StarGateWars Forums

Borek wrote:I just read that weirdy got banned by the Autoban script and obviously he's 100% sure he's innocent and really pissed off.

This b/s has got to stop, NOW.

Jason, it's completely unacceptable to ban people with a script then not get back to them for a month in some cases. Even the people who get unbanned usually have to rely on a Mod to "fast track" their issue direct to jason or go to the weekly meeting, which is often cancelled anyway, and even then it usually takes over a week.

Players get no compensation, no reason for the banning. You just cannot run a company like this, the customer service is non-existant because Admin mark logs in less than twice a month on average, never reads his PM's when he does, hardly ever checks the cheaters forum anyway even when he does log in.

Please sack the useless POS and employ someone or a team who ACTUALLY CARE ABOUT THE CUSTOMERS.

None of us want cheaters to prosper, but the current solution is a sad joke. if you can't get back to us in a decent time frame to explain a banning then get rid of the script until you can, otherwise players will just leave the game in disgust.

I agree completely. Instead, why not set the auto-script to notify admin. That way every major case, that isn't obvious, can be examined quickly. No banning until you know for sure. It's been years at this point, I don't see how a solution hasn't been thought up yet.

Bill

nobodyhere wrote:why cant we have a forum admin who is also a player? someone who nominates themselves (or is nominated) and then gets voted in for say a certain period of time.
this way at least we will have someone who ACTUALLY understands what players are going threw when a problem arises.

maybe we could have 2 admins in 2 different timezones?


i think this topic needs to be made into a poll so both jason and mark can see what we think of this.

because if you have an admin that is a player, he will take advantage of the situation. This has happened in the past, regardless of weather or not they admit it.

Bill

Honestly i have no particular problem with players being involved in the process, but they shouldn't have the power to ban or unban, but maybe assigning a group of people from a variety of alliances (or lone wolves) to check up on auto-banned accounts could work.

All they would be allowed to do is report exactly why the script banned the player in question and perhaps investigate the matter a bit before sending jason all the relevant info they have gathered.

They would be more of a rapid response team than anything else, so the players banned would know that their issue is being dealt with in a speedy manner and the ban reason would be given very fast, even if it was later overturned by jason.

Obviously actually getting unbanned would take a bit of time as Jason is busy, but people will be much more willing to wait if they know someone is on the case and they have a reason why the script banned them. After all they might be able to simply explain why they were doing what they were doing to get banned, if anything.

yh my mate was banned with this sctrip hje had over 3t in bank and admin didnt give it back saying it was a warning or somthing when he was innocent

Borek wrote:I just read that weirdy got banned by the Autoban script and obviously he's 100% sure he's innocent and really pissed off.

This b/s has got to stop, NOW.

Jason, it's completely unacceptable to ban people with a script then not get back to them for a month in some cases. Even the people who get unbanned usually have to rely on a Mod to "fast track" their issue direct to jason or go to the weekly meeting, which is often cancelled anyway, and even then it usually takes over a week.

Players get no compensation, no reason for the banning. You just cannot run a company like this, the customer service is non-existant because Admin mark logs in less than twice a month on average, never reads his PM's when he does, hardly ever checks the cheaters forum anyway even when he does log in.

Please sack the useless POS and employ someone or a team who ACTUALLY CARE ABOUT THE CUSTOMERS.

None of us want cheaters to prosper, but the current solution is a sad joke. if you can't get back to us in a decent time frame to explain a banning then get rid of the script until you can, otherwise players will just leave the game in disgust.

Completely agree, but...

Borek wrote:This b/s has got to stop, NOW.

yea that will work

Borek wrote:Honestly i have no particular problem with players being involved in the process, but they shouldn't have the power to ban or unban, but maybe assigning a group of people from a variety of alliances (or lone wolves) to check up on auto-banned accounts could work.

All they would be allowed to do is report exactly why the script banned the player in question and perhaps investigate the matter a bit before sending jason all the relevant info they have gathered.

