Is there a way to find out if policy report was use to trigger a script check? I got check over the years but today was the first time I get caught and willingly own it. I love that If you are using policy report inappropriately you are subject to the same punishment as the policy violation you are reporting. Is there some sort of check for GMs as well? I don't mind script checks as long as they're not personal. I'm only ask because the same GM checked me around 4/28/20 and was fully expecting it. I responded quickly that time and on a few other occasions but I was a little hurt I didn't even get a lousy thanks for responding in a timely manner.

policy 18 states
First Time Violation: Player is moved to the scripting limbo room and acknowledges this policy (POLICY 18). An official warning will be applied, but no other penalties. After an account has been warned once, the first time violation is never revisited.

First Offense: Player receives an official warning, is moved to a consultation room or scripting limbo, loses ALL field experience (unabsorbed experience), and an experience inefficiency penalty is added, and must reread and agree to policy before being released. If the character was scripting an Artisan Guild skill or Adventurer's Guild task, will lose HALF of their current bounty points or 50 ranks in an artisan's guild or 10 ranks in a professional guild skill. Other gains, such as animal companion affinity, PLAY skills, and/or other in-game progression may be reduced.

why did I get this as well?

You have had a recent warning related to this sort of activity, and cannot enter for 30 days.?Pretty sure multi people were able to go back to an event rather it was paid/free. was my first time especially heinous?

I'm not looking for sympathy ,I just don't want it to be personal. I would also like to finish my entries,I could sell or finish on my other character but I would like to do it on my main if possible.

I got my assist/referral and ended up being more disturbing for the following facts

-4/28 script check no one reported me and was told it was a system thing ( I fully expected that & posted on pc because i was saying the wrong things to wrong people)

-6/30 script check no one reported me and was told it was a system thing again

-both times it was the same GM that did the check and i got caught on 6/30

-especially harsh punishment i got a 30 day event ban,lost experience and a warning on first violation ( the 30 day and the lost experience was fix but I don't understand what trigger tit?)

-I got multi script checks previously and mark on discord and pass each time ( if you check someone enough you will eventually catch them )

-GM says, "It looks as though you were warned about this during Ebon Gate this past year. Arasleaf has a warning on him." ( this the most disturbing of them all because arasleaf hasn't been on my account min 3 years)

-I really hope there isn't anything personal but this experience was pretty unsettling

"-GM says, "It looks as though you were warned about this during Ebon Gate this past year. Arasleaf has a warning on him." ( this the most disturbing of them all because arasleaf hasn't been on my account min 3 years)" -- Neimanz

I agree with the other poster that another topic--like, say, "Policy Discussions"--would probably be a better spot for this, but meanwhile I just wanted to point out that I would anticipate a notation (such as, "A Warning was issued to CharacterName on AccountName") would ride along with BOTH the character--in the event that it eventually got sold, AND ALSO still remain on the originating AccountName.
Perhaps more comprehensibly: "When a Warning is issued, it is tied irrevocably to the AccountName" and at the same time "When a Warning is issued, it is tied irrevocably to the CharacterName."

Moving characters--even if it is not because of buying/selling, but possibly just the same person <cough>Jim<cough> moving things around to hunt M/A together, or passing a character on to a spouse/sibling/child to now take over--happens all the time, but there is no reason whatsoever to allow that to blank out a record of "something that earned a Warning in the past."

.

TL/DR version: if that account had the character that got Warned on it, at any point, I believe & agree that the account should correctly have a Warning tied to it.

because ticket sales stop on day 10 & send the dogs day 11?


we should never stop striving to be better...

> I'm not looking for sympathy ,I just don't want it to be personal.

As someone who has felt targeted before, I would also like to echo this stance. I've taken 2 breaks from Gemstone for the duration 2 GMs were on staff, both times it was because I did not feel like they were being professional with their attempted applications of policy. Policy is very large and can easily be weaponized against people for personal vendettas. When you also consider that GMs are current players themselves and their GM handles act as a nom de guerre, you end up with a recipe for disaster.

These systems need more checks and balances around:
1. How often a particular GM is interacting with us as individuals that we can review.
2. A separation of punishment & checks, it is clearly problematic that the GM doing the check is also the one that assigns any punishments.

