absurb absolute Admins

[pisci95]

Seriously, this games banning policy is harsh and absurd, DO NOT SPEND MONEY ON IT BECAUSE THEY WILL EVENTUALLY BAN YOU!

http://forum.pokemon-world-online.net/showthread.php?tid=8607

 

[Saurus]

Harsh, maybe. Absurd, not quite. Any form of hacking is against the rules. Hacking/botting/speeding/etc is screaming for a ban. If you get bored and the little "cheating" demons pushes you to use illegal programs, then my friend, "EVENTUALLY THEY WILL BAN YOU!"

 

[SapphirePhoenix]

By the way that's not your appeal topic. This is your topic: http://forum.pokemon-world-online.net/showthread.php?tid=30946 . Even though it seems that your ban was justly earned, if you feel that there is a problem with their policies (which you certainly imply) they have posted a topic to gather player input to improve the enforcement system in game. Just remember to make the commentary constructive because simply ranting doesn't help with anything.

And I would also like to say that it should be common sense to read the rules of a game before playing it so you know what to do or what not to do. You don't buy random board games and and just do whatever on them, do you? If you follow the rules you won't be banned, plain and simple! And if you were unsure about rules you ask a staff member!

I'm sorry but I find it silly that someone actually tried "everyone else is doing it" as an excuse to break the rules

 

[Merse]

You won't win the community for your cause like this... The staff, especially Brennan has proved on many occasions that they are not banning players for nothing. You shouldn't blame the system just because you were caught.
But let me ask something: Why would it worth for the staff to ban anyone who have donated for the game? They don't get any of it, as PWO must remain a non-profit establishment otherwise they would have to face serious charges. They won't win anything if they ban you "for nothing", except that you woN't donate any more... Doesn't seem like a good idea to me.

 

[Terry104]

I fully agree with pisci95 , follows two cases of absurd bans especially in the case of jeff_hunter


http://forum.pokemon-world-online.net/showthread.php?tid=29429


http://forum.pokemon-world-online.net/showthread.php?tid=29865



are living practically a dictatorship imposed by an new Adolf Hitler (brennan) , I regret very much all the money I spent with this game

:-\

 

[Tecknician]

Question to those thinking the ban is too harsh.

What do you believe would be a fair punishment? Explain your reasoning please.

 

[Julio~]

Question to those thinking the ban is too harsh.

What do you believe would be a fair punishment? Explain your reasoning please.

I only see people that were banned complaining about the ban system, it's never different. So it means the system is working, just keep the good job.

 

[EcoWOLFrb]

lol did someone really just compare brennan to Hitler?

Anyway, I don't agree with you at all. There are these things, maybe you've heard of them, they're called the rules of PWO. You should have read them. I also don't believe you thought it was just ok. You probably spent at least 10-20 mins researching what bot you should buy, why not take 20 seconds and search PWO forums for botting as a keyword? You might not have done any damage with your botting, but someone can bot for 20 mins and find a S HR if they're lucky.

companies all over the world have terms and conditions for their product. If you're not smart enough to read them when you hit "agree to terms and conditions" then it's your fault, not the companies. This applies to PWO as well, and GMs have no time to go through each botters account to assess the damage they've done to see what punishing is befitting, a ban is placed on all offenders. You're lucky and you joined not too long ago, a new account shouldn't set you back too far.

 

[Arnie]

if you break the rules, you get punished. end of story

all these people riding the waahhhhmbulance after they've been banned for botting/hacking make me laugh. learn to read the damn ToS and if u dont like it, find another game. simple

 

[Tecknician]

Question to those thinking the ban is too harsh.

What do you believe would be a fair punishment? Explain your reasoning please.

I only see people that were banned complaining about the ban system, it's never different. So it means the system is working, just keep the good job.

That depends on the goal of the system. Is it deterrence, incapacitation, rehabilitation, restoration, or retribution?

If the goal is anything but retribution then it is failing... badly.

 

[EcoWOLFrb]

how about this, make an NPC on starter island that emphatically stresses the major offenses that will get you banned. Make people pass a quiz before continuing to one of the regions. This will prevent idiots from claiming ignorance of the rules.
*if there is one already then I apologize, it's been a while since I was on that island.

 

[DomT.]

I 100% agree with Eco's point

 

[Julio~]

Question to those thinking the ban is too harsh.

What do you believe would be a fair punishment? Explain your reasoning please.

I only see people that were banned complaining about the ban system, it's never different. So it means the system is working, just keep the good job.

That depends on the goal of the system. Is it deterrence, incapacitation, rehabilitation, restoration, or retribution?

If the goal is anything but retribution then it is failing... badly.

I would say that many points are intertwined here, but the most curious thing is that players never complain about the system until they get a ban record. I know a bunch of ban cases personally and I would say the system is sucessful banning those accounts, which is the point many players are complaining and it's commonly said ''there's no reason for this ban"... At least till here I would say the system is working fine, but from here I don't know if it's really working, if they'll learn the lesson.

 

[CheckeredZebra]

ZOMG WALL OF TEXT xD​

Sometimes the harshest punishments aren't the best ones. =P Even with warning/knowledge of those punishments.

In the past, cutting the hands (or even heads) off of thieves didn't stop people from stealing; it either made them sneakier (or dead if not sneaky enough) while giving others a social occasion to morbidly gawk at. >_<; Similar with banning, ESPECIALLY when ban messages used to be public. Why? Because such methods cannot prevent the base human nature of greed/ambition. It just punishes those that failed to hide it while not removing the temptation to give into it. =P
Their thoughts: "If I DON'T get caught, and I'm sure there's a way to avoid being caught/I already know how to avoid being caught, I will get rich."

