Shinohara

Hello to all competitive PRO PvPers! This year, PRO Staff have decided to launch another Summer PvP Tournament, which is open to everyone who meets the requirements to sign up and wishes to participate. This is our 4th year hosting an annual PvP tournament! Are you ready to face off against the rest of your server to battle for bragging rights, and a unique reward to set you apart from the rest? The Tournament will consist of a double-elimination bracket. The bracket will be randomly seeded during a live-stream. Registration will begin now (19th July 2021), and end on August 5, 2021, 23:59 GMT Each round will last 5 days (except for Finals that last 7 days). The bracket draw will be streamed on August 6th, 2021, and the first round will begin immediately. All matches prior to the Finals on both brackets will be best of 3 Winner's Bracket Finals, Losers' Bracket Finals, and Grand Finals will be best of 5 Loser Bracket winner has to win 2x Bo5 against the winner bracket winner in order to win the tournament. Should any circumstances necessitate changes to this format, Tournament Staff will give at least a week's notice before the tournament begins. Only one account per player may enter the tournament. Each user can participate only to one tournament, gold one or silver one. Ghosting is forbidden. Players may seek assistance prior to matches, but may not confer with other players during the game or allow another player to play for them. The Pokemon pool of players will not be limited, so there is no need to register teams. All Ranked PvP Rules apply. In the event that any Ranked PvP Rules are changed while the tournament is in progress, the change takes effect immediately in this tournament as well. Should any moves, abilities, Pokemon, or items be coded between the start of the tournament and its end, those moves, abilities, Pokemon, or items may not be used. Players are not required to record matches, but it is recommended, as it may be impossible for staff to validate reports if they choose not to. Should any Ranked PvP Rule be broken, the offending player will forfeit the game. Should either player disconnect, the other player may either claim a game victory or allow a rematch at their discretion. Should the server crash during the game, a rematch is to be played with the same teams, unless a player demonstrates to Tournament Staff that they were in a position where they could not reasonably lose the game. Should any match fail to be completed, both players must submit evidence of activity to Tournament Staff. If Tournament Staff should decide that either player was not sufficiently active, that player shall be disqualified. If both (or neither) players were sufficiently active, the match will be decided by coin-flip. Any reports of participants breaking rules should be accompanied by as much evidence as possible, preferably video. Screenshots will reinforce your case, but may not be considered concrete proof. PRO Rules will continue to be enforced with no regard for the tournament. If an infraction would render a player unable to participate in a round, that player forfeits the round. Toxicity and despicable behavior will not be tolerated, both during matches as well as before and after. Sustained behavior of this sort may lead to disqualification. Match fixing is not tolerated. Players may not attempt to bribe or coerce other players to forfeit or intentionally play poorly. By entering the tournament, you agree that Tournament Staff have final say over all tournament-related decisions. Staff do not take any responsibility if the user is unable to play the match cause they decided to transfer and are unable to transfer back (e.g due to lack of CC, etc) All Pokemon used have to be Level 100. Fill out the following format and make a post in this thread. Example: You will be invited to our official Summer Tournament Discord after you will have registered yourself by posting the filled template in this thread. Pick one of the available and obtainable legendary Pokemon Pokemon conditions: 4x 31 & 2x 30 IVs at maximum/limit but IVs can be decided as you wish as long as within the limit (e.g can have 1 speed) Can be Shiny Can choose Level Can choose Moveset and EVs 3x Reroll Ticket 1x Gold Crown Due to the cancellation of last year’s tournament (which fault is not mine, as explained in the recently made relation thread, but I feel the need to compensate/fix it), I (Keita/Shinohara) have decided to add two Pokémon to the prize pool. These Pokémon have been added as compensation, and they come from my own staff rewards (which is a finite source, taking one entire year of 10-15hrs daily work/effort for me to obtain) as I felt it was important and necessary to recognise that compensation is required, and would be appreciated. Please, do note that this is an exception and should not be expected to become the standard for next tournaments. Nature Change OR Ability Change OR Untradeable Pokemon Reward (Can Pick 2). Pokemon conditions: 2x31 & 4x25 IVs as maximum/limit but IVs can be handled as you wish (e.g you can have 1 speed) Can NOT be shiny Can NOT be special forms Can NOT be legendary Must be available/obtainable by everyone (e.g: metagross yes, toxabestpex no) Can choose Moveset and EVs 2x Reroll Ticket 1x Silver Crown Nature change OR Ability change (Can Pick 1) If the second place picked Nature change, the third place can not pick it 1x Reroll Ticket 1x Bronze Crown Illustrative Image of the Crowns - 1x Fox Mask OR 1x Pancham Hat OR 1x Black Petal Shaymin mount (Pick 1) Illustrative Image Disclaimer: The rewards will be for each server, this means that both silver and gold will have their top 15% Contributions: Shinohara, Qeight, Idkup, Fluffles, , MagicGuard and Senrosia

As none other was asking questions since a bit, and this became more like a place used to fight each other (despite it should have not), I have locked the thread. No worry, I will properly reply everyone and also make a sort of FAQ with the most asked questions and put them on the front page so everyone can also read them in the future. Everyone will get a reply, written to the best of my abilities. Needless to say, this thread was created for communication purpose but it doesn't mean that if it's closed then you are unable to talk or ask things, feel free to use our General Complaint or even PM me on discord (Keita#0083). I'll be happy to talk with everyone, now and in the future, that will feel the need to do so, my DM are always open!

As an Administrator of Pokemon Revolution Online, together with all the previous Administrator, I can tell you that yes you are wrong. Qeight has never power abused in his entire Staff History, and he was in staff with 10 different admins that can actually prove it: Red, Eaty/Walross, Arkos, Sugar, Mage, Shaolan/Cames, Fluffles/Cie, Xylos (although for a short time), Shinohara/Me, Logan. These were all the Admins that Qeight was in staff with and no power abuse was ever committed. With all the due respect, we are not stupid to not notice power abuse or not punish (specially if it's 10 different people with 10 different mindset/brains). We have punished and kicked staff members for power abuse, Rise/Astro is an example of that, exactly cause we hate power abuse and we punish it heavily (staff account AND player account permanent ban). Qeight definitely has recently shown some behaviour problems, which he himself admitted (recent post) and is looking to fix, however I am really confident (with the other people) in saying that Qeight work has always been great and always held high standards in terms of quality. The problem when it comes to the Power Abuse is that no one is able to make a proper report about it. I always says that to people: "You say someone Power Abused? Report them!", however no one ever move a finger exactly cause there's no evidence of said staff doing it but it's just a story created to spread hate. It takes 5 minutes to make a good report containing the Power Abuse evidences, however in more than a year that you (and not only) are spreading this lies you have not found 5 minutes to dedicate to a report? The voices related to the Power Abuse comes from people that are correctly, fairly and justly banned like you Deidaraa that simply cannot accept follow rules and need to blame others when they are unable to mentally process a punishment after said rules were violated. I won't go in details about every single punishment you received, you well know what you did and all the lies and hate you have spread to defend yourself. You have collected more than 9 different punishments (warning included) for toxicity, being insulting or mocking people after you were losing against them. Staff have given you many chances (9 chances damnit, we are not talking about two or three but 9/NINE!!). In the appeal you have always been apologetic and understanding, which is exactly why we gave you that many chances, however you have always failed our trust going back to being toxic a few days after the last mute was ending. All of it ended up with you getting a last special chance, being a 250 days mute as unban condition (you accepted and thanked us for), with the promise to get reformed. Needless to say, you were OBVIOUSLY chill in 250 days (cause you could not talk due to the mute of course), but few days after the mute ended you were back again mocking and insulting people. You have even reached the point to spread tons of lies and hate in the Brazilian Community Discords to build a group of hate, and even going around stating that if you will meet either me or Qeight in Brazil, you will take a knife and stab and kill us without a problem. All of this not to say that Qeight attitude has been correct recently (he himself admitted it), but that it's something that can be worked on and fixed and that has absolutely zero relation with power abuse and neither performing duties. Also important to notice that staff are as well humans like anybody else and after you have people that do what you did (spreading lies and hate to create yourself a support group hating qeight/staff), the patience start to run short. Anyway, once again, problems have been addressed and will be fixed, we give many chances to players (and you are the living example), so everythign we ask is just giving one or maximum two to us.

