Staff Feedback Thread

[Haste]

Let me start things off by saying that I personally believe that sanctioning players for violating rule 1.0 by ganking other players is something we should only do in extreme cases. This can mean a few things. First, there's the obvious example: dropping a dozen ships on one to three enemies -- ignoring ludicrous skill differences that, admittedly, do exist -- and just beating them to a pulp without giving them a chance to even fight back is simply a dick move. I believe that, in the interest of good sportsmanship, we can't allow that to happen. However, these cases barely ever come up ever since we began enforcing rule 1.0 this way. Most ganking-related 1.0 reports that we choose not to action describe fights that weren't exactly stellar, but weren't entirely unwinnable for the weaker side. At the very least the weaker party had a chance to take out a few of the opponent's ships, for example. We could describe them using the expected winrates of the parties involved: these fights are likely "10/90s" or, more commonly, "20/80s". I personally think it is a mistake to sanction players for each individual occurrence of such a fight. It is, however, important to take note of these examples of (slightly) poor sportsmanship, because if a player or group of players makes it a habit to give their opponents such mediocre fights, action should eventually be taken.

However, we shouldn't constantly get in the way of players just trying to play the game. Nobody on the staff team is interested in wielding the 1.0 rule like a mallet in a game of Whack-A-Mole, hitting each subpar fight with a warning, credit fine or ban. In addition, ganking reports require arguably the highest standards of evidence of any violation report, and anything short of video evidence is usually insufficient -- although server logs nowadays are quite detailed and can be used to verify weaker reports to some extent. A screenshot of a lone fighter with five enemies in pursuit, and an endlessly long target list in the bottom left, could still be taken in a fight that -- as a whole -- is even and fun for.. well, everyone else but the guy that took the screenshot, probably.

I also personally believe that it's important for the game to feel at least a little dynamic and unpredictable. A fight can be temporarily uneven as the weaker side tries to hold out for reinforcements to arrive. That's part of the fun. We shouldn't want a completely sterile PvP environment where the numbers are always perfectly even and skill is perfectly distributed among all sides. Even that unrealistic standard would get old before long. Plus, that sort of standard fits organized PvP events better than the roleplay environment anyways.

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I'll briefly touch on the specific VR @Eternal.Journey decided to mention.

I even was a part of some of the fights that were posted as VRs, and they were as clear cut as ever. Let’s take one of them, the Noth case, as an example:

Right off the bat, I can tell you that you and I clearly disagree on what is a "clear cut" case. To me, this is not one of them. There's a bit to unwrap here.

Noth were 6 ships. Covert Wilds, who RP as Mercenaries. Order intercepted them, with 7 ships. Nomads were involved, shooting Noth and Order (it is part of the RP of Noth. They shoot Aliens sometimes). 11 Corsairs jumped into Delta, while this fight was going on. A Nomad Cruiser got engaged by 10 ships.

Yes, the guy on the Nomad Cruiser was having a rough time. Maybe he even had no real counterplay at any point to prevent being put in that situation. Based off of screenshots alone (yes, I'm quite aware there's video evidence too, as I watched it) we can't conclude a whole lot, however. For all we know, the player charged straight into a stronger force and then failed to pull distance again. People make these sorts of mistakes in large-scale fights all the time, and I don't think we want to see anyone sanctioned the next time a DTR Cruiser gets separated from its fleet and gets annihilated by six gunboats in an otherwise even fleet fight. In addition, we can't simply pretend that the Noth and Core ships in the images don't exist, and that this Nomad is somehow entirely on its own. It is incredibly obvious that the Noth and Core ships on the screenshots are fighting the Corsairs and the Order, which means that they are, for the purposes of balancing the fight, on the Nomad's side. When discussing how fair or unfair a fight was, we care about who shot who, not about how one group might feel about another group and how they have interacted in other instances.

Almost every Noth ship died, those who didn’t had to run from the overwhelming fighting odds. After all Noth had left or died, Core fought the Order and Corsair combined forces and killed whatever remained.

How overwhelming could these odds possibly have been if, after Noth either lost or disengaged with half a dozen ships, the Core that kept fighting ended up winning? Look, maybe I really am missing something, but when I first heard about this fight, it was from Core players who were present who were disappointed to see Noth run off, and described the fight overall as nothing particularly difficult, as they themselves pointed out that the Core side had a massive skill advantage over the Order and Corsair groups. It's very possible that at some point in time, it was a fight that Noth were genuinely struggling with that seemed impossible, but it's also very clear that the odds shifted in Noth's favour considering they weren't even needed to win the fight in the end.

Do I believe that this was the best fight ever, and that it was fun for all involved, for the entire time that it lasted? Definitely not. Do I believe it's worth a sanction on its own? Definitely not. I think we have rejected 1.0-related violation reports that had more merit than this one -- and that includes ones filed by groups like DTR, rather than against them --, for still not being quite drastic enough to warrant action on their own. And like I said before, I do believe that enough minor infractions can eventually warrant a sanction.

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Now, to finally mention something people seem to have already begun discussing above, let me start with a little story.

Once upon a time, I was a bit of a toxic asshole. Even more so than I am today -- if you can imagine. I would go around flying ships with shitpost names, write in all lowercase with broken grammar and spelling, and try to bait people (worse than myself) into fighting me so I could then wipe the floor with them. I found this really quite funny, and barely played the game "as intended" anymore -- actually participating in the roleplay environment. At the time, I had little respect for the staff team. I thought they were corrupt, or idiots. Probably corrupt idiots, actually.

However, one day an administrator PMed me, and told me that I kept popping up in staff discussions and violation reports, and that eventually I was going to have to face the consequences of my actions. There wasn't a warning, a big credit fine, no ships were deleted and I wasn't banned. I was just PMed on good old Skype by an administrator, and he and I had a chat. I took his words to heart -- even though I also thought he was just about the only competent person on the administrative staff team at the time -- and learned to behave just a little bit better. I think had I been sanctioned instead, all it would've done is reinforce my feelings about the inadequacy of the staff team, and my behaviour wouldn't have improved at all.

This is why I personally feel that our system of public violation reports is absolutely awful. Even a simple warning -- often meant as nothing more than a "heads-up" for the warned player -- is equivalent to being put on display in a pillory for everyone to point and laugh. This makes it nearly impossible for us to use warnings and other light sanctions as intended: to gently course-correct players. As I'm not the only person who feels this way, we've been trying to avoid public lynchings of players or groups of players, instead opting to privately speak with them to try and sort problems out that way.

Unfortunately, that also means players who feel they were slighted now have to sometimes make do without the catharsis of seeing Player Warned: Bobby.The.Filthy.Silent.Engager on the sanctions subforum.

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If you were as active at actioning on them as you were on others that you have in fights against DTR, then you’d have a far healthier community, because said faction would have learnt the hard way by now. So far, alls you’ve taught them is that they are the ones who have staff favouritism.

Numerous DTR-affiliated (this includes players flying alongside them, not necessarily members) ganking-related 1.0 violation reports have been rejected. In general, the majority of 1.0 violation reports been rejected, or merely noted down as a case of "keep an eye on them". I think that's also simply the correct way to handle this rule. We cannot and should not be sanctioning players for each and every fight that didn't go perfectly.