Some of you may remember my old suggestion https://www.cubecraft.net/threads/appeal-system-change.180724/ which addressed the appeal system. This thread will hopefully expand and improve on that suggestion and offer some new suggestions for punishments as well.
Even after the response from tacosbefriends on my original suggestion I'm still very uneasy about how the staff member who banned a player also handles that player's appeal in the case where there is evidence like a ban from a report. I really think that after a player is banned they should have their appeal handled by a separate staff member who is less likely to make the same mistakes as the first staff member in the case of a false punishment. This is how it works on most servers and I don't see why it's not how it works on Cubecraft.
This would:
-Allow the original punisher to receive feedback from a fellow staff member on what they did wrong in a false punishment quickly and easily:
-Reduce the number of falsely denied appeals with two staff opinions.
-Reduce the need for "2nd appeals" on the forums.
-Overall be more fair to the player who was punished.
Currently you have only Crazymanjr and (I think) GingerGeek working on sentinel appeals and I really feel as if some senior moderators should be taught and given the tools to deal with these appeals as well. Response times are long with pretty much one person handling all the appeals from sentinel and I'm not at all comfortable with one man handling the majority of appeals on the server. I'm sure that most senior mods if not many other staff members are capable and trustworthy enough to deal with these appeals. With more people on these appeals you will have faster response times and overall better support than we currently have for players looking to make "2nd Appeals".
I really think when sentinel bans a player it should give a reason. Currently the "has banned you for cheating" along with the ban waves that ban after the player has left the game leaves a lot of unanswered questions. A player could look at that and think "Did sentinel ban me for teaming or skybasing?" or "Did sentinel pick up on one of my mods that isn't exactly on the approved mods list but still doesn't give an in game advantage and counted that as cheating?" The majority of players don't know the extent of how advanced sentinel is and even could be at detecting "cheaters" and this makes it very difficult to appeal unless you have a video of yourself getting banned. It should clearly state what they were doing with at least "Using a hacked client" or "Autoclicker" as two different options. (Please don't say illegal clients because the majority of children you are banning have no clue what that means.) This would help at least a little more with making an appeal as you know what you've been banned for a don't have to guess. Having the exact "cheat" that sentinel detected the player for would be much more helpful but I can see why you would still want to keep this somewhat secret.
With that out of the way it's time to get to the second part of the title:
Now with hackers beginning to become less and less common in games the new rulebreakers that everyone is all worried about are campers, teamers, and various chat offences. Most people believe that the punishments for these are too short and other believe that it isn't important enough to expand the punishment a lot. There is a way to have the best of both worlds without even banning the player who could possibly donate and attract other players to the server! You can do this with permissions with your plugins. How might his might work you ask? I'll give you a few examples with current offences!
Teaming in solo: Players who team in solo can have the permission to join any solo gamemode removed for a period of time. This time can be extended and stacked upon more heavily than the current punishment as the player can still play other game modes where they won't ruin any other player's gaming experience! (This could be like a week without being able to join solo gamemodes on first offense and could even progress to as long as a month!) When this player tries to join a solo game they will receive an error telling them that they have broken the rules and should appeal at appeals.ccgn.co if they believe this is incorrect. Cross teaming in team modes would still recieve the same punishment as the current system.
Team Trolling:
Simar to teaming in solo except the player won't be able to join team games for a period of time.
Bug Exploiting (maybe):
If the bug is for a specific game you could remove their permission to play this game for a long time. This could be a month for first offense and increase to even permanently depending on how serious the bug is if they continue to abuse the bug after. Bugs that involve the main lobby or the server in general would still use the current punishment.
Camping:
Players who camp can have their permission to play games they can effectively camp in like eggwars, skywars, and lucky islands removed for a period of time. They would still be able to play games like sg, blockwars, and tower defence where they wouldn't harm anyone by camping or wouldn't be able to camp at all.
I think this would be the best way to effectively prevent these players from committing their offenses multiple times and also allow them to still play and invite their friends to the server.
The chat offenses are either not worth reporting or too harsh in many cases for me and that's why I typically don't report them. So here are some changes I think should be made to the chat enforcement:
Advertising: I feel like someone accidentally saying in public chat "Hey do you wanna go play CraftCraft?" shouldn't really be punishable as advertising at least it shouldn't even be comparable as someone putting a server ip in chat telling people to join that server. I think this kind of mild advertising should have a warning before you can report or a staff member can mute the player.
