Profitability of sanctions

[sindroms]

Yo.
Here's a thought you might find interesting.


Currently, what is the actual reason for applying materialistic sanctions in the case of a player overstepping server rules?

This is a thing I have found myself thinking about very often, because such sort of sanctions are definitely effective: you lose time spent online.




However, these sanctions seem like a very....well, it is hard to explain. For example, a player, a pirate, is pirating an ore hauler. He F1ns. What is the chance that YOU would waste your time to report him....if you DID kill him and take his ore. Of course not, you are glad for it. You got his money. But what if he sliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiides away? Then you can, quote, take revenge via sanction. You can report the player and the admins will take away his profits, his guns and perhaps even ban him.

This is the dilemma we face right now: the rulebreaker is not educated unless it is profitable for the reporter.


This is what I really do not like about the current sanctions. They are very selective: The players reporting other players are doing so not out of principal, but do only if there is any gain to be had.

How many of you would bother reporting a swearing or oorping starflyer? Not many, it is only a starflyer. But what if it was a Cap8 Battleship? Oh man, I am sure there would be a few threads for that.




In other words, the current punishment method spawns selectivity when it comes to reporting players and people usually do it out of profitable reasons. So what can we do about it?


Remove cash/cargo/equipment fines and resort to bastilling the person's ship for an x amount of time instead. That way you not only make the player actually seek help on the forums, but also it serves the same purpose. But instead of removing profit he HAD gained over the course of time, you prevent him from using that character for the game.



Of course, this soltuion is still flawed, because I am sure that any unlawful would still report every enemy cap just to have one less problem to worry about. So how do we make sure that players are reported because they break the rules, not because they have made someone mad when they did?

The reason for sanctions is not to punish the player, but to educate them. More warnings, less sanctions. But that would require more reports to process, and such, more admins.







If I had a million for every time I heard someone saying: ''Dude, I should totally wait till he buys a new ship and then report him'', I would give up on mining.

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[Lonely_Ghost]

How many of you would bother reporting a swearing or oorping starflyer? Not many, it is only a starflyer. But what if it was a Cap8 Battleship? Oh man, I am sure there would be a few threads for that.

First thing, which comes to mind....if you see starflyer, breaking rules, like oorp/ooc/F1/re-engage/engage without word...you probably think, that this is total noob new player, who doesn't bother himself with reading the rules. However, two players shall tolerate him, third wont...

[Tunicle]

Do not break the rules then sanctioner selectivity does not enter into it.

[jammi]

Interesting thought there. I'll forward it up the chain.

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[sindroms]

Ideally, the only good the option to report a player should bring the reporter should be having the offender educated. It should not give the reporter a chance/choice in having influence on a person's existing ingame wealth via admins.

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PSA: If you have been having stutter/FPS lag on Disco where it does not run as smoothly as other games, please look at the fix here: https://discoverygc.com/forums/showthrea...pid2306502
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[Duvelske]

well but on every report there are 2 sides. I was a few days back. And came across a liberty ship asked him to stop. and well in tau 31 he kept running away. outside that astroid field even. and then.. poof. F1. Honestly to say. (admins may say if i did) i did NOT report this guy. I am myself trying mostly to avoid it. As admins are not only Admins, but also players. Things wich you can solve easy. For example you have the tools for /pm the person. Tell him just its not right to do so. (don't threaten!) and well to read the server rules. if i see the same person again in like 1 month. doing exactly the same. Well then i might think of reporting him.

So i think it depends mostly on the person who is violating, and the person seeing the one who does the violation. And if they have something towards each other. (hate vendetta's and such) As i have seen many pirates for example. And like you say about piracy people lose money. They mostly (think 80%) are really angry at that person. Tries everything to file in a sanction report. For reasons like no or too strickt roleplay for example. (so 1 line and then pew) But Pirates and other groups like the Nomads/wilde are chased very often. Not only by NPC but also by players. SO to make a good roleplay as one of these factions it is hard. (I am sure some of us will ask the police force or some on skype they know to help them save their cargo.) You need to set at least a greeting or message to players to stop. Otherwise i think 9 of the 10 times you see another player. They will just run away. I have seen some good pirates, wich at least stop you properly or even try to hunt you. Ok i have seen also HALT or STOP. Think its more then up to the one who is pirated to try and make the pirate more clear about how to stop someone properly. and well just pay for that fee he asks. (if its reasonable) and well otherwise you can allways flee and as trader try to dock somewhere.

Also i think everyone must need to think about this:
'What if the disco server will be like any other server? No interaction, just npc and maybe some small plain talk? Is that what we all want?'

