Laurel on definition of harassment

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Cherek
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Laurel on definition of harassment

Post by Cherek » 11 Dec 2015 01:36

To add a cherry on top:
Code:
Cherek tells you: In theory yes? Harassment to me is if you target someone for
absolutly no reason, or because you hate them iRl and want to drive them from
the game, etc, or other obvious things

Who and how can make it "obvious" that they are bent on driving someone away from the game? I'm asking, cause I have been on the receiving end of this shit quite a few times. You usually expect "proof" from me when I suggest someone is cheating/abusing. So please elaborate (and try to be informative, not quantitative) on how a player can "prove" that s/he is being harassed according to the above mentioned definition.
Also - what are those "other obvious things"? I'm curious really. They SHOULD be named and placed into rules.
I figured I should reply to the above in it's own thread instead. Or the other one would be messy...

What does not show in that quote from me is that it's part of a longer discussion on harassment, where both me and Irk express things we feel are harassment. And my whole point was that the definition of "harassment" is different for different people. The above were some examples of things I personally feel would count as harassment, and I personally could think of a bunch of other things as well. You can probably think of some too, and Irk can think of some. And anyone you ask can come up with a bunch of things. Many will probably be the same, but a some things will probably be different too depending on who you ask. This of course makes it both hard to know what harassment is, and hard for us to judge.

I actually planned to change the rules of harassment to exactly what you ask, a few months back. That is, add specific information about what is harassment and what is not, since I generally do not like "case by case" rulings. I prefer having simple, clear, rules and treat everyone exactly the same based on those clear rules. So, we had a long discussion in the AoP team about how we could change the rules of harassment to be more specific, and after the discussion I changed my mind, since the conclusion of that discussion was that if we were to in detail describe every possible way someone could be harassed, it would be a VERY long list. And no matter how long we made it, there would always be situations not covered by the list. So by starting such a list, we felt it would just be complicated, and still not cover everything. And it might make people feel anything NOT on the list is okay, since we could probably not cover all types of harassment possible...

So... we decided to keep the rule as it is for now, and stick to the case by case judgements to our best ability, since we felt that's currently the best solution. It's not perfect, but harassment is a very tricky subject. Not only here, but everywhere. We also agreed to always discuss each harassment case so not ONE person makes the decision alone. In the most recent harassment case that me and Irk were talking about, all four members of the AoP felt the same way about it - that it was not harassment. Of course the one making the complaint feel differently. But in cases like this one side will always be unhappy regardless of what we decide. Based on the information we gather, we try to make the best decision, in all cases. Regardless of who is involved.

But if someone has a suggestion on how to make rules about harassment more clear, without it turning into a 10-page manual, then I am definitely listening. The more clear rules, the easier it is for us to handle things, and logically, players would be less angry since it would be very clear which rule they have broken. I re-did the botting rules and punishments for botting together Mirandus a couple of months ago, to make it more clear what is botting and what is not, and to make all punishment the same, and more suitable to the "crime".

And no I agree that I can't ask you for "proof" of harassment since the rules are not clear enough on that subject. What I have asked you for proof have been other more obvious things that you have suggested. For example that wizards share vital wiz-only information to mortal friends, which is very clearly not allowed, and very clearly against the rules if proof are found. Harassment is a much more complex subject to both prove and judge.

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Re: Laurel on definition of harassment

Post by Draugor » 11 Dec 2015 09:58

Hes just pissy he cant drag his afk mates around with the same ease as before :P

Laurel

Re: Laurel on definition of harassment

Post by Laurel » 11 Dec 2015 10:39

I guess I have an issue with an incoherent approach to rules. Botting rules are set on the "follow the letter of the rules" principle (i.e. polish law works like this). Harassment rules are set on the "follow the spirit of the rules" principle (i.e. UK law works like this).
Genesis wizards also have a long past of both using casus-based-judgment and disregarding it - depending on what suited their goal more.

