PRO's Moderation Discussion

[Onkelles]

i would like the option to permanently ignore some1 since some ppl constantly spam or ask dumb questions on purpose plus doing that reliefs staff also

 

Some kind of blacklist for PMs really would be nice...

 

I am not a big fan of recent chat rules changes. Why are rates and price checks now allowed in help chat. I know people were alwaxs asking for rates and price checks there, but waaay less and if you told them wrong channel they usually quit.

 

Now they spam the same question over and over cause they want their rate for every Pokemon they catch. And it sometimes makes it really hard not to oversee the people who really need help.

 

I am in help chat alot and I like it there. But that new rule made it harder for us "help chat regulars" to help imo.

[Qeight]

Stop change just for a symbol before your name and stay like you do as player (with limit)

Staff members need special permissions that require a new account, new name, new ingame identity. Its for the staffs own good that they are hidden and not known for a few months before they reveal. I am not sure if I understand you correctly so can you maybe rephrase it if this isn't the answer you were looking for.

 

Stop recruit bad people for helping the game, we know tier council will be pick by past history and good PvP player have infractions.

PvP Council is an undecided thing however if it were to happen the council members can have a punishment history (outside of boosting offenses) as long as they can keep a civil discussion and are not toxic. On an English level that is understandable for everyone of course.

 

Stop take all at serious and became real person, stop cry for a game.

Not everything is taken serious however we have to keep a certain level of professionalism.

 

i would like the option to permanently ignore some1 since some ppl constantly spam or ask dumb questions on purpose plus doing that reliefs staff also

It certainly would be a much appreciated feature and was suggested a ton of times, its up to Devs though and their time/priority working list.

 

My biggest complaint is that staff role changed over the Time.

When i started the game back in 2016 a staff Member was active in Chats and helped people. I rarely see any staff ingame who just answer questions there.

In my opinion staff (this case Community coordinator? I guess) Are Way too far away from the Community. Staff should be someone people can go to if they got questions or problems and not someone who just works of his list of reports and punishes people.

For weeks now we have one active Community Coordinator who pulls in 10-15 hours per day alone just with forum and in-game stuff. Community Coordinator are exactly that and quite honestly majority of staff will help you or redirect you to the place where you can get help. Community Coordinators are not working on reports at all, they are the bridge between the community and staff however they have certain abilities to sanction users if necessary but its not their main duty.

 

I am not a big fan of recent chat rules changes. Why are rates and price checks now allowed in help chat. I know people were alwaxs asking for rates and price checks there, but waaay less and if you told them wrong channel they usually quit.

Too many warnings, mutes, bans. It was uncomfortable to moderate for the community as well as for some staff members. The change in itself wasn't necessary but I believe it was for the better. It's not like "rate x pokemon" matters in any chat, it's meaningless in 999/1000 cases as they are just searching for gratification about their Pokemon.

 

Now they spam the same question over and over cause they want their rate for every Pokemon they catch. And it sometimes makes it really hard not to oversee the people who really need help.

It's the same in every chat, rating questions are meaningless but our community for some reason values them. If it were up to me I would ban it entirely as its just meaningless but I believe players should be able to ask whatever they want whereever they want without being too heavily restricted.

[Xanthinarose]

Good day,

 

First of all I want to thank the people involved in opening this topic for discussion. I think it’s really important to see what the general player base has to say for feedback on how to improve this game in every aspect possible, to make it more enjoyable for everyone and just generally keep the community involved in decision making as well. After all, it is a fan-made game and keeping the fans’ ideas/concerns in high regard can really make things better from my point of view. We’re all here because we love Pokémon in the end.

 

I feel like some of my main concerns have already been mentioned briefly so I’d like to elaborate them with a bit more depth and help explain things that go through our minds as regular players, bear with me. ^^

 

Felix, you’ve mentioned that moderators are not there to socialize with players in game and are only there to moderate. I feel like there’d be a lot more benefit if the community felt the staff’s presence in ways other than just punishment. Like for me personally, for a good long year of playing the game I never really saw moderators as actual people. Just the approach and way of speaking seems very unauthentic and robotic to say the very least which makes the players feel really distant. I think that’s one aspect that can really be approved. You can still be “professional” but still have some sort of affection and personality displayed at the same time.

