Town theft... again

[kriskills]

Horrifying sentence structure and flow.

 

[ADaringEnchilada]

Tyronus, I'm fine but I want my items back, as well as my town member's items back because they were obtained illegitimately. Cheating is not hardcore, in fact it is the opposite. Many of you seem to correlate our misfortune with weakness, yet you also correlate cheating (yes, exploitation and abuse of game mechanics and/or bugs is in fact cheating) to the term 'hardcore'. This is incorrect. Also, tyronus, you've mistaken theft via town members and theft via raiders, the two are very different, and you cannot use that anecdote to support your position.

 

[Dielan9999]

I never called you a troll itzmak, you were actually constructive, however if you look a few posts above this reply, you'll see what I'm talking about.

On subject: We shouldn't have to purchase an LWC. Hell, the description of the server used to advocate joining a town because it was safer; but it is not. Honestly, we shouldn't feel obliged to make sacrifices to ensure safety when we are part of a town, because the purpose of a town is to provide protection. It's redundant to tell someone to join a town for protection, and then tell them to use an LWC for protection, a lot like the rule that states you cannot steal inside of zeal, but you can steal from the noble plots inside zeal, yet there is nothing inside of zeal that you could possibly take, making the rule redundant.

I remember back when stealing from towns was illegal to anyone. Now the rules have gotten to loose and need to be tightened back up, because allowing a game-breaking exploit like this to pass is detrimental to the server.

Exactly why I mentioned before that living in the wild has more benefits than a township at the moment.

Think about it, if you had joined this server, used mining bases to get a wealth of ores you use to mine for gold, sell the gold to any town banker (because they always buy for like 9.5 or more like idiots) and get the money for one LWC. Then you can build an amazing mega fortress like Kyotetsu Shoge did. Put an LWC on the chest with all the goods in it you don't ever want stolen, and kick back and watch as people get banned for minor griefing of your wild house.

People will pillar, or grief to get inside, only to find all the goods are in a single(or more) LWC and the junk is all in exposed chests. If they don't fix their griefing they are fucked, so you don't need the benefit of regions to keep a nice wild house. You just need to make a safe bed chamber with lava and stuff to keep people out. Or you can donate to T4, continue gaining riches like you did at the start, and just get a personal region for the center of your house. You'd be pretty well off i'd say. Without ever joining a town to begin with.

When did things get so backwards? Why is living in the wild safer than joining a town in many aspects? I can agree that rules need to be changed, but you don't necessarily have to outlaw town theft. If it were easier to find the theft, before they found out you know, and made it easier to punish them in game and/or get your items back everything would be better. Like what Spire did to Orb_of_thor, good for them.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~avoiding double post~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

@Diffuse :

@Dielan9999 Can I be part of your mini town?

lol sure! It's basically ideas being thrown around about what KRS should do when the next map starts, we won't have gabizou (but he might build a home in our town because he is a friend) so we might not even do the asian theme. I can't be the leader and Xexorian stepped up, he's got some mad designs and I'm sure whatever he does, it would be a good investment of my time, citizen status, and resources i mine to help him out. I'd recommend you to join us if you wanted I just want a simpler life, a simpler town, and a tight group to live with. Then all this thief drama will be a thing of the past for us!

 

[Doogler]

Basiclly every town should look for new members of the server to turn into theives and join enemy towns to steal everything.

 

[Farroes]

I would like to point out that I in no way what so ever endorsed this members action, and he has been kicked from Kamino. I have no idea who thought this would be a good idea, seeing as I myself started a thread very similiar to this when this event happened to me. So I would like to apologize on behalf of my township for one ex-members actions.

-Farroes
Mayor of Kamino

 

[Diffuse]

Who wants to create a guild with me where we recruit all new players we can, get them to join enemy towns, and steal their stuff?

 

[Dielan9999]

Tyronus, I'm fine but I want my items back, as well as my town member's items back because they were obtained illegitimately. Cheating is not hardcore, in fact it is the opposite. Many of you seem to correlate our misfortune with weakness, yet you also correlate cheating (yes, exploitation and abuse of game mechanics and/or bugs is in fact cheating) to the term 'hardcore'. This is incorrect. Also, tyronus, you've mistaken theft via town members and theft via raiders, the two are very different, and you cannot use that anecdote to support your position.

I think the moral of this story is that town regions, which you pay hard earned tax coin for, should actually protect you.

