The Art of Punishment

[kitolani]

I thought that in the light of recent events, these pointers should be reviewed.

There are very few rules in this mud, but we expect our players to follow the
few there are, mainly because they are fair and because there is a sensible
reason behind each of them. The overall and main rule is to use your own
common sense. Behave like a jerk and you'll be treated like a jerk. You reap
what you sow, in muds as in RL. It is as simple as that.
*
Below are the 4 most important rules.
1. Racial, sexual or religious slurs on any channels are NOT acceptable.
   Excessive spamming or harassing of other players is also not acceptable.
   As spam is defined repeating of the same message or action over and over
   again with the intent of annoying. This includes repeated Pkilling.
2. Multiplaying is not allowed. You can create and play as many chars as you
   like, but if you are caught logging them on simultaneously, you get a
   warning at first offence, char demoted at second and deleted at third.
3. Bugs are meant to be reported, not abused. If you find a bug and report it,
   expect to get rewarded. If you find a bug and abuse it, expect to be
   punished.
4. Pkilling or player killing is allowed, as long as you follow the PK rules.
*
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BEHAVIOR BEHAVIOUR COURTESY POLITENESS CIVILITY
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BEHAVIOR RULES
1. Excessively bad language, sexual and racial slurs are NOT acceptable. In
   particular not in public, (i.e. open channels, in your title, on all the
   Boards and in the entire Recall area).
2. OOC, RL threats are totally unacceptable, and will most likely end up
   getting you sitebanned.
3. Imms should be treated with respect. Like it or not, they run this mud,
   and that makes them your superior. If you have a complaint about an imm,
   mail the imps about it.
4. When an imm tells you to do something, you are supposed to obey at once
   without any lengthy arguments. If an imm makes a request, there is always
   a good reason for it, even if it's not immediately apparent to YOU. If
   you still disobey after being warned, the imm is allowed to use whatever
   measures needed to force you, (smite, slay or freeze).
5. When an imm tells you to get off the open channels, you'd better do so.
   You'll get three warnings, then you will be muted.

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PUNISH1 1
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This isn't one of those Muds where power-tripping imms run around smiting and
slaying players, just to show their powers. However, you should be aware that
there are quite a few punishments that could be inflicted on you, should you
choose to behave like a jerk. Below is a list of what the punishments do.
*
1. JAIL. The culprit is placed in a locked prison cell, which is no-recall and
   no-magic. It is possible for other players to help you out of it, and they
   are allowed to do so, IF they want to. If you haven't made any friends in
   the game who are willing to help you out - tough luck! It is primarily the
   choice of the other players if they wish to let you back into their society
   again or not. If you log off the game you'll reappear in jail on log-on.
2. DEATH SENTENCE FROM PLAYERS. This punishment is usually administered on
   newbie killers and players who repeatedly pkill without cause and get a
   KILLER flag for it. If no imms are on line, the older players are likely to
   take the law in their own hands. They might or they might not let you keep
   your equipment after they killed you. (See also HELP PKILL.)
3. IGNORE. If you are very annoying, and keep sending unwanted tells to
   players or imms, they can put you on ignore. As you'll find, it is not much
   fun to be ignored by people. A word of warning: Don't take your
   grievances to open channels, if you are being ignored; this will only make
   things worse.
*
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PUNISH2 2
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4. MUTE. This is the first measure taken against spammers or harassers. It
   means that you will lose all channels except say; you'll not be able to use
   GOSSIP, TELL etc. The punishment usually stays until you have apologized to
   all involved, and convinced the imms that it won't happen again.
5. HELL. This is the next step to deal with spammers and harassers. You will
   be transported to a  no-recall, soundproof area, where you will remain
   until pardoned by the Admin. If you have acted bad enough to be put in
   Hell, don't expect to be let out again very soon.
6. FREEZE. All commands will be taken from you except look. You will be placed
   in a room called the Freezer, where you will remain as long as it pleases
   the imm who put you there. You can quit of course, but next time you log on
   you'll still be frozen. If you log on a new char, we'll allow it - for
   just as long as that char behaves. At first offense that char is frozen
   too.
*
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PUNISH3 3
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7. COVENTRY. This blocks all output from your char, without you even noticing
   it yourself. Whatever you say, gossip, emote or express on any channel, can
   not be monitored by any other players. Consequently they will ignore you
   completely. You might as well not exist.
8. NEWBAN. This punishment is used on notorious spammers, who keep logging on
   new chars after the first is frozen. It prevents any new chars to be made
   from that site, but it doesn't prevent already established chars from
   entering. The newban stays for as long as the problem prevails.
9. DEMOTION. Behave like an ass and you might find your char demoted to level
   one. Keep up the bad behaviour and we might delete your equipment too. Keep
   it up a bit more and you are likely to become a permanent level 1 player.
10. BAN. This ultimate punishment prevents any char from connecting to the mud
   from a certain site. Since it is a rather drastic measure, which also
   affects other players logging on from the same site, it is rarely used. In
   most cases deletion of the char and Newban is preferred.
*
See also: EMOTE, GOSSIP, SAY, TELL
See also: BEHAVIOR, IGNORE, KILLER, PKILL, PUNISH1, PUNISH2, RULES

