Community Transperency on DM Decision
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We always talk first, unless you log out before we have the chance. I could swear I said that! :)
Then everything sounds good to me!
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I think one thing, that maybe the DM team should concider is a "short-term" ban. I am sure there are alot of people here who are very invested in there characters/this server, as I said earlier the whole reason i bought NWN was soley to play here on Arabel. That said, when a problem does come about some people arent going to react as level headed as others. The most recent incident every is refrencing is a good example. As DM's I am sure you dont enjoy or want to be yelled at or cussed at, I know I wouldnt want to be, on the other hand doesnt that come with the job? I personally dont think a Character should be banned permently for cussing at a DM over a matter that may be very frustrating for both parties. I am not saying its right, I am just saying that a banning or such a thing seems harsh. A "short term" ban (a week? a month?) would allow the players to cool there jets and the DMs to examine the situation more closely and allow both parties to talk about it more maturely at a later time.
Again, its hard to make suggestions on the matter as a player because we dont know exactly what you guys (The DM's) go through or the exact circumstances behind some bannings/punishment.
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We are always willing to discuss removing a ban for someone. They are not life-time things, not unless you were in some way beyond the pale.
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I havn't read much of this thread, only somewhere that someone was banned for cheating with an item that should have been obvoius it was too good to be true. If Im wrong on that correct me but my comments on that:
We'd never ban someone for simply not realizing something was an exploit. In this case, we deleted their character for using an exploit and not reporting it.
The player was banned shortly after for calling a DM a "fuckwad" and then logging into IRC to drop a few more insults, and then posting on the forums about considering suicide.
That kind of behavior is just troubling on many levels, and people who go that far are likely better off being removed from the community.
That said, even deleting someone for one exploit is a pretty tough punishment, and it is possible that once the DM's anger at the exploit abuse had faded and the player talked to us reasonably that we'd have worked out a different response.
Where so many people go wrong is that they over-react to DMs intervening. If you cheat, you hurt the whole community by cheating. DMs must respond to that or the entire integrity of the game system collapses. Its why baseball has umpires. CoA has DMs. Just like baseball though, you can disagree with an umpire's decision, do so politely and calmly and they may listen or if they don't you can talk to the commission (or approach the whole DM team with an e-mail)–but if you start cursing at us, throwing a fit, cursing at other players--you'll be tossed out of the game.
This sounds like a good reason not to make certain things public even if one would really wish to do so. It's very difficult to judge by brief typed texts to what degree someone might feel driven to do something really stupid in RL, and you have no control over it. But better have some people around who unjustly believe the DMs were stupid/unfair than to publically remind people of their unacceptable behavior. That is, even if it is anonymous, such a list would still remind someone who was banned of that very fact and make the bad feelings rise again.
Granted, it might have some success in some cases where people realize that at the core of what they did were really some stupid actions. But you don't want people (after they have calmed down) to read such a list and think "Ugh, that's true, I really am a worthless idiot". I mean, you may sometimes feel like you want such a reaction. But. You don't.
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As DM's I am sure you dont enjoy or want to be yelled at or cussed at, I know I wouldnt want to be, on the other hand doesnt that come with the job? I personally dont think a Character should be banned permently for cussing at a DM over a matter that may be very frustrating for both parties.
It's really not a "job". Active DMs can spend 10- 80 hours a week working on CoA with nothing in return. All we expect is for players to have fun and be respectful. If they can't be respectful, they really aren't worth our time, period.
EDIT: Let me add that some people who have gone off the deep end have later grown up and been allowed back on the server if a mature player vouches for them, and/or their request email seems sincere. There are very few things that the team would refuse to consider, but we do err on the side of caution.
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While I am certain 95% of the bannings have been justified, DMs are human and of varying age/maturity levels just like the players, and sometimes I think ego's outweigh the power of reason. To use the example of a DM being cussed at or given a sense of a lack of respect from a player, CoA can be a very frustrating hobby at times, and emotions do tend to boil when you have a lot of effort invested into something and things are going poorly in return. I know there's a criteria that DMs look for when looking to make players DMs, and I truly think that the ability to look past the now in situations that involve hostile player relations should be added to that list. Another thing that would work towards ensuring bans weren't done in haste would be to set a time where the player could meet with not only the dm involved in the banning but several others not involved as well to discuss what happened on irc. I generally believe that we here on CoA are a smart and reasonable bunch, and after a bit of time to reflect having an open platform to discuss where the players head was at and allow them to apologize for over reacting would squash a lot of the petty arguments and grudge holding that sometimes plagues the community.
