BanID #2819 - requesting answer from M_M God

[M_M God]

Well, that you were banned for a year for your first offense is nothing we can control nor decided upon. That was done solely by SSC Ops. We however do follow protocol when you were netbanned a second time, which is a year ban. Also, if you could have just taken the time to look around on either Trenchwars.org (http://trenchwars.org/index.php?v=staff) OR contacted us via forums, which you obviously still use/have access to, you could have easily contacted us, instead of trying to evade to appearantly contact us, which only caused you to either get your ban extended or to be looked upon as frequent evader. I already asked Demonic to give her opinion on this matter.

[Morh]

It's not very smart to use cheats in TW. Especially after being banned for it in the past. How he lashed out on the forums after getting banned again, were also not very smart. But, no harm were done and people have gotten away with worse. Either let him back or reban cheaters like vys, mythril, delectable and so on. people were lenient with them, why not be lenient with this guy too? Hell I'v used wallhacks and speedhacks in TW pub in the past, evaded multiple bans, and I never even got banned for it. Also, about the whole hosting and distributing of cheats from Wingmasters homepage accusations back in 2005? yes it were true. Why don't you ban me now since past transgressions can haunt you forever, right?

[2pac]

Well I think your sources aren't that solid, Exalt. Let me try again to clarify some things with you, 2pacz can either correct it if he thinks we're wrong or admit to it and have sorrow of his past actions and ask for some sort of last chance type of thing: He was banned for 3 months in August 2013, evaded the same day, then evaded again on September 6th 2013 and saw his banned up to its current state. And that was actually pretty lenient from our side, seeing he's already had a previous netban and a current one up. Instead of evading/blaming SSC and TW BanG Ops and lowering himself to make a complete fool out of himself on the forums, he could have tried to sit out his 3 months ban and he would have already been done with. Or, come talk to or email one of us sysops/banG ops and see what we would be able to do for him in case he would promise us he would see this as his last chance. See what i'm getting at here?
Also, oo.oo had been staff in TW before, then moved to DSB, worked himself up to Event Sysop there before he moved back to TW. I'm just saying, you never know what type of people you recruit in your staff/squad/etc, you only find out their real personality after actually giving them the chance. If we hadn't, good staffers would be hard to find nowadays..

You have yet again failed to realize that my 1st ban I over-served by 9 months. When that was my 1st time cheating in this game in the zone I staffed in previously. I got banned a year for that and served a year. Also "come talk to or email one of us sysops/banG ops" How can I contact you guys by email I can't you guys have no emails listed. The only reason I evaded the ban was to get SSC Netops to respond to my Tickets why else would I want to evade the ban I'm pretty sure they would have found out who I was and you guys did, cause I talked to staff then once they saw me evade to get help, you guys extended my ban.


M_M God> then evaded again on September 6th 2013 and saw his banned up to its current state.

That above is incorrect my ban changed on November 17th 2013 thats when it was extended to Aug 17th 2014. I then evaded ban and ask L_E what was up, she said she had previously talked with staff from DS, a zone which was dead. Thus ban was upgraded and my NETban was extended.

Other members who have played this game have done one WAY worse than me and continue to keep playing and they know who they care and have gotten away with it before a mod could get involved.


SSC Netops need to see the rules and it say:
Cheating - Performing any action that an unmodified client is incapable of performing. Developing, distributing, or promoting cheat software. Minimal 90 day net ban for first offence.

Minimal 90 days. That ban was for 1 year and I didn't evade that ban. I served that ban from a dead zone and then when I was released that zone was GONE off of zone lists. Then I started to play TW. Also regarding my TW history - I'm an active player - http://twd.trenchwars.org/profile/6409/squadhistory We started around the same time EPH.

Also Zeebu please stop ruining my thread, I don't need another troll double posting in my thread to up their post count thank you

I would like to get touch with Demonic and get her/his take on this.

Thank again to my supporters. Mythril thats one of my boys big shout outs to him. Big ups to my boy Raazi, GTL brah we comin back soon, and shout outs to the rest of my boys, thanks you.

[M_M God]

Well I think your sources aren't that solid, Exalt. Let me try again to clarify some things with you, 2pacz can either correct it if he thinks we're wrong or admit to it and have sorrow of his past actions and ask for some sort of last chance type of thing: He was banned for 3 months in August 2013, evaded the same day, then evaded again on September 6th 2013 and saw his banned up to its current state. And that was actually pretty lenient from our side, seeing he's already had a previous netban and a current one up. Instead of evading/blaming SSC and TW BanG Ops and lowering himself to make a complete fool out of himself on the forums, he could have tried to sit out his 3 months ban and he would have already been done with. Or, come talk to or email one of us sysops/banG ops and see what we would be able to do for him in case he would promise us he would see this as his last chance. See what i'm getting at here?
Also, oo.oo had been staff in TW before, then moved to DSB, worked himself up to Event Sysop there before he moved back to TW. I'm just saying, you never know what type of people you recruit in your staff/squad/etc, you only find out their real personality after actually giving them the chance. If we hadn't, good staffers would be hard to find nowadays..