They would be more of a rapid response team than anything else, so the players banned would know that their issue is being dealt with in a speedy manner and the ban reason would be given very fast, even if it was later overturned by jason.

Obviously actually getting unbanned would take a bit of time as Jason is busy, but people will be much more willing to wait if they know someone is on the case and they have a reason why the script banned them. After all they might be able to simply explain why they were doing what they were doing to get banned, if anything.

The only reason I have a problem with actual players being admins, is because they are biased. Some of us remember how gamemod turned out, and he was a player. That didn't work out well at all. Things got done far quicker for his alliance then for non-alliance members. Also, many of us had questions about how certain things happened.

Bill

Hire someone outside the game that actually is unbiased. Frankly, I thought Goo would be good as long as he didn't play. But i'm not sure that there aren't hard feelings there.

maybe for the lost resorces, admin can move all accounts frozen to a new database or whatever with its own cron jobs, giveing naq and uu and turns when required, and the account is then not able to be attacked or anything. and if the account is restored, have it on something like vac mode, except when you log in, instead of your account coming back online as such, a free 12 hour ppt is triggered



the ideal solution would be to have the auto-ban script flawless, but this way it would make a bad situation a little better for the innocent player

pianomutt20000 wrote:

Borek wrote:Honestly i have no particular problem with players being involved in the process, but they shouldn't have the power to ban or unban, but maybe assigning a group of people from a variety of alliances (or lone wolves) to check up on auto-banned accounts could work.

All they would be allowed to do is report exactly why the script banned the player in question and perhaps investigate the matter a bit before sending jason all the relevant info they have gathered.

They would be more of a rapid response team than anything else, so the players banned would know that their issue is being dealt with in a speedy manner and the ban reason would be given very fast, even if it was later overturned by jason.

Obviously actually getting unbanned would take a bit of time as Jason is busy, but people will be much more willing to wait if they know someone is on the case and they have a reason why the script banned them. After all they might be able to simply explain why they were doing what they were doing to get banned, if anything.

The only reason I have a problem with actual players being admins, is because they are biased. Some of us remember how gamemod turned out, and he was a player. That didn't work out well at all. Things got done far quicker for his alliance then for non-alliance members. Also, many of us had questions about how certain things happened.

Bill

Hire someone outside the game that actually is unbiased. Frankly, I thought Goo would be good as long as he didn't play. But i'm not sure that there aren't hard feelings there.

I agree Bill, but lets be honest here, finding someone who understands enough about the game to do the job, but doesn't actually play, is very hard.

Reason i suggested a team is so that each banned person can have a neutral aligned player report and investigate. also i should repeat again that none of the players in question would have the power to ban or unban, merely to report to the banned player exactly why they were banned and do a preliminary investigation which can be forwarded to jason for action, or not, depending what he thinks.

I would also point out that even an Ex-player such as Goo would still end up being accused of Bias, we all know how this cesspit of a forum works by now

Pookie would be a good person, afterall he was a good admin, unless he still plays?

Borek wrote:Honestly i have no particular problem with players being involved in the process, but they shouldn't have the power to ban or unban, but maybe assigning a group of people from a variety of alliances (or lone wolves) to check up on auto-banned accounts could work.

All they would be allowed to do is report exactly why the script banned the player in question and perhaps investigate the matter a bit before sending jason all the relevant info they have gathered.

They would be more of a rapid response team than anything else, so the players banned would know that their issue is being dealt with in a speedy manner and the ban reason would be given very fast, even if it was later overturned by jason.

Obviously actually getting unbanned would take a bit of time as Jason is busy, but people will be much more willing to wait if they know someone is on the case and they have a reason why the script banned them. After all they might be able to simply explain why they were doing what they were doing to get banned, if anything.

sorry my bad, i should have been more specific...

what i meant was that the forum should be run by players NOT a paid admin, this is after all "OUR" forum.
said person should have the ability to contact admin within a reasonable amount of time and said person should also be a very active member of the community, i can think of a fair few people who are not only trust worthy but very active and i don't know as many people in this game as some of you (thank god ).

