| Author | Thread: Etiquette Act 1: Protecting New Players | Page 1 | 2 |
NaelwynPosts: 209 Location: Hans Mina Magus Age: 111 years old Clan: OTAKU2 | Message #36084 Posted: Sep 4, 2009, 6:18 pm |
Etiquette Act 1: Protecting New Players
It has come to my attention that we have actually had established players in our community going out and attacking new players to bust their homunculi and raid their resources, with reasons ranging from "It's an easy way to get an achievement", "To force them to get a clan", and most audaciously, "It's fun."
This, as a community, is wholly unacceptable.
Etiquette Act 1 intends to establish into law the protections all clans should provide and/or afford new players and the punishments to be prescribed for breaking the Act. I will be arguing to my full ability as to why this should be put into law.Last Edited: Sep 4, 2009, 6:30 pm |
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NaelwynPosts: 209 Location: Hans Mina Magus Age: 111 years old Clan: OTAKU2 | Message #36085 Posted: Sep 4, 2009, 6:18 pm |
Affordances and Protections
Affordance One, Startup Affordance (A1):
Any new player with less than 1000 total accumulated experiance
is entirely off limits to attacks by ANYBODY other than another clanless new player or a player that they themselves has attacked.
Affordance Two, Neutrality Affordance (A2):
Affordance Two: Any new player with less than 3500 total accumulated experiance not in a clan is off limits to anybody except similar players or players already protected under Affordance One.
Affordance Three, Mistake Affordance (A3):
Any player with less than 2500 accumulated experiance who has accidentally left their homunculus out should not have it touched under any circumstance with the exception of a direct retaliation for an attack by said player. Any player above this should know better by that point, but common etiquette would say not to attack it then either.
Affordance Four, Report Affordance (A4):
Any player protected by the above that is attacked is to forward the report to the sovereign magistrate of the clan the attacking player is in. If the attacking player is not in a clan, the attacked player has essentially free choice to whom they report it to. If a player merely states they were attacked and/or does not forward a report, it will be noted, but no action listed under punishment will be taken without proof.
Amendment 1: Changed hard level totals to accumulated experiance totals. Also lowered the amount of time a homunculus is specifically protected (Because this is one of the first pieces of common knowledge and some people actually go about informing people when they leave them out why it's a bad idea. Though really, it's a mean thing to do anyways, please don't.)
Last Edited: Sep 7, 2009, 1:40 am |
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NaelwynPosts: 209 Location: Hans Mina Magus Age: 111 years old Clan: OTAKU2 | Message #36086 Posted: Sep 4, 2009, 6:19 pm |
Restrictions and Exceptions
Exception One, Abuse Exception (E1)
These above affordances are privileges, and if it is found a player is abusing these in extent they will be offered a warning, and upon repeat offence, the above affordances applying to them, if any, will cease to.
Exception Two, Agression Exception (E2)
These above affordances do not apply to a character that has actively attacked multiple higher levelled people or multiple lower levelled people, as they have themselves thrust their character into a pvp environment. The hard limit here is four (4) unprovoked, nonretaliatory attacks in a single day or ten (10) likewise attacks in a single week. This is subject to change if found to be abusive. Likewise, if someone is attacking three times a day, three times a week, and intentionally avoiding this limit, it's still obvious to their intent. Report and the above applies.Last Edited: Sep 4, 2009, 6:33 pm |
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NaelwynPosts: 209 Location: Hans Mina Magus Age: 111 years old Clan: OTAKU2 | Message #36087 Posted: Sep 4, 2009, 6:19 pm |
Penalties and Punishments
Punishment for ignoring Affordances:
First Offence: On a player's first offence against this act they should be issued a stern warning by their sovereign magistrate, or, in the case of clanless players, a warning from the sovereign magistrate the attack was reported to. Amendment 1: Accompaning this warning should be a citation to this act.
Second Offence: On a clan player's second offence, they are to be stripped of their rank within the clan and fined an amount of money and/or resources to be repaid to the new player they have attacked. On a clanless player, only the fine will be sanctioned.