Let me tell you in the start that the person who is the most disappointed for the 2020 Summer Tournament is me. As you know, the reason it was initially delayed was cause PVP was freaking boring at that time according to most of the players, that due to the repetitive teams player and therefore we wanted to wait MEGAs. Waiting MEGA was the best of the best of the option possible and I am firm on it cause it was gonna add that new and different playstyle into the game. As an Admin, the first thing I did was asking content about the ETA. ETA given to me was 1/2 months and therefore I communicated it to players. I mean, 1/2 months was perfect cause well, 1/2 months for a totally different and more enjoyable tournament was perfect. However, what kicked us in the ass was the fact that people left. We had few people leaving and this hit us hard, cause the strongest weakness of the staff is exactly that tomorrow anything could happen and we might need to leave. With the people leaving, we just had no more an idea about of the ETA exactly cause catching back with other people work (specially when it comes to coding where everyone has their own personal way to do that exactly cause coding allows that). As you have seen in fact WAVE 3 happened like April 2021, many months later. Biggest question is therefore, could you have done that without them after noticing the team left? Well, hard to answer cause decisions are based on the ETA (estimated time of arrival) of something. If I have no idea if something will be delayed of 2 days or 3 months, it's totally impossible (or extremely hard) for me to take a decision. More than a miss-communication, we are talking more about confusion within the content team where I think there was a problem due to the people leaving. No pointing fingers toward anyone (specially not toward Alcedo cause he's one of the greatest staff we ever had), but the problem was evident. The biggest problem that didn't allow us to not have an ETA is that MEGA Quests are custom quests. This not to say that having custom quest is bad, however if I have a plan in my head about a quest I am creating and I leave it at 50% and then leave (maybe due to super urgent irl issues like it happened to some staff) then it's really really really hard to have someone else continue that. This means the quest will need to be remade from scratch/zero or it will take a lot of time to understand it, and in both cases there will be a huge delay. We learnt a new lesson. I am firm on saying that waiting was the best choice (approved by community as well), but at the same time we were unprepared for such a really big problem. In any case, although problem was not caused by me, I am literally giving away more than 1 year of work in rewards (pokemon reward) for the community as a form of compensation. I am sorry to say that, but as the one who hosted the tournament, what you said is wrong at 95%. I will leave aside the terrible action committed by GeoMine, that require the whole remake of the tournament. I have already been super clear about this in Guild Tournament, but the only delay (not considering crash as they are not staff problems and neither delay caused by staff, if you have a minimum of grasp of coding) happened from Staff was 3 days, from me (as the host) due to an Earthquake hitting Japan and me finishing in a shelter. If you want to say that the time given per round was too much, that's a totally different story but it's not a problem and specially not about organization and neither handling, it's simply about the choice of how long a round should last. The only organization problem we had was simply related to the fact that we initially had not a timing for leaders sending list, so it was taking a bit more than after we gave a time to follow, but that's the smallest of the smallest of the problems. What you say about lack of organization, poor communication, ignoring the players and conflict within staff is totally false. I was really clear about the organization part above. As for communication, really? It's literally super easy. Staff ask you list with a time --> You send list in time -->Staff announces the match -->People schedule -->People play and result are posted. It something that even a kid could honestly understand as a system, nothing was unannounced. (even the earthquake was) or communicated wrongly. Players are important and they always were, no one was ignored but it was honestly the opposite. Players ignoring staff and keep stupid and unnecessary fight with each other for the dumbest reasons. (You can't imagine how many I had to mute or even ban from the discord). Conflict? Unsure where you got this out from, but there was no conflict at all with anyone since it was just me and Zeskyr organising it and the other staff members in the tournament were just normal players participating. (staff members that participate can't have power in the tournament in order to avoid any possible bias). I also asked to over than 10 staff members (the one who handle tournaments usually or have experience) if they wanted to help with tournament, and only Zeskyr offered himself and that was really appreciated. The real problem of the Guild Tournament were: Players, and even more guild leaders. In total transparency, more than 80% of the guild leaders were TOTALLY UNABLE to handle their own guild and as well the timing given. 80% of the guild leaders were not respecting the given time for what regard giving the lists and neither organizing their own roster. No offense toward anyone, but it was really really frustrating about how the leaders in that 80% mentioned were unable to provide list in the correct time and also picking a roster without taking 4 years or providing lists with only 5 players and then having the 6th coming out later and telling "but I told my leader I would have played, and now I am not in the list" and therefore having me go and fix that. Again, no offense but it's easy pointing finger toward staff when you have no clue about what happened on leader side. So your question might be: "Why didn't you kick them or disqualified?" and my answer will be.... well, NORMALLY you would be right, but disqualifing 80% of the tournament would have been idiot. Like, we had around 140 players (a bit more or a bit less), 80% of leaders disqualified means having a total of 110 (if my math is correct) of people disqualified. Why the hell would we create a tournament if we would disqualify 110 people out of 140? Would have become the biggest meme in PRO. Server situation (lot of crashes every 5-10 minutes that forced the DEVs to throw the tournament server down and pause the tournament for 1 month and a half). It totally sucks to have been more than 1 month (a total of 1 month and a half) without tournament due to the terrible server condition at that time (crash every 10 or so minutes) and no one can say different. But again, what can you do? It's not like Walross and Cames destroyed the server themselves. They were the one who worked 24/7 on it, barely sleeping, to fix it. I addressed it already in other replies (general/all staff and not only), and also Qeight recently made a post about it if you are interested. I think that answer your point in a good way. And, just to clarify, I always take responsibility for my mistakes and have no problem in admitting staff one/problems (and people I work with, as well as a lot of players can confirm that), which is exactly why most of the players rely on me or talk to me about them. However, players have responsibilities as well and it's important to consider them as well.

Ehi there @Olker Thanks for asking and for the patience. As I am already on this page due to a previous answer, I will reply to you and then go back to the previous one so I do not miss anyone. Being really direct with you, we have staff members that cover those area related to specific languages. For example, I do speak Japanese, Korean, Mandarin&Cantonese, and Italian really good and therefore I am able to properly handle contexts related to those languages in an appropriate way. However, I am totally unable to handle french one for example, and that's why we have French staff like Zeskyr or Naha! At the same time, Senrosia speak spanish and therefore is perfectly able to handle a spanish chat and spanish context. Qeight speak german (same as many other staff like Eaty or Shaolan). Eon speak portuguese. Etc Etc Same goes for basically for almost every other language. We literally have roles inside the staff team that are assigned in base of the languages we speak in a great way. Using myself as example, here you can find how it works In this way, contacting/forwarding the content to the person that is in charge and is able to handle that language is really comfortable. We also have people native from USA and UK and NZ, and this helps a lot in understanding slangs used in those countries. Context always matter, as explained above, and therefore it's considered before issuing a punishment. Only real infractions are punished, and to be considered something an infraction you need to check the whole context first. As for insults, it really depends from the situation cause they are all different from each other. If a sitaution, even if in a jokingly way that in your country means nothing bad, is pushing too far, then a staff will simply intervene in chat to make you know it. Please, let me know if something is unclear or if you have any other questions.

Honestly, it is really clear from what has been posted above that, out of 13 infractions, most of them are literally you using homophobic insults calling people "faggot", "disgusting faggot", "lowlife faggot", "if you are gay you need to seek help cause you have mental problems." or stuff like calling people "garbage piece of shit". Therefore, no. Those are not false and neither are trolls or jokes and it's evident from the logs, the screenshot, the context and the offended people that reported you. Going a bit beyond my staff role, and speaking to you as a fellow human (will be worded a little bit less professionally), I would also like to add a thing about the homophobic insults and similar. We are living in 2021, in a evolved society where people should feel free to chase their own happiness and be free to make their own choices (including gender and sexual orientation) without having anyone trying to harm them or spreading hate toward them for that. Things like "you lowlife disgusting faggot", "garbage faggot", "if you are gay then seek help cause you have mental problems", spreading in this way homophobia, hate and also belittling/mocking someone in base of their sexual orientation (not limited to this, as mentioned below), are absolutely unacceptable. And it is even more unacceptable being proud of doing it and trying to justify that with any possible excuse, as if that's a good thing. As Staff Members of PRO, we won't force you to change your own mindset about it regardless of how horrible it might be. However we absolutely won't support and/or allow any kind of hate or discrimination toward people, specially (but not limited to, of course) the one based on race, gender or sexual orientation. Therefore, we will absolutely be stern and heavy when handling those. You are absolutely correct, you are allowed to create another account to play (remembering the 4th account rule). However, as explained before, punishment policy does not reset for every account you own. This means that if you have reached the maximum amount of punishment possible on your first account (like you did on xXBlackAshXx), if you create a new account and break rules once again then it's a direct permanent ban and we won't start back again from the warning. We do it with everyone, but was unfortunately missed on your case cause a former staff mishandled it by not noticing that you were xxblackashxx/saturnalien and therefore treating you as a new player. This obviously required us to fix the mistake and, although I am not the responsible person, I personally apologise on behalf of staff to the people that experienced those messages quoted above. Also, the fact players are allowed to create a new account is exactly to allow them to join the game and play it, while following however our rules. This cause we give them another chance to prove that they can play without breaking rules in any way. However, if they still break them again and again like you did, we are heavy on them cause the user has already more than 8 punishment received before and already one, or more, account permanently banned. With this, the case is now closed and enough clarification were given to everyone here, as it was fair to be.

