GM Answer needed: off deed question

[Oblivionnreaver 5,174]

7 hours ago, Nekojin said:

If, on the other hand, you log on to find that your fence is gone and your crops gone, there's really not much that they can do - the logs don't have that fine of searching, they have no way of finding who did it within a reasonable amount of time. By asking for it, you're effectively demanding an inordinate amount of GM time to solve the problem. 

fence destruction is logged and it'd take them a whole minute to look up the history of a tile to see who bashed it

 

you'd be surprised just how much stuff is logged in this game, a gm could probably recap your entire day of playing to you if they were bored

[azuleslight 87]

dear god what have i started? lol But seriously, i note the lack of dev and GM response in this thread. they could easily answer the question at hand and definitively set the record....but they aren't, and that gives me a huge pause. is this because it would hold GM's to higher standards of reading all patches releases? or limit the possibility of "i'm a gm so i'm right"? which is literally what happened in this situation. im paraphrasing (have actual logs) "you asked a gm, and a GM answered", I initially just wanted the answer to prove my point. Now my question of lack of reply on a pretty active and very obviously noted thread for GM/DEV interaction has yielded none....when they are normally very active ion these forums...

[Pandalet 1,848]

If you feel you have an issue with the behaviour of a GM, the correct approach is to talk to the head GM (Enki) directly.  You can do this via PM on the forums, although be warned, he has a LOT of demands on his time, so it may take a little while to get a response.

 

Without knowing anything about your situation, or what someone said in chat, it doesn't sound like this is a case of griefing to me, but ultimately that would be a question for the GM team.  Off-deed fenced areas are not secure, and not intended to be - there are other options open to you if you wish to absolutely secure your area.

[Ekcin 2,407]

What should dev and GM say, after all? If I understood right, you already got a ruling by a GM, what do you expect? That other GM, dev, or company managers, confirm or overthrow that ruling? Or that a new rule will be included into the official, intentionally lean ruleset? All that makes no sense.

 

Think of GM ingame not like judges in a judicial system, this is damn a game. Think of them like referees in sports, as their role is similar. A referee's decision in a match can practically never be overruled after the fact, even if it was based on wrong or misperceived premises. A referee uses the rules of the game to the best of her knowledge, and that suffices. Debatable decisions may be discussed later, and there may be consequences for further decisions, but in most cases they just stand as they are.

 

Once again: bashing a fence where it is possible is no rule breach by itself, neither is harvesting crops one has not sown. Ruthless conduct of any sort may be considered a breach of rules (or not like in most cases), and the aforementioned activities may be considered such. That is all any reasonable player or observer can tell, and every GM may act the one or the other way. Some may lean to the "deed it or lose it" advice, others to the "play nice". They couldn't and won't tell you more, and there is no need to do so in this thread as both ways to see the affair have been presented and explained in length.

 

At least that is the way I see it.

[Platyna 521]

9 hours ago, ChampagneDragon said:

So I deed enough to cover all my animals and have a 1500 tile farm, but someone who deeds a minimal sized deed is afforded the same protections? Why am I paying 11s/mo??

 

Deed it or lose it. I deeded it. 

 

There are many, many things wrong in this reasoning, let me point most important ones:

 

1. Your financial capabilities comparing with financial capabilities of a new player, especially from a poor country a bit differ. Using your reasoning only rich players can be ranchers or farmers because if you are poor (for whatever reason), your fencing will be destroyed and your animals or crops taken. 

2. In a crowded area you have no way to resize your deed even if you wanted to. I am in a situation like that and most of NFI population is as well. 

3. Second, your rationale is like I am calling the police that my property was stolen, and they ask me:

- Did you have alarms and military grade doors and locks? 

- No.

- Sorry then, lock it or lose it.

4. Stealing is NOT allowed on PVE, and "deed it or lose it" conflicts with this rule, also conflicts with "play nice rule", not to mention it also strips people who do not own deed off the right to own property at all plus this is toxic for the community - we have almost every day a problematic thread about this matter, people jump toward their throats, everyday drama, which doesn't make us look good to bystanders and makes the game play miserable if you are directly affected (we are supposed to have fun here).

 

I raised these issues to GMs in game and on forum not once that there shouldn't be unwritten rules, rules beyond rule set, shady conditional interpretations, GMs should ALWAYS be able to cite you the rule you broken or one they base their GM orders on, and the GM orders should be given in a direct, official and clear way. In fact my first thread on forums was made about this, when I got banned for 3 days for breaking a GM order I didn't even know I had. This is required to make ASD people, older people, children, and basically people from very different cultures to be able to fully enjoy the game, not to mention it would make our community a lot healthier and GM work a lot easier. It is not like all rules should be interpreted absolutely literally, as there is a principle in law: summus ius est summa iniuria but the interpretation should have its constraints. 

 

Therefore, my petition to the staff would be:

 

1. Make only rules in rule set to apply.

2. Rules should be stated in a simple language without any excess words, according to the good practice of making definitions, so even people with weak knowledge of English can understand them and with use of common terminology (see the "multiboxing" case - it still is not changed).

