Originally Posted by heartbrand
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I get that being a Forum Mod / Guide / GM on a volunteer project can be frustrating [though being a Guide in EQ was volunteer as well]. I'm sure you deal with tons of douches and annoying people on a daily basis. It probably puts people on tilt. I also deal with plenty of incredibly frustrating people on a daily basis. But I think a lot of this is self inflicted by P99's strange selective enforcement model with very little clear rule guidelines.
It was genuinely difficult to get suspended or banned on EQ Live. Many simple disputes such as camp disputes, were handled with a guide simply calming the situation down with a warning, and noting the players account in case of further issues. Here, a situation like that would probably result in your account being randomly suspended three to six months later with no warning, and then being told to "read the rules" (which usually don't exist, or weren't even applied the way they were written, or are contained in post #1988 of some RNF topic you never read) or "you know what you did," if you try to petition to find out [if that staff member is even part of the project anymore to tell you].
There's numerous instances of this on P99 where situations escalate in scenarios that they never had to. You just didn't really "feel" a constant guide presence on EQ Live, even though they were actually there in greater number and force than they are here.
Forum Moderation is another great example. What is accomplished by banning Forum Accounts? The player can't Petition anymore, loses access to existing petitions, if they have their Forum Account set up for their EQ Emulator password reset (which effects non p99 servers as well) they've lost that, and all it takes is five minutes to get another Forum Account going. Yes, if someone is posting gore, tranny porn, burn it down, peoples real life info then sure I get it. But banning people from forums for trolling on Red99 guild posts? The same threads that go without moderation for 2 years then suddenly get moderation, then go dormant again? People were eating bans for using the word f*&()t in RNF, now suddenly it's not moderated at all anymore. There just seems to be a heavy handed approach by the P99 Staff to everything, which is ironic, because when you actually need staff in game on R99 for something that's actually serious, you're SOL 99% of the time.
Normally I'd say if you just "play by the rules" and don't do anything dumb, then you should probably be ok, and that this only affects "shit heads." Problem is, time after time I see good, rule abiding players, eat blanket bans because so-and-so logged on their account one time in 2013, or because they made a character named Bankers that used to belong to someone else 4 years ago before they deleted it, or in my case back in 2012, because Mellowyellow petitions you saying you're a RMT kingpin, or because someone like Roarie baits you into LNS violations, or because the Petitioner usually wins 99% of the time much like paypal disputes, etc.
Every time I log onto P99 I wonder if my account will be banned or not, and I barely even play. Everyone's response to everything is "petitioned" or "reported." It's ludicrous.
None of this is really directed necessarily at a specific staff member, I think the vast majority of it could be easily fixed by:
1) Clearer rules
2) A calmer approach to most disputes [obviously hacking, 2boxing etc. still drop the hammer]
3) A consistent approach to forum moderation
4) A toned down rhetoric between player and staff.
Doubtful any of this will happen. There's 1000+ guide apps in the sub-forum. Are there really so few qualified Elf Sim Larpers in those apps? Most of the people I met in the EQ Guide Program were people who just loved Elf-Sim and wanted to hand cookies out to people and make Norrath a beautiful place. Here the feeling I get most of the time is the staff is the Ferguson Police ready to shoot you down.
xoxoxo
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07-14-2015, 03:51 PM
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