That would be my takeaway, too, especially because my own anecdotal experience was completely opposite.
The only report I’ve made for official servers so far was for a base in Oasis of Nekhet that nuked one of the Relic Hunter armorer spawns. I tried talking to the base owner about it, but they didn’t care, so I ended up reporting the base.
Within 24 hours, I got the reply that they investigated my report and that “any violations of our rules have been handled according to our policies”. The base was gone the next time I logged in.
Now, I’m aware that this is just my anecdote against someone else’s. I haven’t kept the pictures of the database I reported, so I cannot present full evidence, but if I ever make another report, I’ll keep all the evidence for discussions like this.
If course they are enforcing the TOS. That’s not even questionable. We get cries about it constantly here and only a small minority of players uses the forums. But there are simply too many servers and likely, and understandably, pve gets less attention.
Are you for real…? I generally like what you have to say, and agree with you for the most part, but don’t ever question my integrity, my intentions or my honesty. I will send you the exact same email I sent to Zendesk, and their reply so you can see for yourself. ZENDESK themselves have said that it is NOT A REPORTABLE OFFENCE to block the spawning of a world boss. It doesn’t help that Dana keeps closing down the thread either.
I dont know where the mistake lies and it could be a misunderstanding of some assumption (I am willing to give the benefit of the doubt); but blocking of a world boss is something that if someone does it, they should expect devwipe. I’m not really interested in “the facts” of the given situation because “facts” are always two sided affairs and one party in this case (FC) cannot just come in here and defend themselves. Maybe its as simple as it was “Joe”’s first day and after responding someone said “Joe, you got it wrong”. That’s why its futile to discuss.
Its impossible to read the ToS tho and come away with the notion that blocking world bosses are ok.
That is just it. The TOS seems rock sold on that to me, not open to interpretation. If an admin said it was ok, then I think its a poor decision by admin. But some threads get locked because they could go south, or were leaning that way.
This thread is a my suggestion to fix the short comings of a less then functional system.
Threads about specific Zendesk cases tend to get closed as a matter of policy. It’s not a policy I 100% agree with, I’m just explaining what they’ve mentioned occasionally.
In the hope that we can keep this thread alive I will certainly refrain from screaming and ranting (because trust me, I’m furious about this decision. Do I like it? Not one jot, but I have to accept it) and in the interest of an open, and honest debate, it is definitely beneficial for everyone, regardless of what side you come down on this debate regarding the ToS, to hear other people’s points of view.
For the record, I do wish for clearer, more precise, ToS, and affirmative action to be taken when someone is found to be in breach of said ToS.
Call me a pessimist, but I don’t think that updating the TOS will help if their enforcement policies remain as opaque as they are.
Right now, if you get banned, you don’t get clear and precise information about why you were banned. You only get an extremely generic reason – e.g. “blocking resources or building spots” – and that’s only if the tech works correctly. Otherwise, you get “could not retrieve suspension information” or whatever the exact wording is.
The problem with this is twofold:
People who got wiped and suspended without understanding how they broke the rules will probably break those same rules again in the future.
When admins make a mistake, we can’t get the decision overturned. Hell, we can’t even tell if the admins made a mistake or not.
As long as this is the case, it doesn’t matter how “clear” the TOS is, you’ll always run into the problem of being wiped and suspended without being able to discuss it in a reasonable way.
I could agree with that if it came hand-in-hand with the admins giving everyone who ended up wiped and/or suspended a specific explanation of how/why they were judged to be a dick.
If you’ve ever had a chance to be around little kids, they can be total dicks. Do you know how they learn not to be dicks? They’re told “don’t do this specific thing that makes you a dick”. And since they’re little kids, it usually goes together with an explanation of why that specific thing makes them a dick, but we’re adults, so we can skip that part.
What wouldn’t work – and no sane parent or teacher would even think of doing – is if they did the thing that made them a dick, then someone else had to accuse them of it in secret, then the authority figure comes and takes away their toys and tosses them out of the room without any explanation other than “you were a dick at some point”. No mention what they did or when, just the fact that they had been a dick at some unspecified time in some unspecified way.
TL;DR: I agree that the spirit of the rules is “don’t be a dick”, but reducing the problems with moderation (and lack of information about it) to an implication that “if you weren’t a dick, you wouldn’t be having problems” is an oversimplification that doesn’t help anyone.
Dick is a dick, and we’re talking about adults, not children. Adults are expected to know better. If they don’t, then there is a problem that needs to be separated from the rest.
If it makes them feel better, rename Bans to Separation.
No. And don’t pretend you don’t know better, either, because that’s just one way of being a dick
Yes, but everyone makes mistakes. Abso-freaking-lutely every-freaking-one.
And no, I’m not asking for mistakes to be forgiven or overlooked, so do me a favor and don’t start on that, either
That’s not the point I’m making and you know that, too. I’ve never argued against the measures to be taken – not here, nor anywhere else, nor in the past. (To the best of my knowledge. If someone digs up the evidence to the contrary, I’ll stand corrected.)
What I’m arguing is that everyone deserves to be told what they did wrong. Hell, even criminals are told what they did wrong. Even criminals who did wrong knowingly and premeditation are given the courtesy of being told “hey, you did that wrong” before they’re punished.
You’re going on about apples to oranges. Being a dick on a silly tagged server doesn’t make someone a criminal. It doesn’t even make them a bad person. It does ruin the experience for other players and that person’s playstyle is incompatible with the experience that has been chosen to be provided for.
You don’t have to do something wrong to be banned. Read that again. You do NOT have to do something WRONG to get Banned. You only need to do something that the owner/renter decides they do not want on their server.
They may explain what they want in as little or as much detail as they wish, but the results are still the same. If they don’t want you there, you don’t play there. You play somewhere else.
So stop bringing up speeding tickets, murders, ■■■■, arson, theft, forgery, fraud, extortion, and all these other infractional and criminal activities. They have nothing to do with this.
No shіt, maybe that’s why I said that we extend the courtesy of communication even to criminals. As in, “we do this even for people who do really, really bad things, why wouldn’t we do it for people who break some rules on a game server?”
But again, you know what I’m saying. Pretending to misunderstand that would be a case of being a… what?
That’s semantics. It’s not morally wrong, or legally wrong, or ethically wrong. It’s wrong according to the rules for that server.
Notice the shifting goalposts, though:
suddenly becomes
Regardless of whether it’s “wrong” or “being a dick” or “something that the owner/renter decides they do not want on their server”, the point I’m making – the point you’re so diligently trying to distract from and derail – is this:
Anyone who breaks the rules deserves an explanation of how they broke them.
Call it basic courtesy, call it an optimistic belief in human capacity to learn from their mistakes, call it whatever you want, but there’s nothing wrong with that idea, so you can stop trying to obfuscate it
I would say yes that is too vague. Example - Every day i logon to go outside and chop some trees down but i can’t because you have already done it. I believe that you are being a dick so i report you and then an admin bans you. Next time you try to logon you cannot because you are banned. You ask why? But you are just told that you are not entitled to an explanation because you broke the rules by being a dick.
Nobody learns anything from this, you just end up going somewhere else to be a dick.
Also becoming an adult unfortunately does not grant you psychic abilities, you currently still have to learn things in the same way as kids do.