[Molly]

Umm, I see that Point 2 under Punish1 should be revised, since it applies to an older time, when non PKillers could still get attacked and you'd get a Killer flag for doing it. I'll get along to fixing that when I have a spare moment.

Otherwise my comment is this:

We are generally pretty tolerant on this mud, since we believe that people should be regarded as innocent, until proven guilty (which sometimes can be hard on a Mud where player privacy is respected). Some say that we are too patient, that we wait too long with inflicting the punishments, and that once we do punish, it sometimes get excessive.

However, we do expect our players to show some maturity, and also think that player conflicts should best be dealt with by the players themselves. The number 1 rule: 'Behave like a jerk and you'll be treated like a jerk.' pretty well sums it up. Consequently there should be no need for imm interference at every petty episode.

Some players definitely come out as bad eggs though, and all problems and conflicts seem to center around those. If you are one of them; don't expect - just because we are patient - that the patience will last for ever. And remember that bad actions pile up against you each time.

You can regard it as a rubber band. Each time you cross a border, the rubber band is stretched out too far, and each time this happens it weakens the material a bit. One day it will be weakened to the point where it snaps. And when this happens, it means that you have crossed the final border, and that everybody, including the Staff, are totally fed up with your antics. The end result may see a bit harsh to some, but don't forget that there is usually a long history of bad behavior preceding it.

[Darvus]

Why is multiplaying not allowed? It doesn't say why anywhere in the rules, and I'm curious.

[Molly]

According to the wisdom of Horus, it's not allowed because 'playing with yourself will make you blind'. 

All kidding aside, however, I don't really know why.

It's a very long time tradition in 4D, decided by the imps that started the game over 10 years back - (incidentally I was not an imp back then).

I think it's mostly a good rule, mainly since multiplaying can be abused to artificially level a lot of alts, just by dragging them along after your main char. Multiplaying also leads to a lot of the logged on characters being little more than bots, not responding to tells, etc. It's bad for social life, atmosphere and RP.

On the downside it makes our pbase appear even smaller than it is on the WHO list, since  most muds acrually seem to not only allow but encourage multiplay.

Personally I think that the downsides of multiplay are bigger than the advantages, but i'd like to hear some opinions about it.

[Tocharaeh]

Here is probably the biggest reason why mplaying is not allowed:

You can make enough alts to fill a "hunting party" and level the hell out of everyone at the same time, and quest with every single one of them at the same time. This also creates a huge PK disadvantage when you're multi-playing because you can garauntee that you're never alone when a PK fight arises.

Mudding should always involve player to player interaction whereas multiplaying basically removes that aspect almost entirely because now you can be perfectly self sufficient. You have a character that can charm, spell you up, pick locks, bash, behead, and so on. You could even have your own healer. M-playing should never be allowed because of this.

Also let it be known that when playing an alt and suddenly you spot someone you want to PK with your PK alt in the same hunting grounds.. You CANNOT lot off your alt to log onto your more powerful alt to take that person down. That is also multi-playing.

Anything that effects that current character in play ONLY effects the character in play. Not your alts. IN fact it is generally understood taht your alts can never "know" each other unless of course you've decided to RP your own child. 4D hasn't ever truly made such clear boundaries RP wise, and I only state what is general RP etiquette known across the major muds.

Any and all forms of mplaying should always be discouraged. 

[Virisin]

On punishments, it's been questioned whether it was illegal to create alts to do quests to give tokens to the main character. I always thought this was definitely illegal, and I swear I've been told as such in the past however Britnoth claims that apparently he's been told by imms that it is not illegal (admittedly a rather long time ago) and is done a lot apparently. I spoke to a couple other players and they agreed with me, but I'm looking for some clarification from Molly or Diandra here on whether it's illegal or not.