3. Protect the property in full on PVE servers by applying a common definition of stealing.

4. Make a GM duty to cite the rule in question to a player.

5. Make a GM duty to state their order in a clear manner, best with some template like GM Order #12345: you are not allowed to talk with X, Y, Z, GM Order #12346: you are not allowed to remove road. If a number could be generated to a GM order and/or these orders would be browsable it would be amazing.  

 

@EnkiI strongly believe these would remove most of the toxic drama and improve transparency killing most accusations and make us all happier.

 

 

Edited September 16, 2020 by Platyna

[Platyna 521]

13 hours ago, Nekojin said:

@Platyna& @Ekcin- Sure, but they need to have more information than "My fence was broken by somebody." Knowing who did it helps immensely, especially if there's chat logs. 

 

The fact the stealing is illegal doesn't mean that a GM has to guarantee finding a perpetrator. Some crimes will remain unsolved, for example if it will be detected long time after the act, but considering we have tracking abilities and GMs probably have superior tracking abilities, most of the cases could be solved. Maybe it would even improve the game play by making some to improve their tracking skills and who knows, even become detectives? 

 

@Ekcin

 

Quote

Think of GM ingame not like judges in a judicial system, this is damn a game.

 

Why? Judicial systems were made to improve the law, not to make it sound more smart or serious (at least this is the core principle). 

 

Quote

Think of them like referees in sports, as their role is similar. A referee's decision in a match can practically never be overruled after the fact, even if it was based on wrong or misperceived premises. A referee uses the rules of the game to the best of her knowledge, and that suffices.

 

Sport rules such in baseball, football and soccer are big fat tomes written by an army of lawyers, and they are often better written than the laws of most countries. 

 

Quote

Debatable decisions may be discussed later, and there may be consequences for further decisions, but in most cases they just stand as they are.

 

That doesn't work well as we can see, and I think nor GMs nor players enjoy the drama, not to mention with a such huge influx of players they are busy. 

Edited September 16, 2020 by Platyna

[azuleslight 87]

14 hours ago, Pandalet said:

If you feel you have an issue with the behaviour of a GM, the correct approach is to talk to the head GM (Enki) directly.  You can do this via PM on the forums, although be warned, he has a LOT of demands on his time, so it may take a little while to get a response.

 

Without knowing anything about your situation, or what someone said in chat, it doesn't sound like this is a case of griefing to me, but ultimately that would be a question for the GM team.  Off-deed fenced areas are not secure, and not intended to be - there are other options open to you if you wish to absolutely secure your area.
 

Its not a situation rising to that point i don't think, It was mainly about the information in regards to off-deed area's not being GM protected any longer thus cannot fall under "griefing" and not subject to GM's ruling's as it is an accepted possibility to lose all the things that you have when farming off-deed. I had 2 meditation rugs "stolen" off-deed but it was my fault for leaving them on the ground, even fenced in.

Edited September 17, 2020 by azuleslight

[Nekojin 197]

19 hours ago, Platyna said:

Therefore, my petition to the staff would be:

 

1. Make only rules in rule set to apply.

2. Rules should be stated in a simple language without any excess words, according to the good practice of making definitions, so even people with weak knowledge of English can understand them and with use of common terminology (see the "multiboxing" case - it still is not changed).

3. Protect the property in full on PVE servers by applying a common definition of stealing.

4. Make a GM duty to cite the rule in question to a player.

5. Make a GM duty to state their order in a clear manner, best with some template like GM Order #12345: you are not allowed to talk with X, Y, Z, GM Order #12346: you are not allowed to remove road. If a number could be generated to a GM order and/or these orders would be browsable it would be amazing.  

 

@EnkiI strongly believe these would remove most of the toxic drama and improve transparency killing most accusations and make us all happier.

 

I disagree with this, for several reasons. Generally speaking, for a game like this, you enforce as many rules as you can by force of computing - such as you're unable to engage in PvP on a PvE server unless you have explicit permission. Those rules are clear, concise, and set in stone.

 

Then you have things that aren't quite so clear, and this is the land where griefers and troublemakers lie. They will bend the rule as hard as they can without breaking it - violating the spirit of the rules while strictly honoring the exact letter of the rules. This is why many of the rules are vague and general in nature. It allows for GMs to make judgement calls on questionable behavior. If you try to make an ironclad ruling setup, people will abuse it, which will result in the need to make exceptions and addenda. Then people will abuse the exceptions and addenda, resulting in the need for further exceptions and addenda. That results in really long, hard-to-read rules that people will generally not read.

 

For an example of this, you only have to look to the "undeeded fences" rules that have been made over the years. It went through multiple different versions before settling on the current rule set, because every time a new version of the rules was created, someone would find a way to abuse it. 1x1 house connected to 1000x1000 fenced area, no deed. If you can't break the fence, then everything inside that fence effectively belongs to the person who built it.

 

GMs are the Judges of the gaming world. It's their job to observe the loopholes and corner cases, and make reasonable rulings on things that may or may not be someone trying to harrass and annoy other players. So give them the flexibility to make use of that judgement, instead of trying to bind their wrists with "ironclad" rules.