 

-With regards to the report system:

 

I’m talking only from personal experience. I’ve sent in a trade report not too long ago (last Monday to be specific). I hadn’t received a reply for a few days and decided to “bump” my report and only then did I receive a reply. Not only that but the reply just seemed so completely vague, unhelpful, poorly written and -if we’re going a little overboard- triggered my "OCD" because of the poor punctuation.

It just seemed like a typical “copy-paste” delayed response that if I was still a new player sending this report in, would likely encourage me not to use the report system again because we all really know how much of a hassle it is to take multiple screenshots to support your case and upload them onto the forums only to get that response. When we’re reporting something, we need to stop everything we’re doing and just focus our attention on that in hopes that we’re helping the game in any way possible. We sort of expect the same from you in return.

 

I want to make it clear that this is not in any way meant to offend anyone because it’s not specific to last week’s incident, and I truly do understand that staff are all “volunteers” and work in their own pace/ time, but once it gets to a point where I need to bump a report that takes no less than 20 minutes of my time to send in only to get a careless response, then this is what goes through my mind and many others must feel the same: “You’re here to volunteer but you can’t make the time to look into a basic report and put in as much concern as the person sending it in has?” (This also ties to my other point as well, about being professional yet displaying some sort of human personality.)

 

There really needs to be a competence level each staff member should meet and specific standards to be met at all times, if you’re having trouble keeping up with all this volunteering business then step down and get someone who is actually interested in helping the game and making the time for it and its players. This should apply to everyone equally.

 

Please, don’t just be a color on the forums. This is all from a player’s perspective and this affects me as a player. We need you guys to keep this game running well!

 

I won’t go into full details about unjust bans and punishments to be honest. I’ve been quite vocal in my appeal which I’m sure you’ve all read and I’m fed up with the topic. I just have a few suggestions that I hope might be looked into:

 

• I want to suggest that there be a part of the staff “a council or committee” specifically there to look into appeals and especially appeals of higher grade punishments such as bans just to have a third party’s unbiased perspective. I understand it’s probably protocol for the person who issued the punishment to look into the appeal but it becomes unsaid that each person will always be inclined to think they’re in the right and therefore, inclined to believe their judgment is the correct one. It’s just basic psychology.
   
   
  
• I have to agree with @Nixs about the whole evidence issue, it really makes it hard to defend yourself when you don’t exactly know the context or evidence used against you in the report. I’ve been in situations where I didn’t even remember half the things I was told. You should be able to properly defend yourself for what you’ve done.
   
   
  
• Another thing I’ve noticed is that punishments have been being issued first and investigations are conducted afterwards to see whether the punishment is right or not. “Punch First, Ask Questions While Punching” it just really doesn’t make sense at all to me. (And yes that was a LoL reference, I thought it fit quite well ^^).
   
   
  
• Last but not least and I think it might be a long shot since I have no clue about the coding involved, but I really wish I could just right click a player and select “report” :L
  
  

~Again thank you for taking the time to look into our concerns. A lot of players much like me really appreciate it and some of the recent changes have been wonderful, particularly the new auction rules/guide. Keep up the good work and stay positive. ^^

 

Yours truly,

XanthinaRose.

[Chucknovice]

Hello,

 

I just want to share my feeling on the moderation team. I don't need any answer or explanation since I didn't collect all the proofs of what I will say below.

 

I'm playing since more than 2 years and I feel like "it was much better before".

 

It's just a feeling but I think that some moderators are a bit corrupted. I mean that some of them don't hesitate to use their "power" to give an advantage to some players that they like ingame. For example, forcing a trade in an auction, giving some advantages ingame to friends etc...

Another thing is that moderators ingame are using their "power" to mute people all the time and don't hesitate to taunt them with some smiley or some "have a nice day" etc...

