Change Log?

[Namorah]

I wouldn't vote for account deletion/permanent ban for afk offenses except after perhaps the 5th offense. Off the top of my head, I think it should go something like this:

Leveling:
1. Warning & confiscation of weapon for 1 month.
2. Jail 1 week, confiscation of weapon for 6 weeks and weapon reset to level 0. Name & offense level posted in a thread on forums of AFK violators.
3. Jail 2 weeks, permanent confiscation/deletion of weapon. Name & offense level posted on forums.
4. 1 month ban, permanent loss of weapon, perhaps a gold fee as well. Name & offense level posted on forums.
5. Permanent ban? Several months ban? As well as posted on forums.

Gathering:
1. Warning & confiscation of all resources in pack of player and any pack animals out.
2. Jail 1 week, confiscation of all resources as well as all resource keys. Posted on forums.
3. Jail 2 weeks, confiscation of all resources in pack/pets/keys/bank/house, 5mil gold fee. Posted on forums.
4. 1 month ban, confiscation of all resources on the entire account, 10mil gold fee. Posted on forums.
5. Permanent ban? Several months ban? Posted on forums.

I also do not feel that offenses should "cool down" back to lower offenses unless it has been over, say 8months or 1 year since the last offense of ANY kind - language, behavior, AFK, etc. I do not think anyone who has violated to tier 2 or above should ever be able to decay back to a warning.

These are just ideas I came up with off the cuff, but something along these lines would be much more effective and serve as far more of a deterrent to rule violations of this nature than what we currently have in place.

^--- This + 1

Total agreement. This way the playerbase starts to learn who the repeat offenders are and know to look for them.

[cope80]

I wouldn't vote for account deletion/permanent ban for afk offenses except after perhaps the 5th offense. Off the top of my head, I think it should go something like this:

Leveling:
1. Warning & confiscation of weapon for 1 month.
2. Jail 1 week, confiscation of weapon for 6 weeks and weapon reset to level 0. Name & offense level posted in a thread on forums of AFK violators.
3. Jail 2 weeks, permanent confiscation/deletion of weapon. Name & offense level posted on forums.
4. 1 month ban, permanent loss of weapon, perhaps a gold fee as well. Name & offense level posted on forums.
5. Permanent ban? Several months ban? As well as posted on forums.

Gathering:
1. Warning & confiscation of all resources in pack of player and any pack animals out.
2. Jail 1 week, confiscation of all resources as well as all resource keys. Posted on forums.
3. Jail 2 weeks, confiscation of all resources in pack/pets/keys/bank/house, 5mil gold fee. Posted on forums.
4. 1 month ban, confiscation of all resources on the entire account, 10mil gold fee. Posted on forums.
5. Permanent ban? Several months ban? Posted on forums.

I also do not feel that offenses should "cool down" back to lower offenses unless it has been over, say 8months or 1 year since the last offense of ANY kind - language, behavior, AFK, etc. I do not think anyone who has violated to tier 2 or above should ever be able to decay back to a warning.

These are just ideas I came up with off the cuff, but something along these lines would be much more effective and serve as far more of a deterrent to rule violations of this nature than what we currently have in place.

^--- This + 1

Total agreement. This way the playerbase starts to learn who the repeat offenders are and know to look for them.

++1 The afk gatherers, levelers, and champers are the ones ruining the economy of the server.

[anarchy]

i love you +Nyx

I especially love the posted on a sticky forum thread. it keeps the record organized, and informs the public. I play other games and one game comes in mind. i play on this one server where the admins don't care who they ban. if they think you are cheating they will ban you. might sound silly, but that server is ALWAYS full. why? because the other players know they can play without worrying about cheaters. it's a first person shooter.

I also do not believe that an offense should decay to a warning status, but i guess a decay from a heavy violation to a lesser would be ok. meh.

also... don't forget in a violation deletion of exex account.

i love the fine double damage there. deletion of resource keys AND 5 mil gold...love it.

i think any impounded weapon/ resource keys should be put on grand auction... gold sink, punishment, and just plain funny all rolled into one.

[Xavian]

Leveling:
1. Warning & confiscation of weapon for 1 month.
2. Jail 1 week, confiscation of weapon for 6 weeks and weapon reset to level 0. Name & offense level posted in a thread on forums of AFK violators.
3. Jail 2 weeks, permanent confiscation/deletion of weapon. Name & offense level posted on forums.
4. 1 month ban, permanent loss of weapon, perhaps a gold fee as well. Name & offense level posted on forums.
5. Permanent ban? Several months ban? As well as posted on forums.

Just a question in regards to #2.. How would you reset it to 0? I thought there was no backup of the weapon before leveling? You would have to have some way of knowing what the stats were before leveling to reset it. Otherwise it would be great for you to reset my level 95 looted weapon to 0 and not touch the stats, then I could just relevel again..

