[STAFF]: WARNING

[vladimir26]

I might not add anything interesting to this discussion, but hey, it's a piece of internet and on internet everyone got an opinion, no?

This is a long one

Life story

I've started playing in the summer of 2023. I like to think I did not intentionally break any rules ... until recently, apparently.
My experience with the staff is the following: during my time here, I got several people to teach me the ropes. I noticed quite quickly that PvP is not something I am enjoying. I'm not good at it, I'm not having fun constantly turning a snub, my aim is pretty terrible even in caps. Therefore, my only satisfaction comes from trading. I did my fair share of silent trading, I've learned how to interact, how to provide a minimal RP interaction to fellow traders, law enforcement officers, even how to try and RolePlay when encountering pirates and such. Everybody has to start somewhere, so I've also learned a little bit (I don't claim that I'm a good RolePlayer now; even now I'm at most decent).

How my dissatisfaction began

All fine and dandy until I started noticing instances when I felt wronged (as trader / miner, when interacting with pirates). At first, I tried to ignore it and move on. After all the sector is big enough that when I'm PvP dead in a system there's plenty to do in other systems. When I felt that I got even more blatantly wronged, I've tried submitting a VR. Excuse me for not remembering the details of that first VR; all I know is that I never got any response from it. The second VR I've submitted was during the H-Fuel event between GMG and Liberty. There was a pirate cruiser camping the trade lanes in Galileo. He asked for 300k, I offered 200k so I can retain some profit when selling the H-Fuel. He didn't budge, I didn't budge either, so he exploded me. I submitted a VR and later I inquired a couple of times about the status of the VR to be told in the end that there was a vote, the vote "was close", but it was deemed acceptable. Nothing I can do. Life goes on.

Intermittence

Then there was an incident I was not involved in when people I play with got jumped by Ionic in Galileo when mining Platinum (my friend was flying Samura IFF). It's a RolePlay server so of course it is totally justifiable for House Corporations to actively destroy ships from other House Corporations "outside house space" (but if "the encounters spills into house space, who cares, it started outside house space"). As such, this Samura guy tried to fly to Impala, Impala got the shield triggered by the attackers (cuz also game mechanics, God forbit traders / miners get any help) and in the end it was destroyed before making it to Deshima / Tsukishima. Later, when I've learned about this, I got really triggered so I've started pestering the official Discord server about clarifications about what's acceptable and what not, only to receive answers from people that do vote on sanctions along the lines "it's your fault that your PoB is wrongly placed", "maybe hire escorts next time" (cuz ofc with 30 players online at that given time, finding escorts is the easiest thing), "learn to fight back". I admit, there are plenty of details I'm not including, but the discussion is still on the Discord server for people eager to get the whole discussion. Overall, I was trying to get a baseline of what is acceptable and what not and I got nothing but lowkey insults (not by the staff, but by the Ionic player that was involved in the "interaction"). Did I threw a tantrum for nothing? Most people would think so. I don't and here's why:

Another failed VR

My latest VR is also about Platinum mining interactions. Yet again, myself (flying a freighter) and 2 Heges were mining Plat. One Hege got a full cargo and was leaving. Shortly after he left, 2 indie Bristol snubs showed up. Their request was simple: leave the field at once. Fair enough. Even if the other Hege still had some space in his haul, we started making it towards Shikoku JG. Another indie snub appeared and also a B| tagged Gunboat. The guy that made the first request remembered that he wanted our Ore, so he made his request. I refused (ooRP thinking that pirating allows only 1 request: in this case the command: "leave"! , as this was also a previous interaction we had with Bristol) and both the Hege and I continued trying to at least get out of the Asteroid Field. We were constantly CDed and hailed, so in the end the Hege dropped his haul and destroyed it. This is when Bristol people opened fire, exploded both of us, then joyfully returned to their station and logged out. This would have been our first run of mining, so it's not like we were in the field for an hour. Were we targeted? I thought so, therefore, I reported the fact that the "pirates" made multiple demands (and not only one as Piracy is described in the rules) to also explode us in the end. Did anything happen? Of course not. Do I know why we were exploded? I cannot say I do, as nobody bothered to throw me a message at least saying "Hey, in this specific instance both demands counted as one and you were destroyed because.... which is acceptable by us." On top of that, it's not like the Bristol people than started a mining operation of their own, oh no, they just logged to destroy us and then switched to other things. Totally inRP and acceptable behavior, according to the staff that decided to not take any action.

Rule breaker?

