Death Amnesia - Bad wording, and feedback it needs to be stronger.

[Old Lies Die Harder]

We’re limited in that we don’t always see this happen. Players need to report for us to be able to take appropriate action. What appropriate action is changes depending on the context of the situation, sometimes that is a time-out and other times it’s just some encouraging words to do better.

I will note that as a matter of policy, Arelith actively discourages reporting by leaving threads hanging at least from the player perspective. In the event that 'appropriate action' is taken, we are left in the dark about results while also still being the aggrieved party.

The victim in a rules abuse situation pays the bill so to speak when someone abuses the game or rules in ways that damage our time investment. We lose things such as experience, gold, or items that represent time and lose literal time when blocked out of engaging with the server due to death penalties. Then, after paying that price, we pay another one in spending more time and effort to compile a report. When someone breaks the rules, we pay twice. Then, we are told to trust that reports are being handled but are shown very little to demonstrate that.

It's discouraging to have someone destroy something you've made. Most of us can accept loss as part of the game, but it's even more discouraging when that loss occurs unfairly, in bad faith, and in violation of community rules and standards. It is time consuming to compile screenshots and words into even simple reports. I report when I see a problem anyways because I'm stubborn, but I completely understand why other players might feel like the cost/benefit of submitting a report isn't in their favor, and that they're shouting into the void. Hell, I feel that way most of the time.

Perhaps this might help the team understand why there is so much concern about the extension of the amnesia window being abused. To some of us, this rules 'clarification' has put more things on the table (ie, a half hour or more of roleplay) to be taken away by someone who is acting in bad faith, while we still have no way of seeing that our reports have any effect whatsoever.

[Wrips]

Not every report ends in a ban. Not every report actually reports an actual infraction. I can't really count the times I have seen someone (including my own friends) say how they have reported X because they are some kind of bad actor out for ruining other peoples' days and when I asked for evidence it was absolutely nothing other than a player being emotionally upset about something that didn't go the way they intended.

[DM Monkey]

I will note that as a matter of policy, Arelith actively discourages reporting by leaving threads hanging at least from the player perspective. In the event that 'appropriate action' is taken, we are left in the dark about results while also still being the aggrieved party.

The victim in a rules abuse situation pays the bill so to speak when someone abuses the game or rules in ways that damage our time investment. We lose things such as experience, gold, or items that represent time and lose literal time when blocked out of engaging with the server due to death penalties. Then, after paying that price, we pay another one in spending more time and effort to compile a report. When someone breaks the rules, we pay twice. Then, we are told to trust that reports are being handled but are shown very little to demonstrate that.

It's discouraging to have someone destroy something you've made. Most of us can accept loss as part of the game, but it's even more discouraging when that loss occurs unfairly, in bad faith, and in violation of community rules and standards. It is time consuming to compile screenshots and words into even simple reports. I report when I see a problem anyways because I'm stubborn, but I completely understand why other players might feel like the cost/benefit of submitting a report isn't in their favor, and that they're shouting into the void. Hell, I feel that way most of the time.

Perhaps this might help the team understand why there is so much concern about the extension of the amnesia window being abused. To some of us, this rules 'clarification' has put more things on the table (ie, a half hour or more of roleplay) to be taken away by someone who is acting in bad faith, while we still have no way of seeing that our reports have any effect whatsoever.

Well let me try to help explain why it is this way. There’s a few reasons you don’t hear back all of the time (but should at least hear a confirmation that we’ve received the report and will look into it).

One of the reasons might be that there just wasn’t a rule break. A player’s perspective doesn’t really ever have all of the information and we often see situations where it definitely appears to be a rule break from that player’s perspective, but actually turns out not to be for whatever reason. I’m not going to go into any specifics here. The point is that DMs get the bigger picture of a situation.

The main reason you don’t hear back is because we don’t discuss the details of an interview or punishment with other players. It’s private so that the person who was spoken to or punished has a chance to redeem their behaviour and become better. Ultimately we want people playing together, we want people to be able to improve and develop better behaviours. You may not hear that we’ve banned a person who did something bad, or we’ve talked to and coach them, or we’ve taken other punitive measures, whatever it is.

Once you report to ‘Active DMs’, we do our best to get to the bottom of it and take appropriate actions depending on the situation. Not everyone gets it right every time, so if you’re ever unhappy with a decision you can appeal to the head DM which is currently DM Wraith.

So again, you see something that needs to be reported, it’s best to just report it and leave it with us.

[good man of god]

Did the ruling get updated yet?

Since you're asking, what do you believe the ideal wording should be?

I gave a few examples when I was discussing with Vivek, maybe to move this forward a bit more solidly you should show what you think the rule should be.

I've already gone into great length in this very thread.

[Cataclysm of Iron]

Did the ruling get updated yet?