Swearing is not worth reporting at all as it has a short punishment time and requires a warning. At the very least the warning stage of the punishment should be removed IMO as we have one giant warning not to swaer in chat that being the chat filter which these players are consciously bypassing. Along with that I think the first punishment should be 2-3 days so the player actually notices they been punished unlike now.
Not everyone may think this but I really feel like the targgeted chat offense punishment is way too harsh in many situations. 1 month fits for a DDOS threat but for someone just getting a little salty at block game or someone just joking with a friend by telling them to kill themselves over the Internet isn't nearly as bad. First off I think the player who is being targeted should be the one to report the person for targeted chat offense to make the other player recieve the full month long mute and beyond. This would stop people who are just joking with their friends from being muted for a month from a report by some guy who's looking to increase their "players punished" number or someone who didn't understand it as a joke at all. Personally I don't want people who get salty and tell me to kill myself or something in chat to be muted for a month by some random person who saw them say it. Also I think there should be an additional 3 month long stage added so a player can't be muted permenantly for saying 3 letters in chat when they are a bit salty.
I know it's not server and I don't really stand in a position to tell people how they should run their server but I think these suggestions will truly benefit the players themselves.
With that my giant text wall is done. I expect most people to have a completely different opinion than me so be sure to to leave yours in a reply below! :) Much ♡
Appeals
Even after the response from tacosbefriends on my original suggestion I'm still very uneasy about how the staff member who banned a player also handles that player's appeal in the case where there is evidence like a ban from a report. I really think that after a player is banned they should have their appeal handled by a separate staff member who is less likely to make the same mistakes as the first staff member in the case of a false punishment. This is how it works on most servers and I don't see why it's not how it works on Cubecraft.
This would:
-Allow the original punisher to receive feedback from a fellow staff member on what they did wrong in a false punishment quickly and easily:
-Reduce the number of falsely denied appeals with two staff opinions.
-Reduce the need for "2nd appeals" on the forums.
-Overall be more fair to the player who was punished.
Appeal Responses
Now with that out of the way I also think that for all denied appeals, including sentinel appeals, a message should be given to the player who's appeal was denied. This could be a default message like "Contact the moderator who banned you or an administrator on the forums if you still believe your appeal was falsely denied." or in the case that it's a sentinel ban, "Contact Crazymanjr via Discord if you still believe your appeal was falsely denied." These could also be custom messages that explains exactly why the player was banned if the staff member was willing to put in the effort. I feel like this would help a lot with reducing spam on the forums as well as point players who have been falsely banned in the right direction when they may not think to go to the forums or discord. Also with blatant rule breaking evidence a message like be given to respond to the appeal to affirm they will not be pardoned. For example, an appeal for a illegal clients ban that is obvious is made stating, "I deleted my hacks please in an me!" can simply be responded with "Your punishment will not be pardoned as you did break our rules and were not falsely punished." This could prevent some players from coming on the forums and spamming and clear up confusion for players who believe an apology would be an acceptable appeal in their situation. Sentinel Appeals
Currently you have only Crazymanjr and (I think) GingerGeek working on sentinel appeals and I really feel as if some senior moderators should be taught and given the tools to deal with these appeals as well. Response times are long with pretty much one person handling all the appeals from sentinel and I'm not at all comfortable with one man handling the majority of appeals on the server. I'm sure that most senior mods if not many other staff members are capable and trustworthy enough to deal with these appeals. With more people on these appeals you will have faster response times and overall better support than we currently have for players looking to make "2nd Appeals".
Sentinel scares the heck out of me with all the people I know have been false banned from it and have had falsely denied appeals. Shortly after sentinel came out I started using a background recorder in case I saw anyone get false banned in front of me or if I were to get false banned myself. The scariest part of all about sentinel for me though is (not to be rude to the man himself) is that almost all the appeals for it are being handled by someone who is not a well known Community member and isn't even a well known PvPer. To me that seems like giving moderator to one of those random people who come on the forums and ask for mod/admin. I'm sorry if that did come out as a bit rude but that is truly how I feel about sentinel.