Harsh punishment such as this also don't help people do a 360 and "see the light." In fact it does the opposite, as said earlier by others. Dx It results in constant ban-evading/alignment with hacking groups. They have nothing to lose and everything to gain, after all, because the GMs took everything they had including their name!

Rehabilitation can be fairly effective and reduce damage in the aftermath, although also painful if not established properly (people returning to hacking despite a lot of effort being put into discouraging them from hacking and giving them another chance. Which probably ties back with greed/ambition or even the thrill of finding loopholes.) This could be something to explore, though I worry about a potential lack of manpower for this kind of punishment..? =/ And I'm not sure what could be done to rehabilitate...

With that in mind, I'd like to focus on prevention for a minute and see if we can do anything with that instead.
One thing we could do is try to make legit play more beneficial than botting (not that easy with a turn-based RPG). In other words, it benefits them both faster and greater to play normally than with a hack/etc. That would redirect many people's ambition; those who want to have goodies in the shortest amount of time will resort to that method, and if that method is legitimate, then they will play legitimately! Ohhohoh. :3 Now how we would do that? Good question. No idea. D:

Or, if non-human/automated methods became impossible, it would become the only way to get goodies, and thus become the only way people would use. =P The latter is currently enforced by an anti-cheat system. "Well obviously what you just said doesn't work, then, because people keep trying to get around the system!"

Well, that's because when you have direct, nongameplay-related enforcement LIKE an anti-cheat system, people see it more like an obstacle.In other words, instead of a physical impossibility/reality, it becomes a challenge. It's as if they are Indiana Jones, and the only thing lying between them and a great treasure is a set of booby traps in a temple...

But if you create a more sophisticated or random system into the game itself...well, different story. Quests or puzzles where the player has to use their head/actual reflexes instead of their autopilot motor skills is an obvious example. However, the downside to this is that the solutions are often spread like wildfire immediately. I didn't even have to think for myself in the Chinese New Years Event, for example. Somebody had already figured out where to get [x] or the best way to get to [y]...all I had to do was ask if I wanted to know.

@Teck:
(I had to google those terms, curse you.)
No idea how we could do restoration excluding, perhaps, of scamming, but that would take a lot of effort with probably crappy results.

And Incapacitation means nothing when said Incapacitations can be evaded through other means. :[ Though, I'd like to see a trade/transfer/etc. freeze on suspicious accounts.
*Thinking out loud*

 

[SapphirePhoenix]

On a real world equivalent, no therapy or rehabilitation will help a person if they don't have the will or the mindset to want to change, or they think that they did nothing wrong. A lot of people in the ban appeals I read believe they did nothing wrong or were banned "for no reason" even when an explanation was given to them. If they feel like they did nothing wrong then of course they will place the blame on the staff who banned them because they can't see their errors. Others who feel the same will join them and so there will always be a portion of the playerbase who feels this way. This to me is pretty much inescapable and a standard part of the MMO life.

But then there are the people who do realize they made a mistake and they were genuinely asking for second chances. If it's for botting and such how should those be handled? A lot of the commentary on this situation is to remove the cheated Pokemon or items from their possession, lecture them on the rules, then give their account back (which I can see as a reasonable course of action). But, this is rather difficult to do because what if it is a Pokemon they obtained legitly but was half bot-trained? What if they already used the items they cheated and so there is nothing to confiscate? What if they mass bot-obtained Pokemon then gave them away to 20 different people who then sold them to others thinking it was legit? There can be so many variables that come into play that this type of remedy will be difficult to efficiently enforce because I'm sure this game doesn't go all NSA on us and track down every battle and how much exp we got at what time of day (or maybe it does, who knows XD). Appeals can be handled on a case by case basis but if someone isn't happy with the outcome of their appeal then it would probably eventually lead to a group of people crying out against that too. So that is why I've always stated why I was fine with the way they currently handled bans for botting and such. To me it seemed far easier to stick a warning in their rules that they will be banned for botting and then trust that people actually read the rules.

With that in mind, I'd like to focus on prevention for a minute and see if we can do anything with that instead.
One thing we could do is try to make legit play more beneficial than botting (not that easy with a turn-based RPG). In other words, it benefits them both faster and greater to play normally than with a hack/etc. That would redirect many people's ambition; those who want to have goodies in the shortest amount of time will resort to that method, and if that method is legitimate, then they will play legitimately! Ohhohoh. :3 Now how we would do that? Good question. No idea. D:

This type of approach is certainly possible and I have seen something of that nature in the IAP market for mobile games, but it is the "pay to win" method and it's disputable as to how "fair" it is to everyone. On one hand people can excel far better and faster than someone botting because they use real money to buy insane amounts of upgrades and such that places them far ahead of the game (and is a huge, huge money sink x.x), but at the same time it also alienates those who simply can't afford such in game luxuries. Premium currencies seem to be one of those things that botting or cheating had difficulties replicating (unless there was an exploitable glitch or something). PWO is very nice because both free players and players who donate or are donated to can pretty much play on an even field and I would hate to see it take a pay to win route (and I would vote against having this specific system in game if players were given a poll over it). I am quite sure there are far better approaches to your idea but this is the only one that comes to mind that I can instantly relate to.

But still, I really like your idea on shifting the focus from punishing rule breakers to rewarding those who are trying to play the game fairly. Positive reinforcement is something we should be focusing on more rather than trying to find 1000 ways to launch hammers at people

 

[Peace-Enforcer]

I find that post from Eco explanes my fellings exactly. Current system is working well and should stay more or less intact untill we find a better solution (better Anty-cheat system)