Edited September 17, 2020 by Nekojin

[wipeout 1,355]

23 hours ago, Oblivionnreaver said:

fence destruction is logged and it'd take them a whole minute to look up the history of a tile to see who bashed it

 

you'd be surprised just how much stuff is logged in this game, a gm could probably recap your entire day of playing to you if they were bored

Ha entire day of playing if they are bored? Try going back to last week and telling you what you ate for dinner the amount of data that gets logged is insane and there are settings that can be set on a tile or person basis that log even more silly info(like exact direction the person is facing up to 8 or 10 numbers long) or the amount of times you started an action and stopped it without finishing it vs finished actions there is soo much stuff that gets logged on a per player basis and on a tile basis its insane

If a gm really wanted to they could tell you the exact way the toon was facing when he bashed the fences how much water they had at the time being and what position of what planet was where granted that last one might take a dev to check time stamps vs positions of the planets but still they can do it

Now what they cant do is check percentages on quantity of veins and density and the likes but anything a player does they can check heck there was something related to fishing and foot stabbing as well if i recall correctly

[Platyna 521]

11 hours ago, Nekojin said:

For an example of this, you only have to look to the "undeeded fences" rules that have been made over the years. It went through multiple different versions before settling on the current rule set, because every time a new version of the rules was created, someone would find a way to abuse it. 1x1 house connected to 1000x1000 fenced area, no deed. If you can't break the fence, then everything inside that fence effectively belongs to the person who built it.

 

I already explained above why these are two completely different cases and completely different rules. You quoted whole my text and didn't answer directly to any point I made, just quoted an ancient rule that was abused. That rule was about fences adjacent to buildings where it indeed could be abused to pseud-deed large area. Here not fences are protected per se but the property they enclose. For example if I decide I want to deed here, where you put your cattle, I can deed and shrink your pen, then ask you to remove animals, it is completely different from if I do come, I bash and I steal. And no, game mechanics does not protect from forbidden actions, you can AFAIK, lock pick on PVE, also let's be honest, most of these off deed structures are placed on the deed perimeters, because in huge deeds this is a considerable amount of land, so no wonder that deed owners wants to utilize it in full. So current rule interpretation basically hurts the most two groups of players: newbies and deed owners who would like to use the land in full.

 

I have covered in my previous comments basically all points you raised in your comment, including finding the perpetrators, GMs have powerful tools in their hands to investigate problems, not sure if they like @wipeoutsaid, but I had to call GMs on several occasions when I was griefed and bullied by my neighbours, so I am pretty much aware what they can do.

 

Judges to do their work well need a clear and simple law to uphold. Best judge will do no good if the law itself is not good. 

Edited September 17, 2020 by Platyna

[Nekojin 197]

I was actually playing Wurm when the first Fence Wars happened. Prior to that, fences - ANY fences, that is, not a complete fenced area - were pseudo-protected, and bashing fences off-deed was a punishable offense. So people would do long, straight fences that inconvenienced almost everyone. That resulted in the rule being changed to the "closed fences, connected to building" version that far more people are familiar with, which stopped one narrow form of griefing but ultimately changed nothing (since a 500-long fence is only a little less work than a 250x1 fenced area connected to a 1x1 building), so it had to be changed again. It was the cause for far more GM work than it should have been. 

 

That showed how absolute rules can be abused. If they'd coded the "can't bash other people's fences" into the coding, then the 500-long fence would be absolutely impossible to deal with. Or, for additional griefing, imagine someone planting a fence that spanned the center of a map, making it impossible to pass without a boat or swimming. As it is right now, I could build a fence all the way around your deed*. The fact that the rules aren't "clear and simple" is what allows you to bash your way of of this - or call a GM to have the obviously-abusive fence removed. 

 

* (Well, potentially - if you're not right up against water)

 

7 hours ago, Platyna said:

And no, game mechanics does not protect from forbidden actions, you can AFAIK, lock pick on PVE,

It's been a while since I've even looked at lockpicking, but IIRC, it's an explicitly allowed exception - you can practice lockpicking on your own locks (or locks on deeds where you have proper permissions, I'd imagine?) to your heart's content, it's just hard-coded that you can't do it to other locks. If you have a way to pick other people's locks on the PvE server, report that, because it's a bug and/or exploit. As for the statement - why can't I steal from your deed? Because it's programmed that way. No GM intervention needed. I can't pick up so much as a wemp seed on your deed without your permission. Note that I haven't had any reason to try picking locks - If I'm wrong about this, and it's entirely possible for players to pick locks willy-nilly on off-deed property, I'm surprised that people haven't used that to move abandoned boats. 

 

7 hours ago, Platyna said:

also let's be honest, most of these off deed structures are placed on the deed perimeters, because in huge deeds this is a considerable amount of land, so no wonder that deed owners wants to utilize it in full. So current rule interpretation basically hurts the most two groups of players: newbies and deed owners who would like to use the land in full.

That seems like a vast misunderstanding of the purpose of perimeters. You don't own perimeters. You don't own anything ON perimeters. The entire purpose of perimeters is to prevent people "boxing you in" by enforcing a minimum 10 tiles of "no man's land" between deeds. People trying to use their perimeters in the way you describe are trying to cheap out on deeding the property they want to own. If you deliberately build out onto the perimeter, well, that's you creating a situation that can be abused by others, a problem that you had the means to avoid. While I won't look favorably on people who use this to steal from you, I also won't exactly think you're a poor, abused victim who did nothing wrong, either. 

