was in response to this that they began enforcing the rules more vigorously. In that sense they already took the moral decision under your suggested framework - it has yet to be seen whether it will work out, but in that sense a move has been made. Disabling the servers entirely seems to me more likely than shining a light on the few people that are probably having to spend their time responding to these zendesk reports (at least some of which are likely to be incoherent, if these forums are anything to judge by). But I can see that leading to screams of outrage also.

Then I shall agree :slight_smile: But if Funcom ‘says’ (by initial banning) this person broke the rules and the person in question just shouts incoherently, I may understand their frustration, but I also feel I have some justification in forming an opinion of who is likely right or wrong.

But this is the thing - even if we accept the equivalence of the situation (which I don’t, as I consider it to be a private company enforcing its rules as it said it would), then it is not at the point of accusing someone of the crime. It is after the investigation, trial and conviction. And, to use your example, by assuming that Funcom is falsifying this process in some way (not suggesting fraud, just in whatever sense this process fails), you are then assuming that they are a rogue state, that they are Stalin. That doesn’t mean no one innocent gets convicted (no court system successfully guarantees this yet), but there also seems no reason to assume they get it wrong, at least in the absence of evidence that they do.

A fair disagreement, and a somewhat shaky claim on my part. But I’ll attempt to justify it by pointing out that they are accountable to the published rules - if significant numbers of people can show (or even argue coherently) that they have been banned without breaching the rules, then I would say Funcom is acting unaccountably. The thing is that most (at least so far) can’t even put it down to a grey area ‘too big’ ban, most so far that we’ve seen any reasons for have turned out to be for claim spam, or some other offence. In the wider sense, oversight always improves accountability, so your point certainly stands.

Ok, that makes sense. But this comes back to the idea that they think they are purchasing something that they are not. So arguably, Funcom maybe needs to just have something in the advertising material that makes clearer that this is a game that has private servers and singleplayer, and also offers some privately-hosted servers run by Funcom as an optional bonus for those players that follow the rules. Being able to play on official servers may be a factor in someone’s purchase decision, but I’d argue that it shouldn’t be - and maybe that just needs the point to be stated earlier in the purchase process. (I know I would have liked that clause in the EULA about having to accept all updates to have been mentioned earlier - it wouldn’t necessarily have prevented my purchase, but it would have been good to know.)

Sure - always nice to see clearly exactly what the thought process was - but at the moment the process as explained is ‘report comes in (via zendesk)’, 'Staff member visits server, views situation and, if it’s a grey area case, uses their best judgement as to whether it’s a violation or not. A lot more like a sports ball referee, now that I come to think of it - they make the best decision they can at that moment based on the rules - and then people yell at them about it… Without some evidence to the contrary, I can’t see any reason to assume that’s not exactly what the process is - and I’m not sure how much more transparent it could be.

Nah, it’s all good :slight_smile: It’s nice to be able to debate on these things, get different perspectives, and maybe shave a few details down here and there to get at a nugget of new understanding.

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True. But they are additionally offering official servers to play for free for “every” customer as long as you stick to their rules. So the only way the can´t deny customers the entry at the moment is by stop offering the service at all (includes everyone) or when a customer does a violation. If a customer does a violation they need to provide a proof. Just saying you did so in a short message without telling what you did where and when, is no proof. It is nothing more then a statement. A statement the customer can not verify if true or not, because he is not getting any information from the company about the when why and what for.

A rule like “too big” is not clear in their wording and so far Funcom refuses to make a clear statement about giving precise numbers. Therefor a customer can not know if he is violating the TOS while he is playing. Therefor he can not be made responsible for violating this rule. A violation of the rules requires intention. I can not intentionally break a rule that I can not comprehend/that is not cleary stated because it lacks vital information that is neccessary for the customer to be able to stick to that rule.