Third and Subsequent Offences: This is when someone has crossed the line. Any player in a clan by this point will be exiled, and clans that have a "Free target list" will be notified that the player is open for attack. A player can also end up here for flat out refusing to pay restitution to the player they've attacked.
Punishment for ignoring offenses:
A clan who does not institute the above punishments for offences on offending members within a reasonable time frame (3-7 Days) under this law is subject to bring issued a Writ.
Amendment 1: An method of opting-out of the above default actions is available per suggestion/request. Please see further down the thread.Last Edited: Sep 7, 2009, 6:44 pm |
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NaelwynPosts: 209 Location: Hans Mina Magus Age: 111 years old Clan: OTAKU2 | Message #36088 Posted: Sep 4, 2009, 6:20 pm |
Reasons to vote yes:
Every new player that quits the game from being harassed is one less member of our community, but it is also ten of that player's friends that will also never join them, as word of mouth is powerful.
Every new player that quits lowers the ad revenue that Ark receives, and for that matter, will never buy a premium. The more money the developer makes, the more time they can devote to improving the game.
If you experienced the same when starting to play (I have), how did it make you feel? Certainly it wasn't a happy feeling to come back 12 hours later and see everything destroyed.
Attacking new players is essentially nothing more than bullying.
This CSM is developer-backed. I can't make it any clearer than that. The dev does NOT want people acting like assholes to new people.
Reasons to vote No:
Edit 1: I sounded like an ass, which wasn't really my intention here. Really, my apologies.
I would really prefer people not vote no to this in favour of working towards amending issues they find or refraining from voting until problems have been fixed to some degree. Constructive criticism is appreciated, especially pointing out loopholes or direct problems with the act, as they're helpful and all around make it better.
The above was what this was SUPPOSED to be before I just quickly (And admittedly unthinkingly) jotted down my thoughts about complaints.Last Edited: Sep 7, 2009, 1:57 am |
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NaelwynPosts: 209 Location: Hans Mina Magus Age: 111 years old Clan: OTAKU2 | Message #36093 Posted: Sep 4, 2009, 6:39 pm |
Amendments: and Precedings:
Base Act: The basic foundation for ETA1. Most of the things in the above are part of the base act. Base Act's Status: Currently in deliberation.
Amendment 1: Will change the levels to accumulated experiance totals to avoid problems with people artificially keeping their level low, and includes a method of opting-out of the justice defaults. Amendment one's status is: Not Live Yet.
Yours Reformingly,
Naelwyn Talreyn.Last Edited: Sep 7, 2009, 6:47 pm |
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laidanPosts: 1158 Location: Mottonsborough Magus Age: 114 years old Clan: OASIS | Message #36096 Posted: Sep 4, 2009, 7:01 pm |
| I pretty generally have been following these guidelines in my attacks, the only reservation I have is a few folks who have been playing for a long time (player numbers in the 3000 range or less), but who are still low level due to pumping all their xp into strength enhancement and such. You've still got my vote, but I felt that should be mentioned. |
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NaelwynPosts: 209 Location: Hans Mina Magus Age: 111 years old Clan: OTAKU2 | Message #36097 Posted: Sep 4, 2009, 7:05 pm |
| The fact that you can artificially keep your level low is one of the reasons E1 and E2 exist. If someone is keeping their level locked at, say, three for example, and attacking other new players with, say, a strength enhanced bone, E1 and E2 come into play and people can feel free to strike the hammer down. |
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| Sconibulus Posts: 664
Location: Shuul
Magus Age: 117 years old
| Message #36110 Posted: Sep 5, 2009, 2:01 am |
I have a few problems with this,
1: Additional protection for Homunculi seems excessive and unnecessary.
2: Level 8 takes rather a long time to achieve, perhaps lower that to level 6
3: This doesn't differentiate at all between griefing and light PvP, that seems unreasonable.
4: There are rather arbitrary firm deadlines, is there any reason someone who just hit level 4 shouldn't be able to hit those near him in level?
