[ANNOUNCEMENT] - TRIAL - Discrimination/Racism/Spam Silences to become Zone Bans

[Jessup]

Why is staff not enforcing this? I've made 3 calls in the last week with screenshots of offenses by people using bigoted / banned slurs laid out by staff as breaking the rules set in this thread and I received zero responses and zero action. Starting to believe this has become another high and mighty. "Rules for thee and not for me" by staff. Please respond to cheater or help calls and start to enforce this as you said you would. I'd appreciate staff reaching out to me as I have requested multiple contacts from you all and yet to receive even one back.

[godisdead]

Banning them is a great idea, they are one of the reasons the player base continues to stagnate.

[Subspacer2001]

Just give them 1-100 year silences. This would be good so they couldn't buy attachmode or ballpower. Banning people from a game that got about 100 players is maybe not that good idea.

[renzi]

Actually you evaded my ignore as well so it wasn't just once.

It was two times, general faggot. Get over it

[RageRitual]

It was one time, captain faggot 🙄

Actually you evaded my ignore as well so it wasn't just once.

[TheSauce]

[Falconeer]

It's a bigger problem to ban someone from a game over text. The words of a troll I can ?ignore and their text does not infringe on my freedom or take away my choice. Whereas a ban infringes on peoples freedom and takes away their choice. So what's actually more problematic are the people asking to ban other players, in 20 years of playing subspace i never demanded anyone be banned from the game. And I've had whole communities insulting me, attacking me, none stop. So I'd actually argue the people asking for bans are up to no good, they want to actually harm others due to some vendetta, they really aren't moral people themselves, and so they have no moral high ground. And they are too prideful with too much ego to use ?ignore, or otherwise they thrive on the conflict. Because otherwise their problems would go away by permanently ?ignoring a player.

Basically when you introduce bans, you introduce intolerance. And you're no longer saying subspace is "a game where you meet people from all over the world and then kill them", but rather it's a game shaped by a few players who only want the people they like interacting with, in "their" game. So with bans subspace is run by a few people with like minds who are yes people to each other. Usually elitists/league players since they are prioritized in every zone. Also notice it's always the same people who are staff in every zone who decide everything. As a side note: A lot of trench wars mods I've never seen before back in 1997, 2002, 2006? when were their names created? what are all their aliases etc?

If we got new players daily, then no matter how many players were banned that a specific group of players didn't like it would be hard for that group of players to make a game based only on people they like - since the amount of new players arriving daily would be overwhelming. So bans would still be morally problematic in the case of many new players but at least it wouldn't be possible for a group of players to shape the game in their image.

Also remember, few players in subspace are actually innocent, we've even had staff and net ops who did crummy stuff back in 2002, like take down whole zones because of some personal vendetta with someone. And that's the person who became staff and oversees network bans? lol. These people calling to ban others often engage in the same if not worse behaviour and they get to judge other people as being bad for the game? 10 minutes later after successfully banning someone/getting someone banned they basically engage in the same behaviour if not worse. So a ban would make more sense if there was no double standard or hypocrisy, but in zones like pro league or hockey zone, double standards and hypocrisy is all you will find. And many of those players play in trench wars or staff in trench wars.

So to me a ban is always morally problematic. However, I disagree with aliasing, and ?ignore evading. I've never done this in subspace either. I've always had one name and used it. I've even had people who decide who is staff telling me I can be TW staff, BUT I must change my name, and I refused. That's how against aliasing I am. And the reason I never ?ignore evade is because I've always been in agreement that if ?ignore doesn't work bans become necessary. So if proven that the person is aliased to harass a specific person who ?ignored them, that might be one of the few legitimate reasons for a ban.

