Underlying cause and proposed solution to broken trust

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kelrhys
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Underlying cause and proposed solution to broken trust

Post by kelrhys » 08 Apr 2021 18:07

The recent wizinfo scandal has inflamed and derailed everyone from the even bigger issue, which stems from Cherek's confusion over why people don't understand his comment in the State of the Donut address about Cassius going on a killing spree was a joke.

It was just not seen as funny because it predicted exactly what happened: the biggest and strongest player used the short window of opportunity of unbalanced changes and yet another hole in the rules to kill people, resulting in admin changing the rules to remove rooting abilities in acknowledgment of game imbalance. As soon as this acknowledgment was made, why were the victims not restored? This was seen as a miscarriage of justice very much like what happened in the Yeren/BDA situation in which Yeren's position as General was not restored. This is where trust was lost.

Instead, again the victims paid the price while the perpetrator's accomplice (now justifiably!) received a swift restore. PVP tactics that undermine the integrity of the game by systematically seeking holes in the rules and leverage a strength stat that is arguably itself unbalanced should ideally be discouraged instead of rewarded. The unfortunate consequence of repeated incidents is an appearance of impropriety from the admin.

Many have stated that such a large player and his accomplices could have executed a rampage at any time with the same results. He certainly *could*, and if his goal was not to undermine the integrity of the game, then that is exactly what he would do.

The solution to regaining trust is to cease playing the whack-a-rule game with players. A general policy, consistently implemented, that states PVP kills achieved via ANY exploit (including game imbalance) will be invalidated would suffice.

Respectfully,
Kelrhys

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nils
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Re: Underlying cause and proposed solution to broken trust

Post by nils » 08 Apr 2021 19:39

So... If I understand you correctly, what you're saying is, the Elemental Clerics can never get a pvp-kill?
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Amberlee
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Re: Underlying cause and proposed solution to broken trust

Post by Amberlee » 08 Apr 2021 19:47

Was it a rotten move?
Probably.
However blaming this on wizinfo is stupid at best.
This would have happened regardless and with the advance warning we had about the change it was really NO issue preparing for such a thing.
The views posted by me on this forum is not the views of the character Amberlee in-game.
If you ask for my opinion here, you will get MY opinion, not that of my character.

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Mersereau
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Re: Underlying cause and proposed solution to broken trust

Post by Mersereau » 08 Apr 2021 21:01

kelrhys wrote:
08 Apr 2021 18:07
The solution to regaining trust is to cease playing the whack-a-rule game with players. A general policy, consistently implemented, that states PVP kills achieved via ANY exploit (including game imbalance) will be invalidated would suffice.
Every PVP kill would require restoration.
"Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die."
-Mel Brooks

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Silon
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Re: Underlying cause and proposed solution to broken trust

Post by Silon » 08 Apr 2021 21:55

Mersereau wrote:
08 Apr 2021 21:01
kelrhys wrote:
08 Apr 2021 18:07
The solution to regaining trust is to cease playing the whack-a-rule game with players. A general policy, consistently implemented, that states PVP kills achieved via ANY exploit (including game imbalance) will be invalidated would suffice.
Every PVP kill would require restoration.
Gonna be honest, he has a point the game has imbalanced forever for whether it was casters before or fighters now, or hell even a decade into the past, but at the moment we're going to be waiting a while for true balance :)
Rolling along in the grease of shame....wait potatoes don't feel shame do they?

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Cherek
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Re: Underlying cause and proposed solution to broken trust

Post by Cherek » 09 Apr 2021 03:05

kelrhys wrote:
08 Apr 2021 18:07
The recent wizinfo scandal has inflamed and derailed everyone from the even bigger issue, which stems from Cherek's confusion over why people don't understand his comment in the State of the Donut address about Cassius going on a killing spree was a joke.
I think one line in my State of the Donut post has been completely over-analyzed. I made a bunch of guesses for 2021, all the other ones were serious, but I thought I'd add a "fun" prediction too, and one that was almost certain to happen, since Cassius tends to kill some players every year. Raise your hand if you've been killed by Cassius? *raises hand* Yes I have too. I got over it, I moved on, and now I can even joke about it! :)

Some read what I wrote as a "call to action" for Cassius, like I was encouraging him to kill people (as if he needs encouragement), and now you make it sound like I made a joke about something really horrible that you should absolutely not joke about.