5: This isn't really related to the bill, more to how you're framing the discussion of it, I find it kind of low and despicable. You imply on multiple occasions that anyone who dares vote against the bill is a bully, asshole, or other unseemly thing, ignoring that there might be some rather legitimate reasons for their thoughts. |
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NaelwynPosts: 209 Location: Hans Mina Magus Age: 111 years old Clan: OTAKU2 | Message #36114 Posted: Sep 5, 2009, 3:37 am |
I note that the only legit complait happens to be the one you've raised, namely the hard level limits.
1. Perhaps you're right. But it's mean for people to intentionally smash homunculi, and losing them is a MUCH bigger problem when you're new compared to when you're more established.
2. If another person agrees I'll drop it to 6. No issues with people changing it.
3. If someone wishes to engage in light pvp and arrage it via messages, there's no real problem. The Act grants a provision for reporting an unprovoked attack. If the lower leveled player wishes to engage in light pvp with someone else, there is no real issue. (Unless they happen to try and report the person who attacked them back. I've already considered this issue, because it could be quite problematic in a number of cases, and devolve into a case of he-said she-said quite quickly. And I have no real fix for this here.) But the law is to protect low-levels from even single attacks, as even one can be quite crippling. (I, and most other players my level can smoosh a homunculus in one strike.) Subject to review.
4. I thought that hard limits were better than vaugely worded things that people will try and work around. Subject to change if issues arise.
5. I do think that voting against this is low and despicable. I'm totally willing to change almost ALL aspects of this that people find wrong other than the fact that it's to protect new players. I'm most certainly going to goad people unwilling to protect new players, especially since this law is quite morphic.
Edit 1: I also should admit that I'm coming on a little harsh here. Really does not suit my normal persona, I just cannot help myself from feeling strongly over keeping new players from getting smacked around. Frankly, I'm willing to amend just about the entire bill down to "New players should get to report attacks to a SM to get help, regardless of clan status or alliegence." (Which, incidentally, is the first part of this that was drafted and the one point I will not surrender under any circumstances.)
As a breif venture into the thought process, I tried to provide a blanket effect and put some hard protection in place to stop the problem and help the players before they were attacked in the first place. Probably the biggest problems will be caused by the fact that I bundled everything into one package, but nonetheless I stand by it until a whole load of people see problems with everything.Last Edited: Sep 5, 2009, 4:39 am |
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NaelwynPosts: 209 Location: Hans Mina Magus Age: 111 years old Clan: OTAKU2 | Message #36164 Posted: Sep 6, 2009, 4:18 am |
So, to recap the only suggestions made,
Tentative Changes:
Reduction or Elimination of A3.
Lower A2 to level 6.
Give a level range for the end of protections? (Tentative, this one is iffy because people can start messing around.)
Re-edit my old post to make it less inflammatory. (Will get to it. Really I will. Honest. I just got a new rig, Fallout 3, and Guild Wars at the same time, plus I'm dealing with a strike, so It'll be done when it gets done.)
Make it easier for lower levels to engage in pvp. (Dunno how I can really do this one, because people can easily waive their protections or set up rules of engagement with messages. But I might get something in there.
If I get another person's criticism of this I can and will start making changes, but it seems there's not a whole lot of interest all around towards this. Again, I should re-iterate, I have no problems with criticism of anything except the primary point here. |
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laidanPosts: 1158 Location: Mottonsborough Magus Age: 114 years old Clan: OASIS | Message #36172 Posted: Sep 6, 2009, 3:53 pm |
| Well, I already listed my only real concern with it, I agree that chasing newer players out of the game is stupid. I'm not even sure how to remedy my issue without overly-complicating things...so I'm not really sure why I'm writing this...hmm. |
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| Sconibulus Posts: 664
Location: Shuul
Magus Age: 117 years old
| Message #36173 Posted: Sep 6, 2009, 4:12 pm |
| Laidan, why not base it on the total xp earned, which is displayed on the character page, rather than the level. I think level 4 is 1500 experience, and level 6 would be 2600 (although it would make sense to take out the level 6, and turn this into 3000 because it's a nicer number, and gives a little bit of extra leeway, also it's a nice doubling of the first cutoff) this makes it based on length of time in the game, as opposed to willingness to click a button, which makes more sense. |
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NaelwynPosts: 209 Location: Hans Mina Magus Age: 111 years old Clan: OTAKU2 | Message #36174 Posted: Sep 6, 2009, 6:43 pm |
| Re: Sconi and total experiance: I was originally going to write it that way, frankly it works much more like I wished it to. The problem causes by basing it on total exp earned is that, to my knowledge, that stat isn't viewable by people, so I based it off of hard level. |
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NanashiPosts: 1115 Location: Asylum Magus Age: 120 years old Clan: OTAKU | Message #36175 Posted: Sep 6, 2009, 7:14 pm |
It does show total experience on the profile page and you would pretty much view that any time before you attack them.