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Considering that this was in reference to something going on between JJ and myself the burden of proof in question is not on Funcom. It is on the people making the claims that Funcom is banning people without justification who are not breaking the ToS simply because they built something “big” without providing a single shred of evidence to support their claim. That is therefore a positive claim being made by people on this thread (and others for that matter) and the burden of proof is on them to provide evidence to support their claims. Making anecdotal accusations (often times second hand or worse) is not proof. So, where is the proof?

No, you are not in any contract with Funcom. When you purchase any game from any game developer you agree to their Terms of Service and part of those terms are some simple fact. 1). They can change at any time at the developers discretion. 2). The developers have the right to ban anyone in violation of the Terms of Service. If you cannot understand that then you have much bigger problems.

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That’s where we disagree. As a private company, offering a free bonus, they don’t have to prove a player violated the rules. If they say that player violated the rules, then he did, unless he can provide some sort of evidence or argument to the contrary. As I’ve suggested before, they have the right to deny service for any reason or no reason at all, because they are the one’s paying for the servers, same as any other server admin. That wouldn’t be a good idea, and would cause understandable outrage, but they would still have the right to do it. On the limited evidence so far, it looks like most players experiencing bans do know what they did - many just deny it was bad, or insist others were worse, neither of which is a good defense against having broken the rules.

“Too big” is, unquestionably, more of a problem. The other rules ultimately come down to disagreement over whether or not claim spam is acceptable, or similar arguments. “Too big”, on the other hand is an inherently subjective concept, which makes it much more difficult. On this issue I can understand your concerns - some bases/constructions will be obviously too big, but there are going to be others around the borderline - and so long as there is a grey area that is always going to be a problem. The problem with offering ‘precise numbers’ has been covered ad nauseam, so I’ll simply say, yet again, that it won’t work (and suggest anyone wanting to know why not should just look through this thread, it’s been covered repeatedly).

But instead I have a counter-suggestion that I think might work. Funcom won’t publish lists of offenders for many reasons, but perhaps they could publish screenshots of selected buildings considered ‘too big’ and others judged ‘ok’. Or, if using real player-built structures has privacy issues, perhaps they could build a couple of examples in creative mode. Giving players some concrete examples of what is or isn’t ‘too big’, without trying to put fixed numbers on things might help settle more players on where they stand in relation to the border line.

Unfortunately, you will find in life that you will be held responsible for many things that you couldn’t or didn’t know about. And anyone violating these rules does know them (they may not have read them, but they have agreed to them) - too big may be too vague, at least until we start getting some concrete examples, but we are all still bound by whatever TOS we agree to, even if we don’t understand all the terms (our choice, if we don’t understand the terms, is not to agree to them in the first place, and thus not be eligible for whatever it was we wanted that had TOS).

No a violation of the rules requires doing something that is against the rules. Intention has nothing to do with it. Intention may (and in many instances should) come into what punishment if any is applied - if someone was clearly cheating they should be punished more stringently than someone who there is every reason to believe made an innocent mistake. And I’ll agree again here with Dogoegma that permabans are a particular problem on this, especially with the current two strikes and you’re out system. But it is also worth remembering that the rules also clearly advise being careful who you clan with and suggest leaving clans on servers you no longer play on - so if people read the rules, then they should only be caught for offences they were at least tangentially involved in, or that nebulous ‘too big’ thing. And if they are caught for ‘too big’ then at least they have a very clear idea of what is too big for when they return, hard as that lesson may be - so they should only ever be caught by it once and not be at risk of a permaban. (Though still would be better if the risk of permaban for two borderline cases remained at zero - but that then causes problems in banning blatant abusers.)

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My apologies, but it seems you don’t understand what burden of proof means. For those who don’t want to spend time on Wikipedia, I’ll provide a summary to the best of my ability.

Burden of proof has two different meanings, one in law, one in philosophy. In philosophy, it means that you have to provide proof for your position, rather than expect those who oppose it to provide the proof against it. In law, the meaning is derived from this, but more technical.

The point you’re missing is that Funcom is neither debating you, nor taking you to court. They are revoking your access to the service they let you use for free.