When you use alt accounts(weather they be yours, a friends', a family members') you can talk your way onto somebody's region, then steal as though you were raiding on your main account. Sure it's the town's fault for recruiting a bad egg, but in this hostile recruiting environment Zeal has over what Sanctum used to have, you have to recruit to survive. So many people will log in once, join a town, and quit forever. Then the town needs to keep recruiting to make up for those inactives, because they were covering for inactives from when the town first started.

Sure alot of towns don't know that you can go as low as 5 citizens before you lose your ring and region (for town status, its a higher number for city and cap, but lower than the needed number to buy that status) but it's generally frowned upon to have so few. Plus with lots of citizens, they can all be working for the town and helping it grow. Anybody who wants to run a thriving town needs to always recruit new members.

When the majority of new member pool is a bunch of scumbag thiefs and alt accounts, why try?

 

[nmtonj]

Stealing from chests is 100% legal...

 

[Dielan9999]

Stealing from chests is 100% legal...

That's why people join towns. So that with a region (which only town members can add/remove blocks) you can hide your chests away or cover them so random people cannot open them.

The problem here is, people join towns, remove the blocks on top of the chests/dig them out of the floor, and move out. It's shady.

 

[jmoney222]

Stealing from chests is 100% legal...

Really? I had no idea!

Daring - I support this 100%. <3

 

[nmtonj]

That's why people join towns. So that with a region (which only town members can add/remove blocks) you can hide your chests away or cover them so random people cannot open them.

The problem here is, people join towns, remove the blocks on top of the chests/dig them out of the floor, and move out. It's shady.

That is why you ALWAYS keep a lwc!

 

[Dielan9999]

That is why you ALWAYS keep a lwc!

That's why it affects the new players the most. To most of the new guys on this map, it's STEAL or GET STOLEN from.

 

[nmtonj]

That's why it affects the new players the most. To most of the new guys on this map, it's STEAL or GET STOLEN from.

There could be some sort of fine of credits for stealing from other players.

 

[nmtonj]

There could be some sort of fine of credits for stealing from players that belong to your township.

 

[Doogler]

 

[GreekCrackShot]

Okay, well here goes nothing...

(Left out names, didn't want to embarrass anyone or call anyone out, that would be unprofessional)

a trusted member of our towns in ZKH left our town for another town a few weeks ago. He was mad for reasons I still have trouble understanding, for they were insignificant from my point of view. This player happened to have access to all the chests in the ares bank, and all our lwc'd doors, including the chest that happened to contain all the items we were gathering up to expand our Kingdom. These chests were all in the town hall region. My point being, when leaving the community, he decided to deal a deadly blow to our kingdom, by stealing every single item that was relatively important to us.

We're talking:

• 2 stacks of diamond blocks
• 3 stacks of gold
• 4-5 stacks of iron blocks
• 13 or so pumpkins
• 20 disks
• a few stacks of lapis blocks
• and some other things I can't recall

Since this was in the town hall region, I /pe'd it. staff proceeded to help me out, but there was one issue, those valuables happened to be in that player's lwc... Not because they were his items, but because he was the first one to make an lwc for our town when they were put in towards the beginning of the map. This player didn't work for any of the items, it was just his lwc. I assumed there would be no problem, and all our items would be returned since it was in the town hall.

Wrong. instead the player goes unpunished and only returns half of the items (his lwc, but our town hall = keep half?). I don't know, I found this to be sort of unfair. I got super depressed over this incident and I felt like giving up on the game. It pissed me off that the staff would let a player ruin the game experience for a striving community. I don't know how to explain the feeling, because I know it's wrong, because of what I experienced, but from and admin's point of view, this appears to be partly fair by the rules.

As much as this bothered me for a day or so, it wasn't hard for us to get back on our feet. Things are picking up around my town, without said player, and Athena is a growing community. The lost items have been re-gained in no time, and things have been better. I strongly agree with Daring in saying that stealing in your current town should be punishable in some way, and clarification in the rules is definitely needed.

EDIT: Changed some of the wording, I want stealing from towns to stay obviously, but what I meant was stealing from your fellow citizens.

You know you love my wall of text....

 

[Dielan9999]

But the server rules say different

2) The following actions are permitted:​

a) Stealing.​

i) Stealing is legal everywhere EXCEPT inside Zeal and townhalls.​

1) Griefing may be defined as:​

a) Pvp, theft, or block destruction inside Zeal, or a townhall.​

i) Attacking players in a no-pvp zone from a pvp zone is both griefing and exploiting.​

b) Destroying blocks in another player's house/structure.​

i) This rule does not apply to diamond, gold, iron, or lapis lazuli blocks in the wilderness.​

ii) This rule does not apply to plants.​

iii) A portion of a structure may be destroyed in pursuit of another player, or to gain access to said structure, ONLY if the attacking player is able to restore the blocks destroyed to original form, immediately.​

09/24/11 -- Updated (Destroying rare blocks inside a town, without explicit permission, is illegal. Griefing is still illegal as always.)

