Shattered Kingdoms

I'm on the fence as to whether I think deletion as a result of triggering is necessary. On one hand I'm fine with it because it's clear, no one breaks it by accident, and triggering is one of the most egregious ways you can cheat in the game. Of all things people get deleted for, triggering is the most undeniably fair in its application. I'm also not attacking Ezaya, I'm pointing out that the things he said really don't make sense.

On the other hand, there have also been a lot of deletions for people using triggers that I've enjoyed playing with. Part of me wishes that I would have been able to keep playing with those characters, and so to a point I agree with Finney's interpretation that the harsh "always deletion" penalty might be a bit much. Even then, however, I find myself much more wanting to pull a Jim Carrey on the people -breaking- the rule rather than attacking the punishment as the real culprit: It wouldn't matter that the punishment is harsh if people just read the rules and followed them, which is honestly very easy.

That said, as for Finney's statement that deletion for triggering should always be replaced with 1 level loss and all EQ loss, if someone triggered to kill and jloot my character and all they got was a jloot and edrain back, I'd actually be pretty annoyed and it would make me want to quit the game: Grinding out from level 49 to 50 is easy, regathering hours of loot that required multiple people to get isn't.

As far as thought on how many newbies read help rules. Most people new to something want to get their hands dirty and learn as they go and think probably incorrectly that nothing bad will happen to them. Most new players are not going to frequent the forums. Case in point there is currently a new player who is being educated on the get command from other players.
How many TOS do people actually read word for word (yes I have read SKs but blizzard owns my first born child Im fairly sure its in the TOS somewhere). It has gotten to the point where TOS's dont even cover you legally in some places in the world because it is so accepted you just click read. Im not saying that it is fine to ignore rules however you have to remember most people are not going to have read them and mulled each one over in their head. Or even if they do that they reach the correct conclusion. Case in point Ezaya.
Wasting time is the punishment of SK and so punishments are not equal regardless of how you think of them. Deletion does not have the same impact on a player that takes 25 hours to level as one that takes 100 hours. In the same way a fine in court doesnt have the same impact because of peoples different income. Even when you consider a level curse it doesnt have the same impact across factions. A level curse as an evil character could get someone to cut your head off for not being a strong leader, where as a good character your much more likely to get help from allies. Different abilities to pay a level curse can probably be seen in the use of deathquest/reincarnate.

If you have a flag/text file that can be given to emails or IP's you can ramp up the punishment for repeat offenders. To help get players who want to reform to reform and players who want to cheat to get deleted.

There are ambiguous statements in the RAW open for people to comprehend them differently based on their own experiences. Im not going to bring them up here because punishment severity is the main point of this thread if someone is interested PM me.

If getting Junk looted makes you want to delete its going to make you want to delete regardless if you got cheater into it or if you just had it happened. Having them jlooted in response is generally what people wish to try and do when it happens. Perhaps hitting the rules breaker with a (H)oarder flag would be more suitable more harsh "take a week off" kind of punishment if there is a victim to your cheating.

Maybe I poorly worded it: It would intrinsically bother me if, as a player, someone could cheat to very heavily affect IC events and the worst that could happen to them if they got caught isn't much worse than what could happen if they didn't cheat at all.

Case in point: Triggering to win a PK.

Say that someone were to write a trigger to instantly execute commands in response to the "you regain your footing" message as opposed to entering them normally and this enables them to win fights that they would normally lose. They then consider what options are available to them when facing a character I play where without their triggers they face a high probability of losing, for example. They have a few different things to consider.

If they don't cheat and lose, they get full-looted and have to RP out the defeat. This is the worst case scenario if they play fair.
If they don't cheat and win, I get full-looted and I have to RP out the defeat.
If they cheat to win and DON'T get caught, then I got full looted, and I have to RP out the defeat.
If they cheat to win and then DO get caught, we both get full-looted, but I would still have been the one defeated IC. Later he has to spend a few hours grinding out or questing for a level. This is the worst case scenario if they decide to cheat.