If Funcom posted a message in this discussion saying @CodeMage violated the TOS on server 1823, then the burden of proof would be on them to back their claim. If they don’t provide any proof for that claim, we are free to hold it false, but that’s as far as that will take you. It does not automatically make true the claim “Funcom is banning people unfairly”.

The absence of proof from Funcom does not constitute the proof of the opposite claim.

That’s why people like me say “I’ll believe you when I see some proof”. Not because I know Funcom is right, but because I don’t know you are. It’s on you to provide arguments for your claim.

Speaking of proof, I was trying to stay away from the nice, thought-provoking, and civil discussion that @DanQuixote and @Dogoegma were having, but now that I had to open my stupid mouth again, here’s one bit that really bothered me:

If all I had was nothing more than an anonymous message on the internet written by someone who claims to be an escapee from North Korea, then I would not be predisposed to believe them just because their tale sounded harrowing.

The key words there are “nothing more”. People who escape North Korea have proof “written” all over their bodies. It’s etched deeply into their psyche.

When a metaphor is too far from what it’s supposed to represent, it won’t stretch, it will break.

No, they don’t. They don’t have to and they don’t need to. The fact that you keep refusing to understand is that they have no obligation to do what you’re asking them to do.

The document called “Official Servers - Terms of conduct, guidelines and procedures” is informational, not legally binding. If it were legally binding, it would’ve looked more like their EULA, i.e. written in thick legalese.

It might be nicer if they provided proof, but “being nice” has its own pros and cons, and the cons might outweigh the pros.

No, it does not. A violation of the rules does not even require awareness of the rules in the first place. Even real-life laws work like that.

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Not quite. Funcom is implicitly making an assertion of guilt (i.e. violating the terms of service /community guilindes). That is an implied assertion. Not all things need to be explicit.

True.

The problem is that players don’t have the same ability to require evidence, further, we have no reason to default to trusting Funcom, precisely because they aren’t operating a court.

That isn’t sufficient. A small minority of people escape. One could give North Korea the benefit of the doubt and assume that these are a few unfortunates who just got rotten luck in N. Korea. Our assumptions about human nature say otherwise. Not only do we have a good idea what goes on in N. Korea, but we have good reason to be skeptical of what governments say. We demand evidence from them, and don’t take them at their word.

They do if they wish to act in their own best interests, which includes appearing fair and impartial. If they wished to become tyrants, they are in their legal right to do so, but that would not be good for sales.

Sort of. Depends on the kind of rule. Many rules require a mens rea along with an actus rea. That is they required not just a “guilty act” (an actus rea), but also a “guilty mind” (a mens rea). It depends on the context and law in question. Here though, there is an implied point. We are assuming that Funcom wants to look out for its own best interests, and we are assuming that they wish to be seen as fair and impartial. Under these assumptions, Funcom does have to justify their acts.

Indeed. It is the best argument opposing greater transparency here. However, I am skeptical of this, particular if done well. Even if Fucom was hesitant due to some legal requirement or liability, there should be legal and workable workarounds, and I suspect a good boost for PR.

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This isn’t really all that well defined without making clear what the “default” opinions are and justifying them being defaults.

True. That was a very weak argument. You could argue something akin to an implied agreement, but even that is fairly weaksauce.

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That, right there, is a straw man, whether you intended it or not. You’re attacking a claim I didn’t make. At no point did I imply that Funcom didn’t make that assertion.

Again, it doesn’t matter if you default to trusting or mistrusting Funcom. The point is that if I say “Funcom banned me unfairly”, the burden of proof is on me.

It might not be “sufficient”, but it’s a lot more substantial than anonymous words. It’s the difference between a graffito on a wall saying “Zaphod is an abuser” and the testimony of a person who has visible bruises. You might doubt that this person has been abused by Zaphod, but at least you have more evidence than just a graffito.

What we have on these forums are graffiti, and it’s not like we can’t do better than that.

I’ve tried to formulate my reply to you about the difference between what we’re discussing and giving someone the “benefit of the doubt” when it comes to human rights and atrocities, but I just can’t.