Since you're asking, what do you believe the ideal wording should be?

I gave a few examples when I was discussing with Vivek, maybe to move this forward a bit more solidly you should show what you think the rule should be.

I've already gone into great length in this very thread.

You've made a lot of criticisms and sensationalist remarks about the perceived unsuitability of the latest ruling.

You've not actually posted anything which indicates what you think the rules should be.

[MRFTW]

we still have no way of seeing that our reports have any effect whatsoever.

Monkey, you aren't listening.

You are being told that you aren't trusted to be left alone with reports. Your response to that is:

So again, you see something that needs to be reported, it’s best to just report it and leave it with us.

-

Arelith is a black box when it comes to reports and player behaviour management. It's well within its rights to be like that, me or any other player has no right to demand a change there. Within that system, it's absolutely no surprise that with zero transparency comes zero trust. I find it very strange that staff are all surprised Pikachu about it. This is the system you made, it's inherently shady, of course people are side-eyeing it!

There is a maxim in the legal world: "Justice must not only be done – it must be seen to be done". Justice is not seen to be done here on Arelith, which is fine, but with that comes a lack of trust. I think that's just something that everyone needs to make their peace with, be they players or DMs.

EDIT: It's probably worth noting, given the tone of my post, that I don't actively distrust the staff. I am merely pointing out that I'm not incentivised to be trusting in any way, either. Nor have I ever been privately actioned or sanctioned in any way by any member of staff.

[DM Monkey]

I am listening. I'm reading and taking people's opinions in. You've quoted the takeaway message and missed the rest of the post. My responses are to try and help people understand why things are like this - I can't change it myself. Here is your quote right back at you:

I think that's just something that everyone needs to make their peace with, be they players or DMs.

[chocolatelover]

I understand the point of this ruling - so players don't engage in tit-for-tat revenge killings all over the place.

But the Death Amnesia seems to go too far back. Surely the player remembers something...that they were in the tavern, went into the cave, just entered the house...) and they should remember things in a vague manner up to about 5 minutes before the death blow...

Ex: Sonja and I went in the cave to kill the kobolds... Macho Mark joined us.... i don't remember anything after that)

Authorities can investigate... the other players can choose to lie... (the kobolds got you before I could intervene. Mark did it, Sonja did it)

I agree the player killed should not be part of the investigation. It's too easy to let emotions make you insist they keep looking into Player X. It's also entirely reasonable for your player friends to investigate (what happened to poor Pamela?)

But it's also reasonable to act uncomfortable and suspicious around a suspected person. (I've gone many places with Sonja. It wasn't until Mark joined us that something happened to me.) And at least refuse to go places or be alone with Mark.

I understand some of the comments above about this putting all the responsibility on the dead player to not take any action and allows the other PVP-heavy players to run about killing people with no story to take place afterward.

I am probably a grumpy player because my poor character has been killed so many times in PVP she should probably have permanent brain damage by now. While occasionally this is good for story.. (Apparently Pamela Player was killed in some great sea battle or by the infamous Necromancer Nick) but after a while it becomes quite frustrating to just be some pincushion for PVP happy players to constantly attack and get away WITH NO STORY.

I'm only a casual player here, though, so....whatever the DMs decide I try to follow.

[Old Lies Die Harder]

Well let me try to help explain why it is this way. There’s a few reasons you don’t hear back all of the time (but should at least hear a confirmation that we’ve received the report and will look into it).

One of the reasons might be that there just wasn’t a rule break. A player’s perspective doesn’t really ever have all of the information and we often see situations where it definitely appears to be a rule break from that player’s perspective, but actually turns out not to be for whatever reason. I’m not going to go into any specifics here. The point is that DMs get the bigger picture of a situation.

The main reason you don’t hear back is because we don’t discuss the details of an interview or punishment with other players. It’s private so that the person who was spoken to or punished has a chance to redeem their behaviour and become better. Ultimately we want people playing together, we want people to be able to improve and develop better behaviours. You may not hear that we’ve banned a person who did something bad, or we’ve talked to and coach them, or we’ve taken other punitive measures, whatever it is.

Once you report to ‘Active DMs’, we do our best to get to the bottom of it and take appropriate actions depending on the situation. Not everyone gets it right every time, so if you’re ever unhappy with a decision you can appeal to the head DM which is currently DM Wraith.

So again, you see something that needs to be reported, it’s best to just report it and leave it with us.

This entire post is effectively an expansion of what I mean when I say that Arelith discourages reporting as a matter of policy. The policy that you reference here is what I'm talking about.