I also want to take this time to say something that may or may not be popular thought, but I think banning people for guessing DM player accounts is over the top. I understand the reasons why a DM would not want to have players knowing their pcs, but it is human nature to gossip. In the five years I have been here, there have been DMs that have successfully gotten away with hiding their pc, and others who are continually obvious. I'm not even saying thats a bad thing, since many of these obvious DM characters do a lot of good on the server, but understand that trying to figuring out who the player is (DM or vet PC) that is trying to hide behind a begger account name while turning the server upside down is -always- going to be part of the server, no matter how many people you ban for it. If its really an issue that people start harrassing these accounts for dm stuff, ban them (if they don't stop after a warning) instead.
I guess my overall point pertaining to this thread is that we don't need more transperency to justify why you banned player x. I'm pretty sure that anyone who has played here for a while (which is most of us) knows that the DM team is generally fair and consists of good people. What i do think is needed, however, is a chance for the banned player to explain his side of things to not only the dm who banned him but dms not involved. I realize thats available through the email account, but I don't think that is good enough. I know personally when I was banned, there was no way in hell I was groveling to an email account, despite wanting a chance to defend myself and really wanting to come back to arabel because I was just hitting my stride with this whole roleplay thing. Without a bit of dumb luck that would have been the end of me on Arabel, and while I have certainly had my bad moments and frustration explosions trhough the last four years, I have to think that more good came out of me being around CoA then anything else. I really doubt that I'm the only player who can learn from a bad experience.
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@Leaders:
I also want to take this time to say something that may or may not be popular thought, but I think banning people for guessing DM player accounts is over the top. I understand the reasons why a DM would not want to have players knowing their pcs, but it is human nature to gossip. In the five years I have been here, there have been DMs that have successfully gotten away with hiding their pc, and others who are continually obvious. I'm not even saying thats a bad thing, since many of these obvious DM characters do a lot of good on the server, but understand that trying to figuring out who the player is (DM or vet PC) that is trying to hide behind a begger account name while turning the server upside down is -always- going to be part of the server, no matter how many people you ban for it. If its really an issue that people start harrassing these accounts for dm stuff, ban them (if they don't stop after a warning) instead.
From my experience with secret accounts, 90% of the time they're people who, due to varying reasons or another, want to escape the e-notoriety they've caused and want to play with people they've otherwise upset or annoyed.
In other words, most secret account users, I've found, were ones who were either NWN/CoA "celebrities", rude/whatever to others that normally wouldn't play with them.
And assuming we're all trying to be blunt- Stop with the upset attitudes when your secret account gets busted. (This is not directed to LaF before any confusion starts.) It is mindbogglingly easy, when a CoA "celebrity" is involved, most of the time for people to notice secret accounts.
Chances are, if your secret account gets busted, it's less likely somebody else's fault, and more likely your's. There are many ways to avoid being detected on an account, the biggest is to not use your recognized style of roleplay or known secret accounts, which I've found most people have trouble with. Oh, and stay out of IRC.
This applies to players being DM'd too. If you pissed somebody off and were an asshole/whatever to them as a player, why would they want you to DM over them?
Take it as you will, secret accounts and rage over their comprimised state has always been an odd, and usually highly sensitive topic. But considering we're talking about bans, and people've been banned (with them as a major, or at least contributing factor, from my understanding) over them and you brought it up, I felt this was relevant.
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You guys both misunderstand entirely.
DMs can't DM and play a character at the same time. Gossiping about and outing a DM's account is effectively griefing that DM and make it so they can no longer play their character and have fun.
