Open letter to the staff regarding the Silithis Mining Issue

[crime]

Dear Nost Staff,

Firstly, i want to say the unnecessary flaming by banned players is both unneeded and does nothing to further their cause. You have repeatedly told people not to flame admin of any private server and its disappointing than rather than fall back on a reasonable argument the affected players have allowed there emotions to get the better of them and are behaving in a manner that will further solidify your position rather than make you reassess it.

I am not one of the banned players, I know one of them but am not 'friends' with that player. My perspective is that of a pretty impartial player whos been on this server since release day.

I would respectfully ask that you reassess your decision to permanently ban the 5 players accused of exploiding on an industrial level the oozed covered thorium node exploit.

My reasoning:
1) Its not clear that this is an exploit, there isnt easily accessible information available to the general public that this isnt how it behaved on retail.
2) If there is a random post on a forum someplace its not an official blue post, and even if it was its unreasonable to expect players to research ahead of performing a normal ingame action.
3) There are many other things exactly the same as this that have been farmed on a timer and none of these have been deemed an exploit (Black Lotus / Devilasaur's / Rare Recipie's in Shops). Picking this one way and not addressing the others is fundamentally unfair.
4) This is not a 'Major In-game bug'. The amount of gold these miners were receiving from this method of farming is less than other methods available. It can be argued that the influx of arcane crystals is actually good for the server because without the steady supply these farmers were providing they would have been unmanageably expensive. I'm not an admin, i dont define 'major in-game bug' but I strongly suggest a permanent ban be handed out for the abuse of a bug that allows a significant advantage. This type of farming is not a significant advantage over other forms.
5) Permanently banning a character that someone's put hundreds of hours into should be a last resort, reserved for cases where the player has clearly broken the terms of use. The lack of warning is unreasonable. You've approached this from an assumption of guilt rather than a balanced perspective. If you believe this is an exploit take the offenders gold, give them a warning and be done with it.
6) By setting a precedent that players have to actively research what they are doing before doing it or risk a permanent ban you are catastrophically impacting your player base. This is an unreasonable expectation of the general population. The average player is not even reading the forums to know that people got banned for this activity, let alone going to do the hours of research to know if its working as intended. Surley you can see the flaw in the logic, the average player can't be expected to be a better expert than the developers on the game. Your suggestion that we ask a GM - its untenable. A single player is going to be putting in 100 tickets a day, multiply it by the user base and you'll need 1 gm per user. As can be attested on the forums - there are multiple requests for clarification on if something is bannable and no reply from staff to any of them.


Thats a lot of text so i'll stop there - but my final thought for you is this. Picking 5 people and permanently banning them without warning for exploiting the fact that a mineral node respawns on a set timer when practically everything else in the game respawns on a set timer is very extreme. You have to remember your dealing with an online gaming community of people, those 5 people love this community and spent hundreds of hours in this community. Nobody wants to see people forcibly removed from the community when they dont have to be.

[nonsense]

Dear Nost Staff,

Firstly, i want to say the unnecessary flaming by banned players is both unneeded and does nothing to further their cause. You have repeatedly told people not to flame admin of any private server and its disappointing than rather than fall back on a reasonable argument the affected players have allowed there emotions to get the better of them and are behaving in a manner that will further solidify your position rather than make you reassess it.

I am not one of the banned players, I know one of them but am not 'friends' with that player. My perspective is that of a pretty impartial player whos been on this server since release day.

I would respectfully ask that you reassess your decision to permanently ban the 5 players accused of exploiding on an industrial level the oozed covered thorium node exploit.

My reasoning:
1) Its not clear that this is an exploit, there isnt easily accessible information available to the general public that this isnt how it behaved on retail.
2) If there is a random post on a forum someplace its not an official blue post, and even if it was its unreasonable to expect players to research ahead of performing a normal ingame action.
3) There are many other things exactly the same as this that have been farmed on a timer and none of these have been deemed an exploit (Black Lotus / Devilasaur's / Rare Recipie's in Shops). Picking this one way and not addressing the others is fundamentally unfair.
4) This is not a 'Major In-game bug'. The amount of gold these miners were receiving from this method of farming is less than other methods available. It can be argued that the influx of arcane crystals is actually good for the server because without the steady supply these farmers were providing they would have been unmanageably expensive. I'm not an admin, i dont define 'major in-game bug' but I strongly suggest a permanent ban be handed out for the abuse of a bug that allows a significant advantage. This type of farming is not a significant advantage over other forms.
5) Permanently banning a character that someone's put hundreds of hours into should be a last resort, reserved for cases where the player has clearly broken the terms of use. The lack of warning is unreasonable. You've approached this from an assumption of guilt rather than a balanced perspective. If you believe this is an exploit take the offenders gold, give them a warning and be done with it.
6) By setting a precedent that players have to actively research what they are doing before doing it or risk a permanent ban you are catastrophically impacting your player base. This is an unreasonable expectation of the general population. The average player is not even reading the forums to know that people got banned for this activity, let alone going to do the hours of research to know if its working as intended. Surley you can see the flaw in the logic, the average player can't be expected to be a better expert than the developers on the game. Your suggestion that we ask a GM - its untenable. A single player is going to be putting in 100 tickets a day, multiply it by the user base and you'll need 1 gm per user. As can be attested on the forums - there are multiple requests for clarification on if something is bannable and no reply from staff to any of them.


Thats a lot of text so i'll stop there - but my final thought for you is this. Picking 5 people and permanently banning them without warning for exploiting the fact that a mineral node respawns on a set timer when practically everything else in the game respawns on a set timer is very extreme. You have to remember your dealing with an online gaming community of people, those 5 people love this community and spent hundreds of hours in this community. Nobody wants to see people forcibly removed from the community when they dont have to be.

This, "flaming" IS necessary. These Nostalrius admins have not considered the position of those banned. These Nostalrius admins wont budge until they realize that they've made a mistake. Technically, admins can ban someone for no reason at all, but that would make them look terrible. This ban wave needs to be reverted and the Nostalrius team wont revert it until its clear that unbanning is a lower price than keeping the bans.

[Robotron]

As a side note, people wouldn't be encouraged to farm nearly as much if herbs weren't so outrageously expensive because the horrendous supply/demand issue has not been addressed by the staff for the months it's been harped about on the forums.

[Mopar]

*Signed*

[Daelon]

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=21486&start=10

Monkeynews favoritism runs deep.

[Mopar]

http://forum.nostalrius.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=21486&start=10
Monkeynews favoritism runs deep.

He wasn't banned AFAIK. But several rogues who were farming something that may or may not have been a bug were.

You really should take to heart my post. Today they ban people without warning for mining nodes in Silithus in some organized way. Tomorrow they may ban people without notice for picking a specific herb in some organized way. Or for charging 100g crafting fee on a rare enchanting recipe. That is the meaning of my response - you are glad you took herbalism but it does not make you safe. No one is safe.

[thefatswede]

Flaming the staff only makes it worse for those affected but hey that is what you get for exploiting and raging like a kid.

[Dreez]

I'm happy the staff bans exploiters, they are cancer to the game.

However, classifying specific parts of the game as bug ABUSE imputes a bad intention of the player.
The admins seem to have taken the amount of nodes mined to impute a bad intention, which is understandable as this is the only measurable way.
Is it always justified? Probably not.

Seems like some were lucky enough to get away with it, although their bad intention was streamed (and now the vods are deleted, I guess everyone knows which abuser I'm talking about).

[Thefilth]

/signed

[Burovwtf]

RIP