 

8 hours ago, Platyna said:

Judges to do their work well need a clear and simple law to uphold. Best judge will do no good if the law itself is not good. 

Judges/GMs are always needed because no matter how "clear and simple" you make your law, there will always be exceptions, loopholes, and people abusing the rules-as-written. Trying to take any decision-making away from them is futile and working against your own intentions. "Clean and simple" rules rarely, if ever, are as clean and simple as we want them to be. This is why the US laws span many thousands of pages and have to be printed in more than a dozen books, and dozens of other books that help clarify them (like Black's Law Dictionary). 

 

Her's a clear and simple rule: No stealing*. Sounds clean and simple, right? What about if I find a stack of tools in the middle of a road. No players that I can see anywhere nearby. Is it stealing if I pick them up and walk away with them? The answer is... maybe? If picking up things that don't belong to you was always theft, then it'd be an easy fix to hard-code it so that you can't pick up items that someone else put down. And that would open up a whole new vista of griefing opportunities, like dropping stacks of 100 dirt in mines, preventing people from being able to mine the ores adjacent to that. 

 

*Amusingly, there's no clear and precise rule against stealing, aside from the rule about stealing deeds. Theft falls under the more general, nonspecific umbrella "Play Nice" rules. 

[Amata 400]

2 hours ago, Nekojin said:

The entire purpose of perimeters is to prevent people "boxing you in" by enforcing a minimum 10 tiles of "no man's land" between deeds. People trying to use their perimeters in the way you describe are trying to cheap out on deeding the property they want to own.

 

** with the sole exception being the perimeters of Starter Towns. I have been under the impression that starter town perimeters are frikkin' huge to encourage people to make use of free land, free resources, and free ability to create shared or public resources (like inns, merchant districts, markets, docks, etc.)

If I am misinformed about this, I would appreciate someone telling me & explaining what the actual reason is for starter towns having stupidly huge perimeters instead of a standard 5ish

[Nekojin 197]

44 minutes ago, Amata said:

 

** with the sole exception being the perimeters of Starter Towns. I have been under the impression that starter town perimeters are frikkin' huge to encourage people to make use of free land, free resources, and free ability to create shared or public resources (like inns, merchant districts, markets, docks, etc.)

If I am misinformed about this, I would appreciate someone telling me & explaining what the actual reason is for starter towns having stupidly huge perimeters instead of a standard 5ish

You're fundamentally correct - the perimeters of Starter Towns are taking the functional utility of perimeters, "nobody owns this," and applying it to provide a larger area that nobody can own, so that everyone has access to it. It's using an already-existing feature, and using it in a slightly different way. And also allows for them to expand in a community "everyone partially owns this" design like you mention, with player markets and so-on. 

 

That said, I have to say that Melody's newbie town, Overture, fails on that - there's no grasslands or wood within the city's perimeter, and a player must travel for several minutes to find choppable trees, many of which are in deeded territory. That said, there's enough forest within a 5 minute travel that it stops being a problem if you're willing to do some vaguely-risky travel. 

[Tek 99]

I think a part of why threads like this don't get an answer from staff is that they feel the current policies are enough and that the game mechanics speak for themselves. Over the years policies like the FCC and enclosure rules and even highways were taken from being policies defined by a rule, but where ingame actions could still happen, to current day where the policies line up more with what is possible in game.

 

The general idea of deed it or lose it has always been a hot button issue and there are a lot of threads just like this dating all the way back to the dawn of time. There are also a lot of threads like this over the years that try to classify what is stealing and what isn't (and the difference between what is and is not stealing in the world of wurm versus how we try to define it from the real world)

 

There is the play nice rule, which has a few examples listed in it. One thing I noticed was that in those examples, and even in the rest of the rules and PSAs etc there is no actual mention of stealing (other then the specific mention of stealing a deed from the owner) This came to my attention recently after my return from a long break where I had a conversation with a player who wanted to borrow something high value from me to complete a journal task. I had said I was not comfortable with it as I am just returning and do not know them or the reputation they have at the moment etc (To be clear, they have a good reputation I later found out and have traded with them nicely since) but I mention that because upon explaining I was not comfortable with it I was told that stealing it/not giving it back is a bannable offence and that GMs would just get my stuff and give it back if something happened and ban them. Which I though to myself okay sure that might be the way the GMs handle it, but after digging around on the rules pages I saw nothing about stealing items, scamming, etc in the sense of giving somebody items for the purpose and they turn around keeping them. Which is why I was uncomfortable with it because what is done in practice amoung GMs could change GM to GM or day to day, and there was no in writing protection there.

 

That brings me to the community stream with Retro where I mentioned and asked about how there is no official rules about stealing/scamming items in those ways and whether with the steam launch and influx of new players maybe it would be a good time to put those into writing - as wurm grew out of the small community game it has been. The answer was basically that there was no need for official rules about them, and that GMs handle things case by case but that at the end of the day that is what makes player reputation important in the world. 