AIM: m444w
Discord: Ondreian#3875

The vast majority of script checks (that result in finding a policy violation) are performed based on automated metrics tools that we have at our disposal that indicate what level of gains of various types that characters get over time (I'm obviously being intentionally vague about how that works). REPORTed and/or POLICY REPORTed script checks are statistically less likely to be the cause of your script check for a number of reasons (and are statistically less likely for us to find a policy violation going on). One is GM availability to drop what they are otherwise doing and perform a script check right that second of the report. Similarly, five minutes later when the GM is free, the allegedly offending player may no longer be engaging in the complained of behavior. Most of the REPORTs and POLICY REPORTs are for treasure/critter poaching or people being highly disruptive with a broken script (running in and out of rooms, etc). Multiple successive reports of any kind about the same person tend to jar even GMs who are absorbed in something else away from what they were doing to see what's going on. But an isolated report in the middle of night might not get seen in the same amount of time.

There are already precautions and checks and balances against the idea of a rogue GM harassing anyone in particular. I'm not trying to say it doesn't happen, or hasn't happened in the past at any rate, but there's still guards against this. (1) You can ask for a referral to address an issue you may have with a GM. (2) If you don't like how that goes, you can ask the answering GM to escalate the issue to the SGMs. (3) If you don't like the decision of the SGM or PM, you can write Feedback. In my time as a GM, I have occasionally seen Feedback overturn the result of a script check if they do not believe it was performed in a procedurally appropriate manner, or for the appropriate reason.

When we script check someone and find them attentive, we have tools in place to ensure that they aren't script checked again in a very short amount of time. But if our tools are highlighting them again the next day due, another GM might script check them, having no functional clue that they were just script checked 24 hours prior for the same (or different) reason, and least not until they later research the account to see how many scripting violations they already have.

I would also like to address the same GMs script-checking the same people over and over again. Let me tell you something that I hope isn't a big news flash: Many GMs don't really like performing script checks. I'll use myself as an example: About the only time you will find me personally script checking you is (1) when I'm responding to a player complaint via REPORT or POLICY REPORT, or (2) You are AFK scripting while in the referral/assist queue and I'm trying to get your attention to answer your referral. I'm not one of the GMs that is eager to go onduty and plow through the list of players that might be AFK scripting. We do, however, have a handful GMs that are willing to go onduty multiple times a week, and plow through those lists (and are often the first ones to jump onduty to perform the REPORTed ones too). They are willing to be the "bad guys" to the players found violating policy in this regard. I thank them for doing this so that I don't personally have to do it myself. But as a result, it's really the same handful of GMs script checking people most days. It's not because they are out to get people, but rather because they are willing to do the unappealing work.

Enforcing POLICY is hard work. I hope I speak for most of the GMs here when I say that nobody is eager to warn people, to consult people and go over policy with them, to lock people out of a game that we all love, etc. If I go a week without having to have a policy discussion with a player, that's a good week! It makes me happy. I don't want to give players experience penalties for AFK scripting, or lock them out for doing it one too many times, but sometimes I just have to. I salute the GMs that give a lot more than that to the effort. Punishment is standardized for AFK scripting based on previous violations over time. Every GM who script checks should be giving the same punishment, assuming they correctly assess the number of prior violations. If someone believes their punishment to be in error, assist and ask for a referral for it to be examined.

Lastly, it's pretty well known that we don't publicly discuss anyone's disciplinary issues. We aren't going to compare two people's situations with one another, or openly discuss an assist, referral, or disciplinary action. This stuff needs to be addressed through Assists, Referrals, and Feedback. POLICY REPORT is a brand new mechanic, and has only tallied such reports in the last month or so. There's no historical data to give there. We also are incapable of telling players how many times someone has used the standard REPORT tool to report someone else. It's just not how the REPORT verb works.

I hope some of this information was useful.

-ASGM Haxus

<<just one thing, Justify how my first violation deserves my original punishment?>>

I think Haxus just made it pretty clear that that needs to be handled through an Assist, then referral to SGM/PM, and then feedback if necessary. They're not going to discuss the specific details of your issue in a public forum.

