Rule Discussion Thread.

[Ryan]

Hello,

So. I think its about time we make this thread. It's been brought to the attention of pretty much everyone on the server that some of our rules are outdated and perhaps need to be re-discussed. This is going to be that platform. Before we do start discussions, I have a few very specific rules to put in place to ensure this doesn't become a shit show like the last thread did. If you don't follow these rules, your post will be deleted.
1. No flaming, baiting or putting people down for their opinions. We are all entitled to one. Respect each others.
2. We're only going to be discussing TWO rules at a time. Please do not try and discuss anything that isn't related to these two rules.
Feel free to post your opinions below, the more popular opinions will be polled and a decision will be based off that poll result.

First rule is; Scamming (This includes the player made deal section, and whether or not it needs to be revamped or removed completely)

You may not trick another player in order to steal their items or cause losses to them by spreading false information about how the game works or abusing game mechanics to orchestrate a deception. This does not include trust-based agreements made between players where someone is expected to keep their word.

Examples of scamming include:

Luring a player into an unsafe area by telling them it is safe and/or falsely claiming there is something valuable to be found there
Falsely telling a player they will receive a special reward if they alch a valuable item or press alt-F4 in a dangerous area
While agreements between players can be eligible for refunds if made through our player-made deals system, failing to hold up your end of an agreement is not a punishable offence.

Second rule is; Boosting.
Dont have much to say on this one, we need to re-write the entire thing.

Please understand this discussion is not about "how mods interpret rules" or "how they should be enforced". We first need to come up with an agreed upon set of rules to punish, before we start punishing for it.

Let's keep this civil. If this doesn't remain a constructive process, we will simply revert to the old way of doing it and have the staff team decide. This is your chance to have your say. Don't ruin it for everyone else.

Thanks,

Ryan.

[Fungamer]

My proposal for scamming:

You may not trick or deceive another player in order to steal their items or cause losses to them.

Examples of scamming include, but are not limited to:

- Spreading false information about how the game works or abusing game mechanics to orchestrate a player to be deceived and lose money or items.
- Luring a player into an unsafe area by telling them it is safe and/or falsely claiming there is something valuable to be found there.
- Falsely telling a player they will receive a special reward if they alch a valuable item or press alt-F4 in a dangerous area.
- Not giving items or money back when having agreed to it being a trust trade or loan

Agreements between players can be eligible for refunds if the staff team is able to recover the lost items and/or money. We will however not spawn new items into the economy in order to refund you.

While we can punish a player for scamming if they do not hold up their part of the agreement (provided there is clear proof from in-game screenshots and/or videos), we still encourage all players to use the Player Made Deal section when engaging in these agreements to ensure things go as smoothly as possible: viewforum.php?f=138

My proposal for boosting:

You may not gain or otherwise facilitate another persons gaining of PK Points, achievements or kills in an unfair or otherwise "rigged" manner.

Examples of this include, but are not limited to:

- Killing your friend who has no items on them so you can gain PK Points
- Paying your clan members to die for you so you can unlock wilderness achievements

We understand that there are too many ways to boost to sum up. Keep in mind that loopholing is also against the rules and that the staff team has extensive logs to determine whether or not you were breaking this rule. We advise all players to engage in PvP in a fair manner and to use common sense and to not try to circumvent this rule with technicalities. When in doubt, please check with a staff member first.

We do not consider a PKer killing someone who was legitimately PvMing or skilling in the wilderness as boosting. This is a normal part of the PvP aspect of the wilderness.

Just a rough draft, although my sleep-deprived mind thinks it's pretty thorough.

What do you guys think of this, with the (new) implications these two rewrites would have?

[Somedudedw]

As far as scamming goes, I think that any agreement between two people, provided there is proof of the agreement on any platform, should be abided by just like the player made deals section. For example, if two players agree ro a service in a discord pm and one decides to not pay after the service has been completed, it should be viewed as scamming. It would also be nice if there were a way to protect newer players from being taken advantage of on their items, some way to prevent selling their tassets for like 1b when they could get more, but im not sure how that would be implemented other than trade limits and thats just not a good idea.

As for boosting, there should be clear and concise terms to it. Such as boosting your pkp by killing naked people in the wild (non bh) just because they are there. Not talking about pvmers, as they are at least risking something. If boosting pvp achievements is going to remain against the rules, then why would boosting your overall killcount and your pkp in the same fashion be acceptable? Or alternatively, simply accept that boosting for those two things is going to happen, no matter what, and dont waste energy focusing on it.

[Raj]

There should be a big bold text in the scamming rule that if there's a dispute and the evidence of the deal provided by the players doesn't cover it, we're not going to step in.

