Suggestion Item Restoration Policy missing/neglected

[xexorian]

http://herocraftonline.com/wiki/Category:Rules

According to the entire wikipedia about the rules, there are no defined rules as to what happens when someone griefs chests *(specifically)* inside townships. It says removing blocks to expose them, and makes the pretense that all griefing is done to simply steal items.

This is a FALSE pretense and has been ignored now for quite some time. My towns and my kingdom's towns and my vault have been the target of "Proper" Griefing. These players have logged in, and destroyed chests and even lava bucketed the items. I've even caught them in the act, so how could it POSSIBLY be DUPING if they RESTORED my items and BANNED the player?

I think several changes need to be made to our community's rules to make this a better place for people to play. I was talking to purenrgiii and several people who quit from the Communist Collective awhile back -- after my chests were back-to-back griefed. Keep in mind most of my chests are my ENTIRE kingdom's wealth. This is not promoting a "Fair" place to play as the rules suggest.

Anyone can join a new town and destroy all their chests and get banned. The ban does nothing to help the VICTIMS.

These problems used to be mitigated by plugins and proper management of your townships. Such as 1) Child Regions. 2) Trusting only Architects of the server to be managers on your regions. etc.

These features were discontinued, or are no longer possible due to updates within minecraft, and as such I recommend we update the rules to allow Admins to restore items in the case of Chest-Griefing. It is not outlined anywhere in the rules or terms of service and I believe it should be updated to protect townships from TOTAL LOSS.

In the old rules found HERE
This was illegal:
in official towns: hitting, destroying or taking blocks/items that aren't yours or neutral

Destroying items that aren't yours. This would clearly indicate chest-griefing was illegal.

However; no where in the new official rules does it say it IS griefing, found HERE

Oulined here it says you may not STEAL, but it does not say you may not DESTROY:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Town Specific Rules/Personal Regions
For creating a town, see here.

• Personal regions fall under the same classification as towns.
• Maliciously destroying blocks is illegal.
  • Any attempt to join a town for malicious purposes is strictly prohibited.
  • Abuse of region powers for malicious intent
• Looting chests is legal.
  • You may not steal from fellow town members.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Furthermore, outlined here within the GRIEFING rules it says nothing even remotely about ITEMS.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Griefing
(Griefing Rules do not apply in Warshard or Forgelight) Griefing may be defined as:

• Breaking into any regioned areas otherwise impossible to enter.
• Destroying blocks in another player's structure.
  • Destroying blocks above chests in un-regioned areas is acceptable.
  • Destroying blocks in another player's structure is acceptable if the exact blocks are replaced.
  • Plants must be left in a position where they will regrow to their original state.
• Mindlessly destroying the landscape.
• Placing blocks in or around a structure which you do not own.
• Leaving abusive messages in any form.
• Teleporting group members to your person and engaging in hostile actions against said group members.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So, now I ask you, what is the policy of herocraft's administration on returning items DESTROYED by griefers, NOT stolen, and even if they ARE stolen, is it not possible to rollback all of that user's changes, and then wipe their character data for directly disobeying rules? Infact, destroying items isn't even against the rules, destroying blocks are. A case could be made as they are that all of these people banned for breaking chests aren't actually breaking the rules. The Griefing rules here seem to indicate that chests are not the same as blocks, as it specifically states destroying blocks above chests in unregioned areas is acceptable.

All I'm saying are that the rules need a major update. Most of my kingdom's managers, including moderators and other staff are on the verge of giving up playing here for FUN. Infact, a lot of us already stay here because we are all here as a community, and not for any other reason. If it was left up to the likes of some of the more malicious people on the server our towns would all be burning down to the ground right now and the entire map would be destroyed.

We want herocraft to be fun again, and it is NOT FUN when people are allowed to grief hundreds of chests and hundreds of thousands of items, to DESTROY them, not STEAL them, and we don't have any rules in place to allow admin's to protect us.