I can’t sustain this line of discussion much longer, probably because I’ve lived in a region that has seen its own share of atrocities and crimes against humanity. Nowhere near as bad as North Korea, but it still isn’t something I can make light of for purposes of trying to prove a point about a free service in a video game.

“Tyrant” is a really, really loaded word. Are they also “tyrants” because they don’t always listen to us when we say what should be nerfed or what changes they should make to the game? After all, every time they release an update, it will contain stuff some of us don’t want, but we must accept it if we want to play on official servers.

Personally, I don’t think this discussion is improved when it’s framed in morally loaded terms.

Yes, it does depend on which kind of rule. There are plenty of strict liability laws in the real world that don’t require mens rea, only actus reus. Also, there are many laws that differentiate similar crimes by intent, which is how you end up with the difference between manslaughter and murder. So, pedantry notwithstanding, it should not be controversial to state that many real-life laws don’t excuse ignorance.

I don’t know who “we” are. If you mean people like you and @Hel, then yeah, I can tell that you are assuming that and probably more. For starters, you’re assuming that a substantial number of players care about this enough to form an opinion about whether Funcom is fair and impartial or not. You’re also assuming that Funcom cares about that. And you’re assuming that it’s somehow in their best interests to appear fair and impartial in this context to that group of people.

No, I’m not talking about legal requirements or liabilities. I’m talking about other things.

For starters, the cost. The more work they have to do to enforce the rules, the higher the TCO of the servers they offer for free. This is why I’m so opposed to framing this discussion in terms of morality and justice. The systems you keep comparing this to – courts, for example – are still funded by real money. Unless you’re fine with “paying taxes”, i.e. a subscription, for official servers, then you really can’t ignore the cost.

But even if we set that aside, what about the human nature you insist on mistrusting when it comes to organizations? Do you think it’s somehow absent from individuals? Look at the discussions about the new rules. Look at how many times we’ve seen someone come out and say that the new rules are both unclear and unfair, only to subsequently acknowledge that they knew what they did wrong.

If Funcom starts going into more and more details about why they took action against each report, how long do you think it will be before everyone and their uncle is suddenly a Conan Exiles lawyer, arguing that it’s unfair how they got banned for spamming 50 foundations in a semicircle around someone else’s base, when that other guy didn’t get banned for having a circle of 60 foundations outlining the floor plan of the castle he was going to build? “Sure, he put up a sign ‘under construction’, but so did I, so why ban me?”

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Not really, more negligence. I was thinking more anarchic rather than tyrannical.

I think I agree with the rest of it, mostly.

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I do apologize then for the miscommunication, and it is not my intention to strawman. I am not understanding your argument. If there is an applied assertion, then is there not a “burden of proof” for that assertion? Assume for sake of argument that Funcom wishes to be seen as fair and impartial, a ban would therefore have to be justiied, and that is a calim requiring a “burden of proof”.

It does as the requirement for a burden of proof fallacy is that there is a claim outside common sense. Without that claim, there is no burden of proof. For example, if I make the claim that the world is round, that doesn’t really require me to justify it (I certanly could, but it is unecessary). It is common knowledge at this point. If I wanted to claim that space-time has nearly zero Gaussian curvature, and thus the world is flat (where the word world means the universe), then the burden of proof would be on me (I could link to an article demonstrating this, but that would be a tanget). It lies outside of “common knowledge”.

Hence, what arguments require a burden of proof is contingent of what you consider “common knowledge”. Now, for any specific claim that Funcom banned that person unfairly, that would require a burden of proof (just likea person arguing for their innocence in a court of law). However, given human nature, it is reasonable to assume that as organizations err, we should assume that a percent of these claims are legitimate. Hence, as far as policies go, it is valid to consider the impact on a hypothetical player unfairly banned from playing in offical servers.