Borek wrote:

pianomutt20000 wrote:

Borek wrote:Honestly i have no particular problem with players being involved in the process, but they shouldn't have the power to ban or unban, but maybe assigning a group of people from a variety of alliances (or lone wolves) to check up on auto-banned accounts could work.

All they would be allowed to do is report exactly why the script banned the player in question and perhaps investigate the matter a bit before sending jason all the relevant info they have gathered.

They would be more of a rapid response team than anything else, so the players banned would know that their issue is being dealt with in a speedy manner and the ban reason would be given very fast, even if it was later overturned by jason.

Obviously actually getting unbanned would take a bit of time as Jason is busy, but people will be much more willing to wait if they know someone is on the case and they have a reason why the script banned them. After all they might be able to simply explain why they were doing what they were doing to get banned, if anything.

The only reason I have a problem with actual players being admins, is because they are biased. Some of us remember how gamemod turned out, and he was a player. That didn't work out well at all. Things got done far quicker for his alliance then for non-alliance members. Also, many of us had questions about how certain things happened.

Bill

Hire someone outside the game that actually is unbiased. Frankly, I thought Goo would be good as long as he didn't play. But i'm not sure that there aren't hard feelings there.

I agree Bill, but lets be honest here, finding someone who understands enough about the game to do the job, but doesn't actually play, is very hard.

Reason i suggested a team is so that each banned person can have a neutral aligned player report and investigate. also i should repeat again that none of the players in question would have the power to ban or unban, merely to report to the banned player exactly why they were banned and do a preliminary investigation which can be forwarded to jason for action, or not, depending what he thinks.

I would also point out that even an Ex-player such as Goo would still end up being accused of Bias, we all know how this cesspit of a forum works by now

True. But these games are not unusual by now, and finding someone outside it who knows these types of games wouldn't be difficult. Reading IP's, looking at how resources moved...you don't need to be a player here, to know how to do that. Any decision from said admin, should then be pushed up to jason..no action until jason makes the call, in which case it would be final anyways.

In the past, when players were given this power.....bad things happened.

I had a planet taken by a mods non-personal test account...and he got called on it.

That is just one example. There are others out there. I just think the auto-script should notify admin, not ban. Banning should be done by jason, unless it's a bunch of random new accounts and there is no doubt.


Bill

Players should be placed on PPT and advised why they are being investigated.

Investigations should take no longer than 48 hours (the time of the PPT).

If an investigation takes longer, innocent players should be given back any lost resources.

No player should ever have access to game data, directly or indirectly.

yeah, i know about Psi stealing your planet with his admin sanctioned Multi-account Bill and understand your reluctance to give players or even forum staff admin powers, but remember i am not asking for people to be given admin powers, all they will get is effectively read only access to check up on why the player was banned, then do some simple IP checks, check up on dubious trades/transfers, see if the player was gaining resources via a Bug etc.

None of them would actually be able to DO anything other than check then report their findings to jason.

There's 2 major problems with the current system:

1: No explanation for the banning at all

2: Completely unacceptable delay in resolving the ban

Yes people get peeved because they lose resources, but if it was resolved quickly then they would lose a hell of a lot less and if they were informed why they were banned within, say, 12 hrs, i think they would be more willing to take a resource hit because they knew why the ban happened and that it was being dealt with.

And i agree robe that would be a nice solution, however in the real world it's not going to happen because there's not enough admins to do the job. Saying it should be resolved in 48 hrs is all very well, but completely unrealistic with only jason and mark dealing with the banned accounts. As i already said mark is never here and doing his job anyway, so basically jason has to do everything and he just doesn't have the time (and i dare say the desire) to deal with all bannings inside 48 hrs.

Legendary Apophis wrote:Pookie would be a good person, afterall he was a good admin, unless he still plays?

Thats a joke right...

GeneralChaos wrote:

Legendary Apophis wrote:Pookie would be a good person, afterall he was a good admin, unless he still plays?

Thats a joke right...

Which part?