going through each level total exp would be:
0
100
400
800
1300
1900
2600
3400
3300
4300 |
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UshiPosts: 365 Location: Shuul Magus Age: 124 years old Clan: ADV | Message #36179 Posted: Sep 6, 2009, 8:33 pm |
I would go with the suggested total experience levels. It's not so important for level 4, but keeping your level below 8 or 10 seems to be quite doable as the motivation cap is not that bad at these levels.
I don't quite see the need for a homunculus protection up to level 10, but I agree that destroying them without being provoked is bad manners.
By the way, does anybody have an idea how to prevent clans from abusing Affordance One to make up cheap unassailable "mules" (accounts just used to store resources)?
Apart from that I wholeheartedly agree with this motion. I'm just not that sure how important it is at this time. I haven't seen too many new players around. For those who are joining it's certainly a big help. |
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| Kaelas Posts: 1052
Location: Darghelm
Magus Age: 118 years old
Real Name: Barry
| Message #36181 Posted: Sep 6, 2009, 10:54 pm |
You know, there is a very viable alternative to this Act. New players can join a Clan. Don't know about the other Clans but we've never turned down an applicate. And we certainly protect our brothers and sisters when provoked.
Some of you might have noticed this at one point or another. |
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| Yamikuronue Posts: 1288
Location: Mottonsborough
Magus Age: 116 years old
| Message #36182 Posted: Sep 6, 2009, 11:25 pm |
So, because you think some people are being overly mean, you want to put new rules to effect everyone. Enforced by you and your clan, I assume?
Sounds familiar. Why don't you ask MAGIER how other clans like being policed? Oh wait, you can't - they're all but dead nowadays.
If I were you, I'd frame this as a treaty and propose that the major clans all sign it. Make it a voluntary thing, policed by the individual clan's enforcement methods, and then you can declare war on a non-compliant clan as punishment. That way it's less "You all should play the way I want you to and oh BTW Kep's TOTALLY on my side guyz" and more "Let's all agree to play nice in our shared sandbox".
ETA: other issues:
1. I don't want some other clan telling me and mine how to organize our clan, punish our members, or otherwise uphold order.
2. I'm only level 12 myself. 10 is way too high to be considered "new".
3. What happens when, a month or two from now, new people join the game, form clans or stay out of clans, and start hitting low-level people because they're not in a clan to tell them otherwise and they don't read the forums? You can't rely on new people reading every thread on the forums, because they honestly don't.
4. I don't want anyone in this game other than Kep or my SMs dictating to me what to do. Period. Telling me I don't have a legitimate reason to vote no makes me want to vote no to spite you. Last Edited: Sep 7, 2009, 1:05 am |
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NaelwynPosts: 209 Location: Hans Mina Magus Age: 111 years old Clan: OTAKU2 | Message #36184 Posted: Sep 7, 2009, 1:32 am |
Okay, looking at certain issues other people have raised:
Some people say the level 8/10 caps are too high, and some people are saying it's too low. I will be going back in and changing it to total accumulated experiance, based on how many people go for high or low.
Edit2, Fogotten Reply to Kaelas: Another valid point. The whole point of A2 is to give the newer players some time to fool around independantly and carefully pick their clan outside of the first 12 days of new player protection. Well I'm all for people joining clans, they should not be forced into one right after beginning to play the game in order to be safe.
