GM's hate him! Community "troll" exposes abuse

[noisestorm]

Imagine if I were to post that same picture directed at one of the staff, telling them to stfu you punk, what do you think would happen? Lol, yeah.

And again you do seemingly not get it. >>Context<< .

Why would you post that to any staff member in the first place? The context for this picture here: entitled people and/or people like you that obviously cannot get the Hint. Even when the picture tells you to get the Hint in a less than subtle way. I recall that you were warned or told to give up on multiple occasions on many posts (that i cant be arsed to look up now) on the forum, since you are a well known problem child. You try to view yourself (like other people already pointed out) as the victim, while you are in fact just flaming and bitching around all the time and bring nothing constructive to any thread. I just dont understand what you are trying to achieve in the first place, but for the love of whatever deity you have, just quit already and save us all the drama you artificially want to stir up.

[Morf]

Just to point something general out.

A few people in the topic have mentioned that since this is a free to play project, the players should deal with the whims of the staff, should such whims exist.

I don't agree with this, and I don't think it helps to use this as an argument against Euan. This staff WANTS to be fair, reasonable and just - not only because that is the right way to be in general, but because our relationship with the playerbase depends on us being seen to be so. This is why this topic and others like it aren't locked / deleted when they appear.

The only issue comes when the criticism of the staff itself is unjustified, baseless or otherwise unfair. I'm here in this topic and others like it to defend the staff from any unfair allegations, to maintain player confidence in the staff, and to acknowledge justified criticism as well as setting out a path for its resolution. Anyone seeking to issue unfair criticism should understand that I don't need to convince THEM that they're wrong - I only need to be sure that our particular stance is justified or that our own misconduct is acknowledged and steps taken to rectify it. In other words, I only need to maintain the confidence of the playerbase in general. So unless something really good is going to be brought out in this thread, I will have no further reason to reply, as the general attitude in this thread does not seem to be in support of the OP.

Spot on, my thoughts exactly however if i felt hard done by i would also understand the situation of me having no right at all to complain because im not owed anything.

[bangkokeight]

not that i want to appear like i am trying to be constructive / helpful (never raise expectations if it can be avoided),

As Aza points out this is already under discussion, so please feel free to ignore this if moving another way, but wanted to make a suggestion for a method to maybe make this whole area much less confrontational.

Rather than a wall of text this is it in bullet point form.

1. Ask for 3 (or 5) volunteers who are not on the dev/gm/db team. Their role will be to act as an appeal panel for any ban of 7 days or over. (3day bans maybe to short for a process to really work).

2. When a player is banned they can email a designated person on the management team to state they want to appeal and lay out why they feel the ban was unjustified.

3. A member of the management team will sanitize the email from the player together with any chat logs to remove information that can identify the player and the gm/dev involved.

3. A member of the management team will either email (or put up on a secure area of the forum) the appeal panel both the email summary from the play and chat logs etc.

4. The panel will reply with an opinion as to whether the ban was fair, to harsh, not harsh enough.

5. Based on the feedback the management team can adjust / enforce the ban.

Important points to note. In order for it to be a fair peer review strongly suggest the following.

a) members of the panel are not identified as being such to the community as a whole (no lobbying can take place)

b) members of the panel are not identified to each other. this way it can be their view rather individually based on time played, rather than influenced by other panel members.

c) any recommendations from the panel are just that, recommendations. the management have the right to over rule any recommendation.

d) a sticky thread is set up that basically lists bans that were reviewed and the recommendation made. (after the recommendation is final of course).

This basically allows management to set out a firm policy on bans that the panel need to reflect in their response. It stops players being able to whine at the management team ("it was review by non-management, they agree stop whining"). If allows people less deeply ingrained in the game bring some balance with an outside perspective whilst at the same time respecting the fact that this project is being carried out by the devs / gms etc and does not reduce their influence at all.