I believe the reason that MRFTW said "you are not listening" is because not only was the takeaway of your post

So again, you see something that needs to be reported, it’s best to just report it and leave it with us

but also,

"A player’s perspective doesn’t really ever have all of the information and we often see situations where it definitely appears to be a rule break from that player’s perspective, but actually turns out not to be for whatever reason. I’m not going to go into any specifics here. The point is that DMs get the bigger picture of a situation.

This comes off as "Trust us, we have more information that you cannot know, we are handling it if you don't see it" when the actual complaint is:

"Players are discouraged from reporting because 1. When a player reports something, they are double taxed as not only have they been negatively impacted by another player but they now additionally burdened with putting in additional work/leisure time in filing a report. 2. they don't see results and thus have no reason to believe results exist, this giving a feeling that doing so the cost/benefit of this double tax is not in their favor."

Responding to "We'd like to see some more evidence to support trust" with "Trust us, but we're not going to dell you what the decision is" is not only ineffective, but it is further discouraging. This stance fails to educate the reporter about rules in the case the reporter misunderstood if something was a rulebreak. And further, a player cannot escalate a decision to the Head DM/Admin team for reevaluation as you mention if the player is never told what that decision is. This is a system failure on at least three fronts.

However, this is not a thread about debating Arelith's overall reporting and disciplinary policy, nor is it a thread about changing that. Rather, it is a thread about changes to wording in the rules for death, and player concerns about those changes.

I provided an explanation and detailing of players feeling discouraged by reporting to illustrate what I feel is some of the motivation behind the anxiety response to these changes, and noted this at the end of my post. To reiterate here, these wording changes increase the window of amnesia, thus adding more things 'lost' from a character dying by effectively deleting possible hours of roleplay. There are people who can, will, and do abuse systems to get a leg up in bad faith and without narrative engagement. This empowers them, because it provides another layer of insulation from consequences. Why would a thief rob your for gold and let you go if it's a risk to them? Clearly, it's safer to just murder you, take the same amount of gold, and be safe knowing IC that you are 'dead', and OOC that you are not allowed to remember that.

I understand the team wants to make death more meaningful, but most of the steps that have been taken to this end in Arelith's history have simply been to make gameplay more annoying. You are conditioning players to try and avoid death because it's a mechanical pain in the Snuggybear and RL hours of inconvenience. This does not make an engaging story, nor does it create appropriate narrative engagement with the concept of death.

This rules 'clarification' was unnecessary, and has created more confusion and anxiety than it will ever solve. Instead of policy changes like this, the team needs to be focusing effort on encouraging the use of more interactive conflict tools such as subdual, fostering an environment that uses it, and portrays loss as a part of narrative development rather than an OOC degrading of leisure time. In addition, when people are being cheesy and running out of the Cordor Graveyard screaming "Help, help, this man just killed me!" they need to be corrected with progressive discipline.

My focus has been on the staff angle here because this thread is about policy and rules, which is a staff funciton. But players need to contribute with this too. More people need to ask themselves, "am I beating up a character and contributing to their story, or am I beating up a character and teaching the player a lesson?" More people need to use PVP to enrich the story of the victim, rather than create non interactive situations because non interactive losses get ignored. More players need to focus on creating engagement rather than enforcing mechanical death on others, because the systems and policies around it in this game and on this server are broken enough that the rare occasions character death is meaningful are in spite of them, not because of. If you want a fellow player to take death seriously, don't force them mechanically to die, inspire them to decide their character dies or is otherwise impacted.

[Cataclysm of Iron]

This comes off as "Trust us, we have more information that you cannot know, we are handling it if you don't see it"

I don't see why this is an issue. This is what I expect from people who run - especially as volunteers - communities and hobbies I am invested in: people who spend more time, know more, and have a better and more balanced perspective on decisions than I or my peers do. Places like this aren't a democracy.

Folks on the internet feeling a) entitled to a say in and b) like they can usefully contribute to how their hobby is very tired and gets nobody anywhere.

[Spriggan Bride]

They're volunteers, sure, but they're also (usually) players as well so it's natural they'll have biases and existing friend groups. DMs have a tremendous amount of power on persistent worlds and after 15+ years of playing this game I've seen enough abuse where I'm not willing to just be thankful they're giving up their free time.

I also don't feel entitled to anything as I'm just a player, and my attitude is to accept whatever as long as its not egregiously unfair, but I don't think "they're volunteers" is reason not to have this kind of discussion. Also not saying any current DM is bad news AFAIK and I'm sure they're all great, it's more about should we have transparency and oversight so we know if it's a level playing field or not because if it's not I personally don't feel comfortable reporting. For example I've had a run-in with a popular character and player in the past who crossed the line with PvP and other behavior and I absolutely did not feel comfortable reporting them because I knew they were well-liked and well connected.

