Guild Leaders notified about Banned Members & More

[Aggs]

In light of a recent crack down on PRO rule-breakers, there has been a lot of confusion in at least a few guilds that I know of. Having 3 banned players within the past 2 weeks, two of which were back-to-back days, it makes me question the validity of the investigations that staff conduct and the evidence they receive (the evidence received was addressed in a discord announcement, but what does this say about bans prior to this? Will they get a second chance?). It doesn't help that in appeals, users receive a reply along the lines of "I/We have proof of [infraction]," and seemingly no real follow up. However, I cannot see every ban appeal, every piece of evidence acquired, whether through submission or investigation. When guildies, who are 9/10 going to tell their guild they are innocent, try to appeal, read the response, and go to the guild for help, if a guild leader doesn't try what they can to help in their power, I wouldn't know what to say.

 

I want to suggest something that I believe will connect the staff and community a little more. I suggest that, as a part of the appeal process, when a member from a guild is banned, at the very least, a staff member should notify said guild's leader about not only the ban, but provide evidence that does not put personal information at risk, i.e. IP Addresses, Names and Addresses, Account Information(Not just PRO or PRO Forum), and the like. I do not intend for this to be an attack on PRO staff, as I cannot imagine the difficulty of trying to run a game like this, but I believe there is some unnecessary tension between the community and the staff on a topic like this.

[Skazior]

+1

[Clawdark]

+1

[Sgarac]

+1

[Allsmell]

Potential Problems with this system

 

1) The problem with providing proof is it often shows who's reported them leading to potential targeted attacks (also makes the anonymous reporting system defunct).

 

2) might give guild leaders more power/info than is warranted by this game and guilds within it.

 

3) the guys who run this game do so on limited time (I've had a trade report pending for weeks). Every potential job even if it only takes a small time add up, and overwhelming people makes the jobs that need to be done worse quality.

 

These things being said I approve in principle with your message, however definitely point 1 needs some way of being addressed(and I don't think blanking someones name is enough, not to mention it's more time).

 

So take my +1 but abit more thought required about implementation.

[Iamtony01]

+1

[Qeight]

Hey there everyone,

 

the recent announcement was made by our GM Team, a team that functions as higher moderation who more often than not handle very severe infractions.

The announcement had nothing to do with the ways they operate or anything, just simply with how they are enforcing the Punishment Policy. As Letrix wrote in his post ever since GMs and Devs cracked down on bots lesser cheat offenses became a rising problem. Our old Punishment Policy didn't reflect appropriate punishments for those offenses anymore therefore the change. If any of your guild members were banned by a GM you can be very certain they did something otherwise they wouldn't be banned.

 

I said that in another of these suggestions posts about how we operate, simply we can not give away evidence as it would show how we operate (in GM cases at least), in other cases we can not give the evidence to protect the reporters. We will never involve the community in any of the appeal processes nor would we ever give evidence out publicly.

 

Even within the staff team we don't have access to everything, Content Staff have no access to moderation whatsoever, CCs/Mods/Tmods have the same clearance while GMs ways of operation and evidence keeping is hidden from everyone else except Admins and Devs & then of course the highest level in the staff structure Admins/Devs.

 

We simply will not make anything public or involve people who don't have to be informed of anything.

From a personal experience as player and as staff, a lot of people just straight up lie to cover themselves. As sad as this sounds a lot of players lie in their appeals and to their guilds etc. If you want to be a good guild leader, lead them to being honest with themselves and being honest in their appeals. That's all we care about really, honesty. If you are banned then in most cases you did something wrong (investigations bans do happen from time to time).

 

Kind regards,

Q8