If it's not, I think it should be.

[Xeriuth]

Could possibly just say utilized player accounts to an advantage with multiplaying and sharing etc. We have accounts in place but it's only for convenience atm. The first mud I played had you log into the account, then log into the character you wanted, and you could only have a max of 5 characters. And you could not make another account. Currencies such as gold and tokens would be on the account and shared between the players, however, flags could be too. That way one cannot repeat token quests on their alts to give to the main. Solution there, could always adapt it to make it better.  Sure your alt could get gear more easily due to flags, but that's the case anyways, you are the player of the character, you'll be getting the eq easy regardless. Also it'd prevent actual multiplaying because you could never log in both chars on same acct at the same time. What do you think?

[Molly]

Spontaneously I think it's an excellent idea, if I start thinking some more, I'll probably see a lot of drawbacks...

[Virisin]

Yeah 1 'account' seems cool with however many characters you want on it. Kinda like what we have now, but if it was possible to force players to only have one account and not make a new account for an alt, it'd be nifty.

[Xeriuth]

Would be tracked by IP, soo, I'm not even sure if it's possible to change your ip to be two on your computer so one version of mud runs on one ip and other version runs on other. Seems overly complicated. If someone figures something out and immortals cant tell then they got one over, can't do anything about it. But I think most people are like me, may be somewhat computer savy, or less savy, and this would prevent multiplaying entirely on them?

[Diandra]

It is possible to have one IP on one computer and use a different one on another computer. And it isn't complicated at all. So tracking the IP, how ideal it may sound, won't help either.

Edit - to clarify - cause I ain't no expert either:
I can have my usual IP on for instance my laptop, and make it so that it shows as a different IP using my desktop.

And even with only one computer it's possible to have two different 'IP's' show to log on to the mud.


Still, checking for the IP is better than no check. 

[Xeriuth]

Right, idea is to have something in place. Better than nothing and yes, with two computers it is more so possible, but does everyone have two computers?

[Kvetch]

But by checking ip addresses, you're blocking out those people that are either 1) showing their friends the game and trying to get them interested - from the same ip address (I was at my friend's in Chicago a few months back and did this very thing - we showed up as the same IP even though we were on different laptops).  2) Relatives playing from the same house at the same time - we do (or did) have some husband/wife people that liked to play and 3) keeping people from logging in from the same collage (or collage esk places).  That third one takes me back to the old days when my friends and I would all play Highlands - and keep having to tell the IMMies that we were NOT the same person.  There were 5 of us, 5 characters - one headache when we all logged in together. 

[Molly]

I don't like having rules that cannot be enforced, that just makes people lose respect for all rules.

Creating new chars to 'pharm' tokens is one of the things that are very much against the spirit of the game, but is hard to actually enforce. In fact, you'd probably be able to get away with it for quite some time, without anyone even noticing. This is why, although it is generally frowned upon, it's not explicitly forbidden in our rules. In fact, I think most players do all the major quests with their alts too, and as long as it is not driven to the excess, it's not something that we slam down hard on. However, all token transactions get logged, and once we actually get alerted on what is going on, it's very easy to track down all token transactions from a particular IP address.

Making accounts with max 5 alts would probably lead to everyone taking it for granted that it's OK to repeat all quests with all 5 chars. Which of course it is, when it comes to equipment rewards. Token rewards however, should ideally be restricted to once per person, but again, this is practically almost impossible to do in praxis.

In any cas, accounts with limited number of alts would at least hamper the possibility of making multiple chars to abuse the newbie and seasonal quests, which is probably the biggest problem we have with quest abuse. There will always be people who find a way to abuse anything. The best we can do is that at least make it a bit hard, so that the majority will refrain from it.

One practical question however; what happens if a player makes an alt and then deletes it? Would that reduce the number of allowed alts to 4, and if not, how would you even track it?

[Virisin]

I just realized the system I thought sounded cool would stop Jaros and I both being able to play. lol. Eh, I don't really think it's such a big problem, if it was written somewhere in the rules then I think it'd stop 90% of people doing it because most people are happy to just follow the rules. Then when you find out someone is doing it, you have an actual rule to quote to them rather than just a 'spririt' of the game, and can come down harsher on them for it. This should then discourage it even more.