Honestly, you are just looking for a way to justify the violation of our rules and that's easy to prove. In the first place, you think that context allow someone to break rules, when that's absolutely false since regardless of the context you cannot violate our rules. Context matter, and is always considered. However, context does not justify the violation of any rule as said before. If someone insult you, you are not allowed to insult them back or similar cause at that point both of you will have broke the rules and will get both punished. We have a report center exactly to handle the rule violations. So, saying that we do not consider the context only cause you got banned after violating the rules (insulting someone who had violated them as well) is false and a mere excuse to justify a rule violation. Since you mentioned the bans, we went reviewing them out of respect to understand if anything was mishandled. Honestly, after that, I can tell that's not what happened and everything was handled properly and, at this point, it's tiring to hear things that are generated just to put people in a bad light. It was also found out is that you should not even be allowed to play anymore. To be more accurate and explain, you can create a new account and play on that following rules, but if your previous accounts have reached the maximum amount of punishment already (being 8-9), then if you start the break the same rules again with the new one, then it will get permanently banned immediately as well. However, despite you have more than 13 punishments (listed below) due to a former staff error (unable to identify your previous accounts) you were able to surpass the maximum amount of punishments and avoid the permanent ban, which honestly sucks and is unfair toward the other players and in fact will need a fix specially giving the severity of the infractions. What's most annoying is the fact that you keep trying to put the staff in a bad light by saying false things such as you never broke rules (show in one of the screenshot below, part 14) and that we punish without a reason or for really small stuff and that staff are useless. However staff exists exactly for the situations in the screenshot here below: enforcing the rules to guarantee a safe and comfortable/enjoyable gameplay to people. Lets go back on your history starting from your first account: xXBlackAshXx and then Saturnalien and then 666g0d999 (being your accounts, proved by MAC/DEVICE used to play and IP connections) 1. Homophobic hate message 2. Homophobic statement (faggot)+ Vulgar language 3. Someone selling their Poke and you felt the need to PM him this - Vulgar language and Harassment 4. Extreme Homophobic Insults again after you got banned for the deplorable behaviour 5. Again Homophobic insults, this time toward one of our Discord Moderator (after you got told you cannot discuss your ban there) 6. After getting the discord mute for what you said above, you moved to DM to insult in DM (again, homophobic comments) 7. A user try to offer you a price for something you were selling. This was your reply. 8. You... acting as GM and insulting people? 9. Insult toward another player, again. 10. Telling a player to fuck off (deplorable behaviour/vulgar language) just for an offer received. 11. Homophobic insult + Deplorable behaviour/Vulgar language 12. You trolling sellers with fake offers (which is against rules) just for fun. 13. Calling a user a dick, to insult him, cause the user had broken the rules (as you yourself said). Prick meaning is based on context, as pointed by another user before, and in yours you were using it to insult a player for having broken the rules. This is probably the smallest of all of them, but yeah, you also admitted using it to call the guy an idiot and calling someone an idiot is insulting them. 14. You starting to discuss the 9/11 events and Bin Laden. This is important to be explained: in short we do not allow these sensitive topics to be discussed cause they are indeed sensitive and can lead to toxicity or even discussion way too mature for Pokemon (PG 7) so the staff member warned to stop and issued a small 60 seconds mute. However, in addition this was said as well, and you were asked to stop and move it to complaint if you felt needed as game is not the place to do that. Your answer to that was this: Giving you were not interested in stopping and moving to complaint like asked, you were just muted since enough is enough and game is not the place where complaints are handled and neither it should contain drama and similar. Also why the hell staff would steal your pokemon? That's insane and false lol. You were removed pokemon only cause it was given back the the real winner of the auction and you got back the money of course., that's it. That's enforcing rules and not stealing you a pokemon. 14. Not a punishment, but you claiming you never broke the rules before (however here above prove totally different) to put staff in a bad light and you in a good one. In addition to that, in a good amount of appeals you also tried to justify your violation of the rules in some way, exactly like did now. You were well aware of what you did, however tried to not know. You did it another time by saying: Despite above screenshots prove different. Also asking the player if they are aware of what they did, specially in situation where that is really obvious like all the situation shown above, is a way to give the user a chance to be cooperative and honest since the start and therefore having us offering another chance to them. If they don't remember, like you claimed in your case, we simply remind it LIKE IT WAS DONE FOR YOU. Doing it is fine cause it give the user a way to directly create themselves a way out the ban by being cooperative and honest since the start. If they don't remember, we'll mention it and consider honesty and cooperation after having done that. Appeals are based on many things like it can be severity of the infraction, amount of punishment received, honesty, cooperation, and behaviour in general. Not necessarily an appeal lead to an unban if you are honest and cooperative, in your case you should have been permanently banned on all your accounts that you use cause the MAX amount of punishment we allow is 8-9 and you got more than 13 (didn't mention the little infractions in my summary above like the 60, 120, 300s mutes as they are really small stuff that generally are handled with a little warn and a little mute of not even 60, 120 or 300 seconds mute). Punishment history does not reset if you change account, it's not like if you have 4 accounts you need 32 punishments to be permanently banned. It would be insane and dumb from us. Unfortunately one of our former staff committed an error and was not able to find your connection with your previous alts, and therefore your permanent ban was delayed until today. Also you don't need to lick staff ass to appeal. Literally you have to do only 2 things: be honest and cooperative. That's it. Doing that doesn't mean playing the social game and neither licking staff asses, simply means being a respectful and educated person in 2021. Honestly speaking, closing with this part that you keep repeating in game and not, you do not understand what a minor offense is. Calling someone a faggot, a disgusting faggot, a garbage piece of shit ARE NOT small offenses. There are for sure small offenses that can be blocked from evolving to bigger one. One of this can be discussing sensitive topic for example. If a staff member is online, they will stop the sensitive topic from being discussed with a small general warn chat or a small mute (after the warn) and that's easily handled. However, if the user keep discussing it and ignore the staff, it's normal it escalates to a bigger offense. Super good to point out that an offense is an offense, regardless if big or small. What changes between them is the way you handle them. Being an offense, even if small, it means that it's something against the rules of the game and therefore require an intervention. If it would NOT require an intervention, then it would not be a offense. What changes between them is the way you handle them, when a minor offense is handled in a more chill way than a big offense exactly cause the damage caused is clearly and obviously inferior.

As the screenshot states as well, exactly like you mentioned too, context is important. If the word is used as a way to insult someone, that's where it is punished. Obviously, if that's used in a non-offensive way or simply in a context where it does not mean any offensive thing, then it is not punished. In this case, it was used to insult someone who had scammed another user and as a way to insult him for having done that, and therefore it was punished. Context matter, and is always considered. However, context does not justify the violation of any rule as said before. If someone insult you, you are not allowed to insult them back or similar cause at that point both of you will have broke the rules and will get both punished. We have a report center exactly to handle the rule violations

Honestly speaking, it's hard to answer this cause it quite lack of a sense as a situation and it's something that is not within our procedures. Could you please provide some evidences about it as well as when it happened? It's possible it's really old stuff happened before I was even in charge and therefore I am unaware about it

Hi there @MadhavXDark I have addressed this here: https://pokemonrevolution.net/forum/topic/178759-lets-talk-together-about-staff-player-relationship/?do=findComment&comment=1001250 Please, read it and let me know if you have any other question please.

Ehi there @toantoanel98 The reason you were banned for is Macro Usage, more precisely an investigation that needed your cooperation as the case was quite particular. During the appeal, the staff handling it was really kind and transparent with you, exactly like you were as well (and we appreciate when users are honest and cooperative). Giving the fact that your argument looked solid and in addition to the fact you were honest and cooperative, the staff handling it decided to give you the benefit of doubt. This doesn't mean that you were innocent, but it also doesn't mean that you were guilty. We simply decided to believe you and your words/argument after considering it accurately within the GM team. As for will happen the next time, there is no answer for this. As long as you will be innocent or as long as we won't have enough/solid evidences that prove you violated the rules, then you simply will still be allowed to play without any problem. Do remember that we can maintain bans only if they are supported by solid and undeniable evidences that clearly prove the user is guilty. Regarding any other ban, if you think any ban received is unjustly then you can just make an appeal in the Discipline Appeal Subforum Kind regards, - Keita

Ehi there @666G0D999 In total transparency, I think the mini-modding is probably one of the hardest infraction to spot, and as well to handle properly. As for Minimodding, the best way to explain it is quoting our Chat Rules [How to Use Them]: As for the language barrier, honestly, there is no problem, this caise if we have no idea about a specific word used, then we ask to people native to that region. For example, when it comes to Japanese, Mandarin, Cantonese or Korean people usually ask me (for korean we also have other staff members). The reason we ask other people is exactly cause it's important to not issue a punishment for a misunderstanding. Just to prove what I am saying, when reviewing your mute I actually didn't know what a prick is and therefore asked to people that are native from UK and USA. This just to prove my argument and show you what I say it's actually done. And this happen for every language, in fact we have staff roles within our discord that allow us a comfortable handling of cases that involve other languages or even english words that are not relly common. (not knowing an english insult or similar doesn't mean your english is bad). Just to show you some example of our roles, check our roles here below. In your case, you were actually muted for having called a user a prick (means a dick, according to UK and USA native) as a way to insult them after they had scammed someone. I can understand you feeling angry or mad after someone else damages innocent players by scamming them, or any similar situation involving players being damage, however this doesn't allow you to break the rules as well. This is something I tried to teach to other players as well like 45 times: If someone provoke, taunt, insult you/someone else or they break rules in any way, JUST REPORT THEM. Context absolutely matters and we always consider it, however context doesn't mean that if two people break rules then only one is punished. Fairness and considering context doesn't mean allowing players to make themselves justice alone or allowing them to insult rule breakers. Rules exists for everyone, so everyone who break rules should be punished. It doesn't matter if someone insult you first or similar. If someone call you "retarded trash guy" (making an example), you are NOT allowed to insult them back. What you should do in that case is reporting them so they get their punishment and you get justice, however said justice is done by the correct people (in this case staff). I tried to explain this point to several people many times, hopefully this was clear enough to clarify the fact that self-justice is wrong and not allowed and that the report function exists exactly to help staff finding rule breakers and punish them, contributing in helping the game in this way. Hopefully I was able to cover each one of your point. Have a wonderful day.

