Arbitrary Punishments

[Fermin]

From IMMS:

"We are a smaller player base, and toxic in-game behavior is something we intend to have zero-tolerance around. This means, that while it isn't a specific rule, you should be aware that your actions can be judged by our Houseguest policy. Some actions merit recourse from authorities, some do not.

In this case, a player will take three weeks off from the game after waiting a long period to use sleep-stab in a targeted way to kill Mephistopheles. We will reload both da'es Ashan and Laman's as normal.

If you dislike how someone plays, find another way to approach the situation, and do not try to get back at them and then follow-up with a series of rants on discord that promote a toxic environment and support the anonymous actor. If you find yourself prone to negative or antisocial behaviors, we will be taking this route in the future."


Passing out punishments based on the houseguest rule, which reads:

4) Houseguest rule.
The immortal staff owns this mud and invite you to freely play here. Please keep in mind that you are a welcome guest and that you are expected to conduct yourself accordingly. All message areas, communications channels, and the very ability to play here are all privileges offered to you and may be withdrawn at any time for conduct unbecoming a houseguest. (This includes harassment of anyone else but does not necessarily include swearing). Any incidents which merit recourse to the authorities should be logged and reported by yourself. Any threatened or actual incidents which may, in your opinion, merit recourse to the authorities, are your responsibility to record and report as soon as possible.


Seems like a super slippery slope that could easily result in player - imm disagreement punishments that breed absolute immortal contempt.

There is zero reason for the above punishment and goes against 20+ years of wotmud history.

I'd almost like to see the mental gymnastics involved by those involved who thought this was ok.

Yeah there is a small playerbase, primarily because immortals have consistently power tripped to drive players off.

[Sorvitor]

Agree entirely. (well, mostly. I think more players leave over inconsistency from staff than they do from power tripping)

When we get past all the feelings and the reasoning behind it. What we have is a lightside player killing a darkside player inside a darkside city while that darksider is fully not afk. Not alt tabbed, not anything. Actively entering commands at the screen.


I kept my mouth shut over this cause this game can really spiral into nastiness at times. But seeing as it's been several days and I've had days and days to think about it I realize I still feel the same.

If you want this behaviour banned simply remove the ability to sleep and incinerate. If that takes coding and you can't do it immediately, make a very public posts that these weaves will be removed at the coders earliest convivence and that they are banned and anyone caught using them will be in violation of our houseguest rules. Punishing someone and then changing the rules doesn't fly. In most nations in the western world it's straight up unconstitutional.

[Harker]

From IMMS:

"We are a smaller player base, and toxic in-game behavior is something we intend to have zero-tolerance around. This means, that while it isn't a specific rule, you should be aware that your actions can be judged by our Houseguest policy. Some actions merit recourse from authorities, some do not.

In this case, a player will take three weeks off from the game after waiting a long period to use sleep-stab in a targeted way to kill Mephistopheles. We will reload both da'es Ashan and Laman's as normal.

If you dislike how someone plays, find another way to approach the situation, and do not try to get back at them and then follow-up with a series of rants on discord that promote a toxic environment and support the anonymous actor. If you find yourself prone to negative or antisocial behaviors, we will be taking this route in the future."


Passing out punishments based on the houseguest rule, which reads:

4) Houseguest rule.
The immortal staff owns this mud and invite you to freely play here. Please keep in mind that you are a welcome guest and that you are expected to conduct yourself accordingly. All message areas, communications channels, and the very ability to play here are all privileges offered to you and may be withdrawn at any time for conduct unbecoming a houseguest. (This includes harassment of anyone else but does not necessarily include swearing). Any incidents which merit recourse to the authorities should be logged and reported by yourself. Any threatened or actual incidents which may, in your opinion, merit recourse to the authorities, are your responsibility to record and report as soon as possible.


Seems like a super slippery slope that could easily result in player - imm disagreement punishments that breed absolute immortal contempt.

There is zero reason for the above punishment and goes against 20+ years of wotmud history.

I'd almost like to see the mental gymnastics involved by those involved who thought this was ok.

Yeah there is a small playerbase, primarily because immortals have consistently power tripped to drive players off.

When I read that post I felt the exact same way. Very slippery slope. I discussed it with a few of my friends from the game and found out there was a little more to it however that could be hearsay. But the post by itself is a very chilling effect sort of thing.

It reads to me what's next do we get banned because we killed somebody's Alt that came out of the circle to check their corpse? Do we start handing out banishments for people who LD kill? All the stuff that we've kind of just chalked up to people being people over the years?

I do think that if there was more involved with this situation and I was told it was something like they death trapped the unique and we're going to try and buy it back with tokens. That explanation would go a lot further than what got posted. I don't think there will actually really be sudden arbitrariness but just reading that post like that makes you wonder a little bit.