There is a severe limit on the amount of evidence a person can have, particularly if the ban occurs without warning. Indeed, in some regard, we could be more suspicious of a person with too much evidence rather than too little. The average player doesn’t take that many precautions (like recording their every act in Conan Exiles). So unless we assume that no players that are inside the norm in this regard get banned, we have to assume that there is likely a percentage of unfairly punished players that have no way of backing up their claims (all evidence is held by Funcom).

I am sorry to here that. My goal wasn’t to cause offence or to make like of any tragedy. Sometimes my math training makes me forget when I am communicating more than I am intending to. For me, when I say that in regard to X, entity Y is similar to entity Z, I am usually being very specific and not assuming that Y and Z have anything in common outside the relation X.

True, and my mistake. Perhaps the word authoritarian would be more pathos neutral. I am not suggesting that Funcom is tyrannical at all. Rather, I am making a point that it is within their legal right to do so. It might also be a moral right for them to do so if you accept the existence of a set of property rights as moral.

Sorry, I thought you were making a universal claim, my mistake.

Not really. I am actually assuming that Funcom cares about marginal profit. In this regard, we have to consider the benefits of even just one more player, and what costs and benefits are gained by that additional customer’s decision to make a purchase.

I assume so given that they are a private company and probably care a great deal about marginal profit, and how powerful branding is to people’s decisions on making purchases. I think it is a safe assumption to make with those constraints.

Further, to some extent the point stands even if you disagree with those assumptions as they are separate from the argument of, “given these assumptions, X is true”. I am interested what your opinions are if we take as given, those assumptions.

I wasn’t specifically suggesting that you were, merely covering the basics.

Absolutely, hence why my suggestions have been upfront on the costs of proposals. My nagging in regard to getting rid of permabans explicitly points to the small marginal increase in costs compared with increase in potential benefit.

Many customers and potential customers are going to frame it that way. Hence, we have to keep that perspective in mind. We have to consider how these groups will behave and how individuals will “feel” about certain acts. Consider Enron as a useful case study. Most of the fallout of Enron was caused by the reporting on Enron moreso than any specific act by the company. Sure, they were playing fast and loose with their financial reports, but much of what was perceived to be fraud wasn’t (not to ignore the actual fraud that was committed by Enron, they still had committed some fraud). If the reporting on Enron hadn’t broken the story, it is possible that the company would still exist. For companies, reputations matter a great deal, and customers (particularly millennials and gen z) tend to be very conscious to make purchases from company’s they agree with on a moral basis.

They tend to be in the physical world, but not all conceptualizations require such burdensome costs. Cryptocurrency operates with no overhead cost to the creator, yet does many of the functions that cost governments significant money to do (like printing bills, enacting fiscal policy, providing security, etc.). I am not necessarily suggesting Funcom create a blockchain, merely that they could be nonobvious solutions that have low marginal and fixed costs with some nice looking marginal benefits.

Humans are prone to error, particularly when grouped into a bureaucracy where Chaos can make things more unpredictable.

Of course. I haven’t suggested otherwise. I am not claiming that Funcom should demoderate. It is an option, but not the one I would recommend.

Sure, but you are referring to a bunch of anecdotes, which I am less concerned with. Unless you can strengthen your claims, I am not sure how relevant they actually are.

This is a wee bit of a slippery slope fallacy. I am not suggesting that level of investment into the claims of unfair treatment. I am mindful of costs and benefits. I think that removing permabans would be a net marginal increase both for players and more importantly the company. Keep in mind I don’t have a personal axe to grind here as I don’t play in official servers. I also think that Funcom should see if they can responsibly be more transparent. Obviously, if it gets in the way of marginal profits, that would clearly be wrong to do. Otherwise, it should be something considered by Funcom, particularly if it can be done cheaply.

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This is a fallacy of the beard (yes, that is a real thing, it is also known as the continuum fallacy). Vagueness doesn’t mean that a player cannot know the rules, only that we cannot avoid subjective judgments.

Actually, they can. A better argument is they shouldn’t. I am not sure you can argue that convincingly though. For example, cryptographic equipment used by the military is frequently governed without respect to intention, and for good reason.