 

Now, and this is only my personal opinion, it's better to do nothing and post nothing ingame or on forum than take the risk to get reported/ban. We're afraid about express our opinion everywhere.

 

If we take every moderator separately, everybody is doing a good job 95% of the time but it's the cumulative 5% on each one that create this bad feeling.

 

The lines below are the only reason why I post that but I hesitated a lot :

We want to be as transparent as possible, therefore we will not delete or "censor" anyone or anyone's opinion. No topic is off-limit here, we want you guys to have the opportunity to ask freely.

 

[spoiler=Crossing fingers for not being perma banned :D]

 

 

Thanks for reading,

[Madtrainer]

Well, I will try to make it simple. =D I never had ''serious'' problem with Staff itself.

A 30 seconds mute ban when the last rule about Rate was on, and a warning maybe one month ago.

I'm not perfect, it happen to me to make little mistakes, but still I do all my best to follow the rules.

 

I'm glad to see that things such as cheating are taken seriously. Same with harashment and other unacceptalbe stuff.

My main concern here is very simple. I dont like lax system of rules, but I like to see logical people being moderator or else.

I will give some exemples to better explain what I mean (It is morning here and I see that my english is pretty bad right now).

 

- A dude write the famous sentence: Omae wa mou shindeiru. Some players write Nani!?! A staff member say to speak english in All chat. I personaly explain him it is a meme. Of course it is useless, he even say to me he is himself Japanese. =/

 

- A dude look very happy today, maybe he found an Epic Pokemon =D. So happy that he is singing in real life, he want to share what he sing so he put 3 message in a row in all chat with some lyrics of his song (3 sentences, not the wholes lyrics). A moderator tell him to stop spamming. =c

 

- This happened yesterday. A guy simply asked in trade chat: The guy who was talking with me, pm me again, I got dc. A Staff member told him to stop talk in trade chat. For me this last one is the worst. The guy was obviously trying to trade with a guy and talking with him via pm. He might have closed the window accidently, or maybe he even get disconected for a reason. The easiest way for him to contact the dude back was to talk one time in trade chat.

 

Those are three exemples of what I believe would have been done better. Of course, I dont think any more serious measure have been taken, it was mostly warnings but still it is what I wanted to show in this thread. I know mistakes happens, I also it is possbile that you simply answer me that they have done their job, wich I would also understand. I just wanted to take the opportunity to show some stuff I dont like personaly.

 

I have an idea right now. I will share it to you and we will see if this is pertinent.

It happened to me to make chat report and I usually do when the chat bocome to much ''hard to live'' for me and many players.

Problem is that reporting Chat related stuff on forum take time, and it can also take time for a mod to see the thread, solve the problem and then answer.

It would be a good idea to have a kind of ''report center'' on PRO official Discord. I put quote cos this is not really like that.

This could also be specific to public chat infraction. I know it would be hard to handle, I'm just sharing the idea.

It would help the chat problems being solve fastly. EDIT: This is mainly to have a place where we can have help when the chat turn really bad (No stuff like botting, trade ect)

 

Some Staff members still plays the game sometimes, and when they see really serious thing, they can alwais jump on their Staff account to solve the problem.

But the reality is that they are not alwais there. It happened to me to see the chat being a hell for 15-20 minutes.

The problem is not the punishements I know they will be punished. The problem is the time it can take for the chat to come back to normal.

 

With all this being said, I will make myself two others coffee. =D

Hope my english was not too broken.

Thank for your time, thank for this thread and good day.

Edited May 26, 2019 by Madtrainer

[Qeight]

Felix, you’ve mentioned that moderators are not there to socialize with players in game and are only there to moderate. I feel like there’d be a lot more benefit if the community felt the staff’s presence in ways other than just punishment. Like for me personally, for a good long year of playing the game I never really saw moderators as actual people. Just the approach and way of speaking seems very unauthentic and robotic to say the very least which makes the players feel really distant. I think that’s one aspect that can really be approved. You can still be “professional” but still have some sort of affection and personality displayed at the same time.