Maybe it would be a good idea to set a coherent approach to all this? As I wrote - whenever there is a protein-based-agent involved in decision making, there is room for abuse and/or error.

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Re: Laurel on definition of harassment

Post by Draugor » 11 Dec 2015 11:30

Then lets make the rules 100%

No unattended botting or following around, if you do not reply to repeated wizard tests withing 20 minutes, you get nuked.
Thats simple and its fair, no more goddamn bots.

You want to play? Be at the damn screen, or LD away if you're doing something else.

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Re: Laurel on definition of harassment

Post by kirsach » 11 Dec 2015 11:35

It is very good you have started discussion about it Cherek, because I think we need such a discussion. Both to know what is a definition of harassment and what is Your oppinion as a Judge what is and what is not.
I want to present my oppinion about example of behaviour that in my oppinion for sure is harassment. There are players mega-myths that think they have rights to decide who will and who will not kill in good exp areas. And these areas are not "under protection" of their guild because of RP like plains for Knights, Neidar and DA's or Nerraka for PoTs and DA's. They kill alone or in small teams and hate big teams that can kill faster and clear "Their" areas.
They attack other teams or members of such teams and even kill players to discourage to grind in such area or to leave the team and not to team with leader. They even can start guild wars to justify their behaviour and have a good excuse.
I dont know how to call it in another way as harrasement and greed of exp? Especially they dont need to fear any other single Player or even most of 2-3 players teams becaus of their size and "power".
And what is your oppinion about it Cherek? Does the "pleasure" of playing Gen of few mega-myths is more important to a number of others? Especialy when you apply anty bot system (boulders o its modification) and one of their exuses ("that are drone teams that clear tha area") will no be 100% false?

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Cherek
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Re: Laurel on definition of harassment

Post by Cherek » 11 Dec 2015 15:24

Draugor wrote:Then lets make the rules 100%

No unattended botting or following around, if you do not reply to repeated wizard tests withing 20 minutes, you get nuked.
Thats simple and its fair, no more goddamn bots.

You want to play? Be at the damn screen, or LD away if you're doing something else.
I think you misunderstand Draugor. Botting rules ARE very detailed and clear like Laurel said, harassment rules are not, and it's harassment rules we discuss here. I do agree with you Laurel that's it's not (yet) perfect, and case by case judgement always has the risk of causing issues, and make people feel unfairly treated. But like I said, botting rules felt like they could be detailed, since there's just a limited amount of ways you can bot, while harassment is a more complex concept and it's hard to make it detailed without missing something or it turning into a huge document.

If we make botting rules to be more like that ("spirit of the rules"-type), then I think we'll end up in a lot of unclear situations regarding that too... not sure if that's better, even if it's more coherent?

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Cherek
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Re: Laurel on definition of harassment

Post by Cherek » 11 Dec 2015 16:04

kirsach wrote:It is very good you have started discussion about it Cherek, because I think we need such a discussion. Both to know what is a definition of harassment and what is Your oppinion as a Judge what is and what is not.
I want to present my oppinion about example of behaviour that in my oppinion for sure is harassment. There are players mega-myths that think they have rights to decide who will and who will not kill in good exp areas. And these areas are not "under protection" of their guild because of RP like plains for Knights, Neidar and DA's or Nerraka for PoTs and DA's. They kill alone or in small teams and hate big teams that can kill faster and clear "Their" areas.
They attack other teams or members of such teams and even kill players to discourage to grind in such area or to leave the team and not to team with leader. They even can start guild wars to justify their behaviour and have a good excuse.
I dont know how to call it in another way as harrasement and greed of exp? Especially they dont need to fear any other single Player or even most of 2-3 players teams becaus of their size and "power".
And what is your oppinion about it Cherek? Does the "pleasure" of playing Gen of few mega-myths is more important to a number of others? Especialy when you apply anty bot system (boulders o its modification) and one of their exuses ("that are drone teams that clear tha area") will no be 100% false?
Yeah I totally understand you. Some will say the above is harassment, some will say it's not. First of all, it does not matter WHO does it. I promise you we do everything we can not to be biased in any way when making these judgement, and we look purely at "what does our rules say", and "what do we feel is harassment". And we discuss it within the AoP team until we agree on it. And I think it's good everyone in the AoP team come from different places in the world and have different backgrounds etc, so we get different views on things. And in this particular case we all agreed. 4-0 in favor of this _not_ being harassment.