According to this, as long as you return the dirt on top of the chest, and/or replace the floor boards you broke to get into the secret chest room, you CAN take items from your own town.

You could even encase your chest room in gold and diamond blocks, as long as they put the blocks encasing back when they are done robbing you, they haven't broken any rules.

 

[Farroes]

love the wall of text greek

And I fully agree with you and daring. I have a really hard time trying to justify why this should be legal :/

 

[ADaringEnchilada]

Honestly, the rules (and I know the staff, namely Seratt, try to update them constantly) are a little outdated and could use a look over. It also seems that a lot of the rules are not written, but are in place, and vice versa where they are written, but not enforced. This disorganization and chaos makes it hard for a lot of the staff to be on the same page, and similarly some, if not most of the rules are left open for interpretation by the staff for them to make their call because the rule is ambiguous, or has a lot of grey areas. This actually causes far more distress as one person may read it on the wiki, and another in-game and you'll wind up with the conflict of the stated rules and the interpreted rules. This also causes people to break rules they don't think they are breaking, as the source they heard it from said it was legitimate.

My point in that is do not say it is legal because the rules don't say it is, because the rules don't say that is not legal, and don't make an opinion based on a single staff member's ruling, form it off of many. In this case, I'm using Aph and Kain, considering they are two main founders and have precedence over the lower staff. Similarly, since this is up for debate, I'm able to gather opinions from the player base, and I'm getting a lot of support on my side, and not only from town members and close friends, but rather distant friends or people I don't even know that well. And to top it off, most of my opposition is coming from a group associated with mass trolling, and have not provided and educated response that would indicate my idea is faulty in any significant way that isn't completely biased towards them.

So in all respects, my side (or should I say 'our') of the argument is winning. We not only have two major staff supporting this situation, but we also have popular opinion of at least two mayors, and other respected players, where as the opposition in many cases has failed to produce a decent proposal to counter my own, itzmak withstanding, or is incapable of even forming a coherent sentence that is on topic. In this sense, I would think that it would be the best decision to clarify once and for all stealing in the server, and I have a proposal for such:

• Stealing from other players is acceptable under all conditions, except:
  • Stealing from Town halls (regardless of citizenship)
  • Stealing from fellow town members
    • This includes but is not limited to: stealing from other citizen's chests, griefing any and all (including rare, plant, or man-made) blocks, or providing an opportunity for a non-citizen to access normally inaccessible chests (i.e. A citizen making an opening in a house as a spy for another town, abusing region powers to allow those without permission to access inaccessible places)
  • Stealing while inside of the region of Zeal
    • This rule does not include Zeal noble plots

That set of rules is what I am aiming for with this thread. I also believe the punishment for an infraction of these rules should be set to a warning II at minimum, as it is always intentional, especially if the account belonged to a member of a town that not only benefited from the theft, but is on hostile diplomatic terms with the victim town. This sort of crime is similar to hate crimes in the sense that they are targeted against one group because of the relationship between them, and as such ought to be punished with more than a 'wag of the finger and slap on the wrist' as this sort of punishment encourages the player to break the rule again, but more covertly.

 

[Dielan9999]

• Stealing from other players is acceptable under all conditions, except:
  • Stealing from Town halls (regardless of citizenship)
  • Stealing from fellow town members
    • This includes but is not limited to: stealing from other citizen's chests, griefing any and all (including rare, plant, or man-made) blocks, or providing an opportunity for a non-citizen to access normally inaccessible chests (i.e. A citizen making an opening in a house as a spy for another town, abusing region powers to allow those without permission to access inaccessible places)
  • Stealing while inside of the region of Zeal
    • This rule does not include Zeal noble plots

The problem I see here, is that someone could say, "NUH UH! I LEFT THAT TOWN EARLIER! THEY JUST FORGOT TO TAKE ME OFF REGIONS BECAUSE IT WAS LIKE MIDNIGHT!" when caught.

Most people on this server decide for themselves when they are a part of one town or another, some will make arrangements to join a new town before leaving the old. Giving the powers that be in that town no time to remove said player from the regions before they can do damage. All of which gets around this little rule you are proposing. Nobody honors the 3 day rule anymore, it's a damn shame.

It's not easy to do what Seratt does now is it daring?