With all due respect to this community, they can be very demanding for things that we don't have time for. From my personal experience I disable my PMs always ever since I get spammed with stuff that simply I can not answer or are a time-consuming (time we don't have) (eg. battle requests, asking for new content, rating Pokemon etc).

 

As I said before, it's not required for Moderators to socialize, it makes moderating go by easier for some, for others its a distraction. We will not force them to do something they are not comfortable with. In-game moderation can be very stressful and hectic, keep in mind they have to look at every chat at once and enforce rules everywhere, getting sidetracked by something can easily result in stuff being missed or overlooked. On a personal note I like to keep my distant when doing staff duties, keep my mind clear from any bias, mixing that up relations I have as a player carries sometimes negative sideeffects, such as bias accusations and such.

 

I’m talking only from personal experience. I’ve sent in a trade report not too long ago (last Monday to be specific). I hadn’t received a reply for a few days and decided to “bump” my report and only then did I receive a reply. Not only that but the reply just seemed so completely vague, unhelpful, poorly written and -if we’re going a little overboard- triggered my "OCD" because of the poor punctuation.

It just seemed like a typical “copy-paste” delayed response that if I was still a new player sending this report in, would likely encourage me not to use the report system again because we all really know how much of a hassle it is to take multiple screenshots to support your case and upload them onto the forums only to get that response. When we’re reporting something, we need to stop everything we’re doing and just focus our attention on that in hopes that we’re helping the game in any way possible. We sort of expect the same from you in return.

Trade Moderators are currently slammed with work IRL, graduations, IRL things that happened and therefore we experienced quite the delay with Trade Reports. At some point non of them were active so Logan had to cover a lot. IRL comes over PRO, so slight delays may happen. Trade Reports have to be done by Trade Moderators, while everyone in the Moderator team is active, we still couldn't deal with those reports.

 

The report reply you received is the same reply everyone else would receive, as you mentioned everything that was necesary, there was no need to ask for further evidence or ask further questions. Just this month there were over 150 Trade reports, those take time. It's not a one and done thing, those things need investigations, proper appliance of our policies and rules, especially when its regarding auctions. I am not quite sure what you are expecting from the report reply but we can not give you any details of further actions, nor can we keep you in the loop of what will happen. So what else do you expect here?

 

I want to make it clear that this is not in any way meant to offend anyone because it’s not specific to last week’s incident, and I truly do understand that staff are all “volunteers” and work in their own pace/ time, but once it gets to a point where I need to bump a report that takes no less than 20 minutes of my time to send in only to get a careless response, then this is what goes through my mind and many others must feel the same: “You’re here to volunteer but you can’t make the time to look into a basic report and put in as much concern as the person sending it in has?” (This also ties to my other point as well, about being professional yet displaying some sort of human personality.)

Before your report come 20 others, the report has to be discussed and appropriate levels of punishment have to be applied. That on top of any further investigations. If everything was just a 5 minute job our lives would be a lot easier but this isn't the case.

 

I again don't understand what kind of reply you are looking for here.

 

There really needs to be a competence level each staff member should meet and specific standards to be met at all times, if you’re having trouble keeping up with all this volunteering business then step down and get someone who is actually interested in helping the game and making the time for it and its players. This should apply to everyone equally.

We preach 1 hour per day and that IRL comes before PRO, which are valid statements. We are as you said yourself just volunteers and come from different parts of the world. Nobody needs to speak flawlessly English or needs to have the best punctuation but they commit their free time to help the game. Staffs go through a lengthy apprenticeship and they wouldn't be promoted if they were incompetent.

 

I want to suggest that there be a part of the staff “a council or committee” specifically there to look into appeals and especially appeals of higher grade punishments such as bans just to have a third party’s unbiased perspective. I understand it’s probably protocol for the person who issued the punishment to look into the appeal but it becomes unsaid that each person will always be inclined to think they’re in the right and therefore, inclined to believe their judgment is the correct one. It’s just basic psychology.

Team Leaders, this is already a thing

If you believe the Team Leaders were wrong an Admin comes into play

If you still believe an Admin was wrong, the Senior Admin or a Dev come into play and their judgement is final

 

I speak out of experience here, there are enough lairs of protection now to avoid those things.

