Policies are replacing common sense

A lot of threads on here talking about KS'ing, Botters, Boxers, Stealing turn-in spawns, etc. And we see nothing really being done about it. The GM and Lead Guide responses to some of the issues is extremely alarming.

Bad people are going to do bad things. That is a fact. They will continue this behavior until someone with "authority" or a "good person" makes them stop. This is inherent in nature and our everyday world. It's why we have laws and police to enforce those laws.

The problem I'm seeing isn't necessarily on the CS. They are adhering to the policies that they are forced to abide by. The problem are the policies themselves.

You read about people from time to time who had a job and got fired. Why were they fired? Because of a breach in policy. Let's say, they were late to work 3 times in a month. Half an hour late each time. Well the policy states that if they are late 3 times within this period of time, then they have to be let go..."it's our policy". But the person making the decision to fire them has ignored common sense. WHY was this person late those 3 times? Well in once case it was because their vehicle broke down 3 times. The employee's intention and direction was to be at work on time, but "life" happens from time to time. Whether the excuse is valid, can be proved, etc. It doesn't matter. Breach of policy = termination. Period. This is horrible human behavior.

Here in EQ, we have a simulated world with policies that dictate what is right and wrong. Since the policies don't actually state that a person is doing anything wrong (for example: rolling up with 5 boxed mages and an enchanter to charm-steal your named), then people that would take advantage of this behavior are going to do it.

The CS knows this, but either their hands are tied (by policies), lack common sense, or are not allowed to USE common sense to JUDGE.

You ever purchase something from a store and the item is defective? Then take it to the store to return it, and are refused a refund? Thankfully this doesn't happen nearly as much as it used to, but it's happened and it still does. Well, the refund refusal is due to some lowly employee being forced to ignore common sense and follow a policy. Then the issue gets escalated to the store manager, where they have the authority to choose what to do...sometimes. Sometimes they use common sense, and sometimes they fall back on their "store policy", and refuse.

The bottom line is....when their is a breach (or argument against) of policy, Common Sense should be used as the final determining factor. Not doing so is lazy, and unethical.

The policies are in place because they lack the CS staff to enforce things players would like them to enforce. It does no good to have policies to enforce everything if it takes them six months to respond to petitions due to the backlog. (And the TLP's would be VERY CS-intensive if players got all the enforcement that they would like.)

They have incrementally been decreasing what they will respond to as staffing has steadily been cut. The list of things that will be handled by petition decreases each year. I suspect each time CS staff is cut, they have a meeting and decide how to reduce the workload to what is workable with the new staffing levels.

Until and unless the financial situation of the company improves, it is not realistic to expect that to change. And for all that the TLP's are bringing in some small extra revenue to DBG, the rest of the company's games are not doing well, in some cases extremely badly.

You can complain all you want, but they literally do not have the ability to give you what you want. So you can either keep paying them and accept lower levels of customer service, or take your money elsewhere.

Personally I've taken my money elsewhere, at least for the time being.

I agree.

I also dont buy the "not enough resources to police it" excuse.
If someone KS repeatedly nothing will be done.
If someone trains the KSer, they will police it and the guilty party who trained gets disciplined.

If they policed the KS, they wouldnt need to police the train. Same amount of resources used for the same one situation.

TL;DR: These situations do not go away simply because of policy stating they will not be responded to, they escalate into something which a different rule now covers and need to be responded to anyhow.

Also: Wait til Kunark on Mangler, when the queue fills up with Ragefire KS petitions.

Kill stealing happens, it’s not a good thing but it does not cause a wipe. Training does, thus creating a more immediate impact on ability to play. From a CS perspective, you can go elsewhere for other kills but training/wiping has a larger impact on playability.

Also, why aren’t you doing Ragefire in a DZ? Seems like a very easy solution to this one aspect.

The point is it takes the same amount of resources to police the train as it does the KS. Since not policing the latter is typically what causes the former, the claim that not enough resources exist to police the one, but enough resources to police the other do exist, is logically refuted.

I firmly believe they do this because they cant afford to hire staff to police play nice policy on every server consistently.

It's actually a pain to enforce the "I've been here for x hours at this camp or that camp against 2 parties or multiple parties. It's super easy to see a screen shot of a trainer and just give them a 7 day suspend.

There are no camps sorry, I'm not waiting 50 hours until that bot / box team moves to get a camp. If I need it I'll try to ask for a reasonable time if not we race on that mob.

Its just as easy to see a screenshot of a KS or dialogue following a KS as it is to see a screenshot of a train.

Also, anyone believing this situation will result in people just letting stuff slide is sorely mistaken. People being jerks will result in escalation, regardless if it is against the rules or not. Knowing its no longer against the rules will of course cause an uptick in the number of incidents of it occurring, but that will not cause people being KSed to be all laa-dee-daa about it.

This revoking of the original play nice policies on an item by item basis gives the impression that the last few dollars are being milked before they shut-er down, regardless if this is true or not.

Amen brother. We need sweeping change here and transparancy.

Where are the DEVS and STAFF on this? Where is community management?

Wow instead of replying, they LOCKED the other thread.

I remember on phinigel people would get in trouble for KSing the cleric epic triggered mob in lake rathe. U could literally wait at that chick until someone turned in the sea shell i think it was, then someone could charm the pop and run away and kill it.

seems like they just keep getting more laissez-faire each server/firing.

