Players have been weaponizing Funcom’s “Official Server Terms of Conduct” since they were implemented as a way to win battles, get rid of enemies, or just grief people who have spent hundreds of dollars on the game.
Knowing that Funcom “will not be spending time to carefully removing only offending pieces,” it has become a very effective way of removing opposition. This is to the point that in discords it is openly discussed as a game play tactic.
And Sadly, Funcom’s distaste for spending time on in game issues is not limited to removal of building pieces but minimal time is also spent investigating tickets and appeals meaning that any narrative can be painted by the person sending the report.
The group being targeted will find themselves in a hellhole situation trying to have a dialogue to straighten the mess out. There can be days to weeks between responses and often your messages are not read or comprehended. So, you’ll be stuck resending the same message and waiting another week.
On top of that, the limited time Funcom spends on single cases means they will not investigate or reverse infractions prior to bans. Meaning, if you’re in a high ranking clan, you are almost destined to slowly accumulate non decaying offenses until you are hit with a permanent ban and if by some miracle you manage to get that reversed, you’re still only one angry report away from another permanent ban.
Another related issue is consistency in punishment, on rare occasion players have been warned to correct the offense before punishment was dealt but most times its without warning and blanketed. Players in the same blanket ban also often receive different ban reasons and punishments even if they had the same previous infractions.
The entire system is extremely hostile towards people investing large amounts of time as the risk is a certainty if you are competitive on official PVP servers. On the other hand malicious players and cheaters can enjoy $3 accounts and cause infinite chaos.
This system needs to change.