[Ilsanor]

Leveling:
1. Warning & confiscation of weapon for 1 month.
2. Jail 1 week, confiscation of weapon for 6 weeks and weapon reset to level 0. Name & offense level posted in a thread on forums of AFK violators.
3. Jail 2 weeks, permanent confiscation/deletion of weapon. Name & offense level posted on forums.
4. 1 month ban, permanent loss of weapon, perhaps a gold fee as well. Name & offense level posted on forums.
5. Permanent ban? Several months ban? As well as posted on forums.

Gathering:
1. Warning & confiscation of all resources in pack of player and any pack animals out.
2. Jail 1 week, confiscation of all resources as well as all resource keys. Posted on forums.
3. Jail 2 weeks, confiscation of all resources in pack/pets/keys/bank/house, 5mil gold fee. Posted on forums.
4. 1 month ban, confiscation of all resources on the entire account, 10mil gold fee. Posted on forums.
5. Permanent ban? Several months ban? Posted on forums.

Well, I'd remove points #3 from both. Skip the 2 weeks and just go from 1 week to 1 month to 4 months perhaps. Plus add a fee to each tier except the warnings. Jail is in my opinion a bit ineffective as far as deterrents go - the player may do anything in the given time, outside of UO, and it basically doesn't hurt him game-wise. Now losing money and possessions - that hurts, just because it's something you already got and used to. For me 3 months jail would be... meh, I can deal with that, no prob. Now losing a Huge Bag of Holding that took me 3 months to earn and buy or a weapon that I spent 2 months levelling an 200ED to change - that'd really get me. The risk of losing something like that would actually make me think twice before doing anything stupid.

Also a couple of notes to the punishments:
- "confiscation of all resources in pack/pets/keys/bank/house," The last part is a bit of a stretch. I mean, are you really going to run around and check each and every chest in a house? What if someone owns a guildhouse? Or co-owns a house? While scary if it came to pass, it's really hard in execution. Same for resource deletion on the entire account. I'd suggest replacing house with [exex account.
- "weapon reset to level 0" as Xavian noted. It already takes a lot of time for +Coli to get something out of a backup for recoveries. Adding the task of 'recovering' such weapons would be counter-productive. I'd propose setting the level to 100 WITHOUT giving points (if it's possible). That way the weapon cannot be levelled any longer. A loss painful enough.
- +1 to the idea of auctioning stuff that gets confiscated. Great gold sink and a good public warning.

[EnigmaMaitreya]

Just my 2cp,

This is a bit to complicated and way to many points to argue for mercy.

Look, lets just keep it simple. If the individual is AFK:

First time log them out, give then a window they must read and click ok to be able to get back in.

The Windows is simple, "You were AFK blah blah blah. This is not up for discussion. If you do this again, this account will be perma banned. Click the "I understand I have been warned button to continue or Click the I do not agree button (you will be logged out and brought back to this screen the next time you log in)"

The problem I see with this draconian approach is "contributions". I have read the entire contribution thing and have no issues with it.

Now let us say that some one donated $1,000US and gets banned after 3 months. If it were me, I would use a formula to determine a refund amount to the person. In short, if I am kicking a subscriber out, then I do not want to enter the slippery slope of abusing the donation process.

In short, in my experience, it has always worked out for the best when the environment is such that all concerned parties are treated equitably. Even when one of the parties is clearly attempting to exploit the situation.

[+Nyx]

Re: jail being ineffectual, I forgot to note in my previous post I would also like to see jail time stop if the person is logged out and/or the person have to perform a non-macroable task, say every hour for the sake of example, in order for the jail time to count down/to be released from jail. V and I have talked extensively about how to do this and it would be relatively easy to implement something where they had to perform a task that changed frequently and can only be repeated once per hour (or however long it ends up being decided on), in order to earn a trinket, and they have to turn in x trinkets to get to the world teleporter once their jail time is up.

As for resetting a weapon to 0 and/or finding exex/house resources, well those options would take some work by Colibri to implement systems that would make it an easy task for the staffer at the time of the punishment. It's not something we could easily do tomorrow, but it's something that could become part of the process with some scripting done by the boss. I'd be willing to vote for permanent confiscation at a lower offense just to save the trouble of resetting it to 0 if that turned out to be too much hassle for Colibri.

About Enigma's idea, well, I'm not exactly against it but Colibri is loathe to ban anybody, so I don't think that idea would ever fly. He needs there to be many steps, many chances, before any kind of ban is utilized. We have a handful of 5+ offense players running around who weren't banned; so I feel that having numerous much harsher steps is more of a happy medium, and more likely to be considered and implemented.

[EnigmaMaitreya]

I probably came off as pro ban, I am categorically not. I am not sure why I thought that was the punishment.

I will be the first to admit, that in OSI.UO I was without doubt one of the big AFK miners in the beginning. I sometimes feel that my reputation precedes me here, except that implies some one here knows me, which of course I seriously doubt.

Now having said the above, your Nag Question (Are you there?) seems to be effective to me, 30(?) minutes? Hum, that may be long if one is considering an AFK resource macroer.

