All Networks 🚨🥇Win Farming

[Blom]

Win Farming​

Hi all! Today I am going to talk about a topic that on first hand might seem logical, but before you vote disagree, please read the entire piece. I am not going to put a TL;DR at the end for the reason that I want you to read all of it before making a vote or not vote at all. Thanks a lot

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Why make this thread (and why now)?​

For people who are more involved in the community, it would sound familiar when I tell you that a couple of prominent and active Java players have recently been banned from the network due to Win Farming in the limited time mode (LTM) Ender. I myself am one of these people. This is an unfortunate event, which caused me to appeal on the ban. This sadly got denied. Normally, I would respect the decision made. However, this decision is different. There are a couple of issues which have not been addressed before, of which I feel like should be addressed. To make sure, this is not an additional appeal. Team CubeCraft has made their decision and I respect this. I make this thread to prevent stuff like this going wrong in the future, especially in regards to LTM games.

There are a multitude of reasons why I think what has happened should've never happened. I will not be able to discuss them all, but I will discuss a couple. This is also in regards to the other people that were removed from the network which I do not want to drag into this thread without their consent. If they wish to make themselves public, it is their choice.

Rules​

Starting off, to adhere to a rule you should know it is a rule in the first place. For win farming, I think it is trivially known that it is not allowed. What win farming entails on the other hand is not as trivially known. In fact, it is hard to describe what does and does not fall under this rule. CubeCraft has updated their rules the 11th of October to include an explanation of what win farming is exactly. I am happy, as this was in fact my suggestion, made in a ticket in which I asked the staff team the exact definition of win farming. Thanks CubeCraft!

Spoiler: Ticket with Suggestion

Thanks a lot @Eli for your wonderful and respectful response by the way!

This does not change the fact that I and others were banned for the offence of win farming without it being in the rules. To proof this, I attached screenshots from the rules before the update and after the update below. Data of this can be obtained through the Wayback Machine, a website containing all the previous versions of a website.

Spoiler: Evidence of Website Update

The website on October 6th, the day prior to my banning

The website on October 11th, a couple days after my banning

To confirm this is actually true, the date of my banning: 6th of October

"So what Blommmmie, it is in the rules now, right? What's the problem?"
Well, this is not how law works or should work. Say you cross the road on a random spot instead of on the crosswalk. Nothing would happen, right? Say a police officer saw you, notified this to the government, the government making a law that you have to cross the street at on a crosswalk, the officer walking up to you and arrests you for not abiding to the law. That is quite crazy, right? Exactly. You can make a law after someone has done something what in your perspective should be illegal, but you cannot punish that person for a law that didn't exist at the time. This happened with some severe cases in real life as well, such as the Enumclaw Horse case. For those of you who want to know more about that, just know that it contains explicit content, but the link to the Wikipedia page is here.

Obviously, this case does not have a content as severe as the real life case mentioned above, but the point stands. Updating your rules is good, but not punishing retroactively.

Party System​

Playing with friends is always fun. I love to play Ender with my friends a lot better, as the communication is nicer compared to joining a game with complete strangers. There are a couple of issues with this system however, in regards to the gamemode, the rules etc.

Starting off, I think it is incredibly difficult to balance on the fine line given by Team CubeCraft based on what they define as win farming. In the updated rules, they mention 'rigging games' and 'unfairly farming wins'. Also, a rule that has been in existence since forever is Cross Teaming, which is even a harder rule with a big party. At the time of my ban, I believe the size of the party I was in was 9. I think this is a lot of people, maybe even on the high side as well to have fun and play the game. However, all players in the party had an obsidian rank, hence we all got in the human team every time because we could vote to do so. This means that we would all be on the same team every game. Cross Teaming as a rule is therefore not applicable. Does this 'rig games' if you are all in the same team? Maybe, but that would mean the voting system is faulty. You cannot expect from an individual to not 'rig games' if this means playing it as intended. I don't think this rule is applicable either. Lastly, 'unfairly farming wins'. Because there is only one map, all individuals in the party knew were the pages were located approximately. This makes it (almost) impossible for the Ender to win. Is this unfair? Maybe, but as said, this is how the game is made. Neither of these rules I think are applicable on my situation, and I think on many situations with parties.

But what if you would have a party with people knowing all the locations, but them all being Stone Ranks? They cannot vote for a team, so it is bound to happen that the teams get divided at some point. As said, it is barely possible to win if you are up against an experienced party of players. Does this take the fun away? Perhaps. That is something that competitiveness does with individuals. By making a leaderboard, this was to be expected. I believe wholeheartedly that Team CubeCraft did, as our games were closely observed by admins to see if we would do anything that would break this at that time non-existing rule. But with a split team, even if the Ender tries their very best, they cannot slow the humans. Cross Teaming cannot be applicable. Also, in many cases an Ender that is in a party with one or multiple humans still does better than an Ender that does it for the first time.

