PkHonor

Hello,

So I've given the thread (viewtopic.php?f=26&t=83513) a little bit of time to see if anyone else wanted to pitch in. Seems the majority are happy with what has been said. So I think it's time we finalize the first set of changes and put something concrete in place that is both discussed and decided by the staff team and community, together.

It seems most parties agree with making the rule fairly specific. With the possibility of making additions in the future as we see fit.

For those that didn't/won't read the first thread. Lieven and Patel worked on this;

You may not trick or deceive another player in order to steal their items or cause losses to them (ingame statuses, stats, weath, etc.).

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.
- Not honoring (the specifics of) an agreement i.e during services or risk fights.*
- Letting someone else log onto your account to do a risk fight without the other party knowing this will happen.
- 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


* If (one of the) specifics for a risk fight were not agreed upon beforehand, these things will default to being "allowed" to do. For example, if you and your opponent didn't agree on whether or not it was a death match, both you and your opponent are free to tab out when you feel like it.
In the context of a service, both players are always held to the baseline agreements for services made here


Not all forms of deception are considered scamming. I.e.

- Using an unknown alt account in the wilderness.
- Tricks that don't cause players to lose anything.
- Not splitting loot while PvMing.
- Selling an item at a higher than usual price, while not lying about its rarity or function.

Agreements between players can be eligible for refunds if the staff team is able to recover the lost items and/or money. However, they will 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 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


Be sure to ask a staff member if you are unsure your actions will get you in trouble for scamming.

Rapsey raised several excellent points;

Which is how we end up with our 2 options:
Have a clear and specific rule so there is no confusion or disagreement (but occasionally someone might find a loophole)
Have a meaningless "scamming is whatever staff decides" rule (because even 1 scammer getting away with it is unacceptable)
How many loopholes do you think will be discovered? Maybe 3? If the price for having solid unambiguous rules is that the first 3 people to discover these loopholes get to walk free, I'd call that a bargain. With the other system there would be way more drama than this from disputes about staff decisions.

I'd also like to point out that you can make things more specific while still being vague. E.g. instead of having "omission of useful information" as a crime in general, you could make that apply only in the context of risk fights and services (if those are the only places where it is needed). Instead of trying to make this as broad as possible I implore you to attempt doing the opposite: how can we make these rules more specific while still covering all the scam cases we have in mind?

Obviously things will have to be re-worded to include other types of scamming. But, are we as a community, happy with the general examples provided here. Obviously I will need to have a discussion with Rapsey and write up something official, which I will also pitch to the community once it's finalized. But, I need to know if we're all happy with the path these examples are going down?

Vote, yes or no.

Ryan wrote: ↑Thu Oct 28, 2021 12:28 am
Agreements between players can be eligible for refunds if the staff team is able to recover the lost items and/or money. However, they will not spawn new items into the economy in order to refund you.

You mentioned that these will be re-worded hopefully you will include in
""if you have been hacked or scammed and the hacker has lost your items through staking or Pking and are now held by a third party. You will not be eligible for refund""

I think thats a huge misunderstanding among the players that should get clarified more and brought to the light.

Aside from that totally agree with the rules.

Empty wrote: ↑Thu Oct 28, 2021 12:40 am I think thats a huge misunderstanding among the players that should get clarified more and brought to the light.

To be honest it seems like when that happens, people generally understand why we can't just take items from the other staker, but I guess it doesn't hurt to mention it

I like that there’s changes being made, but no where in here do I see the mention of loop holing being a punishable offense. A loop hole is the whole reason this discussion even began, a staff member being part of the stake without letting the other party know and then telling the other party afterwards “you didn’t ask to check who’s on the account” is a meme that I never thought I’d see happen. I’d definitely prefer if this was specifically noted in the rules or we’d just have everyone trying to find a new way to scam and get away with it once they do and we’d be right back with the pitch forks

Thearlygamer wrote: ↑Thu Oct 28, 2021 1:07 pm I like that there’s changes being made, but no where in here do I see the mention of loop holing being a punishable offense. A loop hole is the whole reason this discussion even began, a staff member being part of the stake without letting the other party know and then telling the other party afterwards “you didn’t ask to check who’s on the account” is a meme that I never thought I’d see happen. I’d definitely prefer if this was specifically noted in the rules or we’d just have everyone trying to find a new way to scam and get away with it once they do and we’d be right back with the pitch forks

That will be discussed on another rule thread, as mentioned in my original post. I think it's best we keep the discussion relative to this issue for the time being. Another thread will be made later for other rules.

What about duel arena scams? I.e. turning on capes of clicking off the limited items option and people using a custom etc.

Will be ok2 wrote: ↑Thu Oct 28, 2021 2:28 pm What about duel arena scams? I.e. turning on capes of clicking off the limited items option and people using a custom etc.

You may not trick or deceive another player in order to steal their items or cause losses to them (ingame statuses, stats, weath, etc.).