For instance, if two players agree on "risk fight winner gets 20b", and then one of them tabs, and it wasn't mentioned that tabbing is a loss in the screenshots/forums thread/whatever evidence, we're not just going to enforce it because the one who didn't tab thinks it should be that way after the fact. Ultimately, you get the player made deals system we have now but with more acceptable forms of evidence, but players are able to screw themselves over slightly more easily, albeit knowing that they might get protection from staff assuming everything goes the way it was meant to. We can do our best to fill in evidence which is missing from the available logs, but if something just isn't there, there's no reason to force either player to do anything imo

Boosting is pretty straightforward if you ask me. I don't think anyone has ever misunderstood that rule in its current form. Just there should be an addition saying that anyone caught boosting their comp requirements may have them reset, since that might be unclear to people who have been around since before that was a thing that could be done.

Edit: I guess boosting isn't actually on the rules page, but it is in the punishment guidelines, which is.... weird. If I had to define it personally, I'd say boosting is any planning of a fight so that one player has an unfair advantage, resulting in free kills or illegitimate account progression. That can be things like one player not attacking back, not trying to escape if they're not fighting back, or intentionally not eating food they have, etc. However, that doesn't include things like planning to use certain matching gear sets or (fair) rules while still participating in a fair fight. I assume that should make sense to most people, but who's to say.

[Church]

As far as scamming goes, I think that any agreement between two people, provided there is proof of the agreement on any platform, should be abided by just like the player made deals section. For example, if two players agree ro a service in a discord pm and one decides to not pay after the service has been completed, it should be viewed as scamming. It would also be nice if there were a way to protect newer players from being taken advantage of on their items, some way to prevent selling their tassets for like 1b when they could get more, but im not sure how that would be implemented other than trade limits and thats just not a good idea.

As for boosting, there should be clear and concise terms to it. Such as boosting your pkp by killing naked people in the wild (non bh) just because they are there. Not talking about pvmers, as they are at least risking something. If boosting pvp achievements is going to remain against the rules, then why would boosting your overall killcount and your pkp in the same fashion be acceptable? Or alternatively, simply accept that boosting for those two things is going to happen, no matter what, and dont waste energy focusing on it.

I can’t do my full response to the thread right now because I’m at work but I did just want to say that using chats from “any platform” is both unfeasible and a bad idea. It’s simply too hard to verify when people are who they claim to be. It’s not much effort to change your display name and profile picture on discord and then message someone, or even just editing the text itself in a browser.
If we switched to a system where all agreements for enforceable by staff it would still need to be pkh client chat and forums chat only.

[Fungamer]

Boosting is pretty straightforward if you ask me. I don't think anyone has ever misunderstood that rule in its current form. Just there should be an addition saying that anyone caught boosting their comp requirements may have them reset, since that might be unclear to people who have been around since before that was a thing that could be done.

Mhm. I think the recent thread about boosting was mainly about the fact that it wasn't really being enforced a lot, some people felt like they could get away with it without consequences, and now that it's being enforced again, they're surprised. Although a rewrite might help make things more clear.
Resets have always been a possible consequence, even Jagex does/did it for botters. IMO this is even a rather mild punishment for the shameless boosting that has recently occured.
At this point I believe the whole boosting issue may be a matter of consistent follow-ups from staff so this rule keeps being enforced, but that's already outside of the scope of what this thread is meant to achieve.

I'm rather opposed to having "if you do this, we will punish you by doing this" being in any rule. For some people knowing the exact consequence of breaking a rule leads to them just taking a calculated risk.
It also doesn't take into account other things like punishment history or how hard the rule was broken (E.G getting caught boosting your own account for comp vs having a wildy ach service where you've boosted like 10 accounts before getting caught). At that point I see little use for listing some "standard" punishment in the rules or even a range of possible punishments because there'll always be something that gets missed unless "Ban/Mute/Reset" is listed as a possible consequence for most rules which is, well, redundant.


Not to mention that those who got a more severe punishment will whine and say they're being treated unfairly "because the rules said i shouldn't have gotten such a harsh punishment".
Have that happen with a popular player or with an unpopular mod dealing out the punishment and we'll be here discussing a rule rewrite again in no time. After 30 pages of drama, that is.

[Empty]

My proposal for scamming:

You may not trick or deceive another player in order to steal their items or cause losses to them.

Examples of scamming include, but are not limited to:

- Spreading false information about how the game works or abusing game mechanics to orchestrate a player to be deceived and lose money or items.
- Luring a player into an unsafe area by telling them it is safe and/or falsely claiming there is something valuable to be found there.
- Falsely telling a player they will receive a special reward if they alch a valuable item or press alt-F4 in a dangerous area.
- Not giving items or money back when having agreed to it being a trust trade or loan

Agreements between players can be eligible for refunds if the staff team is able to recover the lost items and/or money. We will however not spawn new items into the economy in order to refund you.