 

The above story, plus some recent finds on the forums searching the topics which I will add some pics of a few relevant comments at the end have lead me to believe that the lack of policy on these things is intentionally the policy but that that the game mechanics define what the rules are (Minus the obvious things like exploiting a bug, or times where a patch might cause unintended mechanics) When you make a character and first drop something it warns you in a pop up that you must agree to (and select if you want to see the warning again or hide it forever) but it basically states that items in the world are not safe from people taking them unless its on your deed, in your house secure etc.

 

Whether the below images were made when the person was staff or not (not sure if at the time of the post they were staff I mean) but it's what leads me to feel like the game itself defines what is stealing or not. Stealing being disabled on freedom - would cover something where its an unintended use of mechanics to take something. But that items in the world not protected by the provided game mechanics are "take" instead of steal means that it's not classified in the game world as stealing. That you can bash a fence and go in, and that the horses or animals etc are able to be lead or taken or killed.

 

So I think the real thing to think about with all of this is that the game makes it pretty clear what is and isn't stealing or taking or property or not. After all stealing is defined as taking somebody elses property - which wurm as a game/world has classified property as being things on your person, or protected properly using the game mechanics etc. So the question really comes down to not is it stealing or not, is it allowed (since it was allowed by the mechanics in a way without abusing bugs/exploits) but instead is a question as players about whether it is morally right or wrong. But that is a question that everyone will answer differently and has no set answer as each person has their own sense of what is moral.

 

I think these below responses in the past to similar topics though are what has made me a believer that the mechanics (not exploits/bugs etc) are set a certain way and that those define what is stealing or not to the game, and the question really becomes as a community game where reputation matters its more of that if enough people think it morally wrong then the punishments from the community (in terms of trade, help, etc) would be the punishment.

 

 

sorry for the quality of the pictures, was a rush snap.

 

Edit also found this clipped from an old Enki post when enclosures and fcc were removed:

In approximately two weeks time in conjunction with the removal of the Enclosure Rules we will be shutting down the Freedom Code of Conduct system as it interferes with the intended sandbox aspect of activities in Wurm Online.

 

 

 

Everyone has the ability to prosper under the protections of a village deed either by obtaining and planting a deed yourself, or by joining with friends.  While joining a deed is encouraged, living and working off deed is still possible.  Should you decide to live off deed in the wilderness, you are solely responsible for the maintenance and security of your items and animals.  To this end you are solely responsible for any losses of items and animals etc...  This includes making sure that all boats, carts, wagons, containers, gates, doors, etc. are properly locked and managed.

 

Edited September 18, 2020 by Tek

[Amata 400]

I've been staying out of this so far - but I have been following this one pretty closely. 
I'm relatively new and I am also prone to either missing the nuance or over-reading the nuance. I have a lot of trouble finding the "reasonable balance." As such, I depend heavily on both rules written and accessible to all ("letter of the law")... as well as trusted members & leaders of the community to enter discussions like these and elaborate on what is / is not covered by nuance, or as it is sometimes called "spirit of the law." 

 

I also have my own "fun" experiences in deeds and perimeters.... 

Spoiler

When I was a young idiot, I found a bit of land that I thought I'd like. I was immediately carried away into mental plans and deed layouts and such. However, when I actually deeded the land, I discovered that a significant swath of tiles at the north of my intended deed were actually a perimeter. This is where the "young idiot" part comes into play - at the time, I thought that it wouldn't really make much of a difference, as I had basically been living free on that area of land for a bit & had not seen any other Wurmians who were actively using the area for anything specific. Since I had already begun building projects & clearing areas & terraforming, I went ahead and deeded the area that I could and shrugged off the fact that my little bit of Wurm would be half on-deed / half off-deed. 

I am now older and wiser. My first couple weeks as a "land owner" in Wurm were plagued by items and tools getting stolen (you can find my old forums posts asking about it, in fact). I had a time where 1 pregnant animal miscarried per day for a whole week long. I got a crash course in decay and repairing, and that some things are more annoying to keep imp'd / repaired than others. And I found out that if both your northern and southern edges are at the limit due to neighboring perimeters... there is a subsequent limit (4x) to the size of your deed from east to west, too. I have definitely learned as I have encountered these experiences. If I could go back in time and give my newbie self hints and pointers, I absolutely would make different choices. As it is, I plan to finish what I started on this deed... and then maybe "retire to the country" -  trade, sell, or abandon the deed I've been working on, and strike out for a massive, unconstrained deed in the middle of absolutely nowhere, surrounded by champion spiders and crotchety trolls. 

 

Anyway, I had a couple bits in a couple of these replies that I wanted to comment on: 

So here we go - first, all about Azuleslight & the Original Post... 

Spoiler

On 9/15/2020 at 4:46 PM, azuleslight said:

because they are in CA saying this, it effects new players and is misleading. if it was a pm or freedom/gl i wouldnt care.

 

When Azuleslight said this, it became pretty clear to me that the OP is not what A. actually had a question about. The fence & deed situation is extended context, yes - but the actual element that A. needs to know is basically, "I am concerned about something I saw a GM doing, what is the best way to share my concern and who is the appropriate person to share it with?" 