Anyway. attempt to be constructive over.. back to flippancy from here on in

[Euan]

Imagine if I were to post that same picture directed at one of the staff, telling them to stfu you punk, what do you think would happen? Lol, yeah.

And again you do seemingly not get it. >>Context<< .

Why would you post that to any staff member in the first place? The context for this picture here: entitled people and/or people like you that obviously cannot get the Hint. Even when the picture tells you to get the Hint in a less than subtle way. I recall that you were warned or told to give up on multiple occasions on many posts (that i cant be arsed to look up now) on the forum, since you are a well known problem child. You try to view yourself (like other people already pointed out) as the victim, while you are in fact just flaming and bitching around all the time and bring nothing constructive to any thread. I just dont understand what you are trying to achieve in the first place, but for the love of whatever deity you have, just quit already and save us all the drama you artificially want to stir up.

[Azarael]

I just showed you how you would ban me over something you and noisestorm do/have done. He even did it in this thread but he's your friend so its not shitposting, right? How Github would call the whole server retarded (no proof) I can understand this one but I have no reason to lie, I actually like github. How noisestorm calls me a dipshit and everyone **** stupid. Nice of you to skip that even though that's here in the forums. How none of you gave me an explanation of why I was banned or the proof provided which is something you guys ask for but fail to provide.

I doubt it's any great secret, but yes, I will overlook something that's against the letter of the forum rules if I feel the other party deserved it. This is why disputes between Mursie and his guild and Gankbus don't get moderated. It's quite difficult to allocate blame.

So yes, I'm not particularly eager to jump into action to defend you - though there are other staff members and Noise has been warned once before for similar behaviour, so you may well be surprised. Is Noise shitposting? Hell yes. Am I inclined to do a thing about it, given its target? Nope, though I think someone else will. The joys of having more than one person with mod privileges on the forum are that I, personally, don't have to act if I'm confident than someone else will do it for me.

Yes, Azarael I'm totally lying about not reading something you said "I already warned you about". Again, I asked you for proof of that and you turn this on me and call me a liar. You never gave me any warning, before or after this supposed ban. Which is why you cannot provide the proof when asked. I'm going to just assume out of the blue that you have no proof, OK.

It's logged in the database on both accounts, actually:

'48260', 'Azarael', 'Exile', '3 days', 'Violation of rules on criticising GM actions on the forum. Consider this the end of the line for your attitude.', '1458905856', '3'

'50890', 'Azarael', 'Exile', '3 days', 'Violation of the rules regarding criticising staff actions on the forum (aggravated). Consider this the end of the line for your attitude issues.', '1458905923', '3'

As I said before, you appealed this ban, which means you were aware of it. Notwithstanding that you were seen online before the ban, attempting to communicate in chat or leave the Winds of Chaos zone (as well as being online when a ban is applied) sends a message to you with the reason for a temp ban as well as its duration.

Like I said before - can I prove you read it? Nope. Do I think you did? Oh deary me, yes.

Yes, skip over the balance stuff when you're clearly seen lying. Obviously you cannot address something that would paint you in an order biased picture. Which is something you want to ban me for. Banning me for something that's in your sig, not abusing your power at all.

The problem is that anything you might quote on balance is irrelevant. Don't forget your mandate here. Your aim is to demonstrate that the staff are on a power trip, such that you can convince someone besides yourself.

This may have escaped you, but the Order Biased signature is an ironic joke because of previous allegations made against me on the sole basis that I am visible and I play Order as a main faction. It would hardly be in my interests to use it if there were any substance behind it.

As far as self motiviating on Maruader buff, please. Was it also self motivating when I asked you to mirror WP buff to the DoK? If you look at each of my characters played you will find marauder is not my most played and never was aside from the start. I don't think I've ever asked for Marauder buffs, ever, aside from suggesting pounce on Monstrosity which is a buff to monstro, not Sav/Brut which is THE build people complain about. If you look at my accounts you will see I play almost everything. PS Knight stagger is not underperforming in the least. Nice try.