@Danda specifically would not restore my items because "It could be Duping" which is bogus when you look at all the factors involved. The guy destroyed the chests, and placed lava under them, it's on the logs. The guy also JUST logged out right there!! How could he have been duping? Especially considering if Danda resets his levels and deletes all his character data after rolling him back/back the area of destruction?!

Danda got mad at me for bitching at him about this and told me I had to take this issue up with @Kainzo So here I am. I've outlined the problems communities like ours are having, whether they are blatantly obvious or not, they need to be fixed and the policy's the community/staff abide by need to be updated.

You may ask, who am I to decide such things? Well, That is why we are going to have a POLL. Everyone who believes we need item-restoration policies will vote for it, and everyone who believes the system is fine as it is will vote for that.

xexorian, out.

 

[DefaultTexture]

http://herocraftonline.com/wiki/Category:Rules

According to the entire wikipedia about the rules, there are no defined rules as to what happens when someone griefs chests *(specifically)* inside townships. It says removing blocks to expose them, and makes the pretense that all griefing is done to simply steal items.

This is a FALSE pretense and has been ignored now for quite some time. My towns and my kingdom's towns and my vault have been the target of "Proper" Griefing. These players have logged in, and destroyed chests and even lava bucketed the items. I've even caught them in the act, so how could it POSSIBLY be DUPING if they RESTORED my items and BANNED the player?

I think several changes need to be made to our community's rules to make this a better place for people to play. I was talking to purenrgiii and several people who quit from the Communist Collective awhile back -- after my chests were back-to-back griefed. Keep in mind most of my chests are my ENTIRE kingdom's wealth. This is not promoting a "Fair" place to play as the rules suggest.

Anyone can join a new town and destroy all their chests and get banned. The ban does nothing to help the VICTIMS.

These problems used to be mitigated by plugins and proper management of your townships. Such as 1) Child Regions. 2) Trusting only Architects of the server to be managers on your regions. etc.

These features were discontinued, or are no longer possible due to updates within minecraft, and as such I recommend we update the rules to allow Admins to restore items in the case of Chest-Griefing. It is not outlined anywhere in the rules or terms of service and I believe it should be updated to protect townships from TOTAL LOSS.

In the old rules found HERE
This was illegal:
in official towns: hitting, destroying or taking blocks/items that aren't yours or neutral

Destroying items that aren't yours. This would clearly indicate chest-griefing was illegal.

However; no where in the new official rules does it say it IS griefing, found HERE

Oulined here it says you may not STEAL, but it does not say you may not DESTROY:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Town Specific Rules/Personal Regions
For creating a town, see here.

• Personal regions fall under the same classification as towns.
• Maliciously destroying blocks is illegal.
  • Any attempt to join a town for malicious purposes is strictly prohibited.
  • Abuse of region powers for malicious intent
• Looting chests is legal.
  • You may not steal from fellow town members.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Furthermore, outlined here within the GRIEFING rules it says nothing even remotely about ITEMS.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Griefing
(Griefing Rules do not apply in Warshard or Forgelight) Griefing may be defined as:

• Breaking into any regioned areas otherwise impossible to enter.
• Destroying blocks in another player's structure.
  • Destroying blocks above chests in un-regioned areas is acceptable.
  • Destroying blocks in another player's structure is acceptable if the exact blocks are replaced.
  • Plants must be left in a position where they will regrow to their original state.
• Mindlessly destroying the landscape.
• Placing blocks in or around a structure which you do not own.
• Leaving abusive messages in any form.
• Teleporting group members to your person and engaging in hostile actions against said group members.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So, now I ask you, what is the policy of herocraft's administration on returning items DESTROYED by griefers, NOT stolen, and even if they ARE stolen, is it not possible to rollback all of that user's changes, and then wipe their character data for directly disobeying rules? Infact, destroying items isn't even against the rules, destroying blocks are. A case could be made as they are that all of these people banned for breaking chests aren't actually breaking the rules. The Griefing rules here seem to indicate that chests are not the same as blocks, as it specifically states destroying blocks above chests in unregioned areas is acceptable.