You actually can, the actual issue is that such judgments are subjective (which we tend to want to avoid in these kinds of scenarios). Sometimes we can’t help it, but if there is a reasonable alternative or a way of mitigating such subjective judgements, then we ought to do so for the sake of our own self-interest.

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However, it’s worth remembering that gamers will buy products from companies they explicitly hate, just because it’s the only way to get the game they want to play. I’m not sure that ‘minor moral disagreement with the company’s stance over rules enforcement on official servers only’ will make much of a blip on anyone’s radar. Sure, as you say, companies are concerned (or should be) with marginal business, but if the gains are sufficiently small then even very low costs may be too high to be worth it.

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My argument was that the concept of burden of proof doesn’t magically extend to all the things that @Hel implied.

For one thing, Funcom does not have to prove you broke the rules in order to revoke your access to official servers, as people keep insisting. And by “have to”, I mean they don’t have a legal or contractual obligation to do so. Whether it would be “good PR” or “good for their sales” is something completely different.

For another thing, like I already said and you acknowledged, absence of proof does not constitute the proof of the opposite.

Those are important points that many people keep missing every time someone mentions burden of proof. Seriously, when someone says “the burden of proof is on you when you say Funcom banned you unfairly”, you’ll often see someone else reply something that makes it suspect whether they understand what burden of proof means.

So do the claims about Funcom’s enforcement of rules. A bunch of people claiming they were banned unfairly does not constitute “common knowledge”. It’s also not “common knowledge” that Funcom is enforcing the rules flawlessly, but nobody here is arguing that’s the case.

See above. Nobody’s arguing that Funcom is doing this perfectly and flawlessly. There are many different claims in these threads, but that wasn’t one of them.

It sure is. I actually agree it’s important to consider that. I’m not really arguing against considering the official policy. It’s something we should do, as long as we’re also okay with arriving at different conclusions. :slight_smile:

Oh, I know. I didn’t mean to imply you offended me. Let me try to put it differently: when I was a kid, I thought that being in a debate club would be fun. I quit as soon as I realized that it’s for people who are capable of arguing for something they themselves disagree with, no matter how wrong they think it is.

So what I meant to say is that we’ve hit the limit of what I’m capable of discussing. :slight_smile:

Now that you mention it, I can see how what I said could be seen as a universal claim. Sorry about that.

I think that if I latched onto “just one more player”, I would be guilty of pedantry, so let’s set that one aside :wink:

Instead, I’ll just say that I’m not convinced that there is such a clear-cut relationship between how Funcom handles the enforcement of the official server rules and the marginal profit. As @DanQuixote rightly pointed out, many people will still buy a game even from a game studio they hate because they want that game, and I honestly don’t think this will make people hate Funcom the way many people hate certain other studios…

Look, if we take these assumptions as given, if we assume that Funcom should care more for being perceived as fair and impartial in its enforcement of server rules, then my opinion is going to be an unpopular one: the only way they can make that work truly well is to split the official servers into two groups; one group would be subscription-based and would have dedicated admins, the other would be without rules whatsoever.

Honestly, I have no skin in the game when it comes to permabans. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with your idea there, but I also think it’s a moot point. Anyone willing to wait a year or more for their ban to expire is probably such a fan that they’ll buy another account before that time. :man_shrugging:

But that’s really not what I’m arguing about when it comes to costs. People on these forums want things, but aren’t prepared to even hear out the arguments about why some of those things are not trivial and how having those things might mean that something else has to be sacrificed. For example, it’s easy to say “they should warn you before taking action”, but you’ll be surprised to hear the names you might get called if you try to explain how that’s not actually something they can do right now in the game and that they would have to implement it and that implementing it is something that requires work that has to be prioritized above other things.

Fair enough. I would say they’re just as relevant as the anecdotes of people being banned for allegedly unfair reasons :wink:

And no, I’m not being facetious here. If we’re going to extrapolate from the claims about unfair bans, then we should be free to extrapolate just as much from people breaking the rules and then complaining about it.