Yes, it was. The point being that you are projecting.

* Azarael scratches "projecting" from his argument Bingo card

Almost every post, it's Aza is Order biased this, Aza is Order biased that - yet all of yours are written from the perspective of painting your preferred faction of Destruction as being neglected and suffering under the heel of the evil staff oppressors. Have you thought to yourself for one minute and realised that the staff is not made up exclusively of Order players? Or that I have no motive whatsoever to bring disdain on myself by seriously neglecting or disadvantaging one of the factions? Or that doing so would kill the server? Or that I'm not so powerful that even if I WERE stupid enough to have that as a motive, I would be able to succeed in doing so?

You never, ever address these simple points (and I don't see that changing any time soon), so it's no wonder that you get treated as a joke, is it?

Anyway, the comparison is valid. You wanted to add Pounce to an overperforming class. They wanted to buff the stagger on an overperforming class. Don't spin things around - Knights get just as much criticism from me as Marauders do, if not more, because I think Knight is irredeemable in terms of its poor design and ease of play. You don't get to ignore that just because it doesn't suit your viewpoint.

Regarding Marauder... don't think I've forgotten when you cried and cried and cried and cried and cried and cried and cried over the idea that thrown axes would not proc procs for any class. I haven't. You're either very strongly attached to that class or to the Destruction faction, and you're not fooling anyone.

Point being you're above the rules. You're banning me for calling you out on it. Totally not abusing your power.

I banned you for being a general annoyance - you are impossible to reason with, never back down and defend your viewpoints to the death, even in the absence of any support from anyone else whatsoever. You simply do not know when to stop. If you don't have the survival instincts to back down when you have no hope of winning, then I seriously think you should stop testing my patience, because I won't respond cordially forever to the same regurgitated points.

[Azarael]

This is why this topic and others like it aren't locked / deleted when they appear.

Well, if we are going for staff criticisms, i will say that that topics are locked way too fast around here sometimes and some gms like to play the "post it on the forums" card then lock it before any conversation can happen in them.

Most of the time occurs when a GM has to make a judgement fast and most people disagree with it, the only way to talk about it is a thread that gets locked asap and then we get told to take it to some gm, we are the ones who have to jump through hops and wait for people to "look it up". Most of the time that means no one is going to bother doing so.

An example of it: http://www.returnofreckoning.com/forum/ ... =8&t=11900

Trying to not make the forums a whine fest is fine, making the appeal process similar to the bureocracy building in Asterix and the 13 tests is not.

Also a lot of the decisions seem to be up to whoever is active at the time and their view upon it, instances like people getting kicked out of the server for killing people outside Orvr zones come to mind, something really odd if you come from a PvP server in Retail or the strange afk policy where the rules seem to be that you can automate your gameplay as long as you can also automate your replies.

But this is not something really good anyway, just things that annoy me a bit.

Yes. In my post just above I mention that I'm not so powerful that I get to have everything my own way, and this is one example. I am not the GM lead, as much as it may look like I am, and I don't have executive control over how matters of GM conduct are dealt with. I have views on it, sure - but I still have to convince those who act of the legitimacy of my views, which is why it's taken over a year for public ban and appeal forums.

Guidelines for sanctions are something we are going to post soon, as part of the appeals forum. As stated above, though, while I can write drafts, I cannot post them without GM approval.

The concern with an open forum for dealing with allegations of misconduct is that it would be abused, with a thread opened for nearly every action taken by staff. This is understandably something that the GM team are not particularly keen on seeing.

[bloodi]

The concern with an open forum for dealing with allegations of misconduct is that it would be abused, with a thread opened for nearly every action taken by staff. This is understandably something that the GM team are not particularly keen on seeing.

There is a difference between having an open forum and a thread opened for every action and just letting people talk about an issue that happened, when you close threads after 3 posts and tell people to talk to the staff to treat issues the staff themselves created, it doesnt take much to figure that people will not even bother or see it as fair.