All I'm saying are that the rules need a major update. Most of my kingdom's managers, including moderators and other staff are on the verge of giving up playing here for FUN. Infact, a lot of us already stay here because we are all here as a community, and not for any other reason. If it was left up to the likes of some of the more malicious people on the server our towns would all be burning down to the ground right now and the entire map would be destroyed.

We want herocraft to be fun again, and it is NOT FUN when people are allowed to grief hundreds of chests and hundreds of thousands of items, to DESTROY them, not STEAL them, and we don't have any rules in place to allow admin's to protect us.

@Danda specifically would not restore my items because "It could be Duping" which is bogus when you look at all the factors involved. The guy destroyed the chests, and placed lava under them, it's on the logs. The guy also JUST logged out right there!! How could he have been duping? Especially considering if Danda resets his levels and deletes all his character data after rolling him back/back the area of destruction?!

Danda got mad at me for bitching at him about this and told me I had to take this issue up with @Kainzo So here I am. I've outlined the problems communities like ours are having, whether they are blatantly obvious or not, they need to be fixed and the policy's the community/staff abide by need to be updated.

You may ask, who am I to decide such things? Well, That is why we are going to have a POLL. Everyone who believes we need item-restoration policies will vote for it, and everyone who believes the system is fine as it is will vote for that.

xexorian, out.

You have WAY too much time, but I'm glad you do This does point out some pretty valid points imo, I agree that there needs to be a better system.

 

[Xargun]

I feel your pain - several players in my town quit the server because they were griefed / robbed by a new town member who joined the server with nothing invested in it only to steal from everyone they could. These new players get banned but usually we lose the older productive member of the community as well. I understand the Admins point of view about duping or ways to cheat the system, but to be honest there will always be a way to cheat the system. There needs to be a happy medium - where the admin makes the call and restores some / all of the items. The logs should show if items are destroyed and if they are then they get restored. If they are stolen then it gets handled a different way. The victim just gets screwed completely and we need a better system / policy.

 

[leftovers5]

@Jacobpanther and @Nightroado were victims of a massive chest griefing of Rapture that ended Night's time on the server.
Last map, @Fo0l3d , @TrueCorruptor and others were raided by a Diffuse alt and everything that wasn't in an lwc was burned and gone.

Clearly, at the fault of malicious activity the no-refunds policy is a bogus and archaic rule that doesn't fit with the times. The duping excuse has little basis and only serves to increase the satisfaction of the assumed banned criminals.

 

[Royfaren]

I agree with this. The policy can apply for minor issues, like a death or something, but for something this big, that's huge. You lose key players in the herocraft community as a result.
On a side note, admins do a lot. Recovery is a lot of work, so I wouldn't say the policy should be completely reversed for every little nitty bitty loss there is out there. It's a videogame.

 

[Drastikos]

I know first hand these issues you're describing!
You outline the issues and the rules well; however, what I'd really like are some suggestions on how we can solves these issues.

When it comes to restoring items we need a better way than going through the chests logs, finding every item, every amount of them, one by one... It's a long, tedious, annoying, PITA, process!
One possible option in to rollback to just before the grief started. This would work in most situations, but can possibly be exploitable.

I've always been one to say, "If you want it, LWC it"! That and personal regions are the only way to keep stuff safe.
If you had your stuff were in covered chests in your personal region, they would have been fine. Yet, I've watched this happen over and over again..
That said, again I do agree something needs to be done to update these rules.

I'm voting #1, cause #3 makes so sense to me at all.

 

[Jacobpanther]

@Jacobpanther and @Nightroado were victims of a massive chest griefing of Rapture that ended Night's time on the server.
Last map, @Fo0l3d , @TrueCorruptor and others were raided by a Diffuse alt and everything that wasn't in an lwc was burned and gone.

Clearly, at the fault of malicious activity the no-refunds policy is a bogus and archaic rule that doesn't fit with the times. The duping excuse has little basis and only serves to increase the satisfaction of the assumed banned criminals.

It's actually a false rumor that @Nightroado left because of the Rapture grief. He resigned a few days before it.