 

I have to agree with @Nixs about the whole evidence issue, it really makes it hard to defend yourself when you don’t exactly know the context or evidence used against you in the report. I’ve been in situations where I didn’t even remember half the things I was told. You should be able to properly defend yourself for what you’ve done.

The trade-offs are not worth it, harassing reporters, giving away certain GM procedures nobody besides GMs and Admins know are simply to be kept confidential. You are not banned out of the blue with nothing as evidence, there are actually quite a few staffs who would be very vocal about unjustified bans, myself included.

 

Another thing I’ve noticed is that punishments have been being issued first and investigations are conducted afterwards to see whether the punishment is right or not. “Punch First, Ask Questions While Punching” it just really doesn’t make sense at all to me. (And yes that was a LoL reference, I thought it fit quite well ^^).

Investigation bans are applied in cases where serious harm can be done and only the user itself can answer questions about it e.g Real Money Trading, Boosting, Account Hacks etc

Investigation bans do require evidence and are not done out of the blue however they are mostly done because we need the FULL picture of what is happening, we had enough to ban already but want the full picture to understand everything properly.

 

Last but not least and I think it might be a long shot since I have no clue about the coding involved, but I really wish I could just right click a player and select “report” :L

I'll bring this idea up, sounds reasonable. :)

 

If you have anything further to add feel free^^

 

---

I will comment on the things you said, not for you personally but for everyone else reading it.

I'm playing since more than 2 years and I feel like "it was much better before".

2 years ago the rules were way stricter, you received permbans easier, policies were stricter

 

It's just a feeling but I think that some moderators are a bit corrupted. I mean that some of them don't hesitate to use their "power" to give an advantage to some players that they like ingame. For example, forcing a trade in an auction, giving some advantages ingame to friends etc...

I only remember once case where it was a mistake that was fixed. This is nothing common nor is it tolerated, those things obviously need to be backed up with any form of proof which you do not have. For us its important that we can actually see proof of any accusations otherwise everyone can just claim whatever they want, destroy reputations for no reason at all.

It's actually quite sad to see this happening from our community more often than we would like to admit.

 

Now, and this is only my personal opinion, it's better to do nothing and post nothing ingame or on forum than take the risk to get reported/ban. We're afraid about express our opinion everywhere.

The issue with a lot of people is that they are afraid of saying things, standing up for what is right in a RESPECTFUL manner. There are players who can do that like teerav but then there are players who just flat out harass, insult or defame staffs for not doing what they want.

I speak out of personal experience here as I was one of the more controversial players, long punishment history and such. I felt what it meant to be targeted by staff etc. I was no saint but I also wasn't the devil. It was one of my goals as staff to create an environment where everyone can express themselves without feeling oppressed or targeted afterwards.

 

Also if I am being completely honest and transparent here, a lot who claim they are innocent, never did anything or say they feel targeted or something are the ones who do the most offenses, break the most rules, lie the most. We are not about to public shame users' but if we could do that our community would realize some things for sure. A lot claim bias when there is no bias, some players hold grudges for weeks and months over nothing such as not accepting certain evidence. I know why you wrote those things but if you actually went into yourself and thought about your past, you would understand that certain actions are not okay.

 

---

- A dude write the famous sentence: Omae wa mou shindeiru. Some players write Nani!?! A staff member say to speak english in All chat. I personaly explain him it is a meme. Of course it is useless, he even say to me he is himself Japanese. =/

Simple, make on exception you have to accept every exception. Its for consistency purposes.

 

- A dude look very happy today, maybe he found an Epic Pokemon =D. So happy that he is singing in real life, he want to share what he sing so he put 3 message in a row in all chat with some lyrics of his song (3 sentences, not the wholes lyrics). A moderator tell him to stop spamming. =c

I don't know the specifics but does being happy or excited give you the rights to spam? What kind of spam? There is missing context here to properly judge the situation.

