Erk
Knight
Am I the only one that has the impression that gameplay is constantly broken by people requiring admin intervention?
I'll give a few examples that most people who have played for a while will recognize:
* Robberies:
* Wars:
* Bounties, assassinations:
* Metagaming:
In a populated server, admins will take time to show up. This means that all these complaints effectively stop immersion. The whining to admins and discussions about rules are CONSTANT.
On the administration side, there is pressure to provide answers and move on to the next case, which means that a lot of the times rushed answers are provided. Of course, this ends up meaning that admins judge most cases based on the reputation of the player, leading to the famous bias in the judgments and people trying to "befriend" the administration members desperately. Given that we are all vulnerable to fall for adulation (and specially young people, sorry), this is a real issue.
My proposal is the following:
Do not intervene in game except in cases of major trolling / randoming or VERY disruptive behaviors. Deal with the complaints via forums instead but make sure to impose "standardized" and harsher punishments.
I see a lot of benefits to this:
- Less likely to make a false accusation if you know it is going to be thoroughly investigated.
- Border edge situations will probably not be reported.
- Decisions become publicly observable so less room for admin abuse, specially if more than one admin is required to make a decision about a case.
In addition, I would suggest forbidding admins to use their RP name as an admin name. When RPing, admins should not mention / reveal their admin status in a server. When administrating via the forums, admins should choose a different name that complicates identification and not reveal it to players.
Discussion about drawbacks - hidden admin identity
Discussion about drawbacks - dealing with complaints in forums
Discussion - what to do if whining still occurs
I'll give a few examples that most people who have played for a while will recognize:
* Robberies:
The moment you attempt to rob someone of more than the miserable 500-1000 gold coins, odds are this person will call an admin. Usually, you are greeted by: "You can't rob this much, learn the rules noob. LOL. Calling an admin, wait" or similar statements. The person will then proceed to stop interacting with you in character and claim that if you attack him, it will be a random attack.
* Wars:
Endless times I have seen people declaring that a war is illegal and arguing over it in global. War rules keep changing across servers (need for a RP reason, number of messages, waiting times, waiting times before rejoining a fight, spawn killing, surrenders...), people end up being afraid of actually breaking any rules so they actually interrupt their attacks.
* Bounties, assassinations:
Almost every single assassination I have seen is followed by a long time arguing with the administration over the validity of the reason to issue the contract or whether all the assassination rules were followed. Again, rules keep changing so this leads to a lot of confusion.
* Metagaming:
Faction chat metagaming, global metagaming, TS, steam, name it. One of the worst, since it is very difficult to establish when metagaming has occurred. Again, it usually leads to VERY long discussions with the players involved.
On the administration side, there is pressure to provide answers and move on to the next case, which means that a lot of the times rushed answers are provided. Of course, this ends up meaning that admins judge most cases based on the reputation of the player, leading to the famous bias in the judgments and people trying to "befriend" the administration members desperately. Given that we are all vulnerable to fall for adulation (and specially young people, sorry), this is a real issue.
My proposal is the following:
Do not intervene in game except in cases of major trolling / randoming or VERY disruptive behaviors. Deal with the complaints via forums instead but make sure to impose "standardized" and harsher punishments.
I see a lot of benefits to this:
- Less likely to make a false accusation if you know it is going to be thoroughly investigated.
- Border edge situations will probably not be reported.
- Decisions become publicly observable so less room for admin abuse, specially if more than one admin is required to make a decision about a case.
In addition, I would suggest forbidding admins to use their RP name as an admin name. When RPing, admins should not mention / reveal their admin status in a server. When administrating via the forums, admins should choose a different name that complicates identification and not reveal it to players.
Discussion about drawbacks - hidden admin identity
I do understand that this is not necessarily enforceable to a 100%. But the current situation is even less desirable. Everyone knows who is an admin and this breaks immersion. You don't piss off a RPing admin, this is well known. Even if he doesn't come back to judge his own case (which constantly happens), odds are he will use his influence to screw you.
Discussion about drawbacks - dealing with complaints in forums
I understand that an issue with this suggestion could be that players get pissed off because some unfair events happen in game and they can't do much about it, which leads to frustration. However, I feel that the current situation is worse. In addition, let's be realistic, not that many people play PW. Knowing that the threat of being banned via forums from a popular server was real, most people would avoid breaking the rules to start with.
Discussion - what to do if whining still occurs
A further complication is that people could still complaint and whine in game, discussing over the future evaluation of the case in the forums. I don't have a good answer for this; maybe one could write a rule that specifies that whining off character should be treated in RP as a deranged person, allowing people who DO NOT want to have such discussions to deal with the whiners in a RP manner. For instance, demanding them to stop stalking you or face the sharp end of the sword.