Those type of scams count under the rule tbh.
When someone says "whipping x" or even "staking x" the obvious implication is that it's gonna be a fair fight. Someone changing the rules would be deceitful.

Although... falling for someone secretly switching a rule is largely the victims own fault (you click accept twice - with all the rules stated). IMO this comes down to stakers needing a whip/whipdds preset where the rules can not be changed.

Getting proof for this would be hard aswell since I don't think people are recording their stakes and sometimes with screenshots there's just no way to tell if they're not just as guilty as their opponent (i.e take your own cape off, get on your equipment screen, ::ss the other player with cape and you without)

It most certainly is scamming but I see lots of problems that can either be dealt with by:

• Coming up with an elaborate add-on to the rule along with strict rules for duel arena proof, or
• Have the game prevent virtually all these scams by having staking presets

Empty wrote: ↑Thu Oct 28, 2021 12:40 am
""if you have been hacked or scammed and the hacker has lost your items through staking or Pking and are now held by a third party. You will not be eligible for refund""

Great point. If I may rewrite it to merge the original with yours & to fit the needs of this rule change only (hacking is a different thing that has its own rule, to which an altered version of the following may be added):

Agreements between players can be eligible for refunds if the staff team is able to recover the lost items or money. If the scammer has lost your items or money to a third party (i.e staking or pking) you will not be eligible for a refund, as we do not spawn in items or coins to refund players.

Ryan wrote: ↑Thu Oct 28, 2021 1:22 pm

Thearlygamer wrote: ↑Thu Oct 28, 2021 1:07 pm I like that there’s changes being made, but no where in here do I see the mention of loop holing being a punishable offense. A loop hole is the whole reason this discussion even began, a staff member being part of the stake without letting the other party know and then telling the other party afterwards “you didn’t ask to check who’s on the account” is a meme that I never thought I’d see happen. I’d definitely prefer if this was specifically noted in the rules or we’d just have everyone trying to find a new way to scam and get away with it once they do and we’d be right back with the pitch forks

That will be discussed on another rule thread, as mentioned in my original post. I think it's best we keep the discussion relative to this issue for the time being. Another thread will be made later for other rules.

As long as it's also discussed then yes I agree with the original thread and am happy to see some change

Thearlygamer wrote: ↑Thu Oct 28, 2021 1:07 pm I like that there’s changes being made, but no where in here do I see the mention of loop holing being a punishable offense. A loop hole is the whole reason this discussion even began, a staff member being part of the stake without letting the other party know and then telling the other party afterwards “you didn’t ask to check who’s on the account” is a meme that I never thought I’d see happen. I’d definitely prefer if this was specifically noted in the rules or we’d just have everyone trying to find a new way to scam and get away with it once they do and we’d be right back with the pitch forks

Do you ever read things or what.

Rule loopholes
There may be some things you can do which harms others but is not explicitly forbidden in the rules. Players found trying to abuse such 'loopholes' may find themselves punished as a result, depending on the severity of the offense.

And this part of the rules is what was how I've viewed the rules and how I've seen them handled by the staff team for years on end. So I don't really agree with the general consensus that the rules have to be changed. Maybe they can be clarified with more hard examples yeah. The arrsenic case wasn't anything special and no reason for a rule change either.

Things like duel scamming are not against the rules but only because there were multiple clarifications by staff members that it wasn't against the rules to do so. Same for the risk fighting, it had been clarified by staff multiple times that it isn't against the rules.

If arrsenic did abuse mod powers to gain an advantage it would've warranted a community outcry, but still no rule changes would be needed because abusing mod powers is obviously against the rules. But since that wasn't the case and the fighting on someone else's account was also not a problem according to both staff and it being the norm for years with risk fights... All that happened was one clan decided to suddenly do a switcheroo on what they themselves never seen as a problem nor problem with the rules, for the sole reason of trying to harm arrsenic because they don't like him. Then a couple of non pkers thought well hey that isn't nice to do indeed and you got this 'general consensus' for change.

But we've had these clan switcheroos so often in the past, usually the non pking forums users would just view it as the biased clan beef it always was. If we do decide as a community that after many years you now shouldn't be allowed to fight on someone else's account then we just add that specific point to the rules and move on. That isn't a fundamental problem with the rule book, it's just a new standpoint on a very known tactic. Anything new just falls under the rule loopholes and can be solved as it always has been, common sense and maybe a staff discussion about the topic how to handle it, at most even a community thread for changes. If a player was unfairly treated and he wants to make a case he can come to the forums and we can decide if he was done wrong by being punished too hard or whatever and staff can reflect.

So I don't get what we need to further change the rules for. 'Almost the whole community agrees the rules need to be changed' based on what?

The underdog wrote: ↑Thu Oct 28, 2021 8:28 pm Do you ever read things or what.

Read this, fuck you