If any of these rules IS applicable for a party system, allowing a party of over 8 in any game should never be allowed.

AFK Farming​

The only rule I haven't touched upon is AFK Farming. AFK Farming means that you part of a party without participating in the games in order to get an increase in stats. AFK Farming is long known to be part of Win Farming, so I will not pretend like I did not know this beforehand. I therefore believe that because I was banned, this should be involved. What are some key characteristics of AFK Farming that I think did not apply for my case specifically but also do not apply for Ender as a game?

First of all, the person does not contribute anything to the game. A contribution in Ender can be in multiple ways. We will focus on the human perspective, as only that counts towards the leaderboard. Contributing can be done by collecting pages. If you collect a page, you have actively contributed towards the win of your team by 5%. The more pages you collect, the more of value you are actively for the team. The second way is to distract the Ender. Leading away the Ender from other humans or just occupying them allows the other humans to collect more pages without interference. This is what I would call passive contribution. For either contribution, you have to move your character around the map, hence you cannot be away from keyboard (AFK).

Then, why does this not apply for Ender. The game developers have done a superb job in adding random Endermen spawning in front of humans every once in a while. These cannot move, but will damage the person looking at it. If you would stand AFK, an Enderman will spawn in front of you and will slowly kill you. This all happens within a minute for almost all games. With a good party, reaching 1 minute is incredibly hard. It is likely that the AFK person is dead before the human team won. Being dead means you will not get an increase on your stats from statistics achieved by your teammates. They will get a win on their record, you will not.

Lastly, why is it not relevant for my case specifically. I want to point out that there has been a bug (I have been banned for two weeks now so I do not know if it has been resolved) that the countdown timer of Ender sometimes restarts to 30 seconds if the teams are deemed 'unbalanced'. This is obviously weird, as 9 votes for human still mean 3 possible people for Ender, of which only 1 will eventually become Ender. I joined the game with my party, voted for Human as I normally would and went to Discord to try and see if I can hop in a call with some friends I was playing with. The bug did not happen this game, so I was standing AFK for 20ish seconds now, taking 2 hearts of damage already from an Enderman in front of me. I proceeded to play the game, collect 3 more pages and went on to win this game. I then got banned for win farming, I suppose that game. In my case, I have actively contributed to win the game for my team. This is in contradiction with what AFK farming is, hence I do not think it is possible to be part of the reason.

Evidence​

The very last thing I want to bring up is how hard it can be to appeal for a topic as broad as win farming. If you were building in SkyBlock and you get kicked for flying, you can get a clip and show that you weren't or argue for the fact that you were building over the void and that it might've registered you floating instead. An inappropriate skin is easy to check and change, so I don't think that would ever be an issue. However, with Win Farming, it could be everything or anything. I've shown you the footage I have, as I didn't do anything illegal so I didn't have a clip program open, so it is my word against theirs. That is a fight I am bound to lose. Because no evidence has been made and the admins are busy people, I understand they did not know what the exact case was anymore by the time they read the appeal I made - the moderation site was down for 2 days so they could physically only read my appeal days after the incident happened. It would help if we would get more of a reason for why a ban happened the way it happened. This can be done private, but I don't mind a bit more proof on cases like this (in the form of a YouTube link to a video where I am actively teaming with the Ender for example).

Conclusion​

I think I have made abundantly clear with this post that the way the recent bans have been handled is incorrect. I also showed you that, in case the process wouldn't be questionable, the evidence and claims made were lacking in content and the system around it is rather faulty. I hope Team CubeCraft takes into account for next LTM game that there will be big parties, so that the rules for this have to be made BEFOREHAND accordingly. This way, everyone knows what they are up to and everyone is able to enjoy the fun that CubeCraft spreads to an extend they like themselves. Thanks a lot, I appreciate you reading it through here and I hope change will be made

 

[DonovanSus]

I put on my glasses to read, haha, but it sounds really interesting

 

[Eli]

First of all I wanna say this thread, as all your threads are, is fantastic and very well written! I am beyond appreciative of in-depth feedback especially when it comes to moderation practices.
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Well, this is not how law works or should work. Say you cross the road on a random spot instead of on the crosswalk. Nothing would happen, right? Say a police officer saw you, notified this to the government, the government making a law that you have to cross the street at on a crosswalk, the officer walking up to you and arrests you for not abiding to the law. That is quite crazy, right? Exactly. You can make a law after someone has done something what in your perspective should be illegal, but you cannot punish that person for a law that didn't exist at the time. This happened with some severe cases in real life as well, such as the Enumclaw Horse case. For those of you who want to know more about that, just know that it contains explicit content, but the link to the Wikipedia page is here.​