Plus ignore and silence are bans on the persons text already. Their presence in the zone shouldn't matter to you if that already solves the problem. Silence would be stopping a problem, whereas banning is considered punishment, because silence exists as an option. And punishment is not a good deterrent, it's not healthy and not as effective as other means, for example treating people like human beings is a way to actually deter bad behaviour. And similarly if it's true that silences can be evaded, so can bans, so you actually solved nothing in the end really. The silence system should work like the ban system, silencing a player based on IP, MAC ID, username, all known aliases previously recorded for that player and so on. It should have already been basically up to par with the ban system, and if it's not, then the proper response is to get development on it until it is, not to enforce bans.

[renzi]

bro you evade ignores. you are stupid as fuck.

It was one time, captain faggot 🙄

[Werewolf]

Just ban the assholes. We all know who they are...
There are several toxic players that ruin the game and certainly chase off any new players. They are the ones ruin this game. Ignore doesn't work, they just sign out and sign back in, or switch nicks.

[Rab]

This is so stupid lol there is an ignore feature. The fuck? You people need to go outside

bro you evade ignores. you are stupid as fuck.

[renzi]

This is so stupid lol there is an ignore feature. The fuck? You people need to go outside

[Falconeer]

This looks pretty bad imo, 1st offence = warning for how long? the rest of the year? that same day? And one day ban for spam that is left up to the discretion of the mod. Spam has always been an arbitrary rule in zones with no clear definition or guideline. Literally always has been based on the personal preference of each individual mod and their feelings toward that player. Typically used by abusive mods as an excuse to ban someone they dislike.

Also the game already has a spam filter that disconnects you if you type too fast. And likewise if someone want's to monologue in the zone/spec chat and isn't copying pasting anything it's very hard to declare it spam. This is what ?ignore is for.

You already have a silence system that can't be evaded and acts as a ban, it punishes based on the offense. IE a text offense = text taken away. It was your choice to allow players to lift their silences through play time though. Could have just opted to keep them silenced for 30 days, especially on repeat offences.

You don't need a trial system for a method of moderating we've had for 20 years. I've been netbanned across SCCU 5 times, didn't do anything, and I evaded. And it even lead to one of the reasons Polix quit the game. Bans will just make players smarter and they will learn to unban. And this 20 year trial of bans it didn't prove to make the game less toxic, if anything it's more toxic and less alive as a result. More toxic from the people who want bans, and those who get banned all around.

A ban for discrimination in text is also funny. Discrimination happens every day in trench wars league, the game is so elitist and anti-new player. Start banning your league players for discrimination, they are the most guilty of it. The only clear thing that could actually be moderated without bias is racism.

Hookecho might as well rename to Hoch.

TLDR: If you changed it to bans for racism and silence for everything else I'd still be against it, but at least it would be 100 times better.

[Grasps]

MMR is cancer. If anyone in charge remotely cares about the zone, abolish it sooner than later. Otherwise good work!

[Hookecho]

Good stuff, can we clarify that everyone is on the same starting line when this is introduced? And any previous offences are reset to run in line with this new enforcement action?

Also, could we have a review of MMR and have a similar table for people leaving games? I still think that is a grey area and subjected to the host and there relationship with the player in question.

I like the direction you guys are going.

Infractions here work similarly to drivers license points where they fall off of your account after a certain amount of time. In our case that is 90 days. With that being said, no, nothing is being reset to zero. If you haven't been banned in the last 90 days, you are already effectively at zero. I think this makes sense for 95% of our population. The 5% that may be impacted could avoid it by being on their best behavior for a while.

I also feel like the MMR arena is a grey area at the moment, unfortunately. That's partly due to it being in beta and still having kinks worked out. It is something we've been discussing in the leadership, at least a call to have some more concise rules for MMR hosting. We're hoping some of the more recent improvements Dwop is talking about above will help curb some of the MMR crazy, but we'll still keep working on getting a more structured guideline for the arena/game system. Thanks for your feedback.

[Dwopple]

If we're going to crack down on MMR leaving, there's a couple of things we have to do first:
- Prevent aliasing, same 1-2 ppl making new names every few days. Bot can't balance if a 2-10 player is 3k rated.

Hopefully this change will resolve the majority of this issue: https://forums.trenchwars.com/tsl/mm...r-registration