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Post by Prime Minister Sinister on Oct 19, 2019 13:32:05 GMT -5
My point is this. If you got banned for posting here you saved yourself a lot of time and headaches anyway. A game that does something like that isn't worth playing. iamjacksopinion got banned for it and made a thread about it. They lost a great player because of doing that. Doesn't seem to be happening anymore. Hiding from the ban is not something I would ever do. I readily welcome a ban because it would simply prove that the game isn't worth my time. I get you and your perspective of it, but personally "will they ban or treat me differently if i do a thing they dont want me to do" isn't the metric I use to determine whether or not the game's worth my time, lol. I stick with whether or not I'm having fun with it, and for all of armageddon's flaws, I've had fun with it for nearly twenty years now. If I can avoid any of the baggage that comes with doing things they don't want me to do (like posting here), I will. Hence the anonymity. |
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delerak
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Post by delerak on Oct 19, 2019 13:34:44 GMT -5
Because the person that banned me is gone. And I never really got banned after that. So I came back to see if the game changed. I will note that I did not play during Sanvean's ban which was my last official ban back in 2005 or something? I came back a few years later once she had moved on and no one really paid me any attention.
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vex
Clueless newb
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Post by vex on Oct 19, 2019 15:28:39 GMT -5
I will also add that bans are extremely detrimental to a game like Arm.
Really, a ban today means nothing. It won't stop a player from playing the game, and will in fact, make them more likely to become spiteful and come back with less than well-meaning intents. There are much easier, effective and less problematic ways to handle people. Even as a last resort, it is a non-functional punishment. It can do absolutely nothing, but risk escalate an already bad situation.
Anyone could, casually, fire up a free vpn, make a half dozen accounts with ZERO KARMA dwarves, and start causing havoc in the game. You can make endless free e-mails, there are scores of mediocre but effective free vpns, you can get your ip changed with every major ISP in a three minute phone call, if you don't already get a new one every couple of weeks. Banning, or antagonizing players to the point of leaving or feeling disenfranchised, is the worst possible choice.
Every major mmo, with vast amounts of funds to manage security and protect their game, use a ban as an absolute last resort, because... most of them give away free accounts, and you pay for your subscription. You can just change your ip, get another free account, and get down to the business of griefing. You can cycle free trial accounts, back to back to back, with a lot of them.
Sound familiar? Free Arm accounts?
Mistreating players is never, ever a solution, and banning will only lead to being forced into an eternal hunt for suspicious ips, behavior, and the threat of punishing an innocent player by accident, as many use vpns for legitimate security reasons, instead of adding to the game, or having time to actually enjoy the fruits of your labors.
It isn't so hard to negotiate, to work things out, and come to a solution that works 'enough' for everyone. It doesn't need to be constantly tense and antagonistic.
Our internet is in an age where the defender is, always, on the back foot, and more and more resources are required to protect against an increasing, evolving and aggressive threats. A mud is, by comparison, rather quaint, and extremely vulnerable, so I am constantly mystified as to why certain staff behaviors here, and elsewhere, is ever tolerated from a senior staff perspective.
Happy players, are productive and remaining players. Angry players either leave, or come back to be a thorn, to various degrees of success.
We're really fortunate, overall, that most of the people who have been driven off, have been reasonable enough to say their piece and depart, as a veteran player with intimate understanding of the game and its code, could do a lot of harm, were they ever inclined to do so. It isn't even like it would require a slow fuse, because again, dwarves are ZERO KARMA and combined with new heavy combats, are a threat right out the gate.
I think this is the reason karma is so hard to get, so people worry over losing it, and having to spend rl years getting it back if they misbehave. It's the only meaningful control mechanism they really have, but even that works against them, because newer players show up at such a grave disadvantage, and for such a long time, they're more likely to leave than spend a year or two waiting and hoping.
It's not a good situation, imo.
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delerak
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Post by delerak on Oct 19, 2019 17:25:10 GMT -5
Yeah I made all those arguments before Vex. Also the stress it causes staff to have to deal with a pissed off person. I think a few people at SOI mentioned how when they banned me and I went on a bit of a temper tantrum they hated trying to track me down or find out if some new account was me or not. It's really stupid and hilarious at the same time.
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delerak
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Post by delerak on Oct 19, 2019 17:26:41 GMT -5
I ran a small NWN server years ago and had to deal with this. We had maybe 30-40 players on average I had to ban a guy and he kept getting around it with VPNs and basically griefing the whole server. It was such a pain in the ass I actually eventually shut the server down.
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Post by Prime Minister Sinister on Oct 19, 2019 18:55:43 GMT -5
I ran a small NWN server years ago and had to deal with this. We had maybe 30-40 players on average I had to ban a guy and he kept getting around it with VPNs and basically griefing the whole server. It was such a pain in the ass I actually eventually shut the server down. gotta wonder tho
what do you do about someone that's just dead-set on griefing and ruining it for others for some weird personal gratification? |
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delerak
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Post by delerak on Oct 19, 2019 19:00:54 GMT -5
Bans have their place. There is definitely behavior worthy of perm bans, IP bans, etc. It's just not really enforceable if the person really wants to get around it. You could take legal action as you can probably swing some sort of harassment law but it would take a long time to get that done and still may not go anywhere.