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[AeternusDoleo]

Reports and sanctions tend to have to fit the crime. If a trader F1's successfully and thus escapes the proverbial "2milordai", then a fine that is (slightly) higher then cargo value does make sense - it tells the player that the consequence for breaking the rule is worse then being blown up. I personally reported swearing and obnoxious behaviour whenever I encountered it, because the bottom line is that I try to do my part in cleaning up the server (I consider insulting/obnoxious folk internet trash that needs to be redirected to the Bastille landfill). But you do need to have some common sense in determining when the admins need to step in, and when it's just a matter of explaining how things work on DiscoGC (basically the [Angel]'s job but in a pinch the admins can do that too).

I disagree with Spazzy on educating the offender as the only valid reason for reporting. Cleaning up the environment so other players have a more pleasant time on DiscoGC is a reason too.

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Wide awake in a world that sleeps, enduring thoughts, enduring scenes. The knowledge of what is yet to come.
From a time when all seems lost, from a dead man to a world, without restraint, unafraid and free.

Mostly retired Discovery member. May still visit from time to time.

[(Paradigm)]

Yo.
Here's a thought you might find interesting.

Not so much that I agree with any of what you say, but a welcome opportunity to discuss these things.

Sanctions, above all else, are a symbol to tell people that they have to follow the rules. You can educate people about the rules ingame by telling them if they break them, there is no need for a sanction. I have reported some people, but only those who ignore the rules even though they know them.

There has to be more than a thread and a warning, because obviously people who dont care about threads and warnings would just continue what they are doing.

Paying people for reports is a terrible idea, because that would flood the admins with reports about everything when a simple "my dear fellow player, please dont to that because its against rule nr X.Y" would have been a enough.

If there is to be criticism aobut admins sanctioning policy I'd exerce it on this:

1. People have told the admins many many times about 3 trolls breaking all sorts of rules in front of Manhattan repeatedly, for days now. Out of character, insulting, docking on lawful bases after shooting lawful players, oorp attacks, and doing everything they can to annoy people and make them angry. Yet, the only admin who is doing anything about it is Hawk, which is ok, but with only small sanctions or warnings which will not change that behavior, because the 3 people doing this know exactly what the rules are and are doing it just to annoy people at Manhattan. No admin ever goes to watch them, even after being called. So it seems very much that the admins are letting those 3 people annoy other players and break rules on purpose, for some reason. Maybe they think that there is some sort of benefit from annoying people to the point that they don't hang out in front of Manhattan? Well if that's what they think, it's a terrible way to handle things. All this creates is inter-player hatred, disapppointment in the admin team, and the signal that you can break rule and nothing will happen to you. If you want people to spread out of New York there is a very easy way: Let people kill each other off there without complaining about "ganking" or telling them they must fight fair. The dead people will be forced to move somehwere else, and the ganking people will get bored when they have no more people to kill and also move somewhere else. The result will be that the hotspots are less populated with people who cause fights, and players will be more spread out from the hotspots.

2. When you sanction people, say exactly what they did wrong, and be critical of their actions, don't cast a judgement on their character. And above all, don't appear hatefull in your sanction notices. Most negative examples I can think of: The CGS and Altejago sanction threads. In both, not a single thing they did wrong is given. It's just "we don't like you so you get sanctioned". Give the examples of what exactly was done wrong so they and other people will know what not to do. Those two sanction threads just look like "I got the power and I dont like you, so I'm going to tell you and everyone that you suck". THere are really better ways to handle that.

[Tunicle]

1. People have told the admins many many times about 3 trolls breaking all sorts of rules in front of Manhattan repeatedly, .............
.................................................................................................................................................................................................................................I dont like you, so I'm going to tell you and everyone that you suck". THere are really better ways to handle that.

+1

Once a server is seen as losing its impartial viewpoint with its rules (or special ID's/factions for that matter) it is on a downhill slope.

[Hannibal]

i myself i havent filled one report in x years,maybe just because i'm lazy to spend time to write a topic for a few seconds when the incident happen and hoping someone else will if it happen again..i know it's bad but i really dont like looking for a few screenshots of a incident when you try to keep screenshots of almost everything as a pirate[that's were i get the most cases]because you really have no other alternative[keeping plenty of screenshots ]


i propose as an alternative to report a few sanctions to be able to report it via flhook:
-you get the option to choose the time that happen for chat logs
-you get a decription field
-ships stats and money should be saved when you use the command
-etc
i dont see it to be a hard thing to code but could 'clean' the server and may result in 'lighter' sanction[not just remove everything] because it would be more reports,and second time you get a 'harder' sanction

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People want to believe that God has a plan for them.
They don't wanna believe that anyone else does..