As the error committed was on our end, I have refunded you, have a great day.

I think the biggest misconception that exists within the community is how complaints, votes and number works. Everyone opinion matter and is important, no one excluded, as long as it's forwarded with respect. However, there are few things to mentions: Accepting, respecting and valuing a lot an opinion doesn't mean that you have to agree with it. Numbers of how many suggest or vote for something doesn't matter. What matter is the content of the suggestion/complaint and the arguments provided. What direction the DEVs want the game to take is really important. Number of opinions and value of them Regarding the number, it's easy to make an example about it. if 300 people says "Ban Charizard." and then one person comes out will say "I think Charizard should be banned due to X reason, Z reason, Y reason and here below you can find all the data I have collected to support my argument." (I think Jorogumo does it greatly tbh) we will value that single person feedback in a higher and better way than the others. And let me clarify that English is not the reason of why 98% of people actually is unable to give a productive and constructive argument/feedback/opinion. Why? Is that person special? Absolutely no, simply that person is providing a constructive and productive argument supported by data, meanwhile the other 300 people saying "Ban Charizard." are providing pretty much nothing and are unable to even properly give a constructive and productive argument. Accepting&Respecting an opinion doesn't mean agreeing with it Exactly what title say. This is not understood by many people and sometimes they (not everyone obviously but a portion of them) try to force their vision within the game and try to force us to do what they want. This is wrong, and should not happen in any way. Being annoyed by an update is perfectly fine, however in not a single game I played the community can force the staff to do what they want. At most, if the community see that the direction the game is taking (decided by DEVs, considering as well community feedback of course) is not the one they like and that it won't change for now, then they are able to leave the game or take a break to see how the new update will turn out to be(all of us played a game and then left it later).

Hi there @UnionJess I have already addressed the reason of why users cannot pick a different mod in another post aimed at Belzebel's question. You can find it HERE (Click to Open) and I invite you to read it as it answer your whole point (pick another mod and staff being rude) really accurately. In that post it was aimed at Belzebel, but you have to see it as the fact that everyone can do what she did, which is literally playing the Staff Roulette and abusing such a system by changing 350 staff members with the aim to find someone that agree with you when the correct thing should just be wanting a staff member that handle the case fairly and justly, as it's correct to be. My suggestion is to read that post and try to generalize it into your head while reading it, to understand that thing is doable by everyone (also reading the examples related to the staff hate and how it gets created) I am sorry if my answer to you is rather short, but rather than repeating myself I would redirect you toward the post where I have answered already all of this in a really accurate way HERE (Click to Open) If you have any other question, feel free to ask me and i'll be happy to answer. Kind regards, - Keita