[Hydride]

You still evaded instead of having it corrected through proper means (assuming it would have actually been up).
Pro move, admitting to evading though. See ya in 2015!

That is the kind of attitude why people hate staff.

No reason to be so condescending towards him. He has some legit points. He made the tickets, but never got responded too, and he also had a ban extended on the same day it was supposed to be up... seems a little intense to me.

With the game in the state it is, not everything should be so black and white. When you act like that, it just makes people hate staff even more. And they should. Kind of a dink way to go about it. You're not Rudy.


Also, the rules are so outdated... Let's get real here. I understand fis' point of having a strict rule set in place where there is no room for "Well we shouldnt ban him because"
But the length of ban shouldn't be 1 year netban. By the time the kid gets back this game could be dead. It's why we changed our rules for racism, etc. Before we would just ban a player. Now we silence them or simply lock them out of bombing ships. Why can't we also change the rules for cheating. Cause we don't really see people using hacks very often. 1 year just seems so over the top for these current times, even if its multiple offense. If it's a pattern of he gets off, cheats every single time.. then yeah sure, ban for life. But goddamn. Give the dude a break LOL.

[fiS]

I think MM has pretty much nailed it. I admit, I do not know the whole story behind this, and I doubt that you guys do.

Also, someone said "he didn't cheat in TWL final but in gatez2 with 5 people, doesn't matter" - But it does. Trench Wars Rules clearly say that NO CHEATING is tolerated. Doesn't matter where, how, when, with how many people. Else we might just end up with a lot of people cheating at dead times in pub or wherever because "it just doesn't matter, nobody cares". There MUST be a strict border to cheating and we have one and it's being enforced. Else where would we end up....?

Also 2pac, I don't think anyone is asking you crawl into someone's butt. And I do also see a change in how how you are approaching the whole ban situation (in the forums) differently right now, less hate, less anger. But a bit of insight is what is lacking. You should be at least admitting to what you've done and that it was stupid instead of only looking at the flaws at SSC/TW ban side and requesting their retirement. (You of course have a right to criticize that. But take a look at yourself, too)

[Ephemeral]

Just let the guy play the game we all religiously play. He's put a lot of time into the game whether he's a dick or not is irrelevant. Give him a banfree for a year, if he cheats again and then lifeban. If he breaks any rule or racism etc and then reban him for the remainder of the ban. Case closed

IMO if we love the game then we care about how we spend our precious resources (time and money). If we care about how we spend our resources then we would rather see them consumed on productive things instead of wasting them on idiots who exploit.

We already did what you suggest, he was given a second chance. You are making a case for a ‘3 strike’ approach, fuck up a third time and then you get lifeban. Just curious, what makes you think that third time will be the charm?
eph

[Zeebu]

at this point, hes asking for a favor. you dont hoot, holler and demand things. you ask. nicely. start off by being a part of the community without being a twat for a bit.

if that goes against his online persona, fuck him.

[Zeebu]

and im not opposed to that as long as he shuts the hell up and gets along with people

otherwise, why would anyone bother?

[Vys]

Just let the guy play the game we all religiously play. He's put a lot of time into the game whether he's a dick or not is irrelevant. Give him a banfree for a year, if he cheats again and then lifeban. If he breaks any rule or racism etc and then reban him for the remainder of the ban. Case closed

[Zeebu]

moral of the story, dont cheat then be a dickhole to the only people that could help you get out of it.

[Zeebu]

my thoughts, 2pacz is being a dickhole. since he is being a dickhole, i could give a flying fuck if he is ever unbanned.


this is my take on the situation

[Exalt]

Okay, this makes much more sense. Thank you for taking the time to clarify the situations MM God and Shadow. This kind of stuff, where you upper-staff guys in the know, explaining to the rest of us on the outside (looking in), is what I respect the most about this current crop of staff. This is the kind of transparency that basically allows these kinds of situations to die down. The communication aspect between staff (especially upper-staff) and players was always.. well, to put in lightly...BAD... in the past. I can at least see a large difference in that communication these days, and that's refreshing to say the least. This kind of stuff gives me hope that the current crop of staff members actually do give a fuck about the rest of the community. I'm not saying that they didn't in the past, but they certainly didn't want to tell the rest of us about their plans or what they hoped to achieve in the past, and that seems to be changing. I for one appreciate that. SO, for someone like me that consistently seems to be on staff's case so much on various issues, I also would like to say thank you for allowing things to be different on that level, at least in the communication and attempts at transparency aspects. I still don't agree with everything, but that's to be expected. At least I can now know your side of the story as well, so it isn't completely one-sided based on either A) 2pacZ's side or B) Lefty or whoever banned him's side of the story. This whole bout of communication can only be a good thing. Thanks for that.

