(06-09-2016, 07:19 AM)Gulryz Wrote: So traders can base hug when you try to catch them according to new rules , what a thinking
I don't see why would any trader circle around a base, having almost no turn rate to compete with a bomber and being extremely vulnerable to their heavy armament.
Besides, you could still basehug as a trader before. Don't see how its against the rules.
(06-09-2016, 07:21 AM)Protégé Wrote: I'm really considering installing HHC mod back again.
I like the transparency of the appeals. I like clear punishments and a 3 strikes system being clarified as well as what will lead to what. I get that removings guns/equipment is not as easy as other punishments.
It does seem like the first offence for server violations is unduly harsh. Also requiring an appeal to get out of Bastille may keep out the "RUS" that aren't on the forums, but are you sure you'd rather not just take credits than deal with a flood of appeals? Like just from an efficiency perspective? Is that the administration motivation behind the rule change?
The idea behind this Nooblet is that we're less focused on the mundane aspects of the rules. Therefore, we won't sanction as often cause you REALLY need to break a rule to get slapped. Before it was "you're getting slapped for 2.4, but this part specifically."
With this new system, it's cut and dry. Think of a speed limits. You're in a city - you can only go 30 here, but here you can go 45, but only one way. That's the old rules. New rules are "here is the speed limit. 60." Go over that, you get a ticket. Under than you're fine." This is making one rule, that of course have expectations, but we won't slap for those nuances. We'll slap for outright breaking that one rule, and it will be public and if someone fights it, it'll be public and allow for everyone to see it.
So we expect sanctions to go down not up, but when one comes through, we'll slap hard.
(06-09-2016, 08:25 AM)Drrobe Wrote: The idea behind this Nooblet is that we're less focused on the mundane aspects of the rules. Therefore, we won't sanction as often cause you REALLY need to break a rule to get slapped. Before it was "you're getting slapped for 2.4, but this part specifically."
With this new system, it's cut and dry. Think of a speed limits. You're in a city - you can only go 30 here, but here you can go 45, but only one way. That's the old rules. New rules are "here is the speed limit. 60." Go over that, you get a ticket. Under than you're fine." This is making one rule, that of course have expectations, but we won't slap for those nuances. We'll slap for outright breaking that one rule, and it will be public and if someone fights it, it'll be public and allow for everyone to see it.
So we expect sanctions to go down not up, but when one comes through, we'll slap hard.
It felt like that was the impetus behind it. I was just wondering how it was going to work or the administration idea behind how it was going to be easier for all involved.
I like the Rules Clarification thread.
I'll wait and see how this goes. (I'm not sure either way to be perfectly honest.)
Posts: 2,749
Threads: 166
Joined: Nov 2009
Staff roles: Systems Developer
I'm not a fan of this change. The rules we had were fine. They weren't perfect but did the job, all we needed was adding context for each rule specifically and additional explanation of the more complex ones. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the goal of this rework creating less confusion and helping new players in understanding the rules? If yes, both were a step back. Grammar mistakes aside (which there are plenty of), the rules are way too unclear, even compared to the "old" ones. Cutting the text short and making it open to interpretation backfires more often than not.
(06-09-2016, 02:38 AM)Drrobe Wrote: The idea was just to use common sense. If you shoot someone, RP first. Don't troll people. Make one demand per pirate encounter to be fair to others. The rules were meant to be a simplified not to create confusion, but to allow people to use common sense instead of feel like they're walking on eggshells.
A key thing to note here is that "vets", or people who established themselves as a part of the community, don't really need the rules. Sure, they lurk in from time to time to make sure they don't break any just in case, or if they have some doubts, but overall they play the game by instinct, in a natural way. For them the rules are here just so that there are some limitations that prevent them from being total dicks to other players. They know how the game works and how interaction goes more or less, which is why they rarely get sanctioned (and when they do it's usually by accident) and why 95% of the sanctions are on new players.
So what does that leave us with? Newbies. A lot of people don't understand how important they are to our server. Without making a huge wall of text about that, I'll just say that without them we'd be stuck with three or four times less players in-game. If you log at any given time and look at the player list just judging by the names you'll find that at least 60-70% are new players. And that's just by looking at the names, let alone interacting with them.
The rules, aside from providing limitations, are mostly for new players. They are here to guide them in a way to understand how this mod and server work, ensure they treat other players nicely and establish themselves as solid members of the community. The "old" rules were pretty complex. A lot of newbies had problem understanding them, granted. Not because of their complexity, but rather because they had no CONTEXT. How is someone supposed to know what OOC, RP, metagaming, powergaming, reasonable demand, pvp-dead, reengaging etc. means? Without context or a clear definition they can't. They'll have a vague, self-interpreted definition to which they'll stick which is wrong more often than not. Look at the first paragraph for my proposal to solve the problem.