The answer to this is, "Send a PM on the forums to Enki"
 

From this perspective, the entire discussion going on in this topic about deeds, rules, GM powers, fences, and griefing is completely tangential. Germane, yes - but still tangential. 

And look, I don't know if this sort-of-misleading intro topic was laid out like this on purpose, as a sly way to use a public forum to "innocently" get someone (or a whole group of someones) in trouble. I sincerely hope not, in fact. I don't know if the point was honestly to determine if the GM was correct or misleading before deciding whether or not to go through with reporting the situation. That actually sounds like something I would do, too, with honest intent to not make a fuss if a fuss wasn't needed. 

On one hand, I feel like A. has gotten a lot of feedback as well as a direct answer to the underlying question... and this topic could be closed now. A just needs to decide if they think there's enough here to justify sending a PM and getting into this with Enki. 

On the other hand, I absolutely adore discourse-of-culture and have been fascinated by some of these responses. In which case, I would simply adjust the title of this topic to reflect the subject matter truly being discussed and keep the discussion about player's rights & property in Wurm going forever!!! /geek

 

Confounded by Conditionals

Spoiler

On 9/15/2020 at 4:57 PM, azuleslight said:

On 9/15/2020 at 4:53 PM, Nekojin said:

They're in CA saying what that is misleading? 

that you can be banned if you take off deed crops just once and that a GM can decide that on a case by case basis. making the implication that you can be banned for snagging off deed crops. As SOVO's has linked to, its not case by case basis, there is no time you can be banned for it. As it has been said "As per the last weeks notifications, changes and updates to pricing, the enclosure rule is no longer effective and off-deed fences are no longer protected by the GMs." so its misinformation....i know dont be a knob but to tell a new player they can get banned for doing what i have said isnt correct. Even if its done multiple times. 

 

Conditionals make everything confusing a lot - especially when communication is happening remotely, or in written form (without the benefit of emphasis indicators). Some of what I'm about to say also rests on conditionals, so I am going to use CAPS and bold to really highlight when something is conditional rather than set-in-stone. 

 

IF A's description here of the GM's statements are accurate, THEN the GM in question was not NECESSARILY incorrect.  IF I want ONE way to determine how to interpret what the GM is saying, in light of the known rules- I COULD go through the summary and highlight the conditionals. 

Quote

You CAN be banned IF you take off deed crops just once.
A GM CAN decide that on a case by case basis.
[Therefore] You CAN be banned for snagging off deed crops.

 

The reason this conditional statement is true, is not because of the enclosure rule. In fact, it cannot be because of the enclosure rule - as we all agree that the enclosure rule is no longer in effect. 

The reason this conditional statement is true is because of the "Play Nice" rule. Under the Play Nice rule SOME specific examples are delineated. However, by definition, the Play Nice rule covers anything interpreted as "not constructive or with deliberate intent to do harm to others." The consequence of a GM determining that something has broken the Play Nice rule is that the offender "MAY be given a directive, warned, or even banned based on the situation."

 

The combination of the Play Nice Rule definition plus punishment results in a written, accessible rule for Wurm Online players that inherently empowers GMs to make discretionary decisions on a case-by-case basis and to modulate the subsequent punishment up to and including being banned. 

With this knowledge, we revisit the conditional statements made by the GM. Under the Play Nice rule, a GM is indeed empowered to decide a matter on a case by case basis. It is indeed possible that "snagging" off deed crops could meet the defined criteria of the Play Nice rule. Therefore, yes, it is possible that an in-game situation arises in which a crop thief is judged by a GM to be in breach of the Play Nice rule, and as a result the GM determines that a player ban is appropriate.

Thus: You can be banned if you take off deed crops; yes, even if you only do it just once. 

Yes, my mother was a math teacher who had an unhealthy obsession with the math version of conditional statements. Also, my dad was really big on doing that awful dadjoke "can I go to the bathroom? I dunno, CAN you?"

 

Here are some replies that I thought had some really good input, in part or in full - and which helped me sort out my thoughts, up to this point - 

Spoiler

This bit from Nekojin is the one that really got me thinking... But, to be honest, I felt that Nekojin nearly on point but got tripped up in the details of mechanism. I have applied a strike-through to the parts that I felt were erroneous (and slightly increased the font size of the strong points, for readability). As others have already pointed out 1) the GMs might be busy, but they certainly have powerful assets at their disposal, and 2) just because a case is technically unsolveable, doesn't mean that it wasn't still a crime. 

 

On 9/15/2020 at 5:11 PM, Nekojin said:

You're misreading, or misunderstanding, what the GMs can and can't do. If you see someone bashing your fences and stealing your crops, and they do it even after you ask them to stop, you can report it to a GM - they can then look at logs and compare to the claimed actions. They have a name, a time, a location, and potentially a voice log that they can check. 

 

If, on the other hand, you log on to find that your fence is gone and your crops gone, there's really not much that they can do - the logs don't have that fine of searching, they have no way of finding who did it within a reasonable amount of time. By asking for it, you're effectively demanding an inordinate amount of GM time to solve the problem. 