If I may nitpick just a lil bit though, here's a few things I do not agree with:

1. While Desert Storm was an SSC zone in the past, how long has that zone been dead for? Does anyone know exactly how many years? Beyond that, why do we trust the opinions of old staff members from that dead zone, when they were not recruited by anyone in Trenchwars (which in my opinion, even with how bad some staff members have proven to be, has always had the BEST group of staff compared to any other zone), and so their standards could have been completely screwy. We simply don't know what those standards were, do we? 2pac stated that even he was staff in that zone at one time. There have been many players that I've talked to from other zones that were former staff members of those zones (usually dead ones), and they were axed from staff and possibly even banned from those zones due to power struggles within those zones. Actually, the only player I've ever seen kicked out from my current squad (Lightning Strike), which tends to recruit almost anyone and everyone due to the mission statement of trying to help new players A) get better and B) enjoy TWD/TWL when they probably wouldn't be accepted by other squads, was a player named 17.5. That player came from EG, and he was a former SMOD of EG apparently. Now, I won't get into details not only because my squad captains (vermillion flame and company) are nice people, and I highly doubt they want to let dirty laundry of any member/former member getting out. Besides the details, the reason this player was axed was due to this player being pretty much being horribly mentally ill. I won't get into details further than that, but the guy was simply psychotic. This player was actually a high-ranking staff member of a popular zone like EG. That alone kind of shows me that another SSC zone, which is fairly popular even, has some horrible recruiting practices of their staff members. I can't imagine what would happen in EG if a player that is obviously psychotic/mentally ill (for real, he's sick in the head) would have banG powers. I imagine it would've been quite easy to be banned in EG by a player like that, and possibly people could've been innocent, yet that stigma still is attached to them. Trenchwars would take that old ban into account with their own bans? I fail to see why this is a good thing.

I mean, if you want an example that's far more close to home... remember oo.oo? Was he not a sysop of DSB or something like that? We let him into staff in TW due to his credentials as staff in another SSC zone. How well did that turn out? That guy went batshit crazy himself trying to ban people for no reason. Can we admit that other zone's staff members are not the same quality as Trenchwar's staff? As much as I complain about staff in our zone, even at our worst times with our wost group of staff members, I will willingly admit that our absolute worst/most abusive staff members were probably saints compared to some of the upper staff members of other zones. This is why I don't understand why Trenchwars even CONSIDERS bans in other SSC zones as having any legitimacy inside Trenchwars. I mean... cmon guys! Our staff is night and day better than any other group of staff in any other zone. I mean all of those other zones are seriously too thick-headed and egotistical to even merge with each other to make their zones viable and not completely dead, let alone work with Trenchwars and actually help the game of subspace survive and perhaps possibly thrive. They would rather let their zones DIE completely rather than at least let their legacy live on inside Trenchwars. I just think that the stupidity of those staff members in other zones proves that we shouldn't trust them whatsoever on any decision, let alone bans on players.

2. As far as I've been able to understand it, SOMEONE in TW (if it wasn't Lefty, than someone else did it) netbanned 2pac locally from TW for 3 months. They apparently made the mistake of not checking his previous bans (in Desert Storm, a dead zone, which I already pointed out why this is stupid to care about the bans that happened in other zones already in my 1st point), and so they assumed this was his first offense. Due to that, Lefty (or whoever it was) banned 2pacZ for 3 months. As far as I DO know, 2pac did NOT evade that 3 month ban. He served his time. On the day that his ban was up, he tried to enter TW and discovered that Lefty had added MORE time to his ban after finally deciding to check up on his previous offenses. To ME this means double-jeopardy, and it is cruel and unusual punishment if we are going to make more American Judicial System analogies. Yes, I realize that TW is not a democracy or based on any American Judicial System (it's more like the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which basically means you have no rights whatsoever), but we've been apparently making this analogy quite a bit in this thread, so I continue to do so. This is the reason OJ Simpson is not in prison for murder, even though it was obvious he did it. He was acquitted in a criminal court of law, and therefore he cannot be tried again legally for the same crime. Yes, he lost in civil court, but that is entirely different. My point there is that you already sentenced 2pac to a 3 month ban. After the fact, you decided to add a NEW punishment to his original crime, which seems morally wrong in my eyes. It goes against almost every judicial system in the world, beyond dictatorships and backward 3rd world countries, and I don't think TW should consider itself either a dictatorship or a 3rd world country.

