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Re: Uncool = DELETED

Posted: 13 Jun 2017 17:19
by Amberlee
Kvator wrote:If you want any sense in this rule go one step further - players shouldn't have alts in enemy guilds (so it's fine to have knight and merc but it's not fine to have knight and bda for example).

Imagine situation
1- I have knight x and I know that knight y is alt of someone whose main is pot/bda.
2 - i can clearly see thay he's doing crap with his knight second to weaken this guild (while guild of his main is proffiting from it)
3 - you now expect me to put this accusation in some crazy/unreal rpg outfit while informin conclave bout it?

Not cool

Are.. You... Daft?
Keep characters separate.
If you're not a total douche, you are able to keep characters separate.. Which makes this a non issue.
If not, well then one character is weakening his side and thus won't be an issue as said character will be dealt with by the ones in charge of the guild.
Self policing thing really as no council or leader want his guild to be weakened.

Re: Uncool = DELETED

Posted: 13 Jun 2017 17:29
by Tarax the Terrible
Unless u have split personalities keeping characters totally sperate is a bit hard.

I'd be more in favour of everyone knew everyones seconds if the are in rival guilds. And when guild wars break out you declare a conflict of interest and put one to bed.

When seconds deserve anonimty is when they r just random trouble makers like the occasional thief. If everyone knew thief x is a second of player y then there is a good chance you would just kill the main for revenge.

Re: Uncool = DELETED

Posted: 13 Jun 2017 17:53
by Cherek
When it comes to people not being able to separate their characters or judging a character based on the actions of an alt, and similar things, I can safely say that from an AoP perspective those things are very hard to prove. Yes, often it seems _possible_ or even _likely_ that such things are going on, and we all know they are. But do you punish someone based on something you _think_ is going on? There have been many cases when I as AoP, and later AoD felt it's likely shady stuff is going on, but when I was unable to gather clear proof I had to drop it. There's really nothing else we can do, because punishing people based on rumours or what you believe is _likely_ would suck horribly if you were wrong.

But we have taken action against some who have had trouble separating their characters, because sometimes there ARE proof to be found. The last couple of years several people have been caught using a character to benefit another character. Both players and wizards have been caught dong this and been punished for this. It has been first time offenders and fairly "minor crimes" though, so there has been no deletions, but a couple of quite harsh punishments have been dealt out. Like losing all your combat XP with no recovery and/or lengthy suspensions. These cases are easier to prove than stuff the goes on behind the scenes though, or in the case of treating someone differently based on their alt's actions, that kind of takes places inside someone's head, making it extremely hard for us to prove, since not all players are exactly 100% honest.:)

AoP: "Hey, did you deny X entry into guild Y because you don't like their alt, it sure looks like it?".
Player: "No I didn't, I don't care about that, their application wasn't good enough and i didn't think they knew the guild lore."
AoP: "Mhm... their application looks fine and they're an excellent RP'er."
Player: "Well, that's not what I think, my guild has very high standards."

AoP thinks player is totally lying, but... that's not nearly enough to act on. So... yeah. Then what?

Proof is needed, so if you suspect someone is cheat, if at all possibly try to find proof and send it in when contacting the AoP. Because if it's something I have, unfortunately, learned as AoP and AoD, it is that surprisingly many people have absolutely no problem at all with lying straight to your face in order to save their own butt.

A word of advice though: DON'T DO IT. Because when we actually sit on logs or other proof that you don't know of, that proves that you are lying, the lying will just make things ten times worse for you.

Re: Uncool = DELETED

Posted: 13 Jun 2017 17:58
by Kitriana
Amberlee wrote:
Are.. You... Daft?
Keep characters separate.
If you're not a total douche, you are able to keep characters separate.. Which makes this a non issue.
If not, well then one character is weakening his side and thus won't be an issue as said character will be dealt with by the ones in charge of the guild.
Self policing thing really as no council or leader want his guild to be weakened.
You are giving a lot of credit to certain individuals who frankly are unable to separate their characters.

As for being dealt with my their guild leadership -- that is not always as easy as you have laid out.
Some people take a very nuanced approach to their attempts at weakening their alt's guild.
What if their behavior is information collection...? I've heard of situations where people have information that there is ABSOLUTELY no way they could have
without relying on an alt to provide to them.
How does a council/leadership build up a case to remove/punish that person without it appearing like they are the ones who are metagaming?

Re: Uncool = DELETED

Posted: 13 Jun 2017 18:07
by Dhez
If such things have occurred and have been dealt with according to the severity of the crime, it raises the question of how this outruled behavior warrants a punishment far more definitive and severe than the others?

If we can interpret the following statement
... The last couple of years several people have been caught using a character to benefit another character. Both players and wizards have been caught dong this and been punished for this.
As a clear violation of the long standing rules of the game while within it and with the powers bestowed upon someone based on trust and merit, and such a crime hasn't ended in deletion, by which rule are we measuring a comment in an obscure Chatroom outside of the game's boundaries as worse than this, to the point of deletion?