Hello, @Belzebel. I will divide this post in different parts in order to provide as much clarification as possible, pre-announcing that it will include details in order to support the statements that will be done. Unfortunately, the way ban and appeal works is something you have never been able to grasp despite I have tried to explain you them several times, both when you were within the staff team and as well outside. The problem starts in the first place when you say "quick to ban", making it sound in a bad thing, for the simple reason that you have no clue about how bans works despite I explained you several times every time you were getting punished for something and even in other moments. Warning exists, but there are few variables that affect how and if they are issued. I have already explained you them several times, but lets mention some here: The rule that is being violated: For Chat Infraction & Trade Infraction, if sending a warning here or not is totally and entirely situational cause there are both big and small infractions in both. Chat Infraction Making the example of something small, like it can be a little spam, we generally just issue a warning if the user has never broken rules before. If the user has already broken rules before, and therefore this means he already is familiar with rules and specially already received a warning for something else before, we issue a mute ban. For something heavier, for example involving racism like it can be «"Ehi you all nigga should die"» or, making a non-racist example, something like «"you fucking retard go fucking die you bastard», which is obviously way more serious and unacceptable, we just issue a mute ban directly without any previous warning. The reason why there is a division between the severity of the infraction is obvious, where one is a little thing that does not damage anyone or, if it does, is something small, and the other (racist/insult, etc) is something that affect the whole community and damages it. Trade Infraction Exactly like Chat Infractions, even here there are infractions more serious than others. A small Trade Infraction could simply be a user advertising a pokemon wrongly (eexample saying he sell a pokemon saying it's all +20 when in reality its stats are below), while a bigger one is a succesful scam. First is a warning, remembering the fact that warning are issued only if you have not received any punishment before, cause if you did then you should have familiarized with the rules and also have already received a warn, while the second instead (succesful scam) is a direct trade ban for X days. Even here, the reason is simple. in the second one is a real damage to a player that sometimes cannot even be reversed if not reported on time/fast and therefore deserves a direct trade ban while in the first a direct trade ban is not needed (remembering the previous punishment stuff) as the damage is something really small. GM Infraction Giving that GM handles the most serious infractions possible, warnings before ban do not exists here or are really really rare. Some of the serious things GM handle are: Real Money Trading (accounts, item, pokemons being sold or bought for real-life money which also harm and destroy economy), Unauthorized Software (usage of illegal software to gain unfair advantage over other players and also harm and destroy the economy), Bug Abusing (abusing of possible bugs to gain unfair advantage over other users and destroy economy, there was a issue in 2018 were people could duplicate Coin Capsule for example). None of these things deserve a warn before ban. Imagine someone duplicating Coin Capsules (like happened in 2018) on purpose and starting to sell them. Going there and telling them «"Ehi, saw you are bug abusing and selling the products of it, can you just stop please?"» after the user gained millions after selling bug abused things. It would be incredibly stupid and totally unfair toward the honest players. Same goes toward someone who is using Macro (unauthorized software) to farm money or pokemon for hours while being outside of home. What do you tell them? «"Ehi, sorry for the disturb, saw you using macro and farmed 3 millions and also caught a epic charmander while you were sleeping, just don't do it anymore, ok?"» It would be totally unfair toward honest players who farmed hard to obtain those things. No need to say but if the users in the appeal are honest and cooperative, and the damage they brought/did can be removed (example they farmed 5 millions pokedollars with macro, and they still have them so they can be removed) then we will obviously offer a second chance if that's their first infractions. The punishment history of the user: If someone has already previous punishments received, the user should be already well aware of the rules and have familiarized with them, specially since they should have received already a warn or got told by staff to familiarized with rules during the appeal. I mean, rules in general should be read before playing if we would like to be technically true, but we are anyway kind enough to issue just a warning at the first infraction and remind users to familiarize with them. Some appeals mainly take long time for two (or three, although third is really small) reasons: Infraction is a really problematic and big one (for example Account Hacks and RMT) User has a really long punishment history, on multiple platform (game, official pro discord, official tournaments discord + other stuff like spreading lies to incite riots toward staff) and therefore we need to understand what and how we want to actually proceed. Smallest of the things, Staff members being volunteers and therefore having like 3 hours available today, maybe 6 tomorrow and maybe only 1 the next day. Teerav was a moderation staff member in the past, you can ask him about the activity time, where there are people who can just handle 2 hours a day, which seems a lot but is not. But lets go down and make an example of a really problematic case, making a GM one for example, which is probably the most known complaint: Example: PlayerA starts to sell their account goods in change of real-life money (EUR/USD just to give an example). He sells 500.000 pokedollars and 9 pokemon to 10 different users. Yes, what just described looks incredibly messed up, however that's how 95% of the RMT cases are. In this case what we do in the first place is banning all the seller accounts (obviously) and then start to check all his trade logs of all his accounts from A to Z (even past one that might be 1 year before the RMT happened) to find every single user he sold the items to, and the trades that looks suspicious and investigate them. Now that we handled the seller, it's time for the buyers. Who bought from PlayerA(seller) is potentially involved in other RMTs, we cannot know until we find. So GM will go and check all the trade logs of the buyers cause maybe the buyer decided to move the bought goods on his alt accounts to hide them. Now lets suppose that the buyer has 3 accounts, this means that GM will have to go and check all the trades and connections in those 3 accounts where maybe the user did hundred trades in his game-life. Multiply that for the 10 different buyers and each buyer has 2-3 accounts (even if, as staff, most of the rmters have even more than 3-4), this means you will have to check all the trades and connections of 25-35 accounts (seller included). In the end, during the appeal, the user will be asked to be honest and cooperative and we will have to verify everything he says with the data we obtained. We are pretty kind during appeals, to my opinion, to the point where people deny even speedhacking despite they do that in front of other 50 players and get reported by 10 of them but we still give them more chances to be honest so we can offer them another chance to play with their account. Few months ago, our GMs found a mass RMTer group that had sold more than 800 millions pokedollars in total and the account to check were more than 155, which takes even more than a week. If a player trust or not a staff member, it really does not mean the staff member is actually unprofessional or handle the case wrongly. The only times where a staff member is not allowed to handle a punishment is when the said staff member is the one being involved. For example, is someone start to say "Keita is a fucking retarded idiot", I will not handle it myself but pass it to someone else. Here below the evidence: Really important as well that the reason you are not able to pick another MOD to handle your appeal is exactly what you have done, Belzebel, by playing the staff roulette and showing how much abusive that can be. You first were unsatisfied with Qeight; So you came to me (Keita/Shinohara), which was fine to a certain point despite Qeight did not abuse power or punished you wrongly (and 10 different admins from 2018, period Qeight joined, until now can confirm you that, Red/Sugar/Mage/Arkos/Eaty-Walross/Shaolan-Cames/Fluffles/Xylos/Shinohara/Logan/, so I don't understand why you say different unless you think all of us are blind). After that you were even unsatisfied with me (for the ban with the viadinho), which in the future evolved even in starting trashtalking me as well using as well racist terms and spreading lies about me (we'll get to this point later), therefore Walross talked to you about your behaviour (you were still in staff). After Walross, months later, in order to explain you the OnlyFans and what was wrong with having it in our community, Ehkoe intervened to help (both as your friend and as well as staff) and talk to you. All of this in the last year of course (2020), however if we consider even before than 2020 then more than 8 different staff members handled your punishments, and you always complained about them. Also, that number without counting all the one that actually warned you within the staff about your behaviour issues like you jumping within discussions about PVP (when we were still deciding it within staff and had not a council) and calling brainless people that had a different opinion than you and then calling them sexist after they asked you nicely and kind to refrain from coming out of nowhere and start insulting or disrespecting people calling them brainless for using a specific pvp style, as that's unnecessary and not productive. Just leaving a little part of it here, to give context, but not gonna go further as it's unneeded and the aim is not shaming or similar but just explaining that a lot of the things you see are just reaction after the staff team (not only qeight) just is not able to absorb unjustified insults and hate anymore. I mean, you were the first staff member in history that needed to be muted on the staff discord due to the continuous insults toward other staff. In no mean this is meant to insult you, obviously, but what you always did and shown was that you just played the Staff Roulette and looked for a staff member who actually agree with your vision and not a staff member who handle your case fairly and justly as it's correct to be. As for the appeal that was locked, it was not locked immediately but you were given an accurate explanation on why you were banned, shown you evidences as well of when you got warned about the topic (warned before the ban, out of kindness, so you had time to not commit that infraction anymore despite you had already more than 15 in total). You however tried to force a change of MOD and ignore the appeal itself, despite as I explained above it's just not possible to change MOD for the reason mentioned above plus the fact of how you abused that "want a different mod" system or the complaint in general about who was banning you/the bans you were receiving from different people. Appeal was therefore locked in the moment you were not cooperative and just pretended us to once again do what you want. No, staff member are not allowed to call others idiot. But, at the same time, players are not allowed to do the same. Please, refer to this post I made before for some extra detail about the first part: HERE (Written by Shinohara) and HERE (written by Walross) and then keep reading here. Qeight/Felix way of addressing the whole hate toward him has been wrong as he used a wrong language, but he reached a point where I think that he's totally right in being really mad about the way he's being treated. You specially Belzebel throw a lot of hate toward staff, and this is easy to prove just by watching your videos where not only spread lies and trashtalk but also target people (despite you complained in the past where some player did it with you). I will literally make an easy example here about it. In the past, in a private discord, I mentioned not being a fan of onlyfans and I preferred it not existing for various reasons (I still think it like that and will add reasons below), and stating that's different, in my opinion, than a porn actor/ess career. Reasons for that thought are literally these (as stated as well to a friend I talked with few days ago): However, you literally took my statement about it should not exists and transformed it into: Put into a Google Doc and sent it into a guild discord with more than 2500 users inside. (and later said google doc/screenshot went around the community) All of this is honestly cringe and sad. Also, bias behaviour for the onlyfans ban (discussing your patreon that contains +18 material and even send a warn when you open it)? You were talked by 3 people before getting banned, exactly cause it could have been prevented, but you just ignored and kept doing it.. Lets add as well the fact that, as a person who cared about you in the past, I tried to stop you in 35 different ways from breaking rules even to the point of dedicating you 12 hours in a row to talk with you about explaining you the situation, how you were breaking the rules and how to actually behave and report taunts/provocation from other players without answering to them. As you were ignoring me and keep breaking rules (and since discussing with you when you have a different opinion is just close to be impossible), I just tried to approach Teerav so he could have probably helped you better in understanding that you were just once punishment away from the permanent ban (where banning is something that no staff, and specially me, like doing). I didn't talk to teerav with any bad intention, specially since I never had a bad intention within the PRO related environments. I do this with the community in general, and I can prove it as I have done to you in PM. Last week, a user was starting to break rules and getting worse, so what I did was asking to a friend of this person (within staff) to actually talk to him and block him before it would have gotten to far so we could have both fixed the situation before it was gonna be too late and avoided a ban, since ban sucks specially in situation they can be prevented. However, about it, what did you do? Made this piece of art and spread it. Included this into your google doc and spread that into a community with 2500 PRO players, which later got shared around. This not only is racist for obvious reason (it clearly is as you are using my nationality to judge me) "Japanese sexist culture", regardless the fact you called "sexist" over than 20 staff members even when you were a staff member simply cause they told you to remain respectful if you wanted to participate in discussions and you were replying "Oh yeah, I am a woman so I have to shut up cause I am an object... you are sexist", despite no one ever said anything even minimally close to that (and there were other women in the discussion) but people just asked you to not insult people with a different mindset. Which was followed by further spread of hate: So, in short, no staff should be allowed to behave like this but recently the frustration shown and verbal abuse is literally a result of not being able to absorb anymore all of this hate based on lies and false things. Small mention to the fact on how you created us hundred hours of work by saying in your video by calling it HOW TO GET UNBANNED saying that all the banned people should go and appeal again mentioning they felt humiliated by staff. Despite they had already appealed and complained already in the past, and I mention past cause you made people spam that stuff in more than 300 people all with the same copy paste message you passed them that had already their case solved and complain reviewed and handled by one of the admin/leader in the last 4 years. This is just the tip of the iceberg obviously, but this is not the place aimed at pointing out everything unless further spread of lies are done where it will be necessary to point out any false-accuse and just say the truth done to avoid people being innocently being put in the bad light. The same happen with players obviously, which is why I had no problems in mentioning Rise (a former staff member we kicked) who damaged players by power abusing. In my eyes there is not just black or white, regardless if it's player or staff, truth is necessary and the spreading of lies and false accusation to put people in a bad light is just wrong. I will also make you other examples here below to make you understand what I mean with player unjustified hate. As I mentioned them in another post, I will simply put them in a spoiler so they are easier to close for the one who read them already: Already addressed this Staff Roulette above and how much abusive it can be. Action will be taken only if the staff member is directly involved in the case (e.g If you in-game insult me, I cannot ban and handle the case and I have given example above) or they abused power (in that case will be removed if there are evidences to support that claim, since we don't punish someone only cause player says stuff but is not able to prove it and on our logs everything is fine) or they have misused power or treated the banned user wrongly due to personal reasons or similar. However, none of that happened until now in the case you mentioned. Or, if it happened, then 10 different admins (Red, Arkos, Sugar, Mage, Eaty/Walross, Shaolan/Cames, Fluffles, Xylos, me-Shinohara and Logan) from 2018 until today are totally unaware of it and I invite you to properly report it. Please, read as well the link I passed in the second part of the post HERE (Written by Shinohara) and HERE (written by Walross) cause they are important and address things that I didn't repeat just to avoid a 30 kilometre post. Kind regards, - Keita

Ehi there @Sir I have actually checked the case and I can confirm that there are signs of boosting there, visible from the several matches against another account logging from your same house (same connection and IP) in a really short time (same hour), adding as well the fact that you won all of them. In total transparency, I think that the staff member handling it was a bit too much harsh (without absolutely any bad intent as the staff is one who always supported and stood by community side), although this was partially a consequence of you lying entirely or partially. It just looks however that you have not yet wrote a complaint about it in order to have a review about the case, but what you(or your brother) did after the appeal was just starting to insult the staff handling it. I will in any case invite you to make an official complaint here so we'll go back on the case: General Complaint Area. Kind regards, - Keita