3. As far as I understand it, 2pac didn't evade during his original 3 month ban. IF he DID evade during his ORIGINAL 3 month ban, then I understand why staff added time to his punishment. IF he evaded AFTER his 3 month ban (meaning after he was given ANOTHER sentence based on his original crime), then I don't believe this should be used as a legit reason for adding time to his sentence. Do you get my point here? Everyone keeps mentioning that he tried to escape from jail and so he was given more time to his sentence, but if he didn't try to escape until he was basically let free and then the judge in the case decided to wrongly add another year to his sentence, then how is that not understandable? I'd try to evade to if that happened to me. I think anyone would, due to it being pretty ridiculous.

I have to go for a bit, but I'll probably edit this post and add a few more numbers to my list. Like I said, it is nitpicking, but overall I am impressed and proud of staff for being able to finally communicate with the general public in ways that NEVER used to happen in the past, and also for the general transparency that you guys have been trying to show for the rest of us. Thank you for that.

[Ephemeral]

Here is my prediction. 2Pac is an attention whore who has no remorse and only his intention is to stand out in a crowd. He has made no contributions to the zone and will not make any moving forward. He will, in fact, continue to suck resources by trying to draw attention to himself in any way possible. He will continue to push the boundaries instead of just playing the game for enjoyment. We will wait a year and revisit this thread; I truly hope he proves me wrong.
eph

[Ephemeral]

This is a difficult topic, historically and geographically justice systems have vacillated between ‘punishment’ and ‘reform’.

Those that look at justice as a form of punishment see its value as being to deter others. There is little compassion for those who have offended, they are used as an example to show what can happen when you fuck up. Whether or not you subscribe to this perspective you have to acknowledge its effectiveness; the greater the punishment the greater the perceived risk. Having examples of those who are held responsible for their actions is indeed a strong message to others.
On the other hand you have those who see justice purpose as being that of reform. They believe that the objective of punishment should be to ‘teach the person a lesson’ and that people can emerge from the other side of their punishment as being a better person for it. Of course while this is certainly a more compassionate approach its detractors have piles of real data that shows that this rarely works.

SubSpace, and its subset of TW, have traditionally been a lot about deterrence. Few people gave a fuck about the handful of dickheads who exploited a free online game for whatever warped reasons and excuses they had. This was an easy when the community had plenty of population but now it appears that this is being reconsidered. We could debate the wisdom of trying to retain every single player no matter how they behave and its impact of the community but let’s just assume that this is what the direction is. (And this is certainly appears to be true over the last few years with the lifting of the bans in some cases).

So we come to reform. A case can be made by using a person like Vys. Here is a guy who fucked up, paid the price, and now appears to be a contributing member of the community. Maybe the guy matured and no longer feels the need to break the rules or maybe he enjoys playing the game and doesn’t want to risk being caught/punished again. Only he can really tells us what he was thinking and how he sees things now.

But here is the rub. To consider reform you have to start thinking about ‘intent’ of the person. Perhaps in Vys case his intent was only to enter a near empty arena and ‘test’ a known hack. If true then perhaps his was a good case to consider for reform; his actions since then have appears to verify that this is probably true.

So what are other possible ‘intents’? Well, a person could break rules with the intent of winning, of being ‘better’ than other players. I guess for some folks they can set aside logic and just focus on making themselves feel better. Is this type of person going to be reformed? If so, how do you tell? If the approach is to give them the benefit of doubt then how many times do you allow them to ‘reform’?

What about a person who’s intent is simply that of ‘attention whore’? You know, someone who originally broke the rules so be noticed. Can they be reformed from this behavior or will a attention whore always be a attention whore? A typical example is someone who loves to push the boundaries of the anti-racism policy in the zone. Anyone have any examples of a player who used to be this way but now has reformed?

And now to 2pac. What was his original intent? And has he reformed and shown that whatever drove him to previously break the rules is now no longer an issue? Or has he shown more contempt and no remorse?

And speaking to using ‘real world’ examples. No one gets a free pass in life, once you are convicted of a crime you pay a price the rest of your life. In this country you might be forced to wear a electronic ankle bracelet, report for years to probation officer, lose the right to vote, lose the right to carry a firearm, or not be allowed to live within 500 yards of a school, etc. Point is, we simply don’t just turn offenders back into the community with a pat on the back and a ‘good luck’. What does TW have to ensure that the cheater has indeed reformed or to help the player become a good member of the community?

The reality is that you would have to be a fucking dumbass to further alienate TW staff since they are some of the few that might be able to help you with the Billing involvement. Look at LF, here was a guy with a proven track record of contributing to TW on virtually every level (time and money) yet he got tangled up with Billing and TW staff can only do so much. Yet we think that TW staff should help 2Pac?
eph