All it takes to avoid that problem is to be quiet and not spread rumors. If you figure out a DM has a player account, fine you know, no one will punish you for guessing. You get in trouble when you stab the guy in the back who just wanted to play on the server and get something back from all the time and effort he put into it, and ruin his play time.
And Forte, you're gossiping about accounts is the prime reason it eventually reached a level we had to point out we'd start banning people for gossiping about them. You ruined many a DM's player accounts in the past already. Honestly, you may just not want to go here, trying to debate this will definitely stir up my annoyance with you on this one issue.
It is really that simple.
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Well, I will admit that any bannings involving revealing dm accounts that I have heard about generally came from somewhere between second hand and 20th hand information, so it may have been more considerate then it has sounded.
I hope that wasn't taken as the central point of my post though.
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Let me bring another concept to this discussion.
Having a forum to list bans entries would cut the time and energy to handle a ban. (In the specific case of known players, not unknown griefers that randomly appear on the server. So I guess those are the type of bans people feel like they want to debate over/appeal, etc).
Let me explain, how it happens:
21:00
I log into IRC, starts doing some toolset work. Expected duration: 3 hours; my girlfriend is already asleep, so I figure I'm going to do scripting, fixing bugs, adding new content etc until 00:00.
21:15
After finally getting setup in the toolset and a few queries in #coacharacters later, I remember I had been communicated an exploit entry for parasites a while ago, and it got buried under the huge pile of TODOs we have. I get on fixing this, this takes only a short while.
21:30
I'm disgusted by the fact that someone would use that exploit to give its character an unfair advantage over others by using that exploit several times, without the thought of reporting it to the DMs. I take into account that the character is a high level monk (not something very easy to achieve on the server). If I was a player of a monk on the server struggling to level, I would feel pretty cheated that someone else used an exploit to get to a high level. Even more so if there was some PvP event involved (luckily, it's not the case here, or it might have been quite worse). Still, this is largely unfair to every other player out there that are NOT using the exploit.
21:35
The concerned player is in IRC, so I decide I'm going to talk about it and see if the reports for using this exploit are accurate. The player confirms using the exploits on several occasions, and admits realizing it's too good to be true. I tell the player I'm glad she admitted, since lying about it all could have degenerated into something worse.
21:45
I tell the player I will delete the character as a result of using the exploit several times. I FTP onto the server, move the character file in the "deleted characters" folder and log back out, preparing to write my entry for this character deletion on the DM Forums.
The player explodes and insults me and demonstrates a generally bad behavior (As this is not the first incident with the DM team, I'm not really surprised and then I decide to ban the player. I also remember that a while ago, I had offered advice to this player on how to portray one of her character's very low wisdom score, and had been met with hostility, the "You're not going to tell me how to play my character" bad mojo answer when all I wanted to do was help)
21:50
Now, this is where the fun begins.. (This is sarcasm). I find out the CDKey I need to ban, remote onto the server, ban the key. I write the mandatory posts in the DM forums about the details surrounding the ban. Save my IRC logs, and tries to go back to what I was doing.
At the same time, the players starts causing grief in #coa, continuing to insult me, still enraged. Then players are having several arguments at once, in which I feel obliged to partake, since this is related to the situation I was involved in that just happened minutes ago. I get several requests from players in PMs asking me questions about the situation, about exploits and how they are handled. At the same time, there is a discussion about it in the irc dm channel about this very issue as well. Since I'm the one having all the info regarding this, I'm busy in there as well.
This continues on for most of the night.
22:30
I'm distracted for a few moments, a player has a problem in game and needs wanding about something, so I log in for a brief moment to handle that. Once I'm done, it's back to IRC and forums.
01:00
I intentionnaly don't answer in #coa or PMs about that night's issue so I can concentrate on other stuff. I'm cutting short on the stuff I wanted done with the toolset, but since this was the only night I had available to work on it this particular week, I tried to finish all I could.
I'm exhausted and this whole situation turned out quite bad. I'm sad that it had to go this far, but I figure out this is in the best interest of the server and its community after all.
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You see, the point I'm trying to make here is that if I could have dispelled all that angry movement that was started with this particular banning instance by posting how the situation played out for everyone to see, I could have spent the three or so hours I had this one night to create something meaningful for #CoA's community, like putting more Socketed Loot, Gems and Brewing Recipes like I initially wanted to do.