While we can punish a player for scamming if they do not hold up their part of the agreement (provided there is clear proof from in-game screenshots and/or videos), we still encourage all players to use the Player Made Deal section when engaging in these agreements to ensure things go as smoothly as possible: viewforum.php?f=138

My proposal for boosting:

You may not gain or otherwise facilitate another persons gaining of PK Points, achievements or kills in an unfair or otherwise "rigged" manner.

Examples of this include, but are not limited to:

- Killing your friend who has no items on them so you can gain PK Points
- Paying your clan members to die for you so you can unlock wilderness achievements

We understand that there are too many ways to boost to sum up. Keep in mind that loopholing is also against the rules and that the staff team has extensive logs to determine whether or not you were breaking this rule. We advise all players to engage in PvP in a fair manner and to use common sense and to not try to circumvent this rule with technicalities. When in doubt, please check with a staff member first.

We do not consider a PKer killing someone who was legitimately PvMing or skilling in the wilderness as boosting. This is a normal part of the PvP aspect of the wilderness.

You always seem to amaze me with your forums posts, i had the exact same points in mind. couldn't have said it any better!

[R3v k1ller]

Boosting is pretty straightforward if you ask me. I don't think anyone has ever misunderstood that rule in its current form. Just there should be an addition saying that anyone caught boosting their comp requirements may have them reset, since that might be unclear to people who have been around since before that was a thing that could be done.

Mhm. I think the recent thread about boosting was mainly about the fact that it wasn't really being enforced a lot, some people felt like they could get away with it without consequences, and now that it's being enforced again, they're surprised. Although a rewrite might help make things more clear.
Resets have always been a possible consequence, even Jagex does/did it for botters. IMO this is even a rather mild punishment for the shameless boosting that has recently occured.
At this point I believe the whole boosting issue may be a matter of consistent follow-ups from staff so this rule keeps being enforced, but that's already outside of the scope of what this thread is meant to achieve.

I'm rather opposed to having "if you do this, we will punish you by doing this" being in any rule. For some people knowing the exact consequence of breaking a rule leads to them just taking a calculated risk.
It also doesn't take into account other things like punishment history or how hard the rule was broken (E.G getting caught boosting your own account for comp vs having a wildy ach service where you've boosted like 10 accounts before getting caught). At that point I see little use for listing some "standard" punishment in the rules or even a range of possible punishments because there'll always be something that gets missed unless "Ban/Mute/Reset" is listed as a possible consequence for most rules which is, well, redundant.


Not to mention that those who got a more severe punishment will whine and say they're being treated unfairly "because the rules said i shouldn't have gotten such a harsh punishment".
Have that happen with a popular player or with an unpopular mod dealing out the punishment and we'll be here discussing a rule rewrite again in no time. After 30 pages of drama, that is.

I mean.. rules and punishments are all open to quite a bit of discretion. Its seen time and time again, which is why this discussion has to happen again. The rules need to at least have a clear outline that isn't open to interpretation depending on the staff member.

Scamming is usually pretty clear cut. Dont lie about an item, dont lure somebody with lies, dont hide a weapon or rule, risk what is promised.

Boosting is basically being given a kill. Dont give each other kills, dont kill a friend with gear and give it back to hide behind this rule.

idk why these rules are so open to interpretation..

[Fungamer]

I mean.. rules and punishments are all open to quite a bit of discretion. Its seen time and time again, which is why this discussion has to happen again. The rules need to at least have a clear outline that isn't open to interpretation depending on the staff member.

idk why these rules are so open to interpretation..

That is a staff guideline or consistency issue. These complaints have nothing to do with the rules themselves. Post another thread if you think this is an issue that needs to be (publicly) discussed.

[R3v k1ller]

I mean.. rules and punishments are all open to quite a bit of discretion. Its seen time and time again, which is why this discussion has to happen again. The rules need to at least have a clear outline that isn't open to interpretation depending on the staff member.

idk why these rules are so open to interpretation..

That is a staff guideline or consistency issue. These complaints have nothing to do with the rules themselves. Post another thread if you think this is an issue that needs to be (publicly) discussed.

Other rules will eventually be brought up here. But what I said is accurate about these two rules. Why is a pk cc giving kills for extra pkp, streaks, and emblems allowed, while two people fighting in karils in an attempt to get comp requirements is boosting? The rule should be clear and enforced fairly.