I've said this before and I'll say it again I don't buy this argument that they don't have the staff or resources to enforce things. It's apathy and laziness. I've played on well-managed private servers with a tiny staff of volunteers who do a better job at policing this stuff than the paid staff at DBG. It's bogus.

Nasomi is run by ONE dude with a job, wife and kids. And he does a better job at policing bad behavior on his server. What DBG is allowing to happen on these servers and to this community is shameful. Much of the onus here is on the community itself but as the OP said without some sort of authority to enforce things the bad actors will continue unabated because why not? There are no consequences. Just like the recidivists in the town I live in, except their krono is called meth.

Greetings,

Senior Guide Pirowen here. You would be badly mistaken if you believe that the institution of DPS wins is a cause of problems. It was the CS experiences on Ragefire and Lockjaw that led to the implementation of that policy and after some initial grumbling things settled down and there were nowhere near as many problems as before.

Training has always been a serious offense and will continue to be so. It would behoove you to consider whether you with a single character can ever beat someone with a half dozen or more accounts that can be used against you. Think about it, even if you manage to avoid being on video violating that rule you still can't win

The ganking of quest mobs is another subject entirely and it does need to be address by the Devs

Speaking of RF/LJ the two 20th anniversary TLP servers are very quiet and peaceful in comparison to those servers. Ahh, the good old days!

Sincerely

Senior Guide Pirowen

If this surprises you, you haven't been paying attention.

Mangler has turned into the wild west, where everything goes except for murder (training).

Well from my "wild west experience" from watching movies lol, what does the town do usually? They elect a Sheriff, and that man deputizes others to help him enforce the law.

So what's the equivalent on Mangler? Sheriff = Server GM. Where's the deputies? It's supposed to be Guides. But apparently there's a huge lack of them.

I've said this in another thread a while back, but I'll say it again....

Reinstate the Volunteer Guide Program. Make it huge. 20-30 Guides on the server at all times. It costs absolutely nothing.

Yeah, the program in the past has had some bad apples. Well, that's the "sheriff's" job to police them. The guides have enough power to take care of most situations, and those that they can't, they escalate it to the GM.

At least it's "some" form of CS. Guide "common sense" might vary from guide to guide at times, because we as people are not perfect. If there are repeated issues, then it will become known and that guide will be removed.

But a blanket statement such as "everything is legal, except training, hacking, or botting" is not CS. It's not good "policy". It's making a lot of players/customers quite angry.

You make your customers angry, then you lose business...simple as that. Make them happy, put forth "some" effort. A lot of us will help you do it...for FREE. We love EQ, we just want it to be fair ground for all.

I've had a buddy offered to be a guide last year but the old rule stands, if you currently play on mangler you cant be a guide for there. So I guess if you magically play on selos and not mangler, or coirnav and not mangler/selos (as some people play on multiple) then youd be ok but still seems like a conflict if youre on one TLP youd probably want to go to the next TLP eventually (when your current one dies)

the best advice and experience i've had is record the people, and dont just record them, lets be honest we've all done that and do you think the GM actually sat there and watched the whole video? in my experience they dont. what I do then is either shorten the video or I give a synopsis with timestamps of every violation in the video so they can skip to that point in the video and save time and hopefully punish the violator. try to get lot of violations in one video and write out a whole play by play that the gm can skip through the video to. point out whats in each play by play, such as broadcasting at the same time, cussing, training, dispelling your pets buffs, etc.

now this doesnt always work, i recorded a guy at juggs using KISS and in the video I got his puller monk opening the locked juggs door from the inside to pull a jug and faceturning around back to camp and nothing happened to him, but the play by play definitely increases your chances.

The problem with KSing is first you have to have a rule about first engagement. Without that rule, well you can’t KS someone.

Kind of reminds me of a something that happened to me once: I came out of the grocery store, to find two empty shopping carts were left directly behind my car, and I was forced to move them myself so I could leave.
I remember thinking at the time: Someone deserves to get punched for this (maybe 2 people), but if I did see them do it, and administer justice, I would be the one getting arrested.

I'm not saying we need to do away with KS'ing period. I mean, it is part of the game and has been since the beginning (51% damage of mob gets the kill). But obvious harassment being disguised as "dps racing" should be questioned, investigated, and handled.

I've never heard of players dispelling charmed mobs, or charm-gating, until I came to Mangler. Apparently it's been a thing on previous TLP's also. It's shocking how mean some people are to each other.

Something as simple as removing (on TLP's) the marketplace item that allows you to change your character name "could" curve some of the bad behavior, as their reputation would follow them. Unfortunately when you have entire guilds doing this, they don't care. They have everyone they need right there. And there's nothing you can do to stop them.

To be fair, this policy does absolutely nothing to solve the problem, it just quiets your CS ticketing system because people have nowhere to turn with their complaints about KSing.

Is this the correct solution? Probably not.

Is this the path of least resistance from a CS perspective? Probably so.

I don't necessarily think it's right to simply wash hands and say CS does not resolve camp disputes because camps don't exist. I don't necessarily have a better solution given you surely have finite resources and if you do wade into solving camp disputes you open a floodgate you can't control with CS issues because, frankly, the playerbase is made up both of responsible adults who understand this is a video game and are here to enjoy themselves, and of irresponsible adults who both cannot control base impulses to be disruptive jerks to each other and cannot handle the disappointment of this happening maturely.

It's a lose-lose situation, but it's pretty disingenuous to suggest that the Pontius Pilate solution to CS has resulted in a better player environment rather than simply a quieter ticketing system.