Honestly speaking, as a former staff, it's perfectly fine to watch your era as the good one. Sometimes we just want think everything around us is good just cause we are doing good, totally not noticing/realizing things around us. There were a lot of problems within that era. Some were known to everyone, players included (thanks to the transparency of staff), and others were just not known as they were just really private staff situations not possible to know within players. However, not knowing something does not mean it doesn't exists. I won't make name for obvious privacy reasons (although long time passed and 95% of those people are not even around anymore), but it's good to point out a few things of the staff existing back then Important: this obviously does not go for 100% of the old staff as it would be retarded from me to say that, but a good amount of people sadly suffered of these issues, which is visible from logs and anyway from forum work and chat). These things being: Lack of logs For the one asking what a log is, an example is here: https://imgur.com/VTbFQjW , in short it's a text that indicate when and why a user was punished, as well adding the evidence of what and how exactly something violated our rules. A ban is valid and can be kept only if the log the prove the infraction actually exists. Logs exists exactly to give the chance to the entire staff, current and future, to know why and how someone was banned, allowing in this way also to go back to find possible mistakes or power abuses or simply to make a review. A really big portion of the staff back then were not logging things, or not logging properly leaving out evidences. There are more than 4 people that out of 300+ bans have logged only 60-70 (which is like 25% of the total bans), just to make you understand. And no, no forum change damage or make lose anything since even those 60-70 would be lost and also there are other people from the same era that have great and complete logs. This has lead the staff of 2018-2019-2020 to actually need to unban a lot of people simply cause there were not the evidences to hold those bans (some even for cheating) due to the lack of logs from the staff back then. Power Abuse Staff back then literally had dozen of dozen of cases of people banned and evidences intentionally hidden/not added cause the ban was unjust or overly harsh, thing that was found out later and properly punished by the Administration team of that time. Being extremely harsh Players punished for evident 'friendly' (or even normal) jokes that however Staff were seeing bad cause they were following the rules like a sort of sacred text even higher than the bible and enforcing it like a machine/computer. (we call this robotic moderation and literally teach to be empathic and understand the entire context of a situation since first day of apprenticeship, unsure if it was taught even back then and then people was ignoring it or if it simply was not taught). Sometimes this was even intentionally aimed at specific people just cause they were classified "rule breakers" and therefore considered worse than others. Tons of those bans were in fact revoked. Deathwing, just to be clear even if that's obvious, but this does not go for every 2016 staff; in fact there were a good number of staff members that were actually great and would love to have still them within us. But a lot, really a lot, some were even team leaders, were doing that. Making name sucks as it would look like targeting, which is I made only one name in this post which was well publicly known. Also, just to be clear, I am not trying to throw shit on the 2016 staff, but if you tell me that the situation was good or better back then, then it's just necessary to be transparent and say the actual truth. There would be a lot to talk about even a bit short after you got kicked/removed from staff, like some GM selling appeals in change of IRL Money (Eur/Usd/Won, etc), which was found and got kicked not outside of staff but directly on another planet. Actually, that's really based on the role itself. Every staff role actually has the ability to log and talk with people, which is why we have people from different teams doing so. However, the team that does it the most is the Community Coordinators team simply cause creating a bond with community is one of their direct duties. We have a lot of staff members that actually have over than 3000 messages per month as staff, which probably isn't that big of a number but if you consider how many staff we have then it's not that bad. Can there be improvement? More than improvement, that's related to the time available. The last months were literally HELL for any university student due to the exams (not only in staff of course). However, now that Summer is here (exactly as during the winter period) time available should be more. Punishment Policy received a really big improvement since 2017, really really big. The previous punishment policy was a bit too rough/raw and still needed a lot of improvements. For example: Being too harsh in terms of punishment but even more in how much you needed to reach the permanent ban. In fact, you needed around 3-4 mutes to reach the permanent ban before while right now instead you need 8. Obviously, each case is different from each other so punishment are really adapted in base of the severity of the infraction. I will use the first level of the Severity two to explain what I mean: 1st Infraction* : 1-4 Days Quiet Ban. As you can see from here the first real mute has a duration between 1 and 4 days, which is quite a big difference if you think that 4days is literally 4x times the lowest (1 day). This goes as well for all the other infractions and clearly not only for the first. If the infraction is just spamming in chat in a good way but not really extreme (ignoring the previous warn received from the staff team and therefore continuing anyway) 1 day of Mute is perfectly fine as a start since the infraction is not too bad. Obviously, if user continues anyway even after the mute ended, we'll keep in consideration the fact that, even if that spam is not that much extreme, the user keep ignoring staff and don't care about rules, which is why we'll be harsher and work with a different mindset from the second infraction going on. Contrary to spam, racism is way more serious and clearly more bad than a spam for OBVIOUS reasons. Therefore we will issue the first infraction will generally be 4 days. Obviously the more you break the rules and the harsher the punishment received, it passes from Mute/Quite Ban -> Temporary Ban -> Permanent an -> Possible last chance but with a really long quite ban applied (this was reached only by 2 players since 2018. Since only two players actually reached that point and amount of infractions in the last 3 years, I think the PP actually discourage toxicity and staff do so as well. Lacking specific punishments for specific and different violation We simply have a long and organized punishment policy for many different infractions in order to differentiate each infraction and issue a proper punishment based effectively on the severity of that infractions. For example, both Attempted Scam and Fake Offering are trade infractions, however they have different punishments and therefore have their own unique part cause Attempted Scam is clearly more serious than Fake Offering. I have already addressed part of the suggestion question here so i'll avoid repeating myself and making this post longer (You can anyway read it there). I didn't address the criteria there, but that's simply cause there is not a real criteria. DEVs/Content read the suggestions They are like and think would work great with the game and cause no prolems with the direction that the DEV wants the game to take Suggestions is implemented or started to be worked on. Sometimes a suggestion can be even only in part good and needs other adjustment, and therefore there will be a discussion within staff/admin/devs to understand what adjustment is actually needed. What is lacking is definitely the answer part from the staff side, although it's more a DEV thing, as mentioned in the post linked to you above but as well the ability of players to make a proper suggestion that is not something repeated for the third time and receive an answer already in the first two. Suggestions are honestly really hard cause a lot of players try to force their vision into us and pretend us to do what they want otherwise we are flagged as dictator or as "people who don't care about players opinion", despite that is clearly immature as an argument and wrong. Obviously, as stated even for the old staff, not every player is toxic and not every player try force their vision into staff and pretend staff to do what they want. Please, refer to the thread I linked for another part of my answer related to suggestions. The whole moderation is well organized; there are obviously some people that perform better than others in terms of activity, but it's also normal to not have 55 people performing everyone at the same ways. Even inside companies there is a worker that might be more efficient than another. What we lack now is a MOD leader (TMOD lead just left but we already have a person who will take the role in the next days so it's all good), this simply cause picking a leader is extremely hard as there are many variables to consider when doing so: Ability to teach others. This is really important cause a leader should also be able to teach new people, and teaching is not minimally related to skill in performing duties. You can be the most skilled but have a poor teaching ability. Time available A leader needs a really big amount of time to be able to monitor the team, spot possible issues and fix them together with the team. Also should work as a pillar for the team, which usually takes lot of time. Ability in performing duties of the role the person is part of Not much to add here, exactly what it says. Interest/Will Some people could be a super mega great leader but might simply not be interested in leading a team. Other variables like prospect for the future can be, where we cannot promote a leader now if they have already decided that they will leave staff in a month due to X reason (university, work, etc). This cause it would make us need to find a new leader again, which takes lot of time. But really, Moderation actually looks fine as a team. Would be cool to have more good staff applications (good staff applications are not rare but not even common), however that's not a problem of moderation or caused by staff in general as it's something that is just related to the players/community that apply to staff. However, applications are permanently open since we think this is the best way to give everyone a chance to and also for us to not miss potentially good people. For what regard Content Scripter, I am totally unsure about what you are told but that's just wrong. Like, it is true that we have many content scripter and that many work on different projects, but that's perfectly fine. Like, making the example of the Mega Quests, we had like many CS working on it but all of them were working on different quests and then with the CS Leader they were checked/reviewed. As for events instead, there are project leaders. For example, if a CS will come out and have a great idea for an event (idk, easter maybe), he will propose that to the whole team and if liked that person will be in charge of the development of the event. That person will be also in charge of coordinating the event (this means communicating to MAP and ART teams what is needed and as well team working with the other CS on the things help is required). We have a really great leader honestly, really great worker and as well organized (lot of logs even for the smallest things in order to keep everyone updated) and with a great communication. As for power abuse we generally mean: Abusing in-game commands/staff tools/staff knowledge/and staff-only powers that give an unfair advantage or may damage a user, the game, and the community I made two example in one of the previous posts. One was about a staff member logging his Staff Account during PVP in order to kick opponent and get free win and the other was selling appeals in change of IRL money. Both are power abuse but different kinds. Obviously said staff members + their players accounts were kicked so strong to reach Mars (by 2016-17 admin and the 2019 one) and will most likely be discovered soon by either the Nasa or in the future by Elon Musk's team. Stay updated on the official Nasa website where the RAW images taken from the Mars Reover are uploaded, maybe they'll find them if they were not kicked too hard. https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/multimedia/raw-images/ The recruitment system helps us in understanding who we have ahead and how they work, and those are all the things we need actually. Which is essentially why the recruitment system is unchanged since 4 or more years. Also it was recently improved where yes, it's made more serious, however the argument "it's not a job" should never be considered valid from a player and even a staff member. Not being a job, but being a volunteer position, it doesn't mean staff members should hold a really different kind of mindset (probably worth calling it "seriousness"?) and respect (toward the project) when effectively contributing to the project development and improvement. It is exactly because we are volunteer that we are able to decide ourselves in the first place if applying or not keeping in consideration that even if not paid it's needed respect toward the project and seriousness. Contrary to an average job, even just 1 (well organized) or 1 hour and a half of hour per day (even divided in multiple sessions) is enough to do a great work. 1 hour seems low, but what you see is just a number and nothing else. I have seen people handling 20 threads in the General Support in 1 hours and others instead handling 5 in the same time and same quality. At the end of the day it's all about efficiency and organization. Correct, this is unchanged. If you think your appeal is being handled unjustly (but needs to be able to prove it, obviously) or if you have a complaint about the outcome of the appeal you can make a post in the General Complaint Area and an higher up will answer to it and handle it. It's generally the leader of the person who used to handle your complaints, as it's correct to be, however if the person who's being complained about is the leader then an higher up (generally Admin) handle it. I hope I was able to provide enough clarifications on the question you have asked. It took me quite a while, but I got it, and hope that's appreciated. Have a great day !