You could perhaps implement a significant deterrent to the offenders. Log then out with an escalating time to allow them to log back in. *Shrug* just for conversation, you might just increment it by 5 Minutes for each forced log out, then decrement it by 5 minutes per 24 hours. It is kind of like the osi.uo murder needing to cool their jets before they can do anything, in short ramp up quick, cool down a bit slower.

Another alternative, that may not be all that hard to code up, is to simply put a multiplier on the resource.

Start with 1.0, example, 27 or times 1.0 = 27 ore. First offense multiplier = multiplier - 0.2, min value = 0.1 Then every 4 hours of game time increments the multiplier by 0.1 max = 1.0.

Just some thoughts

[Namorah]

Now let us say that some one donated $1,000US and gets banned after 3 months. If it were me, I would use a formula to determine a refund amount to the person. In short, if I am kicking a subscriber out, then I do not want to enter the slippery slope of abusing the donation process.

Buuu what?

Abuse?
You agreed to the EULA when you signed into the game and clicked OK/Connect.
I don't care if you donated $10k USD. if you break the rules then you deserve to be punished just as much as anyone else; up to AND including being banned off the server for good. Donations are just that, donations. That means you gave your money away without thinking there would be anything reciprocated to you. You get ED as a BONUS for donating, they are not guarenteed.

[Namorah]

Just a question in regards to #2.. How would you reset it to 0? I thought there was no backup of the weapon before leveling? You would have to have some way of knowing what the stats were before leveling to reset it. Otherwise it would be great for you to reset my level 95 looted weapon to 0 and not touch the stats, then I could just relevel again..

1) If it is a known weapon like a cavorting club, or a titans hammer, than the base stats are known, and they can be reset to that.

2) If it is a looted weapon then all stats are reset to Zero. That would make AFKers think a bit more about trying to afk level and hope to not get caught huh. Can you imagine a 58x4 getting reset back to Zero? Sorry you paid all that gold for it, now it's worthless.

Just my 2 cents.

[Xavian]

I like the idea of +Colibri fixing a script to reset it back to where it started. That way he can also make it an option to buy with EDs =)

[anarchy]

You agreed to the EULA when you signed into the game and clicked OK/Connect.
I don't care if you donated $10k USD. if you break the rules then you deserve to be punished just as much as anyone else; up to AND including being banned off the server for good. Donations are just that, donations. That means you gave your money away without thinking there would be anything reciprocated to you. You get ED as a BONUS for donating, they are not guarenteed.

100% agreement! if you donated for anything; you'd think you'd be more careful about your stuff!!

2) If it is a looted weapon then all stats are reset to Zero. That would make AFKers think a bit more about trying to afk level and hope to not get caught huh. Can you imagine a 58x4 getting reset back to Zero? Sorry you paid all that gold for it, now it's worthless.

LOLOLOLOL HAHAHAHA i love it!

[EnigmaMaitreya]

Now let us say that some one donated $1,000US and gets banned after 3 months. If it were me, I would use a formula to determine a refund amount to the person. In short, if I am kicking a subscriber out, then I do not want to enter the slippery slope of abusing the donation process.

Buuu what?

Abuse?
You agreed to the EULA when you signed into the game and clicked OK/Connect.
I don't care if you donated $10k USD. if you break the rules then you deserve to be punished just as much as anyone else; up to AND including being banned off the server for good. Donations are just that, donations. That means you gave your money away without thinking there would be anything reciprocated to you. You get ED as a BONUS for donating, they are not guarenteed.

In have seen this time and time again, not on free UO shards but on forums that solicit donations. It flat out doesn't matter if an individual was banned or mistreated for cause or not, the individual is going to say they were wronged and guess what, the owner is going to say the person deserved it. Look at the dynamics, if the person did deserver it they wont say they did, if the owner said the person did deserve but the didnt the owner wont say that either.

In short, there is no means for mear mortals to ever know what the truth is, and let me assure you, that if an owner took the stance that "well, I have your money and now you no longer matter" that is most certainly both feet in the camp of abuse. The owners here state that if you donate with the expectation of ... considerations, then you have just wasted your money. I would ask you to consider just how thin a line that is ... for considerations vs I dont care about you.

Lets just say I see this whole thing as a slippery slope and you don't lets just let it go ... ok?

[+Nyx]

In have seen this time and time again, not on free UO shards but on forums that solicit donations. It flat out doesn't matter if an individual was banned or mistreated for cause or not, the individual is going to say they were wronged and guess what, the owner is going to say the person deserved it. Look at the dynamics, if the person did deserver it they wont say they did, if the owner said the person did deserve but the didnt the owner wont say that either.

In all seriousness, though, you clearly don't know Colibri. He is not this way, and if anything he'd probably lean toward being more tolerant of those who have donated large chunks in hopes they'd continue to donate, rather than ban them because he's "already got the money".

Let's move along.

[walter]

Hello, I started this separated topic for AFK, and tried to summarize the ideas so far for this thread.

Can we continue AFK discussion in that topic and leave this one for the Change Log?