Sentinel Appeal Reason
I really think when sentinel bans a player it should give a reason. Currently the "has banned you for cheating" along with the ban waves that ban after the player has left the game leaves a lot of unanswered questions. A player could look at that and think "Did sentinel ban me for teaming or skybasing?" or "Did sentinel pick up on one of my mods that isn't exactly on the approved mods list but still doesn't give an in game advantage and counted that as cheating?" The majority of players don't know the extent of how advanced sentinel is and even could be at detecting "cheaters" and this makes it very difficult to appeal unless you have a video of yourself getting banned. It should clearly state what they were doing with at least "Using a hacked client" or "Autoclicker" as two different options. (Please don't say illegal clients because the majority of children you are banning have no clue what that means.) This would help at least a little more with making an appeal as you know what you've been banned for a don't have to guess. Having the exact "cheat" that sentinel detected the player for would be much more helpful but I can see why you would still want to keep this somewhat secret.
With that out of the way it's time to get to the second part of the title:
Advanced Punishments
Now with hackers beginning to become less and less common in games the new rulebreakers that everyone is all worried about are campers, teamers, and various chat offences. Most people believe that the punishments for these are too short and other believe that it isn't important enough to expand the punishment a lot. There is a way to have the best of both worlds without even banning the player who could possibly donate and attract other players to the server! You can do this with permissions with your plugins. How might his might work you ask? I'll give you a few examples with current offences!
Teaming in solo: Players who team in solo can have the permission to join any solo gamemode removed for a period of time. This time can be extended and stacked upon more heavily than the current punishment as the player can still play other game modes where they won't ruin any other player's gaming experience! (This could be like a week without being able to join solo gamemodes on first offense and could even progress to as long as a month!) When this player tries to join a solo game they will receive an error telling them that they have broken the rules and should appeal at appeals.ccgn.co if they believe this is incorrect. Cross teaming in team modes would still recieve the same punishment as the current system.
Team Trolling:
Simar to teaming in solo except the player won't be able to join team games for a period of time.
Bug Exploiting (maybe):
If the bug is for a specific game you could remove their permission to play this game for a long time. This could be a month for first offense and increase to even permanently depending on how serious the bug is if they continue to abuse the bug after. Bugs that involve the main lobby or the server in general would still use the current punishment.
Camping:
Players who camp can have their permission to play games they can effectively camp in like eggwars, skywars, and lucky islands removed for a period of time. They would still be able to play games like sg, blockwars, and tower defence where they wouldn't harm anyone by camping or wouldn't be able to camp at all.
I think this would be the best way to effectively prevent these players from committing their offenses multiple times and also allow them to still play and invite their friends to the server.
Chat Enforcement Changes
The chat offenses are either not worth reporting or too harsh in many cases for me and that's why I typically don't report them. So here are some changes I think should be made to the chat enforcement:
Advertising: I feel like someone accidentally saying in public chat "Hey do you wanna go play CraftCraft?" shouldn't really be punishable as advertising at least it shouldn't even be comparable as someone putting a server ip in chat telling people to join that server. I think this kind of mild advertising should have a warning before you can report or a staff member can mute the player.
Swearing is not worth reporting at all as it has a short punishment time and requires a warning. At the very least the warning stage of the punishment should be removed IMO as we have one giant warning not to swaer in chat that being the chat filter which these players are consciously bypassing. Along with that I think the first punishment should be 2-3 days so the player actually notices they been punished unlike now.
Not everyone may think this but I really feel like the targgeted chat offense punishment is way too harsh in many situations. 1 month fits for a DDOS threat but for someone just getting a little salty at block game or someone just joking with a friend by telling them to kill themselves over the Internet isn't nearly as bad. First off I think the player who is being targeted should be the one to report the person for targeted chat offense to make the other player recieve the full month long mute and beyond. This would stop people who are just joking with their friends from being muted for a month from a report by some guy who's looking to increase their "players punished" number or someone who didn't understand it as a joke at all. Personally I don't want people who get salty and tell me to kill myself or something in chat to be muted for a month by some random person who saw them say it. Also I think there should be an additional 3 month long stage added so a player can't be muted permenantly for saying 3 letters in chat when they are a bit salty.
I know it's not server and I don't really stand in a position to tell people how they should run their server but I think these suggestions will truly benefit the players themselves.
With that my giant text wall is done. I expect most people to have a completely different opinion than me so be sure to to leave yours in a reply below! :) Much ♡