Ehi thre @princekashyap Those things are already planned for the future, but require a really big amount of work. Please, refer to the DEV To-Do List to know what our Developers are working on. Have a good day !

Hi there Anny ! I will address only part of the question cause the other part was covered already here. Regarding the 'being afraid' there's nothing to worry about, there is not a single staff member that will ban you only cause you dislike them. All of our bans are properly logged on forum in a way that every single moderation staff member has access to them and therefore it's really easy to notice any power abuse. And when something is easy to find, people is not stupid to do that. Kinda like trying to rob a bank when there are 4 cops inside, it might happen rarely but it's literally easy to find and take action. To make you an example on how our logs are structured, I will add here below a screenshot: From here you can see that we have Username, Server user was banned in, The date it happened, the Reason, The evidence (the 'click here' open the image or video), and then the appeal (link the appeal + marking if it was successful or not). So, as said above, you can avoid worrying about getting punishment without reason or just cause people dislike you or you write something to a staff cause you dislike them. Your POV is right but is totally seen just from the player point of view. Honestly, with all the respect, if a player dislike us or pretend someone else to handling his report or case that's NOT a valid reason to have really someone else do it. If PlayerA dislike StaffXYZ, but StaffXYZ is not minimally involved with PlayerA if not with some past punishment after PlayerA had violated the rules, then StaffXYZ has all the rights and no problem of handling the case of PlayerA. Player will NEVER be able to decide what staff handle their appeals/report/etc, and this will never change. The reason is simple, 99% of the people who do that is cause they can't accept their punishment is fair and just look for someone who just can support the fact the ban is unjust; so what they want is people telling them that they are right and not someone handling their appeals in a professional and fair methos. A PRO contributor and youtuber, without making names for privacy reasons, actually attempted doing this and it was really bad. Qeight banned them (this person), so in the next case the player requested another person to handle the case and therefore I (Keita/Shinohara) did it. User was still unsatisfied and therefore at the third case the player requested another staff member handling it (a GM), which turned out later to not be the good one as well according to the player. This is horrible and a really unorganized and unprofessional way to handle things from the player's end. In not a single game (but even irl) you can decide who will handle your cases and who not, exactly for the reasons mentioned by me above. However, important clarification! During cases related to player insulting a staff member that goes beyond the normal infraction (so not things that are evident like "you are a retarded idiot", staff will simply ask someone else to handle them. This doesn't happen every time, but pretty much with the most extreme things since a simple "idiot retarded dictator" just does not mentally affect anyone but however something like "I will come there and rape your mother, your wife and then slaughter them" (gore example but this actually happened and a player told us). Attaching an example of me doing it: This would be doable in a perfect world, however you underestimate how many players just want to damage some staff member reputation or in general abuse the complaint system. Staff Members behviour judgement is already performed by Administration & Management (team leaders) team and that's enough, exactly like every other existing game do. Your system sound good on paper and in a perfect world but would bring 350.000 problems. And this voting from community sucks in every department. Even Amazon call center (but not only) workers literally beg for the 5 stars cause otherwise they are just fired or literally quit the job due to the heavy stress such a system brings. I have already addressed the rudeness part (calling people stupid, etc) in the thread I linked you above. We treat racism, homophobic and similar (transophobic, discrimination, etc) really seriously and that's why we are heavy on punishment when it comes to them. Your assumption that staff member who act like that are unpunished is just wrong and based on the fact "I can't see = It doesn't happen", and this is just a wrong mindset. Just to make an example, few months ago Smooge used a sort of racist/disgusting sentence towards greek community into one of his video and after it was reported (not like we watch every video PRO youtubers create) we literally heavily punished him and he can confirm it. I would like to ask you to not assume things do not happen just cause you can't see them, as that's something that I think it's not acceptable in 2020. Exactly like players punishments are not announced publicly, the same goes for the staff members one. This is totally wrong! You don't bring yourself justice alone. If PlayerA call PlayerB "retarded idiot abort" and then PlayerB reply "dude shut up, it's you that are the retarded idiot abort" both the players are equally guilty of having broken rules. You can't and will never be able to bring yourself justice alone, not on PRO and not on any other game. There is no honor to defend and we are not in th Roman Empire in the 300 but in an evolved and civilized society in 2021. If two users break the same rule and we punish mute only one and the other gets just a warn then this would be a totally biased and unfair moderation. The way you see complaints is honestly wrong to start with, this cause you don't try to see both the point of view of staff and player but focus only on the player one, which is an error in the first place. It's objectively true that what really makes the difference between a valid complaint and a NOT valid one is the content of such complaint, and the evidences provided that support and show such content/the things If 10 people complaint about a staff member abusing power, but that staff member did not abuse power then the complaint is honestly worth to answer but giving the staff member did not abuse the power then there won't be any punishment on the staff member and also the user that complained will be shown that his claims are false. The same goes for players, if 10 players report Player137 for having broken rules but the player didn't break them, then the complaint is just not a valid one. Worth to answer even to it, as it's normal to do, but that's where it ends. I have given many examples already here about why the number of people that make a complaint is totally irrelevant for the final result and that what really matter is the content, the claims and the evidences supporting the claims. That already exists, always existed, and it's literally 18+ exception made for really talented people who have shown maturity to be able to join staff before that (e.g Mage joined staff at 15-16? And comrader at 16) Hope I was able to address each one of your point and provide as well an answer about them. For anything else, feel free to ask and i'll make sure to answer about it. Have a good day

Yes, we do that quite frequently actually, some cause we just go back looking our bans and some other thanks to the after-appeal complaint we receive. A reason for appeal taking some time is also the fact of taking the best decision and being sure of it, most of the time even checking with our colleagues. However, we do go back to our bans and even removed some of them if we find them a bit too harsh or similar.