 

The game offers you a reliable way to prevent your problem. Since this is the case, the GMs are justified in not spending (potentially) hours trying to find out who took your stuff. But if you have evidence of who did it - and a name and time is evidence, in a digital world - then they have a greater ability to resolve it in a reasonable time, and potentially punish a griefer. 

 

Nobody in CA is wrong; you're just viewing what was said through a very narrow perception. The "play-nice" rule means that people CAN be punished for griefing, and more importantly that GMs can act on dickish things that griefers do that follow the letter of the rules, while violating the spirit. But asking them to play Detective to a mystery is just wasting their time. I'm reminded of a recent poster who said, "Kiting mobs isn't against the rules," while deliberately spamming giant scorpions onto another player's Deed. 

 

In this next response, I enjoyed Ekcin's reminder that, although not part of the official rule set, "deed it or lose it" is certainly part of what we could call "Wurmian conventional wisdom." For all that I love specificity and clarity, I must also acknowledge that even if I don't care for it - most of the people around me use conventional wisdom to manage and make decisions in their everyday lives. In general, people are not considering the actual laws as written for each moment in life - their mental input is a recollection of conventional wisdom, the shreds of what they maybe, sorta remember having once been taught, and a double scoop of gut feeling and emotional state sprinkles. 

People are not reciting legal code for vehicular transportation as they drive their cars... they are thinking, "I better actually stop as this stop sign because there's a lot of traffic right now, and if I don't stop I'll probably get in an accident."  They are thinking, "I'm running late and I don't see any cops around. And there aren't usually cops around this road. And nobody actually drives the speed limit anyway. Everyone knows you can drive 5 miles over before the cops even care...."

I dunno how it is in other countries, but in America, that "5 miles over the speed limit" thing is perhaps the single most agreed upon "rule" in the entire nation. Because of conventional wisdom, Americans unanimously agree that the written laws regarding speed limits are entirely irrelevant, as long as you were only speeding by about 5-7 miles per hour over the legal limit. 

 

I have again used a strike-through on areas that I'm not entirely sure I agree with.

 

On 9/15/2020 at 5:40 PM, Ekcin said:

While I agree to Nekojin about both, the "deed it or lose it" warning (I understand it as such, not an encouragement for any ruthless behaviour off deed), and as well about the point that filing a ticket for crops removed (and of course felt stolen in a social and ethical sense) is pointless and wasting team's time, intentionally and repeatedly destroying fences and destroying or taking crops may of course be interpreted as griefing, and a violation of the "play nice" rule, which is a rule, other than "deed it or lose it". Therefore a GM may of course rule that such behaviour is a bannable offense, at least after warning and repetition.

 

It should be evident at this point that I agree that "deed it or lose it" is a cautionary form of conventional wisdom - not a tacit permission for that sort of behavior implying that the victim should have done something differently to not have been targeted. The way of victim-blaming lies madness, and I'm not going there. 

 

My disagreements stem from: 
1) if you feel something is a breach of the rules - any of the rules - it is not a waste of time to report it.
I'm sure the GMs appreciate players who take the time to double check or ask for clarification to be sure.... but, at the end of the day, it is not the player's job to decide which broken rules are or are not a sizeable matter. That is the job of the GMs. If it is not a big deal, a player might receive a short, quick answer directly. If it is a bigger issue, a player might receive instructions about what to do next (provide screen shots, provide copies of logs, wait a couple days or weeks while the matter is discussed with some other relevant staff, etc). 

Again, big or small, it's not the player's job to make that determination. It is only our responsibility to report what's going on in the Wurm world, and let the staff handle it from there. 

As a note: I don't necessarily agree with all the staff decisions. I don't necessarily agree with some of the discretionary flexing that seems to happen. And I do want and hope Wurm players will be an active voice in discussions about desired changes. Please allow these statements temper or nuance your understanding of what I'm saying above. 

2) As currently defined and delineated, the Play Nice rule does not require that the offender be given warnings before a play ban can take place.  
I don't know if I agree or disagree with this amount of discretionary power - although Wurm does have an appeal system, so that's not nothing. However, I might actually be leaning toward agreeing with GM powers in this case. Here is a scenario that might help illustrate why: 

Quote

ThatGuy420 likes to play video games ruthlessly. ThatGuy420 always plays a PvP rogue. ThatGuy420 plays as a murderhobo. In PvE games, ThatGuy420 lives to find exploits and loopholes. ThatGuy420 thinks that they can take anything that is not nailed down - and believes that anything they can pry up wasn't nailed down well enough. We all know ThatGuy420. Even if you identify with ThatGuy420, I'm talking about the one that you think takes it too far. You like the playstyle, but ThatGuy420 gives players like you a bad name. 

Today, ThatGuy420 passed through PlayerSuzyRainbow's neighborhood. PlayerSuzyRainbow had some items on tables as decor. PlayerSuzyRainbow has tools and flowerpots and furniture, and piles of resources placed strategically around their area to make the world feel "lived in" and "full." ThatGuy420 helps themself to everything in PlayerSuzyRainbow's area, even though it is obviously some other player's possessions. 