Yami raises some other, quite important issues.
I really do like the treaty idea, I like it a lot, but the game has no real mechanism for it. I thought that a game-wide vote would get a general concensus on players opinions.
Edit 1: I am seriously considering implementing the treaty suggestion in at least some form, if not for the act specifically, for at least some sections. (I would say that I would certainly be willing to change A3 to be a separate "No Smashing Homunculi" treaty. I also think this would be a preferred method of taking care of the Penalties section. (Because I knew full well somebody was going to have problems with the game at large telling them what to do in certain cases of interior clan politics.) I'd like to possibly set up different enforcement options. Please reply to this, I'm interested in the suggestion and I really would like to work around the hard rule. (Because it IS a legitimate complaint, but it's one I'm willing to work around. I apologise again for my writing in the first 5 posts.)
The reasons for making it binding on all clans if the vote passes, rather than on clans that choose to adopt it, is obvious. It means that the bill would otherwise be totally, utterly useless, and anybody that wants to operate outside any of them would merely have to join a clan that didn't enforce it. YES telling other people what to do is not my cup of tea, but, seeing as we have a senate, I consider this game a democracy, and if the players as a whole think that we should be giving newer players some extended protection, then I believe that everyone should be bound by the "Play Nice" rules. Honestly, if a clan wanted to resolve matters like this on their own, I wouldn't mind in the slightest. The problem is, again, like a problem in all laws, if a specific cause and effect are not outlined, there's all sorts of exploiting of loopholes that someone will eventually try and do.
Specifically to Yami(3): That is a good point, but it's one I've thought of as well. That's precisely why the first strike type punishment is a warning. I will be going back and explicitly writing in that a referance to this act should accompany said warning. Thank you for pointing this out.
Specifically to Yami(4):I really have to make it a priority to go back and edit my first few posts. In fact, I'm removing the inflammatory taunt now, and probably most of that section. I really don't know why I included it in the first place. I really don't like my tone throughout the whole thing, but I'm busy dealing with other personal issues and changing the rest is really lower down on my priorities.
Edit 3: This reply got really large, really quickly. I apologise for the huge mass of text here.Last Edited: Sep 7, 2009, 1:54 am |
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NaelwynPosts: 209 Location: Hans Mina Magus Age: 111 years old Clan: OTAKU2 | Message #36185 Posted: Sep 7, 2009, 3:55 am |
Fairly implementing a treaty type idea was not a really big problem to me. (Changing the actwise and actually devisingwise.)(I wrote this in advance to try and be sure of how my intent comes across.) I thought there'd be big problems with loopholes and the like, but I think I've gotten a version that works without any huge problems.
Basically, I think the act could be changed to add an opt-out feature for the specifics of the penalties section without a whole lot of problems. It would basically free (And I mean totally free) a clan that opts-out to determine their penalties freely for their own members.
It requires only two things:
1) A Sovereign Magistrate of the clan must be the one to submit the opt-out request. (For obvious reasons.)
2) Disclosure of the policy must take place for the opt-out to be effective.
What 2) means is that the act would require the opting-out clan to pledge exactly how they persume to cover the penalties section. This can literally be anything from "Do Nothing" to "Ban from clan instantly" (I'd personally suggest against anything that extreme in either direction for various reasons.)
Yes, this means that there is a small amount of transparency in the opting out clan's policies. This is because new players deserve to know exactly what to expect in terms of treatment from an opting out clan, and it is an act of good faith. A clan will be held responsible for upholding a pledge it makes.
Again, if there are issues or really big loopholes in this, please post them if you see them. I've tried to address all the concerns I could see, but there are likely some I've missed. I am willing to change aspects of this as well, within reason. (I'm obviously not allowing a wizard-knight to dictate anyone's public policy.)Last Edited: Sep 7, 2009, 3:56 am |
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UshiPosts: 365 Location: Shuul Magus Age: 124 years old Clan: ADV | Message #36195 Posted: Sep 7, 2009, 9:38 am |
As for loopholes I'd like to repeat the problem of "mules". Maybe I was a bit too confusing the first time.