The only option is to ban on sight and just recognize that you might make a mistake and ban an innocent player or something. It really does suck cause I been on both sides of it.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Oct 19, 2019 19:12:08 GMT -5
I ran a small NWN server years ago and had to deal with this. We had maybe 30-40 players on average I had to ban a guy and he kept getting around it with VPNs and basically griefing the whole server. It was such a pain in the ass I actually eventually shut the server down. gotta wonder tho
what do you do about someone that's just dead-set on griefing and ruining it for others for some weird personal gratification? You troll them on their seperate forum? |
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delerak
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Post by delerak on Oct 19, 2019 20:21:28 GMT -5
Real griefing doesn't really take place, at least not a scale I'm talking about. IE: flooding the discord chat with spam, or using spam bots on all the arm domain emails etc. Making multiple accounts. It's time consuming but I really don't see that taking place at Arm.
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vex
Clueless newb
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Post by vex on Oct 20, 2019 4:56:17 GMT -5
But they don't work, and you no longer need to be computer savvy to circumvent them.
I could, for example, bypass a ban within minutes, or create parachute accounts ready to go with plausible IP histories bounced through free VPNs, or access other, older accounts through social connections who no longer play and re-create an IP based on their location when they did. And these aren't even elaborate, or illegal, or difficult, requiring little more than passable reading comprehension, or in the case of the latter, the ability to socialize and make connections.
For someone determined, there is... little in the way of functional counter measures, and the criteria required to meet a 'cyber harassment' charge, if your country even acknowledges such, are virtually impossible without actual damages or tangible threats that can be proven in court.
It is better to adopt a policy of approachable fairness, and cultivate a reputation for being reasonable and even handed.
It costs nothing to be polite and reasonable, and will eliminate far more problems than the heavy handed threat of ban ever will.
For an every player, it doesn't matter much, but for an admin, it can be the difference between business as usual and an embarrassing, troublesome problem.
I feel its very relatable, especially with a certain staffer throwing degrading comments around at and in front of everyone.
It's why going to Reddit en mass to zealously defend Arm, by attacking reviewers, has a greater potential to harm the game than help it.
A ban, or even the threat of a ban, has more potential to harm your endeavor, than having that same person being a douche while he's around. You have more ability to control, mitigate and curtail damages with a player on grid, than you do by banning them and eliminating all your reliable means of monitoring and tracking them, until they show up to cause you harm from an unknown/surprise vector.
There is no argument for bans, as it eliminates what little control you have over a problem situation, and worse, gives further motivation to said person to step up their game.
It only takes a cursory browsing of this forum, to see what happens when staff mistreat, ban, or simply disregard the feelings/opinions of players, or how long those ill feelings will linger.
There is zero grounds for a ban to ever be on the table, without an assured way of enforcing it and defending against it being circumvented.
So, zero grounds, more or less ever. Any other option will be more productive.
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mehtastic
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Post by mehtastic on Oct 20, 2019 6:21:01 GMT -5
I go with anonymity because I didn't want staff to try and figure out which of them leaked the game's code to me. They still PMed me with a tracking pixel. lol
Bans mostly work in a place where rules are applied and enforced equally, and there's zero tolerance for asshole behavior.
Currently, before you get banned permanently on Armageddon, you can do ALL of the following:
1) Fail to roleplay and disregard documentation multiple times (and get caught multiple times).
2) Don't bother to ask consent (and get caught) once. By the way, the rules are still written to ensure you only have to ask consent before the start of a scene, not mid-scene when people are walking in on your Gaj orgy. (Oh yeah, that's what this thread was about!)
3) Connect new characters to your past characters after approval (and get caught multiple times).
4) Play with the same set of players across multiple characters (and get caught), multiple times.
5) Multiplay (and get caught) once.
6) Control your character's actions through botting (and get caught) twice.
Given how much asshole behavior is tolerated before you get a ban, is it any surprise that a player who feels they were "banned too early" or "banned unfairly" will try to circumvent it? If the rules simply stated "You will be banned for any of the following" instead of the "temporary ban" and "warning" horseshit, staff would have a responsibility to keep the game clean and fair and players would have expectations that staff are using their powers fairly. If staff publicized bans then players could review each occurrence of a ban. And... there you have most MUSH communities, many of which are as old or older than Armageddon and some of which have larger playerbases. And guess what? There's very low ban circumvention rate to troll the game. When bans are circumvented it's usually because the player is deciding to play by the rules now, completely indistinguishable from any other new player.
Bans only don't work on Armageddon because staff have a long and storied history of banning players for any reason or no reason at all. Drawing out punitive behavior just makes the whole process of rule enforcement feel like a punishment, instead of a way to curate the game's players. Is it any surprise that someone would want anonymity when staff have shown they're willing to ban people for anything they want?
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mehtastic
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Post by mehtastic on Oct 20, 2019 6:29:48 GMT -5
Real griefing doesn't really take place, at least not a scale I'm talking about. IE: flooding the discord chat with spam, or using spam bots on all the arm domain emails etc. Making multiple accounts. It's time consuming but I really don't see that taking place at Arm. It's happened before, but it's very occasional. The last time I can think of that happening was over a year ago when someone stalking Nergal flooded the Armageddon Discord with "call Nergal at (some phone number. I might share game code but I'm not going to dox people, jeeze)". There was another time where I played Arm and some new character came into a place and spammed "shout FUCK THIS GAME" repeatedly. In that case, your only option is to just ban. Staff aren't obligated to hold a trial every time someone breaks a rule. They just have to set up their rules system correctly and enforce it fairly. It's such a bare minimum. Like I said in my previous post, the game's rules are designed to keep problematic players around, potentially for months. The rule set is the opposite of an anti-asshole policy. |
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