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Yardsale, I am a very very happy fish that I am not part of the dm team. No wonder you guys burn out so fast as you do.
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Well, I hope you posting a list of a recent event wasn't in response to my post, because I've been away for 10 days and was not talking about any banning in particular, just my thoughts on them in general.
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@Leaders:
Well, I hope you posting a list of a recent event wasn't in response to my post, because I've been away for 10 days and was not talking about any banning in particular, just my thoughts on them in general.
No, it wasn't. I wanted to bring another aspect that was not discussed yet about the concept behind a forum detailing ban entries.
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Now the question would be: a thread with all those information (banwise, not about the DM life of Yardsale) would be helpful?
To me no, sincerely it proves only that bans happen for OOC abuse due to the fact that those cheating, sooner or later, will get angry ooc.
Once they will think about their behaviour they'll know that it's the anger that triggered the ban not the cheating. And if you are mature enough to understand that you got banned for OOC abuse you can always ask via email to get unbanned.
So, once more, no need to post reasons for banning unless DMs wish to entertain us with pages and pages of posts similar to Yard's one (which will leave us less time to have DM online or developing the toolset!!!).
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My point was that it would have taken less time to explain the whole situation in a few lines than losing my night over it.
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Just… sorry.
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Admittedly, I don't play much (at all!) anymore, but I would like to lend my (lack of) wisdom to the discussion.
Initially, I was opposed to the idea of airing dirty laundry in a forum where others might see it. After all, there are some people that are easily embarrassed. In fact, some of those players that have gotten their past bans reversed have chosen to forget their old player name and characters entirely, for the sake of avoiding talk of their past actions.
That said, having seen how quickly banning decisions can turn into he-said, she-said affairs, I'd make the argument that it would save everyone a heap of trouble if the DM could just jot the reasons in a post and be done with it entirely. I can recall two instances of players that I played with frequently being banned and telling me why. As somebody previously pointed out, their recollection of the events were much different than what actually happened.
DMs aren't out to punish unfairly people they don't like, or otherwise go out of their way to make anyone's experience hell. That just goes against their nature; if you're a shithead, you'll get ignored. I say give us the Pentagon Papers, mister secretary, I want to point and laugh at others' misfortunes. :P
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You know, after reading Yardsale's post, it's changed my mind an awful lot. I can totally see how it would have saved a bunch of time, caused the DM in question much less stress (in this instance for sure) and gotten more sweet stuff into the module.
There would probly still be a few people who didn't believe the DM's reason, probly people who knew the player who was banned for example, but, the DM would still be able to largely ignore stuff, being as they had written the situation down for all to see.
I was pretty opposed to the idea of 'name and shame' before, but Yardsale pointing this out has made me aware of things I didn't really think about.
I'd personally think trying the new policy out for a while couldn't hurt too much, now.
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I'm sorry your night was ruined, Yardsale - no sarcasm - and i'm also sorry NS lost a character she clearly liked a lot, but most of all i'm sorry I couldn't manage to convince her to write that e-mail and sort this all out.
At the end of the day it was not a pretty sight - you've had your night ruined, a player's been banned, and a few people are concerned that they might make a similar mistake and recieve a deletion for it in the same instance they are informed it is an exploit - which has now been cleared up several times in this thread.
My personal opinion remains that this is the exception, not the rule, when it comes to punishments. I don't think a public forum or the sort for this or other bannings/punishments would generate the sort of result you're after.
I can't think of anything else to say on the subject, just reiterate what I have said - it is opening up a can of worms, and if this is the exception, not the rule, then that's better left not done.
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Ive never really seen the DM's as unfair. Ive been in trouble with the DM's once or twice and ive agreed with them on it. They made sure to list there side of the story to me and the facts they knew and told me what had to be done. So I rolled with it. I can really only remember once, it made total sense that my character was being deleted and since then Ive never made the mistake again. So really if your having players rage at you about this stuff. They shouldnt be on arabel anyways. Its just a game and they need to cool down and stop cheating.