It’s a slippery slope argument, but it doesn’t have to be a fallacy. There’s real evidence that people do behave that way in this game and on these forums :slight_smile:

Maybe you aren’t – although I’m not sure at this point what level you’re really asking for – but many people here are suggesting it. Hell, not just suggesting, but demanding it.

As I already said earlier in this thread, I think they should:

But I’ve already seen way too many people saying that this wouldn’t be enough for them.


From what we’ve discussed so far, I get the feeling that we’re not in that much of a disagreement. It seems that we have a slight miscommunication about our intentions. For my part, I’m not entirely sure what you’re asking for, apart from removal of permabans. Also, I take your replies in the context of the wider discussion, so I’m not just replying to what you’re saying, but also what those who seem to agree with you are saying.

At any rate, it’s nice to be able to discuss these things with you, if for no other reason, than for the fact that this is the longest string of replies I’ve had on a heated topic like this without being called names. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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I feel like this whole conversation is based on what I see as a flawed concept, that a ban is Funcom vs the players.

The missing ingredient here is the third party, which in this case would be the reporting player or players.

Server moderation in this sense is one player (ie the accused rule breaker)vs another player(ie the reporting player) with FC as the arbiter. Either way one player wins and gets what they want and the other player doesn’t.

All FC has to do to be fair is to try to apply the same measures from one report to the next. This will never be perfect because there is a subjective element, but this isn’t at all uncommon even in law and court.

There is a lot of discretion involved in law across the entire system. For example cops don’t pull over every person who is speeding. It’s also why when they do pull you over they can choose to let you off with a warning or ticket you for the infraction. Judges give wildly different sentences for the exact same crime, based on the circumstances surrounding said crimes.

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True. But we really aren’t considering specific people or potential customers whose purchasing decisions aren’t influenced by the reputation of the company. We might say that such player’s decision to purchase is “invariant” to reputation changes, and we can call say that such a player/customer is an “invariant”. Those players/customers can’t effect our analysis. Instead we are wanting to focus only on people who aren’t invariant, lets call those people, a “movable”. It isn’t likely that the set of movables is empty. So we have to measure out what we think the costs will be to influence a kind of movable. We should refrain from discussing invariants as they won’t meaningfully impact the discussion.

True, and I am very mindful of that. We should also restrict our discussion to policies that, at minimum, yield a marginal profit on its time value of money, that is policies that make a profit that exceed inflation and do so by a decent amount when each movable makes a purchase. Let us call such restrictions an “innovation”. Now we can focus only on changes that will affect a group of people and will largely be positive.

I claim that there is a good chance that Funcom could develop a change that is an innovation. It is clear that I consider getting rid of permabans an innovation, but it would be interesting to hear if you or anyone else has other ideas of getting innovations (you mentioned renaming servers, not sure that would do much, but it is an interesting idea). We would also need a way to make sure that researching the outcomes of the policy changes are also innovations themselves. Otherwise they are just too risky to do.

To preface, I’ve NEVER seen ANY of the issues being complained about here - and after having played the game for nearly a year now. But I have a question or two: By “foundation stacking” do you mean building walls out of foundation blocks and/or fence foundations? And is that bad somehow? I’m mostly PvE so I don’t follow the PvP rules, ethics, and suggestions too closely. Can you explain more? Thanks!

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Nope, I mean “stacking” fence foundations in depth, like in this post:

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WTAF??? Wow… OK, I see… My goodness…

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As long as the server rules aren‘t more specific everybody can be the victim of the mood of certain admins and the dedication of people who report them.

On the last server i played on, a single person got a whole server population (30-40 people) banned. You guys think any of these 30-40 people had the intention to break the rules?

How can this be in the interest of funcom?
I personally seen enough of funcoms randomness and unclear/unspecific server rules.

I‘m pretty sure that some big youtubers and certain online portals are very interested in a story of that scale.

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