- This happened yesterday. A guy simply asked in trade chat: The guy who was talking with me, pm me again, I got dc. A Staff member told him to stop talk in trade chat. For me this last one is the worst. The guy was obviously trying to trade with a guy and talking with him via pm. He might have closed the window accidently, or maybe he even get disconected for a reason. The easiest way for him to contact the dude back was to talk one time in trade chat.

The easiest way is actually using /pm <username> but I believe I know what you are talking about here and this has been already addressed internally. :P

I have an idea right now. I will share it to you and we will see if this is pertinent.

It happened to me to make chat report and I usually do when the chat bocome to much ''hard to live'' for me and many players.

Problem is that reporting Chat related stuff on forum take time, and it can also take time for a mod to see the thread, solve the problem and then answer.

It would be a good idea to have a kind of ''report center'' on PRO official Discord. I put quote cos this is not really like that.

This could also be specific to public chat infraction. I know it would be hard to handle, I'm just sharing the idea.

It would help the chat problems being solve fastly.

We are completely separate from the Discord, we do not control it or have any influence over it. We can not offer 24/7 support regardless even if this were a thing. Reports are your best bet if no Moderator is around.

 

Some Staff members still plays the game sometimes, and when they see really serious thing, they can alwais jump on their Staff account to solve the problem.

But the reality is that they are not alwais there. It happened to me to see the chat being a hell for 15-20 minutes.

The problem is not the punishements I know they will be punished. The problem is the time it can take for the chat to come back to normal.

As I said, 24/7 support is sadly not possible and even if staffs are on their player accounts, this doesn't mean they are now online to moderate. I speak for myself now, when I did the Manaphy quest or the Shaymin quest, I completely turned off the chat and hid it because I didn't want to see it. A staff member who is revealed has sadly to live with the "loss of peace" when they are online on their playeraccounts due to stuff like that.

[Madtrainer]

First of all, the thread I posted have been really simple. The exemples I have provided have been simple cos they are.

Well, I'll make some precisions to one of my exemple just to make things clearer.

EDIT: I used many times the word simple. As I said previously, my english is very limited this morning. =/

 

- For the dude singing, it is very long ago, so I dont remember exactly, but rules breaker are easy to spot in this game. It was not one of them, at least, not a this moment.

 

- For the guy talking in trade chat, obviously he didnt remembered the other player name, if so he would not have talked here. It is not the first time someone do this. It is, imo, understandable. If repeated several time, I would have understand the warning.

 

And I also know and understand completely that you are volunteer and cannot be active 24/7. Just wanted to get support faster for some chat related things.

But I accept this is not doable, was just a little suggestion. ;)

 

I will make sure to watch this thread sometimes to see what people have to say. =3

Edited May 26, 2019 by Madtrainer

[Qeight]

First of all, the thread I posted have been really simple. The exemples I have provided have been simple cos they are.

Well, I'll make some precisions to one of my exemple just to make things clearer.

 

- For the dude singing, it is very long ago, so I dont remember exactly, but rules breaker are easy to spot in this game. It was not one of them, at least, not a this moment.

 

- For the guy talking in trade chat, obviously he didnt remembered the other player name, if so he would not have talked here. It is not the first time someone do this. It is, imo, understandable

"Simple" was just an expression used, it wasn't mean that your examples were complicated or anything ^^

It was more like "That is very simple to explain why we do this"

[Mythicallegend]

Hello dear staff – moderation team of PRO,

Firstly I would like to thank all of you for the efforts you spent days and days exerting, ahead on devoting a lot of time and effort for the community sake .

 

May I suggest new points to those categories,

 

1-Chat rules :

 

A) For double posting ,

*Point

- A very good edit was made which is the time lag block between each post preventing people from spamming , however the rule of double posting exist and the allowance of double posting may occur as well in case the trade chat was passing by a dead time for players.

If it happens that someone could do it as for example 2 minutes already passed without anyone posting on trade , it's his good to go to double post then since plenty of users are currently off.

 

*Suggestion

- Increase the time lag to relieve the moderator from the concern of rule of double posting spam mutes or warnings. [ Let the system deal with it automatically ]

 

Specified topics per chats,

*Point

Ratings and general topics has been split between battle and all chats ,and it is good so as to revive the battle chat meanwhile to put it all on order.