By cutting the text short and making the rules open to interpretation, new players get even more confused. They lose the guidelines that were there before when more text was added for each rule, and for some rules that are now "common sense" to vets such as "Cheating" which isn't clearly defined anymore, how is a new player supposed to know what exactly is considered as cheating? Same goes for any other simplified rule. This is a complex mod and having detailed rules isn't a bad idea at all, in fact it's better than having as short as possible definitions with no context or examples which is why it backfires greatly on new players. A big problem is that it's almost impossible to notice that until it's too late (when a newbie breaks the rules), and then we have to punish them through sanctions.
In addition, a version of the rules in different languages should be a introduced. There are plenty of people, more specifically new players, who can understand and write English just enough to play on the server. When reading the rules, those same players won't understand a lot of it because of their not-so-good English on top of having barely any knowledge about the game which inevitably leads to them learning it the hard way via sanctions. We can't afford to drive away any new players that don't understand perfect English anymore, we don't have 200 players daily. Adding a multi-language version with the emphasis on "2.1 Everything must be in understandable English" to make sure they still do talk in English as much as possible would help those players understand the rules significantly more, I'm sure. If I joined Discovery 2 weeks ago and had average English skills, I'd have a great problem with both understanding the actual words in the rules and the rules themselves. Were they in my native language however, one of the problems is automatically solved. I'd propose adding a version in German, French and Russian for starters, as the most of our non-UK and non-USA population is from countries speaking those languages.
My 2 cents on why I feel this change was more detrimental than beneficial. I'll be commenting the new rules and how good/bad each of them is specifically in another post. Don't get me wrong though, the current ones have potential and can be fixed to be good overall, but it'd be a lot of fixing to do.
Quote:- Demanding they drop their shields is not a reasonable demand that you can destroy them for if they refuse (Though if they do, good for you pirates)
- Demanding they drop cargo AND credits is multiple demands, and not allowed
- Demanding they give you their pants is reasonable inRP, but you can't further demand credits
Are you kiddin' me?
1) If trader fulfills "Drop your shield" demand, that means he's not going to fight you/call for help/whatever. And if he doesn't, that means he's planning to resist you anyway and is waiting for backup/good moment, therefore must be blasted the hell out of space.
2) If pirate would request too much overall, it would still fall into "unreasonable demands" category. And this actually limits RP, cause now pirate can't ask for 10 crates of sigars(pure RP demand) and some cash.
3) Same as above. It seems now pirate can either RP or make some profit. Not both.
Posts: 3,619
Threads: 326
Joined: Aug 2012
Staff roles: Server Administrator
Quote:So we expect sanctions to go down not up, but when one comes through, we'll slap hard.
Okay, so what if they're new? They accidentally say some OOC lines in chat and get sanctioned for it. They get put into Bastille. Because they're new they don't check the forums and make a new ship. They work hard on their new ship and then they accidentally write some OOC again. Sanction goes through and they have their ship deleted, as per punishments listed. They try one last time to get back to where they were and eventually they do. They accidentally break the RP before engagement rule because they've got their first ship and they want to fight with it and then they get banned for a minimum of 1 month.
Players in Bastille receive a message upon logging in that they are in a prison station and that they need to check the forums.
--------------
PSA: If you have been having stutter/FPS lag on Disco where it does not run as smoothly as other games, please look at the fix here: https://discoverygc.com/forums/showthrea...pid2306502
----------
The move to cut the rules to a shoter format is correct.
Explaining them with examples and defining border line cases as they come up in a place where one can look them up is a good call. It was really bad to look for green statements in other sanctions.
The sanction system (3 strikes) is a lot clearer and the attitude of "oh well, it's only guns & equipment - let's just do it!" will likely change. There is no "cheap sanction you can just risk" any more.
Like with any change, there are of course some things that might have to be discussed and changed if necessary.
Time will tell.
(06-09-2016, 02:38 AM)Drrobe Wrote: The idea was just to use common sense.
I took my time several times in the past to point out how such thing exists in theory only and not in practice. I won't bother this time, I'll just let you find out yourselves that we are not in a fairy tale or utopia.
(06-09-2016, 06:51 AM)sindroms Wrote:
(06-09-2016, 06:45 AM)Tunicle Wrote:
(06-09-2016, 06:27 AM)sindroms Wrote: 4.2 Piracy demands must be kept within reason and abide fairplay between players.
That probably encapuslates what we were after.
Then please remove the specific about there being ONE demand. If there are two consequetive demands that are used in order to coax a trader to decline the demand and be killed, it falls under said rule above and 1.2 . Remove the ''one demand'' part and there should be no more problems the rule catching demands that are a RP consequence rather than a piracy demand.
Yes, please.
EDIT:
(06-09-2016, 08:25 AM)Drrobe Wrote: With this new system, it's cut and dry. Think of a speed limits. You're in a city - you can only go 30 here, but here you can go 45, but only one way. That's the old rules. New rules are "here is the speed limit. 60." Go over that, you get a ticket. Under than you're fine." This is making one rule, that of course have expectations, but we won't slap for those nuances. We'll slap for outright breaking that one rule, and it will be public and if someone fights it, it'll be public and allow for everyone to see it.
Right now it looks more like "The speed limit is much bigger than what it was before." and the clarification thread is a barchoba to find out what exactly it is.