I think it's pretty absurd to be honest, that my little joke could be so misunderstood and cause so many complaints. I guess it shows how polarized Genesis has become. People must REALLY dislike Cassius, when I can't even make a small, in my eyes, harmless joke at the bottom of a 500-lines yearly post without people getting upset over it. After lots of statistics and serious stuff I'd thought I would end with something that might make a few people smile.

Now, I am NOT going to apologize for that. I've done enough apologizing lately. I'll continue joking about players. Especially Cassius, he's fun to joke about. Here's another one that Gorboth came up with a while ago. It goes like this (slightly modified):

Do you now why Cassius is spending so much time in the church?
He's trying to confess all his sins, but they're so many he has to live there.

See? Cassius-jokes are the best.

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Cherek
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Re: Underlying cause and proposed solution to broken trust

Post by Cherek » 09 Apr 2021 03:37

Kelrhys: Here's my reply to your other concerns:

I think your "whack-a-rule" statement could not be more wrong. I think we have a very good policy regarding restorations. It's simple, and most of the time not open for interpretation, and it ensures exactly what you ask for - consistency. When someone contact us regarding a possible restore, this is the policy we follow (and I think any player who ever asked for a restore can vouch for this):

Was there an error or mistake in the code, causing it to not work as the coder intended?

If yes. Restore. If no, don't restore.

It's really that simple in the absolute majority of cases. Sure, there are some other possible reasons you could be restored too, for example if you're the victim of some form of harassment. That's thankfully quite rare, though, and in most of the cases it's some sort of technical reason. Either some bug or unintended workaround a player has exploited in order to kill another player, or a PVE issue causing a strange death of some kind.

I think this policy is working really well, and we applied it in each of the recent cases you brought up, and I think we got it right every time. It wasn't really much of a discussion in any of them, because it was a clear yes or no-answer to the question above, and everyone involved in the discussion agreed with the decision.

Regarding the players who died during "Bloody Sunday", none of them (to my knowledge) requested a restore. So, that's an easy call. And had they asked for one, it's a simple call as well. Was there an error or mistake in the code, causing it to not work as the coder intended? No, definitely not. The coder intended white hits to hurt more, and they did.

Also, I, the Keeper, even made it very clear on the forums that there would be no restores for people who died due to the changes, and playing immediately after the change would be at your own risk. Don't wanna risk it? Play an alt or take a break for a weekend. That's why we put up the big warning sign at login a week in advance...

During the first 24 hours after the change, the overall death-rate was up by 4-5 times (if I remember right), and it would have been really inconsistent of us to restore anyone, since nobody died due to errors or mistake in the code. It would also have been especially unfair and inconsistent since I had announced that we would NOT restore people who died because of the changes.

As for the other case you brought up, when "the perpetrator's accomplice" died. Well, we also informed everyone beforehand that we would monitor the effects and likely make many tweaks and updates based on what we learned. One thing we learned was that some of the current movement stuns turned out to be too powerful together with the new white hits. Should we have thought of that before? Well, yeah. But we didn't. And hindsight is great, isnt it? So we disabled all the movement stuns and made a common board post saying all movement stuns have now been disabled.(Btw, Bloody Sunday wasn't the only PVP deaths that day, but likely the only ones that the general public learned of).

Then a player dies because of a movement stun that we missed. So... we ask ourselves again "Was it due to something not working as intended?" Well, yes. We intended to disable all movement stuns, even told people we had, but we missed one. So, since things did NOT work as intended, we restored the player. That was a really easy call too. I am quite sure ANY player dying from a movement stun when it has been announced they are disabled would want a restore, and rightfully so.

Now, considering who it happened to, I of course knew what was gonna happen next. Of all players who could die from a supposedly disabled movement, that was the (second) worst choice in terms of publicity for us. I get it. I get how it looks, and I get why people start asking questions. But still, it was the correct thing to do. We have to be _consistent_ in our rulings, and we certainly can't factor in who it is, and how it will be viewed by the general public. If it's the right thing to do, it's the right thing to do. We made the same ruling we would have for any player, and used the same policy we've always had.