[Old Lies Die Harder]

This comes off as "Trust us, we have more information that you cannot know, we are handling it if you don't see it"

I don't see why this is an issue. This is what I expect from people who run - especially as volunteers - communities and hobbies I am invested in: people who spend more time, know more, and have a better and more balanced perspective on decisions than I or my peers do. Places like this aren't a democracy.

Folks on the internet feeling a) entitled to a say in and b) like they can usefully contribute to how their hobby is very tired and gets nobody anywhere.

Because it isn't a democracy it's a collaborative community, or it's supposed to be. Players have say because this is the feedback forum. If you are tired of folks on the internet feeling entitled to a say, then I have to ask: why are you posting in the feedback forum if not to have a say and usefully contribute to the hobby? If players are not to have a say, then remove the feedback forum.

However, I'm not going to spend any more time on explaining this aspect of my statements because this is perhaps the third or fourth post that has focused on the aspect of reporting problems to the point of excluding the main actual point of my posts. It's boggling to see people hyperfocusing on supporting statements and derailing the topic to be about those.

Death Amnesia wording changes is the point of my posts, and of this topic topic, and it's boggling to see people hyperfocusing on supporting statements and derailing the topic to be about those instead of the point they are supporting. Consider reading the quote below, which does not contain the statements about reporting. Focus on that, the topically relevant main point, instead.

I understand the team wants to make death more meaningful, but most of the steps that have been taken to this end in Arelith's history have simply been to make gameplay more annoying. You are conditioning players to try and avoid death because it's a mechanical pain in the Snuggybear and RL hours of inconvenience. This does not make an engaging story, nor does it create appropriate narrative engagement with the concept of death.

This rules 'clarification' was unnecessary, and has created more confusion and anxiety than it will ever solve. Instead of policy changes like this, the team needs to be focusing effort on encouraging the use of more interactive conflict tools such as subdual, fostering an environment that uses it, and portrays loss as a part of narrative development rather than an OOC degrading of leisure time. In addition, when people are being cheesy and running out of the Cordor Graveyard screaming "Help, help, this man just killed me!" they need to be corrected with progressive discipline.

My focus has been on the staff angle here because this thread is about policy and rules, which is a staff funciton. But players need to contribute with this too. More people need to ask themselves, "am I beating up a character and contributing to their story, or am I beating up a character and teaching the player a lesson?" More people need to use PVP to enrich the story of the victim, rather than create non interactive situations because non interactive losses get ignored. More players need to focus on creating engagement rather than enforcing mechanical death on others, because the systems and policies around it in this game and on this server are broken enough that the rare occasions character death is meaningful are in spite of them, not because of. If you want a fellow player to take death seriously, don't force them mechanically to die, inspire them to decide their character dies or is otherwise impacted.

[PowerWord Rage]

There isn't a perfect system...sometimes, giving players too much choices / freedom isn't as good as you expect it would be.
For example...if death system is decided by player, after being striked down and they get to choose to die or similar to current subdual system, the mess is still there but simply changes another outlook.

Simply imagine if player A is brought down but knows that he gets to choose whether he dies or not, he gets to annoy other player within the limits of rule ( it will happen ) or perhaps the person dealing the death strike becomes too non-chalant ( more trigger happy ) about it and the purpose of making Death more meaningful actually degrades to making Death looks even more silly.

The current wording frankly...looks complex enough. I doubt that it will make any difference to change the wording since it is just a matter of time before new loopholes get found and the same cycle repeats itself. Unless, there's really such a big problem here that is impossible to overlook which i don't find any, at least imo.

I'll agree however, that respawning...may need to have a pop-up to inform players about the standard death rules. Nothing complex or additional wording but simply the rules written on wiki as a quote or something. There're players who never ever looks at the rules section / wikipedia / forum for all the time that they play on Arelith.

And i still stand by my point earlier... Story or Roleplay are really both parties. Sometimes, it's really just the other party would want it to end from the death because it's just getting too tiring.

Edit : I don't see any point in Public Shaming. Whether DMs has punished the offender or not, It's fine to keep it hidden. They -can- tell the person who reports and i firmly believe that it's going to be spread everywhere soon enough which is equivalent to public shaming anyway. Sometimes...when i get killed, i feel frustrated but it does not dictate that i hate the player enough for them to be shamed publicly. At least, my Bar for it isn't that low.

[The First Vicar]

I haven’t intended a hostile tone in anything that I’ve written here. What came across that way?

I wonder why people seem to think you speak hostile at them all the time Monkey. I wonder why...

[Nurel]

Personally I like the Death Amnesia system because when my PCs die in PVP it is almost always to trigger happy ganksquads of "hurr durr evil" players. This system allows for my character to move on with 0 recollection of such unfun events without IC repercussions, and its great.

PCs who actually want to RP with their PvP victims usually use -subdual. PvP is much more RP-centered when you use -subdual, I've found.