The problem is that Kep can do little about really determined players who want to have an illegal alternative account. I won't go into technical details as not to give anybody ideas, but the main reason for not doing it is basically that it takes a lot of time in real life to run a fully fledged alt. That problem doesn't exist with mules as such accounts are only there for soaking up resources and protecting them from harm.
At the moment mules aren't a major problem. You never know when an enemy in a clan war might decide to take out your low-level account, even if doesn't attack anybody. If we were to rigidly enforce Affordance One most everybody wouldn't dare attack a low-level mule. If a clan decided on using them they wouldn't even stoop so low as to file a complaint most of the time.
I may be exaggerating, but I think this could be a serious problem, if clan wars really heat up.
On a different note, I'd also be in favour of a treaty construct. It would be great to have a game mechanic way of doing this, but it should work without one, too. |
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| Noreen Posts: 102
Location: Broukendale
Magus Age: 108 years old
| Message #36201 Posted: Sep 7, 2009, 3:48 pm |
| Unfortunately I feel I have to vote against this Act. All of this discussion needs to come before the vote not during or after, so people know exactly what it is that they are voting on. The issue itself is a good one to look at, thats how I lost my own Homoculus in fact around level 4. Yet, passing a 'whatever we decide later' Act is not how things should work. |
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NaelwynPosts: 209 Location: Hans Mina Magus Age: 111 years old Clan: OTAKU2 | Message #36203 Posted: Sep 7, 2009, 3:58 pm |
Noreen raises another good point. Originally I thought of implementing any changes to the act with amendment acts after. I just figured it would be easier to fix some of the bigger problems and/or before the act went live. If the act does not pass through fixable criticisms I'm going to be going back in and fixing all the problems I can find and then locking the act for it's second submission once everyone thinks it is okay.
On the subject of mule alts. I was thinking about this issue as well. Now, usually a mule account is not really doing much. If it was really, egregiously abusive, I'd think it would trigger E1 on itself. The main problem with a mule is that It is not obviously visible (I.E workshop level does not have to be raised, storage and resource generator are not visible from profile screen.)
I don't have a workaround for mules at this point, but would like to work something in. If anyone could come up with something, It'd be appreciated.
Edit/Update 1: An amended version of the bill is ready irregardless of whether the first passes or fails. It includes changing levels to accumulated experiance totals to disencourage artificial low levels, and includes an opt-out clause for clans who wish to deal with their member's offenses independantly of the act.Last Edited: Sep 7, 2009, 6:37 pm |
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| GordonIronsmith Posts: 434
Location: Broukendale
Magus Age: 114 years old
| Message #36277 Posted: Sep 9, 2009, 2:45 am |
Here's My input. Instead of saying "Don't do this or else." We just form a stronger stream of communication between clan leadership.
Also if you don't want to be part of a clan that's fine. just expect to be beaten up more, if you want you can can always move to unpopulated areas (I know that's harder then it sounds, but it is still an option), or hire protection.
Communication is key. rules can be set up after such communication can be achieved.
-GordonIronsmith |
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NaelwynPosts: 209 Location: Hans Mina Magus Age: 111 years old Clan: OTAKU2 | Message #36283 Posted: Sep 9, 2009, 3:46 am |
My original intent was to start messaging SMs once this thing was refined by the whole community into something better then I could get it on my own and asking them if they'd be willing to sign on. I'm starting to regret that decision in particular.
Tomorrow I'm going to be going around and messaging every clan SM currently active and ask for their suggestions and/or support with this act. I was originally hoping to do this once the act was "done", but I'm going to be going around now as I do want this to be a community issue and not everybody happens to go and read the forums or is all that active.
If this issue can be solved solely through messaging and getting everyone to agree to some form of standard, be it flexible or inflexible, I'll be immensely happy and immediately amend this with the resulting agreement. Irregardless I plan to work with the feedback I'll hopefully get after tomorrow.
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