Here's why I disagree with the way you say this:​

• I'll be nerdy for a second and say that this is a bit of a reductionist interpretation of the law, law is about precedent, there will always be someone who gets punished for a crime for the first time in history. Furthermore, not all crimes/infractions need to be codified in the law from its inception for them to be punishable in the future. The law is dynamic and should welcome change, there will always be a first for everything, sometimes that means that some people might go unpunished for actions that later on become punishable by law, it's the imperfect byproduct of a system designed to be adaptable as times change.​
• Shorter version of that, and applied to CubeCraft:
  • You cannot expect the Moderation team to anticipate every possible infraction and add it to the rules prior so that it becomes a valid punishment reason.​
  • Our rules have a VERY important desclaimer at the very top, that everyone seems to conveniently forget every time they are punished for something that is not explicitly within our rules: "the Moderation Team will be allowed to apply punishments as they deem necessary". This INCLUDES the Win Farming punishments applied on Ender.​

Now, you could argue "ok, but then don't punish the first person to ever commit the infraction, add it to the rules once it happens for the first time and punish everyone there after!". This is not quite as simple, mainly because our rules are kept minimalistic with the very conscious intention of giving the Moderation Team more capacity to act in the face of unusual and exceptional circumstances. And although Win Farming was added to the rules shortly after this incident, that may not be the case for every "new" infraction that comes along. Furthermore, it is because of the disclaimer I mentioned previously, and the expectation that all users play in good faith and use common sense, that the Moderation Team has the right to punish those who commit infractions even if those infractions are not mentioned in the rules / those users are unaware of their current wrongdoing.
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Party System​

This entire section I believe is a little misguided because the reason of the ban had to do with one of the members of the party being the Ender and intentionally giving an advantage to the Humans so that the Humans would win. It had nothing to do with all of you being humans at once and being good enough to find all pages quickly. It had nothing to do with all of you being humans and being in a party together thus facilitating communication and making you win faster. It had entirely to do with whoever was getting the Ender role, misusing it and teaming with the Humans to benefit the majority of the party in the form of exp and wins, hence the winfarming punishment.
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If any of these rules IS applicable for a party system, allowing a party of over 8 in any game should never be allowed.​

This is a bit of a leap, parties are allowed to join games under the good faith assumption that players will engage with the game normally, and not team with each other. Should they fail to do so, they would get reported and punished fairly quickly. I personally do not see large parties rigging games all that often, with the exception of Ender, that is.
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They will get a win on their record, you will not.​

This is not true, alike all other team modalities, you might be dead, but if your team wins, so do you.
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The very last thing I want to bring up is how hard it can be to appeal for a topic as broad as win farming. If you were building in SkyBlock and you get kicked for flying, you can get a clip and show that you weren't or argue for the fact that you were building over the void and that it might've registered you floating instead. An inappropriate skin is easy to check and change, so I don't think that would ever be an issue. However, with Win Farming, it could be everything or anything. I've shown you the footage I have, as I didn't do anything illegal so I didn't have a clip program open, so it is my word against theirs. That is a fight I am bound to lose. Because no evidence has been made and the admins are busy people, I understand they did not know what the exact case was anymore by the time they read the appeal I made - the moderation site was down for 2 days so they could physically only read my appeal days after the incident happened. It would help if we would get more of a reason for why a ban happened the way it happened. This can be done private, but I don't mind a bit more proof on cases like this (in the form of a YouTube link to a video where I am actively teaming with the Ender for example).​

On this I will say that from my experience in the Staff Team, people are usually very careful when applying Win Farming punishments of any kind, many times we collect evidence for internal purposes and to gather opinions from other Mods. This is because of the complicated nature of this infraction, we usually try to make sure to be making a good call. Now, I understand that in your case no evidence was collected, but I am fairly sure the person who applied your punishment spectated a sufficient amount of games to be convinced of issuing a punishment.

I find no valid reason why the Staff Team should provide evidence specifically for Win Farming even if they witness it themselves, considering that some other infractions may just be as hard to argue against (like cross-teaming, team-trolling, perhaps even bug abuse). So I would rather take your criticism as a criticism to the system as a whole, that allows Staff Members to apply punishments without evidence if they witness the infraction. In such case, I can respect your claim, I may also have opinions that conflict with that rule in particular, but changing it is a big ask.

Thank you again for your feedback, I am glad I found something to agree with at the end :)​