There has also been two other "high-profile" restorations in the last month, and I think those two were no-brainers as well. One was a PVE death, where a well-known evil player died due to a clear bug. The other was a well-known goodie being PVP-killed by a bug in the backstab code.

I think we've been very consistent, and treated every player who asked for a restore fairly, and in the exact same way using the same policy.

Regarding your suggestion about including "game imbalance exploits" in the policy for restorations. That would do exactly the opposite of what you want I think. Such a policy would be extremely "loose" and open for interpretation, and that is exactly how things become _inconsistent_ and unfair. What's "game imbalance"? Where do you draw the line on that? Is it a game imbalance exploit when a goblin kills a hobbit, since the races in Genesis are imbalanced? Is it a game imbalance exploit when a player in a very powerful guild kills someone in an old guild that's far from up to date? Ask ten people, and you'll likely get ten different answers about what "game balance exploit" is. So.. no I think the current policy is much more fair, and it's much less open for interpretation, and that's a good thing.

Finally, you brought up the Yeren case. *sigh* How long will that be used against us? Mirandus even posted a common board note explaining he got that wrong. There were many reasons for that, and you can read all about it in common board post from ages ago. Genesis players are like elephants(?) it seems, make a mistake and they're never let you off the hook.

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Silon
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Re: Underlying cause and proposed solution to broken trust

Post by Silon » 09 Apr 2021 03:56

When that evil player was killed we 100% knew he would get restored, there's no reason to go after the wizards for that considering the fact it was completely justified. We rooted him in a way that shouldn't have work with an item. That was fixed, he got a justified restore, we moved on with a bit of grumbling but overall no complaints. Even if you hate someone if you really want consistency you should be fine with them getting restored as well.
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kelrhys
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Re: Underlying cause and proposed solution to broken trust

Post by kelrhys » 09 Apr 2021 06:55

Cherek wrote:
09 Apr 2021 03:37

As for the other case you brought up, when "the perpetrator's accomplice" died. Well, we also informed everyone beforehand that we would monitor the effects and likely make many tweaks and updates based on what we learned. One thing we learned was that some of the current movement stuns turned out to be too powerful together with the new white hits. Should we have thought of that before? Well, yeah. But we didn't. And hindsight is great, isnt it? So we disabled all the movement stuns and made a common board post saying all movement stuns have now been disabled.(Btw, Bloody Sunday wasn't the only PVP deaths that day, but likely the only ones that the general public learned of).
Now that I understand your criteria for determining a restoration, I can agree that it is certainly superior for implementing consistent decisions regarding restorations than my suggestion. The only remaining issue is that it was not applied in this situation, unless I am misunderstanding something.

You determined there was an imbalance due to the changes which required disabling the stun ability: therefore the code did not work as intended. Doesn't that mean the victims should have been restored? At least one of the players did ask for a restore and was denied, thus discouraging others from asking.
Finally, you brought up the Yeren case. *sigh* How long will that be used against us? Mirandus even posted a common board note explaining he got that wrong. There were many reasons for that, and you can read all about it in common board post from ages ago. Genesis players are like elephants(?) it seems, make a mistake and they're never let you off the hook.
Accountability is an important aspect of every organization, including non-profits, not something to be avoided. It was brought up because it was germane to this discussion on trust.

I appreciate the time you took in writing your response and I am not trying to be antagonistic or unappreciative. I am just trying to understand how apparent inconsistencies are occurring.

Thank you,
Kelrhys

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Re: Underlying cause and proposed solution to broken trust

Post by Poultry » 09 Apr 2021 07:01

Cherek,

When you make a HUGE screw up, like was made with Yeren, it will be remembered forever, no matter how many times you apologize. When you add to it that Cassius ALWAYS seems to land on the favorable side of the interpretations of the rules, it doesn't take Q to come up with a conspiracy. It's not just the Yeren situation. It's that every single time since, Cassius has walked away like he has leverage over the admin.
Call me Q if you need to, but something's fishy.

--P

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