I personally like the way that the staff handled our major grief. They reset all the griefed buildings but left all of the stolen chests empty. Although I did disagree about not reimbursing the heads. *cry* Angyle's Head *cry*

I just voted and I realized I was the only for keep as is lol. If probably asked this after the Rapture grief I would have said yes, but after a few months after I realized it was probably the right call. It was the people who didn't use LWC's faults for not utilizing the plugin, and yes I did not have any LWC's at that time so all of my stuff was destroyed as well.

 

[xexorian]

It's actually a false rumor that @Nightroado left because of the Rapture grief. He resigned a few days before it.

I personally like the way that the staff handled our major grief. They reset all the griefed buildings but left all of the stolen chests empty. Although I did disagree about not reimbursing the heads. *cry* Angyle's Head *cry*

I just voted and I realized I was the only for keep as is lol. If probably asked this after the Rapture gried I would have said yes, but after a few months after I realized it was probably the right call. It was the people who didn't use LWC's faults for not utilizing the plugin, and yes I did not have any LWC's at that time so all of my stuff was destroyed as well.

I do agree that you have a valid point, I do not agree that it is the way to go, in the case of larger towns with more people this becomes a key issue. We simply do not have enough LWC's to protect everything we've amassed. Even with me giving away items, including iron, diamonds, and special blocks. I had a lot saved back still, and I was saving that for the kingdom's towns' upgrade. Not to mention my ancient runestones, and double chests of saddles, moss stone, cracked stone brick, mossy stonebrick, ice, obsidian, lapis, iron, etc. are gone. The costs of the items I lost were insurmountable, probably around 100,000-200,000 coins if they could even be sold without saturating the active playerbase.

My personal belongings are fine.. for the most part, I did have stuff in that vault that was mine, like ALL my lapis is gone, poor bluejack would've had a hayday when he returned if I still had them. But, that's my point.. it was a Kingdom's valuables, not just my personal things. It's the TOWNS that are at risk of losing everything they've amassed, and the towns, and their people, suffer from chest-griefing.

I don't mind rebuilding my town, honestly rolling back changes like block-destruction aren't that big of a deal. I only care about redstone contraptions and lift signs to be blunt. Things like that can break the functionality of structures designed specifically for herocraft's version of minecraft. Some buildings don't have stairs, they only have lifts. Those can be a pain in the ass to fix.

What pisses me off, personally, is chest-griefing for the sake of destroying items. It's pointless, if the guy was trying to steal from me, he wouldn't have even gotten away with maybe a double chest.. the problem is that if you're out to destroy items, it's easy to destroy shit tons of items in a very short amount of time. All that needs to be done to fix this process -- the chest, and its contents need to be rolled back as they were, then deal with the players actions and rollback what they did/delete their character file. Set them back to level 1, tutorial and ban them for a few months. Unless, it was a serious enough offense to perm ban the guy. I'm personally willing to give people second chances, but the problem with that is that the rules allow them to come back and grief again, and again towns, or myself, get victimized and pillaged and we can't get anything fixed, or get our items back. That in and of itself is the problem with the rules, If you don't Perm-Ban people who do bad things, in an effort to keep them in the community to straighten them out or to let them be with other friends who arent so bad, they don't have any remorse for those actions.

Think about it like these 2 scenarios:

Scenario 1)
They griefed a bunch of chests, and burned my items, and get banned. I don't get any of my items back, and they eventually get to come back. All they gotta do is bullshit their way out of it, or say I got really stoned and stupid "I'm sorry!" Either way, I'm fucked as the victim. But, this doesn't NEGATE their reason for doing it!!

Scenario 2)
They griefed a bunch of chests, and burned my items, and get banned. I get all of my items back, and they have to wait a few months before they can play again. In this case, they lose. Period. They broke the rules, and suffer for it. Not the victims.