Re: Uncool = DELETED

Posted: 13 Jun 2017 19:09
by Cherek
Well Dhez, I am no longer the AoP, and I am no longer in the admin either so I can't really make any "official" statements on the new rule. I can speak of the the stuff that took place when I was AoP/AoD though. When it comes to the rules, most rules do not have a defined punishment, simply because there are so many different ways you could potentially cheat. It would be very hard to list all ways and the appropriate punishment, and we would still miss tons probably. "Using a character to benefit another" covers A LOT of different things you could do, and just saying "If you in any way use a character to benefit another you will be deleted" would imho end up being quite unfair. Once dropping a sword somewhere with your main that your alt later picks up, compared to setting up a team of remotely controlled bots and double logging them all to gain massive amounts of XP for a long period of time are two completely different things that both fall under that rule. NOTE: Those were just examples I made up, not real things. But if they were real, and if I was AoP still the last example would most likely lead to deletion of all characters, while the first one would lead to a less severe punishment.

We did go through the rules when I was AoP, and discussed whether we could define some rules more specifically, and their punishments, since I personally think "case by case" isn't always a good way, as it makes it harder to treat everyone the same. However we eventually came to the conclusion above, that there are simply too many ways you could break the rules, and for many rule violations it has to be case by case. And that also makes it hard to list punishments. The botting rules was one thing we did feel could be explained in detail, and also come with a list of punishments. Most bots are after all working in similar ways.

I guess when it comes to revealing someone's alt against their will, it is one of those things that are easier to define? Either you do it, or you don't? Same punishment for everyone. Seems reasonable to me. Whether the punishment itself is fair or too hard probably depends on who you ask, as with anything.

So, how that compares to "using a character to benefit another character" really depends on how you used your characters I think. If you did something really bad, especially as a wizard, then yes, deletion would definitely be possible. In the cases I mentioned, I made a case by case decision at the time based on how severe I thought the "crime" was. I didn't think deletion was needed in either case. At the time we did not have this new "deletion for revealing alts" policy either, since that's about one day old.:) So I obviously did not have to consider that. We never had a defined "do this and be deleted"-punishment while I was AoP, so I never had to consider that when taking a decision. So at the time I made a decision based on what I thought was fair, and previous similar cases. I don't know how this new policy will affect other things, or if it will at all, and since I am no longer in the Admin it's not up to me anymore either. I guess that is Mirandus' and Gorboth's headache.:) I am still in the AoP team though, so I'll of course do my best to enforce the new rules.

Re: Uncool = DELETED

Posted: 13 Jun 2017 19:33
by Kvator
Amberlee wrote:
Kvator wrote:If you want any sense in this rule go one step further - players shouldn't have alts in enemy guilds (so it's fine to have knight and merc but it's not fine to have knight and bda for example).

Imagine situation
1- I have knight x and I know that knight y is alt of someone whose main is pot/bda.
2 - i can clearly see thay he's doing crap with his knight second to weaken this guild (while guild of his main is proffiting from it)
3 - you now expect me to put this accusation in some crazy/unreal rpg outfit while informin conclave bout it?

Not cool

Are.. You... Daft?
Keep characters separate.
If you're not a total douche, you are able to keep characters separate.. Which makes this a non issue.
If not, well then one character is weakening his side and thus won't be an issue as said character will be dealt with by the ones in charge of the guild.
Self policing thing really as no council or leader want his guild to be weakened.
I might be. Depends on definition I guess. But in my 2 years experience in knights guild i saw enough of alt-related stuff :) no point in going into details here i guess.

Tarax idea of freezig alts when war occurs is actually cool. Currently i am playing polish mud arkadia and there is something wizards might wanna copy that could support such system:

All guilds have their 'relations' where u can have official state of war with other guild (their npcs are attacking you for example) or can be officially allied (so a person from guild x which is in alliance with guild y can for exampe enter few guildrooms, some racks etc). With such system u could easily enforce the requiremenet to freeze 1 alt if you have another in opposite guild that you prefer to play.

And for the record. My coming out! - Kvator, Krep, Nergal, Arnaud - all my alts!

Re: Uncool = DELETED

Posted: 13 Jun 2017 20:27
by Tarax the Terrible
Never heard of them... They past greenhorne yet?

My alts are even more unremarkable, I always found playing alts kinda spoils immersion a lot a makes gen feel just like a game.
Tho one is growing on me a bit.

Re: Uncool = DELETED

Posted: 13 Jun 2017 21:42
by Thalric
I am mostly wondering who the people are who have been spreading information about seconds in such a scale that this rule now has been made quite visible...

I bet that something has happened for this to be taken up like this.

Re: Uncool = DELETED

Posted: 14 Jun 2017 02:06
by Amberlee
Kitriana wrote:
Amberlee wrote:
Are.. You... Daft?
Keep characters separate.
If you're not a total douche, you are able to keep characters separate.. Which makes this a non issue.
If not, well then one character is weakening his side and thus won't be an issue as said character will be dealt with by the ones in charge of the guild.
Self policing thing really as no council or leader want his guild to be weakened.
You are giving a lot of credit to certain individuals who frankly are unable to separate their characters.

As for being dealt with my their guild leadership -- that is not always as easy as you have laid out.
Some people take a very nuanced approach to their attempts at weakening their alt's guild.
What if their behavior is information collection...? I've heard of situations where people have information that there is ABSOLUTELY no way they could have
without relying on an alt to provide to them.
How does a council/leadership build up a case to remove/punish that person without it appearing like they are the ones who are metagaming?
Frankly any information is easy to come by.
That spies are even an issue to you is unfathomable.
I say.. If they play their role and become a spy.. Excellent!
Keep their identity hidden and continue that.
Does not take away anything from the game.
So who does the metagaming here?
The spy or the people obsessing over spies?