[Rig]

Yea, there wasn’t much more to it. I dt’d it because I knew it would be reloaded and I didn’t want to use it/out my own alts. I’ve seen a lot of people thinking I want it on my warder, but I don’t play my warder and it goes to whoever paid the most tokens to buy it in the clan it was bought.

My intention isn’t to make anyone quit, however my intention to get other people to stop playing in a way that’s detrimental to a team environment was probably taken too far. My general frustration and reaction to this is to just kill the players that annoy me, and that’s exactly what I did, and I made sure I did it within the bounds of the rules of the game.

The argument as to whether it’s lame or whatever doesn’t matter to me, because it’s all arbitrary and under the interpretation of whoever’s opinion.

[Kryyg]

I read the post as if the player voluntarily took 3 weeks off to cool down. I didnt read it as a punishment.

I still don’t know the details of it but if there was no real cheating involved I’m in agreement with Sorvitor. Lame but within the realms of the game created by immortals. Ambush was always lame but we didn’t make people quit when they killed someone with it. We adjusted the skill.

Anyways, if it was a voluntary break (which I think we all should take, especially if the play style of another player is getting to you) then I find it an overall acceptable solution. If it was forced on the player then that is unfortunate.

Rig is better than this and if he wanted to kill Mephistopheles he could have. In time- everyone dies. Except zangief and Jaster. They remain elusive. Though the last time Jaster died was to a PONR Stab or missed bash stab by some lamer. Stab needs to be downed.

[erulak]

It's a fun incident to talk about on Discord because it's weird as firetruck, but there's really nothing to litigate. Nothing done was against the rules - if the pretzel logic around trying to make what was done after the kill itself (DTing the unique) as something against the rules didn't make it apparent, no Immortal has actually come out and said definitively what part of the action was a violation of any rule, besides some vagueries about "intent" that was then clarified in a way that, once again, left you wondering what the actual issue was.

The post itself was edited to remove the only consequential piece:

Our follow-up to this will be considering the place of the spells "sleep" and "incinerate" and whether they are conducive to the type of environment we're interested in.

If the weave is out of whack, change it. We often see people do "lame" or "unintended' stuff to their heart's content and whenever something is changed, there's no actual punishment unless there was actual bug abuse or exploitation of some sort. In this case, I'd say this is lame, but doesn't strike me as an unintended use of hide, sleep, or stab.

I'd say a post that should have been on whatever Imm forum as a discussion item for the 'sleep weave' should not have been a public "punishment" that involved taking a unique the player got on a different character, but complaining about dragging Rig's name through the mud is like complaining about a dragging a fly through dung.

[Jestin]

I think out of all time periods on Wotmud, immortals are probably doing the best in the past few years. Both in terms of game balance and transparent, fair punishments. This includes the last two times I was punished for doing shady dung. On top of that it must not be easy volunteering for a game and having to waste your precious time chasing down people who are cheating and/or not behaving.

Having said that, without knowing the full details of this situation, it certainly seems strange and a bit overkill to punish for this. Instead a stern conversation with Rig telling him this type of behavior isn't great and there -might- be consequences in the future if he continued down this path might have been better than a first time punishment.

Everyone makes mistakes - its impossible to get all of these types of punishments right all the time. Imo, there is absolutely no shame in saying - "sorry guys, we kind of overreacted here, even though Rig was clearly going a bit beyond the bounds of vengeance we like to see vs. a player. We'll adjust these weaves and in the future please just everyone play nice and don't grief each other!"

[Rig]

The technical details are:

My characters are jailed for 3 weeks
I got *some* of my unknown alts outed
I had a unique from a separate in-game experience taken
I was, at first until Vampa actually spoke to me, accused of trying to make someone quit

Then there were a bunch of whines about how I lied about doing it (who admits to sleep stabbing someone on their unknown alt? That’s so weird, stay mad about that I don’t care)

Some really weird insinuations that I abused discord (I sat in that room mostly afk for 2 hours, it’s not hard when 99% of the playerbase is predictable in what they’re going to do, and I hold myself morally superior to people who do cheat, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to make fun of or mock cheaters!)


At the end of it and a conversation with Vampa, this event along with other events where I had complained about Gok and asked Vampa to step in ended in, Vampa deciding that I was taking out my frustrations in lame ways and those aren’t necessarily conducive to a good in-game experience. Again, I don’t really care about the arbitrary definition of what is lame or not lame. However, it was decided that I am to take a three week break from game, regardless of the fact that I didn’t actually break any rules.

[erulak]

and a conversation with Vampa

https://youtu.be/JTurSi0LhJs?si=GYINXZ_uKkScZQEi&t=50

[Dixon]

Meanwhile I can get harassed repeatedly on discord or in game by the same handful of players over and over to the point to where I do quit for a bit and leave the mud discord and absolutely nothing happens to those players.