My point being the following: If you weaken the penalty for for cheating, then cheating actually starts becoming "worth it" in a lot of cases, because even the worst case scenario of getting caught cheating is better than the worst case scenario possible if one plays fair. Dulrik has always leaned towards the side of making cheating punishments -much- more severe than the crime to completely remove that line of reasoning from the equation: It simply isn't worth triggering in any circumstance.


As a secondary note, I really don't think that the argument of "no one reads the rules so the punishments should be lighter" is valid at all. When evenly enforced and sensible, rules make the game better, not worse, and the last thing we should do as players is make excuses for not reading the rules. The rules themselves really aren't that oppressive: And I'm not talking about the ToS here, I'm talking about "help rules" which is listed on screen every single time you connect to the game in the message of the day.

If they where to receive the (H) flag of a hoarder and be full looted they would not be able to carry loot for a week some vets would say that is a harsher punishment than deletion because they could GM and gear up a character quicker than the flag would wear off.
If there is no victim to the cheating they have only (saved their own time) their own time. A suitable curse for how bad the cheating is seems reasonable forcing them to spend more time. If there is a victim involved in the cheating aka abuse in PK (they have wasted someone elses time). A full junk loot and a week of not being able to get new loot is a harsh punishment. Much harsher than a 5 or even 10 level curse for many players. As far as if a single level curse is harsh enough punishment I really feel that needs to be measured against the player. If they GMed in 25 hours a level curse is basically a 30 min you have to go do something else. If they GMed in 200 hours of play time then a level curse is about 4 hours of their time. Yes Im aware that same thing can be done in 30 min to regain your lost level however it comes down to player knowledge.

The question is Edoras what kind of punishment do you think is reasonable that will be much less likely to cause a player to quit 1-5 levels of curse? Perhaps a (C)heater flag added which stops XP gain for a week for them to walk off the curse. A (H)oarder flag added if loot was involved. As far as your example you can make a trigger that is undetectable in game to achieve that goal anyway so if people want to cheat we can not really stop them. Then it would come down to a rule's manager judgement call which is a very shady area Thuban has stated they dont want to be in. If repeat offends get harsher and harsher punishment there is no intensive to cheat. I am curious about your thoughts on the boundaries between a slap on the wrist and a slap to the face when it comes to punishment. The follow up question is it better to have more players with a few non reforming cheaters in it or fewer players? Honestly I preferred the game with more players even if some of them used questionable methods. Back in the "golden days of yore" there was actually two tears of players those who got involved in PVP and cared about cheating and those who just fountain RPed and probably wouldnt win a PVP even if they did cheat their hearts out.

Okay Thuban, yes I got a char deleted for triggering. I had absolutely no argument when you wanted to delete it, none whatsoever. That being said, it seems to reason that you should give me the benefit of the doubt considering that I had just had that happen, that I wouldn't be purposefully breaking any rules like that again. You could have easily discerned that had you actually decided to have a conversation about it. At very least, in the spirit of your job as an enforcer of the rules, when you said why you were wanting to delete Ezaya and I did not react like I did previously, as in full admission and no argument, you need to realize that in no way did I realize I was cheating, and act accordingly. Had you done more the first time other than just say, help rules2, DELETE, I wouldn't have put myself in a position to get deleted for a trigger that didn't do a damn thing for my char other than produce an emote. And no, I don't care about the deletion. In hindsight I realize that I broke a rule and the punishment for the rule is deletion. Should it be? For that, absolutely not. But whatever. My entire rant is that if you're in charge of enforcing the rules of a game you need to take into consideration WHY and HOW a rule got broken. It was incredibly obvious that the first time I was intentionally botting a char and was in full admission with no argument to my punishment. It was also incredibly obvious that the second time I was in no way intentionally trying to cheat or gain an advantage. Soccer. The exact same physical violation can result in: a free kick, a yellow card, or a red card. Intent is everything when it comes to the breaking of and subsequent enforcement of rules.