<<that is the thing i already got my referral and I was never told why I was given my punishment. I mean if your kid/you get arrested as a minor for stealing candy and the officers realize you were only 12 but someone they sent you to riker's island. It doesn't make it ok if they come back 5 hours later to get you. I'm ok with airing dirty laundry and would love some transparency & closure>>

If you got your referral to a GM and were not satisfied, then the next step is to request a referral to an SGM or the PM (Wyrom). If you do not get resolution there, then you email feedback to escalate the issue to the onsite staff.

> If they were to break the policy of not discussing individual cases like this publicly, what's to stop anyone from thinking they aren't breaking policies designed to prevent things like rogue GMs targeting players?

Someone already broke the policy of not using the standardized punishments, he should've just been given some sort of warning, so I'm not sure this position holds any water.

I use to think the GMs were always right in these sorts of manners, but the older I get the more I can see they are just a loose band of individuals with varied motivations for doing things.

Hoy's stance is a valid one and overall we need more transparency as players about how GMs are interacting with us.

There should be some command to audit this:

>policy checks
You were last script checked 20 days ago. Here are the last 10 events:
1. You were script checked by GM-Whoever on 03-05-2020 and you responded after 10 seconds
2. You were script checked by GM-Soandso on 03-04-2020 and you failed and were given a warning.
3. You were being monitored by GM-Taterkin on 03-02-2020 for 20 minutes.
3. You get the idea...

That's not enough information to "hack the system" but it is enough to give us more accountability to sort out problematic behaviors, instead of getting the gaslight.

The whole handing resolutions in the backroom is not really acceptable and is part of the problem, when the issue is lack of transparency on how these things are applied, enforced, and silently walked back when problematic behavior is found. This is unacceptable from a customer service point of view that the onus is on the players to root out problems or spend days waiting in queues at time to deal with situations.

AIM: m444w
Discord: Ondreian#3875

>>That's not enough information to "hack the system" but it is enough to give us more accountability to sort out problematic behaviors, instead of getting the gaslight.

This is why I created POLICY REVIEW. It went a bit unchecked for 25+ years in this area. But you can always ASSIST to get things reviewed and to go over everything. The performing GM who does the check will also talk to you if you are attentive or become attentive after being warned. I'll add some language to POLICY to let players know to ASSIST if they have questions. Logs aren't stored in game, that's why the information is limited and why it's best to talk with staff for the details.

---

Wyrom, PM

Uhhh... because they want people, not robots?

Maybe I'm TOO old-fashioned, but I'm sitting at the keyboard every time my character does something.
Do I have a lot of text that I ignore? Yep. Highlights are great.
Do I have a lot of text that I no longer type in full? Yep. Macros are great, too.

But it's supposed to be a person playing the game, not a competition of who writes code more better: GM or player. <dismiss>

I'd like to hear from the company directly, as they seem to be happy to accept tens of thousands of USD for items, which only go for such record sums because bots exist. That's the only reason.

> This is why I created POLICY REVIEW. It went a bit unchecked for 25+ years in this area. But you can always ASSIST to get things reviewed and to go over everything. The performing GM who does the check will also talk to you if you are attentive or become attentive after being warned. I'll add some language to POLICY to let players know to ASSIST if they have questions. Logs aren't stored in game, that's why the information is limited and why it's best to talk with staff for the details.

Ok, but I received a warning for even a lesser action than Helsfeld, who received a REFUND for doing the same exact "exploit"

And my "exploit" was given to me by a GM who's PC was abusing GM powers to get T5 ensorcel on a coraesine item, which that I received a warning for.

The whole system is corrupt.

AIM: m444w
Discord: Ondreian#3875

>Many of these pay events have a feeder with a fixed number of "Super-jackpot" prizes. Every prize that goes to an AFK scripter is a prize stolen from someone else.

>As a casual player, why should I bother participating in a pay event where my slow hand-typed entry has to compete against the vastly greater number of entries from AFK scripters?

I've attended enough events to see many people walk into a game I've been playing, play once or twice and hit a jackpot. Whereas I've played multiple hundreds of times and came up with nothing. I'm not AFK scripting and I could be there for a few hours and get nothing.

Sure, it's generally a game of numbers. Those that tend to play more have a better chance to getting a jackpot, but it's also luck. I've had events I haven't won a jackpot and found one or two T5 items after thousands of digs and/or thousands of games played.