Ezaya wrote:
In a game that's always had so much grey area and has always relied on players to make it interesting, I think everyone is just sick of the black and white approach lately. I doubt that anybody who has received a major punishment lately had the intent of sabotaging the game, making it less fun for other people, or doing anything that generally decreased the quality of the game itself. It keeps coming back to intent. A player gained an advantage by enchanting for his own character. Yes, that's an obvious rules violation, but who cares, really? I wouldn't do that, myself, but I would never want the game to lose a player and have to suffer yet another banhammer fallout discussion that apparently can only lead to the standoff that we keep having. It seems like the player base is trying to play a RP/PK mud, and Thuban is trying to play his own game regarding rules enforcement. I mean you have decades of playing experience complaining about how things are being handled and the staff position is rock solid that everyone is just wrong? Who is benefiting from any of this? Also, if the check and balance system for players is in the lap of one single person, who's checking that person? You can, of course, argue that every punishment for every violation that's happened is legit by the letter of the law, but how is this trend helping the game as a whole? Take Syn for example. Was I ever under the impression that Syn followed the rules to a T? No. Was I often on the [REDACTED] end of Syn's antics and forced to play the game harder due to someone dictating my play? Yes. But if I really wanted to avoid Syn's character and play the game in a manner where Syn just had absolutely no impact on my character I could, easily, no matter how many rules were being broken. Now my play is being dictated by someone my character can't just man up and go deal with if I want to. I'm not saying I want to cheat. I'm just saying it doesn't feel like I even know what is going to be viewed as cheating and what isn't half the time. Because my intent is never to ruin the game for someone else I don't ever feel like I'm cheating.(my admitted botting of my first char back in like 5 years because I was lazy aside) In all of the recent arguments between the players and the staff(Thuban specifically), it seems like it always comes back to "don't cheat and it'll all be fine." Well, how about you let the players enforce the rules themselves for the most part, like they have for years? Anybody can make a log of another player doing something illegal and submit it if they feel the need to. Something can always be reported and looked into. Rules Manager should be a position that is responsible to the player base to keep the game fun. How many of the recent penalties have been brought to the attention of the staff vs the staff just enforcing them on the players? The players are responsible to each other in respect to the rules, because each other is what makes the game interesting. We shouldn't be accountable to a Rules Manager, especially when that person has the ability to interpret and dictate how, or even IF, we get to play the game. If someone breaks a rule, they aren't doing it to carry out a vendetta against the Rules Manager, and the person with that job can't act like every rules violation is someone slapping his mother.
If you wanted to, you could call a penalty in just about every single play in football but they don't, because that isn't fun for anybody. Referees in any sport are governed by the sport itself, the players, and the fans...not the black and white letter of the law. Did Michael Jordan push off on a few game winning shots? Yep. Does anyone wish he didn't? Maybe the guy who got pushed, and likely only for a little while. Even that's a maybe, because the game itself grew from it and that player likely profited from it in the long term because the GAME grew from it.
Let me start by saying you are a guy who got busted for botting on an internet game where botting is not allowed. You're not Michael Jordan. Let me also say that Michael Jordan was called for 2,783 fouls in his career and fouled out of the game 11 times. He also wasn't cheating; he was just committing fouls, which have a clearly defined set of penalties and are an intrinsic part of how the game is played. Botting, on the other hand, is defined here as cheating. People get banned for cheating and other rules violations in the NBA all the time. It may or may not be "bad for the game" that a player commits domestic violence or that a player abuses steroids or that a player punches another player in the face during a game, but, regardless, the league has rules that all the players agree to abide by when they sign up, just like SK has rules and a ToS. And, just like in the NBA, when players cheat or commit rules violations, they face consequences.
If you want to make the case that botting, multi-playing, spamming, harassment, and bug abuse should be legal, good luck with that, but I don't think it's for SK. If you've ever seen a MUD where botting is unrestricted, you end up with people bot-spamming their iTunes playlists in their titles.
You're not entitled to cheat. If you get caught, you will get punished. If players stop cheating, I can stop punishing people for cheating. Don't act like it is rocket science, either. Anyone could have told you that botting in the newbie zone was against the rules. You did it because you felt entitled to, not because you weren't aware it was against the rules.