As the rules are now, they're --allowed-- to grief and destroy items, and we "lose". They "Win". That's the problem. If there isn't a reason to do it because I will get my things back, then they will have less reason to grief in the first place. Right now, the power is shifted infinitely in their hands to destroy the server as griefers are known to do. Take away that power, and give power back to the staff and community to manage their towns without worry of griefers. This would make recruiting for townships a lot less dangerous than it is, and
everyone will prosper.

 

[monkeyfatzer]

If there was an item restoration policy people would just make alts and town abuse and then dupe their items, that's why this rule exists.

 

[Eldrylars]

I have not read the current rules write up

That being said, I like the idea of better written rules, but unfortunately it cannot be absolute. The current policy on Town Theft / Region abuse is: The abusing players must return the items stolen and then wait out their suspension. If the abusing players do not return the items they cannot be unbanned.
​

There have been instances where items were replaced during Bastions time but it's a rare case and must be decided by the best judgement of the admins as to what can qualify as a legitimate theft and what cannot be guaranteed as a theft, and this so far is what has happened.

 

[victim130]

If there was an item restoration policy people would just make alts and town abuse and then dupe their items, that's why this rule exists.

But tbh, if staff catches the alt, both players get banned. Win win imo. Plus, currently, people are just making alts to grief towns. I guess the problem would shift in this case.

 

[xexorian]

The reason I ask for a policy change is to allow admins and moderators a window of time to restore items, if the items were griefed a long time ago and no one caught it, there is plenty of room for error, that doesn't mean it should not be investigated, and actions still taken.

secondly, all the policy change would do is allow players the opportunity (if they're active) to report grief and especially chest griefing to mass scales, and get their items returned. There is no possible way they would be duping massive amounts of items this way, especially not for a $25-$30 minecraft key. I will explain why below. If they're using the same IP's well... they're dumb. IP's can be tracked and they can ban these players permanently for trying to dupe. Furthermore, the plugin's involved can track the items and totally prevent this from happening.. So basically..

..You're also missing the point -- I was talking about being able to roll back changes to the entire user, what they put into chests after griefing, and where, what they drop, and where they dropped it, who picked it up, etc. I'm pretty sure you could do a radius check for a single user on the whole map and it might cause a small hiccup, at worst. It wouldn't be wasting anyone's time, they could even announce it if it became an issue;

"[ALERT] Danda: Doing a block-check in a few seconds, get safe!".

There wouldn't be a loophole around this if you could easily cross reference what was dropped and picked up in an area. (such as the entire map if people are worried about duping). In the case of tons of items, like what we lost, it may be necessary, but in the case of smaller grief involving only mob drops, and lesser worthwhile items/blocks, it wouldn't be necessary. This would be part of the "Policy" changes I am referring to that need to be implemented into the rules, so staff can make smarter and wiser decisions, and allow players to not lose ALL their shit when massively griefed. Also, I would like to point out that we didn't lose tons of gold, diamonds, and emeralds, we did lose an ancient runestone, shitloads of iron, coal, lapis, saddles, and other rare goods. But nothing that would impact the economy as badly because it would easily over saturate it. Just for the sake of argument.

So, that all said.. Let me introduce to you:

http://dev.bukkit.org/bukkit-plugins/prism/

..a quote from the page:

Events and Lookup

• Tracks 65+ player, entity, and world events.
• Includes block changes, container access, item inserts/remove/pickups/drops, entity deaths, shearing, vehicle events, and a LOT more.

Now, while this might be tedius, I'm sure there are ways to use this plugin to track exactly what happened to items during griefing. It even PREVIEWS changes.. You can view the changes in real time as you're making them, and it automagically moves players out of the way so as not to accidentally kill innocent people.

This plugin is already implemented on the server. It is badass. We are not using it's full capability, to the best of my knowledge of it, to prevent item-loss. We should be. If it's not possible, then it needs to be explained as to why.. and perhaps we should find an alternative that allows us to track more data without impacting the server. Anything is possible, this is just a mod, and smart data management. Analytical data management.

Also, I would like to state that if players didn't want a tedius job, let someone else do it, someone that gives a shit enough to help the community out to perfectly catch these people, restore items, and fix the griefing. If we, as a community, cannot find someone to fill this role, then we are failing.