PlayerSuzyRainbow was told by their neighbors the conventional wisdom, "oh well, if you don't use certain game mechanics every time, every where, this sort of thing can happen." PlayerSuzyRainbow understands,  but ultimately decides that something undesirable was done, and contacts a GM to report it. It's small fries for a GM, but PlayerSuzyRainbow recently read Retro's forum post about being kind, and they want to give it an honest try. 

The GM looks into it "just real quick" and learns that ThatGuy420 has a bit of a reputation on the server. The GM thinks it is only one theft, so perhaps a warning not to cross the line will be a quick fix. But, just to be sure, the GM does a cursory search of some log file or something. As it turns out, it hasn't been only one theft - ThatGuy420 only steals from a player once... but they've done it 38 times in the past month, alone! The other 37 players told themselves, "oh well, I didn't use that game mechanic, so I knew the risk" and they told themselves, "this is too small to merit a report to a GM." So until PlayerSuzyRainbow, there had never been a report made of ThatGuy420's disruptive behavior.

Should the GM be required to give ThatGuy420 a warning for this first official offense?
Should the GM respond to the pattern of behavior and conclude that ThatGuy420 is not going to change their behavior based on a warning, and escalate immediately to something of greater consequence? Maybe go directly to a ban?

Why should ThatGuy420 be warned, and essentially given a second chance in the community? ThatGuy420 has had 38 chances to choose appropriate behavior already! Does anyone actually believe that 39th time's the charm?

 

 

In the end.... what is the point of it all? 

Spoiler

 

On 9/15/2020 at 5:44 PM, Platyna said:

 

Only rules listed in official rule set should apply, otherwise, what is the point of it? 

 

I agree with the first part of this. 
We (the citizens of Wurm) should have the right to a Rule set written out in an accessible format, using language that a reasonable adult can understand, in as direct a manner as possible. Only Rules as written are in that rule set are considered "official." Wurmians should be held to the standards and practices defined by the official rule set. Anything that is not in the rule set is voluntary or part of Wurmian's freedom of choice. 

However, I'm not entirely sure that we are at a "what is the point of it" moment - either here in this specific discussion, or in Wurm, the game, in general. Let's not "throw the baby out with the bathwater" is the English colloquialism. 

The primary reason not to look at this situation and throw your hands up and despair of a world gone mad and chaos in the villages... is that granting GMs discretionary, case-by-case powers is part of an official rule in the official rule set. As I've discussed above, the "Play Nice Or We Will Rip Your Heart Out" rule provides a criteria for judging an action as "nice" or not, but that criteria entails a necessity for GM discretionary powers inherent to the rule itself. 

If the idea of GMs with discretionary powers gives you the heebee-jeebees... consider that
• as far as I can tell, only one rule (the Play Nice rule) truly allows for a discretionary GM powers 

• even if a GM judges something to be in breach of the Play Nice rule and decides a punishment, Wurmians still retain the right to appeal, even in cases where the punishment was a player ban

• the Play Nice rule does not include PvP servers

• we know that the official rule set can be changed, so even if GMs are afforded discretionary powers under the current rule set, Wurmians who find that troubling are free to suggest ways to alter and/or strike out the Play Nice rule such that GMs no longer have discretionary powers under a future rule set. 

Now, despite all the bullet points above meant to be kind and compassionate and support players with a different perspective than mine - there is one last thing that nobody has mentioned in this topic yet. And I love you all whether we agree or disagree, and I love this game, and I am at very least grateful to the devs and staff who have a hand in making it possible for me to play this game I love with people I adore.... but, when it comes to Wurm, we are players and there's a way these things go in the real world. 
 

Quote

Wurm Online may suspend, modify, terminate, or delete any player account at any time for any reason without notice. ... Accounts terminated or deleted will not be reactivated for any reason.
The following rules apply, but are not exhaustive and serve mainly as guidelines....

 

Nice and big and bold, right at the top of the Rules. 
Sorry y'all, that's just the way it is for players. 

 

I know this was a long read, and I tried to use formatting to help break it up. I don't have a TLDR because we're discussing official rules and GM powers and fair play - there is no 5 second talking point for that stuff. I sincerely appreciate everyone who stuck with it & actually read through this post. 

As y'all know, I talk too much. 
~ Lady Amata of Havensfield

Edited September 18, 2020 by Amata

[Cecci 1,609]

Are you sure the person in CA that responded to you was a GM? Most times it is just regular volountary staff there.

And we have heaps of new CA people.

[Arronicus 636]

I know it's a difficult issue to give a definitive answer on, especially considering leaving opportunity for staff discretion is really valuable, but it'd be great to hear a GM or higher-up comment on this. My personal understanding based on interactions some friends have had in the past month or so is roughly:

If you don't have it deeded over (or within the confines of a house-type building), other players are allowed to bash it, harvest it, cut it down, loot it, etc, as long as they don't do it to your area repeatedly.

This leaves a fair bit of confusion though, does that mean it's okay for people to bash into random farm pens and harvest it all, as long as they distribute their theft out across multiple places and don't just focus on one? What about deeding over planted and locked beehives in the wild?