Why?

Well, for me it comes down to one thing really. PVP is currently free in Genesis with some very few exceptions. You ARE allowed to attack someone for whatever reason, or no reason. If that reason is simply "I want the XP myself", or "I don't like you being here", there is nothing in our rules saying you cannot do that. In Genesis you have the right to attack others, steal from others, and in other ways "mess" with other players. That is part of the game, and a risky strategy for the people doing it too, because you risk getting a lot of angry players as enemies.

Now, we can discuss if PVP should be free or not, and why the massive size differences between players make PVP less fun that it could be, and so on, and I think these are issues that need to be looked into. Should the size differences not be as massive, it would not be as easy for some huge players to "bully" other players. But as long as Genesis is a free for all PVP game with more or less unlimited growth, then these things will always happen. So from a rules perspective I do not see anyone is doing something wrong here. It's a battle for a specific area. A turf war. No one person has been singled out without provokation, or killed multiple times over this, which are things mentioned in our rules that could be considered abusive player-killing. Nor does this have to do with real-world issues of some type of discrimination or RL-harassment. You are being attacked because of things your characters do, not because of who YOU, the players, are.

Now there were previous, guild related issues between the same players that complicated this too, but that cannot be taken into account, since those death occurred inside a guild vs guild war system and were unrelated.

I am also very much in favour of "the less wizard interaction the better", and I think in this case, and in many cases, the best way is for the players themselves to solve the issue one way or another. Genesis is a game where interaction with other players is a part of it, whether you want to interact with others or not, you will encounter other players who have different opinions about things than you. I understand you want to be left in peace to grind, which is perfectly fine, but if other players have other ideas, you'll need to find a way to figure it out, either by fighting back or talking to them and striking some kind of agreement. Or "surrender" and go somewhere else.

As for RP reasons for "protecting" areas, I actually think this one is more honest. "We want the XP" makes more sense than for example "Lets protect these trolls in our city so WE can "train" on our OWN troops by killing them on a daily basis". Amazingly nobody complains on silly made up reasons to keep XP to oneself. I personally think coming up with a totally poor RP excuse is exactly the same as not coming up with an RP excuse. The reasoning is still the same "I want the XP to myself". Be that trolls in Neraka or ogres in Sybarus. People always try to keep certain XP areas for themselves, with or without RP reasons. I do not see that as wrong, or against our rules. It's usually more accepted by players if a silly RP reason is made up though... which I have always personally found a bit strange? I have always felt poor RP is worse than no RP to be honest. And killing your own troops / allies and at the same time claim to protect them has always been silly to me, but not against the rules so I do not have an issue with it. If that's how you wanna play it, that's perfectly fine. This case is the technically exactly the same, just without the RP part.

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Re: Laurel on definition of harassment

Post by Amberlee » 11 Dec 2015 18:41

tbh harassment rules should not be too much defined.
What some see as harassment, others see as good natured banter.
I choose to believe that we are actually mature enough to make a stand against it, and if it continue, then report it.
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: Laurel on definition of harassment

Post by Mersereau » 12 Dec 2015 04:40

Protecting NPCs under the guise of roleplay is garbage unless it's your guildhall.
"Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die."
-Mel Brooks

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Re: Laurel on definition of harassment

Post by Draugor » 12 Dec 2015 08:26

Mersereau wrote:Protecting NPCs under the guise of roleplay is garbage unless it's your guildhall.

Or atleast themetically tied to you, but you killing them yourself, while they are protected seems... wrong

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