Then I became the rule-breaker. How? Simple! I was flying a Barge. I filled it with 20k Azurite and 10k XRs to move them from Delta to Gamma. I was in Delta, approaching the Jump Hole from ... behind the Core solars. When I was 10k-12k away from the JH, Order|LV-Mammon, a 3.6k Border Worlds Transport, jumped in. He was carrying WG, started to cruise towards upper Omicrons, but noticed me and changed direction to scan my cargo. He then asked me to drop my cargo, which I refused. He then started attacking me. Before he got to opening fire, (another) friend showed up in a Murmillo to run interference. The Order| guy started shooting at me, but when he saw the Murmillo starting to fire back, he disengaged and started cruising away. I jumped to Omicron Kappa and disconnected there. Afterwards, I was told that Order Discords were pinged and not only the 3.6ker swiched ships to try and hunt me, but even some other Order ships logged (I was not presented any evidence that said ships logged in Delta. From what I know, they logged in Mu, so no matter what, it would have taken them some time either way to get to me). A while after, as soon as I logged back to move the Barge to Gamma, Order|Damien magically logged in 12k away from me in Kappa. By that time, I've heard that this guy is eager to destroy me, so before logging, I made sure escorts are around. Seeing that once again he cannot do anything to me, he retreated AGAIN and submitted a VR (counseled by a staff member who God knows how context had when giving this advice). Lo and behold, a sanction came in the the form of a 50mils (yes, the equivalent of tens of hours of powertrading... something I stopped doing when I got into the business of making equipment and supplying bases), being cited the 1.2 rule. I was therefore sanctioned for "disconnecting during player encounters". The reason I chose to disconnect in the first place was because I though the player encounter ended when the 3.6ker disengaged and flew away. But because I was flying a slow Barge, because (without me even knowing this) other people already logged Order ships to hunt me, I was punished. Ok, even accepting that a wrong doing you don't know is wrong still deserves it's own punishment, is 50mils a fitting punishment for this (aka destroying days, maybe even weeks worth of time spent in getting that money)? And I was one of the lucky ones. I was told by the admin guy handing in the punishment that there are precedents where barges were deleted because they F1ed as soon as they jumped to a system an enemy was in. Again, my "enemies" were not in the same system as I was, but multiple systems away, and even so, is deleting a 150mils ship a punishment worthy of the crime?
I was told by yet another guy that there is also a precedent where a snub F1ed during an interaction and the punishment was simply the confiscation of a weapon because the player "was too poor". So even accepting it is the same offence (which I still refuse to do), the punishment is different according to the time people invest in the game and their playstyles (you cannot tell me a person who invest 1 day in PvPing makes as much money as the person which uses that day to trade)? Is this fair and considerate by the staff?

The last straw for me

Well, my last straw was the Noth - Pheonix - DTR - PLF incident. Though I was not involved in the execution of the espionage going on there, I was involved in planning it and contributed to the idea of catching Noth dock on a Wild/Nomad base. The fact that the whole RP was invalidated on "unwritten laws" ground, the fact that the terms "metagaming" and "powergaming" were used, not having any relevance to their definition as described here, the fact that even now multiple people of the community have different meanings of "metagaming", some even confusing it with "powergaming" is just... too much. I honestly admire all the great work the devs are putting in. The innovations they bring to a 20yo game is simply astonishing. I also respect the admin team that tries to keep things in one piece in the community, but playing God, interpreting "unwritted laws" to invalidate otherwise perfectly right RP, not carrying one bit to give feedback on the decisions they made is too much for me. I don't want to invest my time in a game where admins showed (in my subjective interpretation, I fully admit it) multiple times they are willing to twist facts and impose completely disproportionate punishments, the PvP bias (see the punishment of what was deemed at that time as 4 OCs ganking a Corsair and losing 3M - compared to 50M or even 150M - each for it)... all these are reasons for me to at least take a break, consider whether this is something I want to continue doing. When players are the offending party, at least there is a Violation Report you can submit. When admins are the perceived offending party... what options are there?

TL;DR: the rules are intentionally vague, up to the interpretation of the staff. When no sanction is given, no explanation is given to the "wronged" party as to why their reason for reporting is not justified or not good enough. There is an explicit PvP bias in how rules are made (see the Competitors system) and enforced. When sanctions ARE given, the "offender" has no way to try and defend himself or at least present his own point of view. When Barges are the "offenders", punishments are exaggerated and do not fit the crime under any circumstance.
My completely subjective feeling out of this is that staff simply likes to play God with other people's investments and not budge even when they might be wrong or when the truth is not even that straight forward (see the Pennsylvania Zoner debacle of which I wasn't even involved and how that played out).

Just a small fyi, Violation reports not going through goes both ways. I have knowledge of a few (not done by myself), on very basic stuff like not dropping lines, that didn't go through for some reason. If the warning of two people is the end of the road for so many others, then I guess that if all the other VRs went through it would've been a nuclear apocalypse. Maybe the admins should change the warning's title into another community warning? So we can continue with our game without any lessons learned or accepting any responsability.

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