Some titles are not clearly specified , for example I had a discussion with a kind moderator from our staff about whether discussing the nature of the poke is allowed to be discussed in all chat or battle, Meanwhile he precisely was a firm on natures or ability is considered to be a rating decision and not to be asked on all chat , I find it more easier and discussable as per rate or all chat however , if it is all decided to be a battle chat thing , I recommend it would be all described on chat rules in further details with informing of course couple of times the new set of rules edit.

 

*Suggestion

Specifying more in details the battle, all chat variances on a further detailed set of rules , since the topics discussed are pretty much.

 

 

2-Trade & Forum rules :

 

A) Auctions in game,

*Point

- I would like to thank the new edits and new rules made for auctions they're really great and wise to put , however the auctions in game are kind of un-ruled ,

Some users including the auctioneer spend more time than the decided per them to increase the time auction , may this be reportable but at any cost some participants don't report it since they won it anyhow.

Some participants in the in-game auctions are not totally protective , for example they wouldn't take a screenshot for a poke that is just been posted up for auction , they might follow up the auction , and might find something they wanted to complain about has been way scrolled up in history of chat that can't be redeemed.

Some auctioneers fake disconnect or really disconnect which make the auction stuck on a temporary hold.

Some auctioneers fake raises and as though players themselves has to confirm whether the raising participant is online or not , and did raise or not , not to mention if the bidder is a friend of the auctioneer and helping him or an alt not that they could figure the ips of the user , aside note from that being it on forums wouldn't help decide if the friend of auctioneer is helping him or not can be controlled, it would definitely be punishable if his friend is the last b.o and winner and didn't confirm the deal.

Last calls feature that is permitted on in-game auctions and not applicable on forums is unfair , it can't be decided or controlled , many auctioneers use this feature at last call to keep pming every bidder with the new b.o so as to get more and more raises as much as they can get.

Not to mention there's no time duration decided between each call.

 

* Suggestion

Illegalizing in game auctions without it being posted on forums , even limited time auctions 5-10 minutes should be posted with raises screenshots per time, safe to say the in game auctions are legal but must-be posted on forums as well.

Canceling feature of last calls , let time and raises with-in a specified period decide it.

 

Auctions on forums.

*Point

Thankful to the new set of auction rules that has been made they're all great , I would just like to make it easier for our staff by making it all going automatically by system,

Whether the allowance of 15 minutes added to last minute bids is permittable as the new rules state , most likely there is always a noise going on each auction specially on a rare shiny or a good pvp poke by last minute snipers or time check posts and so on,

And so I recommend as hard I know it is to make it but one time effort and not an every auction check and arguments,

What I recommend is splitting trade chat forums to two parts , Regular selling , as means insta sells only per pokes or offers sellings on pokes.

And auction selling one , the auction selling one will have a feature of,

@The thread will allow only one post per each minute, so if two users tried to post at same minute , whoever posts first win and the system will state that the current minute is taken by a bid and to wait for next minute.

@the whole issue will be at last 10 minutes, but that shouldn't be of a problem , after all applying the new rules , the system will allow extra 15 minutes after each minute of last 10 minutes raised on bids,

So at anyhow the owner of the poke will get a fair selling for his poke , and the burden of sniping and complains will be decided but not automatically by system without the moderation staff exhausting checks on every auction for the legal winners and the illegal try-ons.

 

* Suggestion:

Developing an auction forum section that works with a system to allow one raise per each minute locked instantly per one post ,

The system will configure with the auctioneer the time of auction as much as it happens on lend service,

Allowing last 10 minutes on the on-going auction to be extended 15 more minutes per each raise at those last 10 minutes and far another 15 if raise in the last 10 minutes of the extended 15 , and so on until all bidders are not interested except the current best offering bidder for a limited time as per said .