If the idea is to have transparency, making people discuss issues behind closed doors and not on the open is not the best way to promote that.

Anyway, my issue is mostly Gms deciding what is fine or not on the fly without any base besides their opinion on it, i would rather see a policy like Valve applies to Dota2 where if its ingame, its fine to use instead of letting gms decide what is fine or not.

Dont mistake me, Valve still bans people for using external programs and things like that but instances like the one in the topic i linked would never be touched by them, with a reason.

And hell, is not like "bugs" didnt affect the outcome of multi million dollar tournaments already https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5I-5eo_vDM

But when you take that position and you even tell the players directly that things like this are fine, they just patched the game later to make that tactic impossible, if it was here, some gm would start arguing about how is an exploit and exploits are cheating and cheating is bad and there is no way to move him from that idea.

[Azarael]

Thing Is I tend to agree with that viewpoint. Take pulling through doors. These people knew it to be an exploit and not part of the original game, and had no defense for doing it. It wasn't something we could easily fix either. In situations like that, I feel bans are very much appropriate, and that there's too much focus on shifting the blame to GMs instead of understanding that the players themselves are responsible for making the decision to deliberately exploit bugs.

A strategy of prevention rather than cure works for Valve (and for me in another game, actually) because both Valve and I were able to make rapid patches to deal with issues like that. For RoR, it's not quite so simple.

[Euan]

I did not recieve the message but I can see now that you did send it wherevr the hell it was supposed to go to. How exactly did I appeal for it? I really was not aware of it so how I could appeal it? Also was this for telling magicthighs that the player hasn't done anything wrong and to get off his power trip? The player hand't done anything and magicthighs already had an atittude to the point of cursing at him. But I'm banned for "having an attitude".

You banned me for being annoying because of my posts/calling you order bias which is in your sig. I show you how you're lying to cover your order bias. You tell me its irrelevant.

Noisestorm wasn't even part of that conversation, he just butted in. You would think I deserve it and you would take action against me and not your buddy. Because I call you out.

I've actually posted that this game is more balanced than people think. Destro is by no means an underdog and almost anything can compete here. I have no attachments to Marauder, I never even mained Marauder aside from the start. The reason I defend Marauder is because he's the subject of attack. If I was really attached to Marauder, would I really be logging more hours on another class? Is that why Marauder was my 3rd class I got to 40 even though he was the first I started with? I've actually told you not to change things based on forums QQ.

You're trying to paint a picture of me as being unreasonable. Please go look in your inbox and tell me how unreasonable I was being.

I've offered to help with replying to player questiosn before, I've offered to help with ban appeals before but I'm just a troll who just wants to bitch, right?

[bloodi]

.....

But pulling is as much of an issue as aoe through walls, which has happened since t2 yet it seems that there was so much people doing it that it would simply be impossible to police yet since magus/engi are the only ones being able to pull and there is so few of them, then action was taken.

Specially since aoe through walls mas shaping the meta so much that places like the brewery in high pass and black fire were constantly camped with warbands staying into them spamming aoe to take advantage. Way too often i see that kind of group fail only when either a crash occurs or someone says **** it and pulls them.

Pulls through walls would counter fine but somehow, one is a bannable issue and the other is not, both take advantage of the same but they are not both punished.

Thats why i would much rather see both being fine. Its not about shifting blame to GMs, its just instances like that will continue to happen and some like this one we will have to live with for months.

And the point is that "players themselves are responsible for making the decision to deliberately exploit bugs" is disingenous because it can be from having 4 copies of the same rr jewelry that is unique equipped to things like massive gold exploits, thats why i said the part about how some gm would start arguing about how is an exploit and exploits are cheating and cheating is bad and there is no way to move him from that idea.

Combos in fighting games were also consided an exploit at some point, so labeling things as exploits is not an argument in my book at least.