Although we talked already in private and asked me to feel free to not answer in here, I will just do it anyway for the sake of transparency. It is obvious that even staff have to follow rules and we in fact have our own staff rules and staff punishment policy. Said staff member has been talked to, from me personally, regarding the way he address some people. However, it is correct to point out that fault is not entirely on him but there are a lot of things that are unseen from the normal player. I will make you some example about what I mean being black or white. Example one. Few months ago there was a really big group of Real Money Traders that in total were actually selling (obviously not from a single account but many) around 900.000.000 Pokedollars (900 millions). Said staff member found it and banned all of them, both the seller and the buyer exactly as it is correct to be since Real Money Trading is a really serious infraction that can potentially destroy the game economy. This group was from a single specific country and a few of the banned went to complain to a PRO Youtuber they were following saying they were unjustly banned and the staff member was racist. This Youtuber started publicly accusing the staff member of racism and banning innocents, which has lead the story to get bigger and bigger until this person and staff (admins) started to receive threats from many users supporting that youtuber and thinking what said was true. Now, unfortunately, we cannot address these things publicly cause it's sort of unprofessional to call out people in front of everyone. However, the staff member called "idiot" or "stupid" (I don't remember which one of them) that person who did their best to put people against the staff who issued the punishment. Was it correct to call them stupid/idiot? Honestly not correct and not even worth the staff member time. However, we are humans and therefore get tilted as well when we experience such things. Does it justify any disrespect? Absolutely not, but that's exactly to say that things are never just black or white and there are many things that cannot be seen by a lot of users but users just assume that the staff his doing everything alone and starting it. Example two. We have a user who was able to reach the total amount of mutes necessary to get permanently banned. This number is exactly 8. In short, this user, a pvp player, was being toxic against opponents every time he had the chance to (mocking them or their skill after beating them, insulting them after this user was losing, etc) Every mute the user was receiving he was making an appeal, where he was promising to not be toxic anymore and follow rules/respect other players. However, after not even a month it was back to the start with the user being toxic again. Time passes and mute by mute the user reaches his 8 mute and then the permanent ban as the limit was reached and crossed. User at that point appeal, as he was permanently banned, and ask for a final chance. The staff member believes him and his words and decides to give him a last chance, however giving him a long mute despite the unban (this is how policy works after you get out from a permanent ban, having reached the limit, for toxicity). The user really happy accept it, a mute of 250 days aimed at making him reform and chill. The 250 days of mute passes, the user played without any problem until then. However, after the mute ends, not even a month later the user was back again being toxic, insulting after losing and mocking players after winning. This lasted for months, he continued doing it for months until we checked chat log and people started reporting him. At that point, the staff members decide to issue the last permanent ban as it was clear that the user could not get reformed. In that way we lost a PRO veteran player, and it sucks but at the same time we cannot give a special treatment to people only cause they are old players. We had initially thought about having him playing with a permanent mute, however the limit was already reached and honestly it would have been unfair toward all the players (new and old) that this user had insulted and mocked until now. Lets be clear, there are players that know they are toxic and therefore ask us (before getting punished) to kindly mute them so they are chill and can play without any concern. In fact, we appreciate that, as player realize they can't control themselves and want to play without causing problems. Anyway, after that person was banned, he started to try to put an entire community (the community of his country) against staff, even going as far as saying that if he will find that staff member he will stab him with a knife and kill him. In that way we got a big community from a country against us for something that staff had no fault with. Example three, and last one. Long story short, during Summer Tournament 2019 the user winning the gold tournament had cheated the whole tournament by making someone else playing for him. Host were me and that staff member. That staff member realized something was wrong and pushed for a investigation which has lead to the user being called racist by that person and spreading the fact he was racist for doing that check. (user was trying to defend himself and play the racist card to block the investigation) Also, that person had a relative within the staff team that also pushed and promoted the "you are racist" card. (this is explained better later). Unfortunately, time passes and we cannot find anything solid about it (we ban only after solid evidences) so we just close the investigation. Few months later, this group of people have a discussion and stop being friends so they start to report each other. It was then that we found evidences about it, as they literally reported the whole tournament situation where, sadly, the staff member (the relative mentioned above) also helped in cheating the tournament and hiding it. Needless to say, the staff member was kicked and the user got their first prize removed. However staff got once again a big amount of people hating staff and that staff member despite nothing wrong was done on our end, but people just blindly believed their friend. I myself banned a user from the game (RMT iirc) and the user pretended to be unbanned while insulting me (not sayin ban was wrong but just threatening me to be unbanned). After I didn't unban, this user started cutting his veins and send me photos and video of it to try to accuse me and actually lead me to problems in-real-life and as well spreading the fact I was transphobic banning a trans player (where obviously gender and similar had nothing to do with the ban). As for why this person is not "fired", the reason is simply that we have a staff punishment policy, exactly like players that is divided in steps. What the staff member did was not enough to warrant a removal, but definitely a good and stern talk as it happened. What we instant remove from staff are things like: Power Abuse (that the staff member you mention actually never did). Some example of power abuse, just for pure transparency: Logging your staff account to kick opponent you are in pvp battle with your player. This was performed by Rise/Astro (as many know) that got permanently excluded from PRO (staff + player ban), and therefore he was immediately permanently banned as soon as we found. Selling unban in change of irl money. Spawning items for people Banning people out of fun or without any reason (this, contrary to what some people say, was actually never performed by the staff member mentioned). Lot of drama that can greatly damage the game Needless to say, we do not support any disrespectful/offensive behaviour and if disrespectful behaviour will continues (however I like to believe there won't as that staff member is mature) further actions will be taken to fix that in a way or another. As for why this staff member was hired, the answer is simply that he's simply one of the best staff member PRO ever had. He provide a lot of work for the game, with a great quality, has a really high activity and has the aim to actually improve the game. As for attitude, I think that there's a need of learning how to control himself cause even if we (humans) might say something that is totally correct, it's really important to consider the way we do that. (as i told him) However, for what regard staff duties themselves, I think he's actually the example to follow and a new moderation staff should be aim to be like. Many recently started accusing him of not caring about the game just from due to the language used (which yes, needs to be controlled by him), however he did a lot for the community itself. It's even just worth to mention that years ago you just needed 4 mutes to be permanently banned forever, however he thought it was too harsh for community and therefore improved it from 4 to 8, giving it this way 4 additional chances to players to reform themselves and follow rules. Or the whole hoenn update where the pokemon are not encountered while surfing, which is a benefit since hoenn (the whole surfing part) is honesly as painful as a kick in the ball due to the many spawns and the super larger big water maps. I hope I was able to be clear enough (I mean, I was with you as we talked in PM and you even told me to feel free to not reply here, however I wanted to do it anyway for the sake of transparency). Also hope people won't jump on the "you are defending!" but also understand both the negative and positive things said.

Before I continue replying people, I would like to remind you that this is a place where you ask things and Administration team answer to them with the most transparency. If you think you can fight each other here, then you just fail to understand the whole point this thread exists. Stop to fight each other, just ask things (to staff) or voice out your concerns (respectfully). This won't be tolerated.

Hi there @McSchitter I will address each one of your points separately, like you did, so it's easier for both of us. Suggestions are something that are pretty much DEV-only things and absolutely not to GM. I would like to say Administration in general, but the knowledge of what's possible on PRO and what not, as well as the really detailed and complete to-do list of PRO (where those include adding non-existing features on client or server) is known only by DEVs. Yes, you can find a public to-do list of DEVs, but that serves more as a list of things the DEVs works now and will work in the future, however, none of us is able to know exactly what needs to be done in order to implement something. For example, to implement simple pokemon moves/ability in the game, but as well MEGAs, that you would think it's hard but not that much, took A LOT of work from DEVs exactly cause there is a lot of background work that needs to be done and that is not visible to anyone except DEVs. What players, and 99% of the staff, sees is pretty much the aesthetic part of the final result, however that part is probably less than 30% of the whole effective work that as required to reach that result. DEVs actually check the Suggestion Area more than you can expect; they actually do it really frequently. What is lacking is definitely answers on those topics, not for all of them (see a lot replied by walros) but many of them for sure. A lot of threads are unreplied cause people just repeat the same request someone did like 2 months before and that had already received a reply. I don't think it's really good to leave people with no answers even in those cases, but I think that's something more fit for the Community Coordinator team (it's not one of their duties at the moment, so they did no mistake) and I will check with them about it in the following days so even people that suggested things that were already suggested and got an answer before can actually get informed about it. However, giving how many people repeat the same suggestions, I think it's not entirely staff fault but as well players one for not doing a small research before even making their post. As for the things that didn't get an answer at all, we will clearly discuss it as well in order to have a sort of comfortable system both for the DEVs and players. I think the first point cover this as well. I think you are wrong regarding this. Q & A (question and answer) is something where someone (acting as interviewer) ask things and you answer to them. In a normal video you should prepare questions in advance, as you need to record it. However, during a live stream, you should focus on reading chat and effectively answers the questions that are asked to you in live. I am not saying that we cannot make actually a Q&A in a video-format by preparing the questions in advance; what I am saying is that the format you have in mind is a Q&A but with a format that is not one for a livestream but rather a video. Could we do one in a video-format but in live? Yes, why not, but I don't think there was any error committed until now if the questions answered were the one made in the live chat. I think the important is having users asking questions (whatever passes on their mind) and staff answering them, and that's actually what's been done. Good to point out that one of the first Q&A was organized by me in terms of questions, where I had prepared the questions before the effective live and then Walross read the answers and added his part (obviously). However users (major part) were quite annoyed by the fact we were not answering chat one but focussing mainly on the one we had prepared in advance. But yeah, there are no limits regarding that, so preparing questions in advance and making a thread about it is not something we are against. Staff Related Questions regarding criticism I do actually totally disagree here, as it's exactly my role the one to handle the staff members in terms of how they feel inside a staff and if they have to voice out something. I always did my part and many, many, many people always came to me to talk and vent about something and we were able to find a solution together, or unfortunately there was no solution possible but at least that person had someone to rely on and talk with. Obviously, there are also people that just close themselves within their groups. I had a small groups of 3 people within staff that rather than voicing out their problems and come to talk to me (or as well Red, or any Dev) just started trash-talking a lot of staff members in a small private group, ad that's just wrong. Remember that what you have talked about is always a double-path/way/route thing. I can stretch out my hand toward someone in the best and kindest of the way, but if that person will refuse to take that and won't explain me why (despite me worrying and asking) then there is nothing that me, or anyone else, can do about it as I cannot force someone. However, I got to say that a lot of people come to talk to me or I even go to them before they do (when I notice something is strange). Except rare cases as the one described above, I think people voice their opinions really well. But again, if people refuse to do that with anyone from the management team or admin team (I am probably the most fit as that's exactly my role, but if they go to their leader or anotehr admin I am really fine anyway as long as it helps in solving the issue) then there is not much we can do as that's a double-path/way/route thing as explained above. Just to clarify, I also bump a post about it within the staff team sometimes that talks exactly about it (contacting proper people if you have a issue/concern or similar, as together we can find a solution or at least do our best to try it). If you want to ask anything else, please feel free to do so and I will do my best, as you know, to help with that. I don't mind if you do it here or in DM as we did before, whatever it's more comfortable for you. - Keita

Ehi there @Madtrainer I am unsure about who told you that there won't be a Summer Event this year, but that's wrong! Our content team is working on a Summer Event, like every other year. We will announce to community when it will be released ! As for other events during the year, there will always be new one and I doubt PRO will ever stop to create new content. I cannot reveal you anything, but the biggest one of the year should be during the Christmas period so keep yourself ready ! - Keita