 

3- Pvp rules :

 

A:SquirtleSquad: Banned abilities , Moves

 

*Point :

Allowing some of the banned abilities and moves with buffing or nerfing the abilities that is seen to be overpowered or weak or if the edit wouldn't matter to the ability hence the script is the same , therefore keeping it banned is fine , the point is opening new features and fun terms of new trials for our beloved ladder gamers to explore and edit with new formations of new pokes and teams

 

*Suggestion :

Checking if some of the banned abilities, moves is applicable to be unleashed with a buff or nerf edit.

 

I would like to thank all of the staff per all categories for their efforts again and their managerial skills that keeps this game on track and well adjusted and for opening this thread for fair discussion up all for the sake of PRO, thanks a lot.

Special thanks to Logan.

Regards ,

Ic3 .

Edited May 26, 2019 by Ic3thirst

[Belzebel]

One of the best changes made is allowing people to ask for help in all chat. It simplified the rules and made sense to the community. I think this should be a guide to future rule changes or additions. Rules should be simple to explain, understand, and make sense to a majority of the community.

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I am a huge fan of the recent trade auction rules. I have been very vocal about this subject for a long time and excited to watch its impact moving forward.

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I am extremely concerned about the amount of begging or spamming for help in the form of free things done through PMs. A majority of these are spam with clear intention to SCAM other players. I have expressed my concerns about this several times. Scammers pressure people into 1 on 1 conversations away from the eyes of moderation. Some very commonly used phrases are:

• "Could you please give me 5k so I can travel to another region?" - They are simply spamming as many people as they can to earn a quick buck.
  
• "Could you please give me any high level pokemon you do not use so I can beat the elite four?" - In reality, they have already beat the elite four. They just want free things with the off chance a noob gives them an epic.
  
• "Could you please give me money, I am new." - Shameless begging. No one would ever type this in trade chat.
  
• "I gave away all my stuff awhile back. Do you have any pokemon you could give me?" - Advanced form of manipulation to make you feel sorry for the scammer. How could you not give pokemon to someone that was so kind in the past?
  

Common responses from staff members are:

• "You can just ignore them." - This is not effective. As soon as the PM pops up, the feeling of frustration and disappointment has set in. Also, I do not worry about me falling victim, I fear others falling victim to the scammers.
  
• "If it annoys you, just turn off your PMs." - PRO's advantage over the Pokemon franchise games is the ability to socialize and play with friends. Having to set myself to offline because I am PM'd for free things every other time I walk into a PC is frustrating.
  
• "Asking for help is not against the rules." - This is true, however, this is what the scammers hide behind. They mask their scams through asking for help in the form of pokedollars or free pokemon. There needs to be rules preventing or discouraging scammers from hiding behind this reasoning.
  
• "If they are scamming or spamming, you can report them." - Sure. However, as a player, when someone tells me they need some money to travel to another region how am I supposed to know they are also asking 100 other people the same thing? How am I supposed to know the person they asked before me already gave them 5k and they are simply asking more people in hopes to get easy money? How am I supposed to know the sob story of giving away all their things last year to attend college is a lie devised to get me to feel sad for them?
  

The bottom line is, asking for free things should not be permitted through PMs. Asking for help is not a crime and should not be punished. Asking for free things should be though. I have been extremely vocal about this topic and provided several real situations to multiple staff members in ways PRO scammers operate with begging via PMs. There must be a more aggressive rule that prevents this predatory behavior and encourages the community to report it. Feel free to moderate how you feel, but educating the community on how to identify and report these types of scams will make it a much more enjoyable game for players at all stages of the game.

I can also relate to that. There's no way I can play the game without having PM's off. I also have to ignore people who spam friend invite. I really wish there was a way that you can only friend invite someone once. If you get denied, you should no longer be able to friend invite the person. I was also ATTACKED by a friend invite spam twice while I was in a PVP battle and my game crashed because of that. It is a really easy way to torment someone you don't like or make someones client explode while you are losing a PVP match, just to save yourself from losing rating. It is coward and disgusting.

Before you say "you could /ignore the person doing friend invite spam", sometimes their username are too hard to type and until I finish typing it, my client is already lagging and crashing.

I hope you understand my frustration.