 

[Symbolite]

My personal items have luckily never been hit in a mass chest griefing event like this but I've witnessed this happen to people in my town and my community for my entire time playing Herocraft. Mostly in the last 2 maps tho. The town Nevermore must have been hit like 6 times last map, events where they lost their ENTIRE town storage. Some ridiculous number of full double chests numbering well over 100! Getting hit 6 times and each time the town had to rebuild their supply. Again this map I've witnessed it happen in Newerth and a few of its sister towns multiple time, pretty much exact situation. This is not even counting the number of times I've heard of this happening in towns I'm not affiliated with, the Communist Collective incident Xexo mentioned comes to mind here as one of the major ones. I'm honestly surprised any of us in OS still play with the number of times we've had to replace our stuff lol!

So I agree, something needs to be done about the rules regarding this. I'm sure with some investigating an Admin can tell the difference between a duping incident and a legit plain griefing. People are taking advantage of this to grief towns and get away with it.

 

[Royfaren]

So, that all said.. Let me introduce to you:

http://dev.bukkit.org/bukkit-plugins/prism/

OT, but creepy. Just creepy. The name that is.
And honestly, on topic, it's pretty easy to discover a major duping. An admin can look into the event deep enough to find where the items have gone. There's enough fair players and watchdogs out there to find something so huge. Not hard.

 

[Dielan9999]

The town restoration policies have caused me to stop recruiting for my town. New players (especially HC premium accounts) are not trustworthy.

 

[DaShniper]

My personal items have luckily never been hit in a mass chest griefing event like this but I've witnessed this happen to people in my town and my community for my entire time playing Herocraft. Mostly in the last 2 maps tho. The town Nevermore must have been hit like 6 times last map, events where they lost their ENTIRE town storage. Some ridiculous number of full double chests numbering well over 100! Getting hit 6 times and each time the town had to rebuild their supply. Again this map I've witnessed it happen in Newerth and a few of its sister towns multiple time, pretty much exact situation. This is not even counting the number of times I've heard of this happening in towns I'm not affiliated with, the Communist Collective incident Xexo mentioned comes to mind here as one of the major ones. I'm honestly surprised any of us in OS still play with the number of times we've had to replace our stuff lol!

So I agree, something needs to be done about the rules regarding this. I'm sure with some investigating an Admin can tell the difference between a duping incident and a legit plain griefing. People are taking advantage of this to grief towns and get away with it.

I was hit in Newerth this map. I lost every single item I had, due to a clear exploit, and was not refunded. Went inactive for six months just because it was so daunting.

 

[Kainzo]

I feel like a broken record sometimes.

If you have valuables, use LWC's. If you have random building materials, sure you can use primitive methods to protect items.

All of this can be avoided with a little prep time and planning.

 

[what777]

I feel like a broken record sometimes.

If you have valuables, use LWC's. If you have random building materials, sure you can use primitive methods to protect items.

All of this can be avoided with a little prep time and planning.

We have 20 max LWCs, I've aseked for more LWCs many times. I simply can't LWC all my items, since I just have more than 20 doublechests.

 

[Symbolite]

I personally have over a hundred double chests of materials myself. My real valuables are in my lwc's but if you're a collector like myself everything is valuable, even the cobble! That and I don't mind handing out my vast amount of items to people who need it when they need it.

I'm trailing off but what I'm trying to say is, I only have so many lwc's. It's literally impossible to protect them all even if I have the funds to do so!! Believe me, if we could my town would be all lwc's, between myself and others in my community we could certainly afford to lwc everything, the system limits us to a certain number tho.

 

[Kainzo]

What the real issue here isnt policy, the real issue is that Mayors aren't given the proper tools to defend themselves against malicious intent.

We need sub-regions, mayor-only LWC's (or donation LWC's) and things like it. I feel like instead of changing policy to help against this type of thing, we should instead make sure it can't or is very unlikely to happen.

I could also see the LWC limit increasing across the board.