An Alternative to Banning

[Grimy_Bunyip]

So don't get me wrong. Banning is a perfectly common and acceptable form of punishment in a MMO.

But I think there's a two big flaws to it:

 

-items owned by the banned player are lost

So lets say Jagex wants to ban a manipulation clan (manipulation is bannable, although merchanting isn't btw).

And Jagex bans them while they're buying up godswords.

Well if Jagex did that, all the godswords would actually be removed from the economy.

Making a buy-out induced godsword shortage, into an actual shortage.

The few manipulation clansmen that weren't banned, would make a huge amount of money too. That would not send the right message.

 

-They just make a new account and have fun again.

Sure, they lost all the time they spent. But ultimately alot of people play for fun.

Simply losing an account doesn't have the same psychological impact on some players as others.

Some people can just shrug it off, make a new account, and start enjoying it like nothing happened.

 

 

So here's what I think is better:

Lockdown their account until the gamer pays an in game fine equal to their total bank value.

 

By lockdown I mean:

Player receives 10x less Experience.

Player has access to only 1 GE trade slot.

Player cannot trade, request assistance, etc.

Player has a 90% chance of receiving no drops from a given monster or PVP kill.

 

The destruction box:

The player puts their items into the destruction box to pay their fine.

If a player puts a godsword into the destruction box, the godsword is sold on GE, and the value it sells for is used to pay the fine.

The player can alternatively, just pay cash towards the fine.

 

Of course Jagex can store the "punishment fines" in the off chance that they punish the players incorrectly.

This isn't favorable for players with anti-junk items (like phats, etc)

But remember that the players aren't forced to destroy their items.

If they believe they're innocent, they can wait it out, only sell liquid items, and receive the cash back for all the fines they paid once they are proven innocent.

 

Pros:

-Psychological

If Jagex bans the account, it's very impersonal. It's mean ole jagex reigning in on the poor player, so to speak.

Instead, you're making the player punish himself in a sense.

That godsword he worked so hard for, well he's the one that's going to have to pick it up, and throw it into the destruction box.

 

-Deflation

Deflation is ultimately, a good thing in my opinion.

Because it's a lot easier to cause inflation than deflation.

Jagex has to invent new content (like construction) to make players willing to give up the cash they worked so hard for.

But it takes barely any effort to introduce drops that give players a lot of GPs (pvp statuettes for example)

 

-No More Items Lost

Wasn't there a massive spike in rare prices when Duke Freedom (I think that was his name) was banned?

Banning removes items from the economy.

Removing gp's is fine in my opinion, but banning certain people can change the economy for months.

It can change it forever if you remove rares.

 

Cons:

-Not as harsh

In a completely practical sense, this punishment isn't as harsh as banning.

You still keep your account. Instead of losing everything, you just lose a set amount of money

 

-Just make a new account.

Like with banning, the player can still just make a new account.

 

-Cheaters Spend All their money on stats.

Knowing that if they get locked-down, they will lose all their money.

Cheaters would be more inclined to spend all their money (namely on skills that spend money quickly like prayer/herblore).

Potentially driving the price of the expensive prayer and herblore sills even higher.

 

 

But I think that the fact that it is more practical for the player to accept the new punishment than to start anew is a good thing.

It's incentive for the player to *accept* the punishment.

And that's the main point of the alternative punishment.

It seems *less* like Jagex is forcing their punishment on the player (it still is though).

But the player is left with some options (What to throw into the destruction box and what not to).

To the player, it seems like they are dealing the punishment to themselves to some extent, since they would be the ones choosing what items of their bank to destroy.

[Bladewing]

Having accounts in lockdown would be useful for dumping junk for mid LOL.

[MstrMonopoly]

I like this idea. It wouldn't make party hats even rarer.

[Grimy_Bunyip]

Having accounts in lockdown would be useful for dumping junk for mid LOL.

Emphasis that the destruction box would cash in for what it sells for ;)

If it doesn't sell on GE, it doesn't cash in towards your fine in the destruction box. >:]

[gspbeetle]

Lockdown their account until the gamer pays an in game fine equal to their total bank value.

 

Thats basically dumping everything he got into ge.

[Grimy_Bunyip]

Lockdown their account until the gamer pays an in game fine equal to their total bank value.

 

Thats basically dumping everything he got into ge.

and not getting money back for what they dump back :)

yes, that's exactly it.

[Racer434]

This sounds like a nice idea and a good way to punish those pesky manipulators lol

[Bladewing]

Having accounts in lockdown would be useful for dumping junk for mid LOL.

Emphasis that the destruction box would cash in for what it sells for ;)

If it doesn't sell on GE, it doesn't cash in towards your fine in the destruction box. >:]

Ah somehow I missed that. Why not just require pure GP, the player can GE all his items?

 

PS: Prepare to be flamed by every would-be skiller because this will drive down the prices of all mats.

 

This sounds like a nice idea and a good way to punish those pesky manipulators lol

Manipulation is not a banable or mute-able offense.

[Zaaps1]

But whose to say that the player won't just abandon a locked-down account?

[oceana]

Having accounts in lockdown would be useful for dumping junk for mid LOL.

Emphasis that the destruction box would cash in for what it sells for ;)

If it doesn't sell on GE, it doesn't cash in towards your fine in the destruction box. >:]

 

But if the fine is equal to their total bank value, then how could they pay the fine if many of their items don't sell on the grand exchange?

[deletemeplease]

I like it.

[Ezz]

That's a very interesting idea! Will have to have a lot of thought put into it though, like you have.

[Grimy_Bunyip]

But whose to say that the player won't just abandon a locked-down account?

That's one of the cons I listed.

And the only incentive not to, is the fact that it's quicker to rebuild the locked-down account than make a new one.

 

Having accounts in lockdown would be useful for dumping junk for mid LOL.

Emphasis that the destruction box would cash in for what it sells for ;)

If it doesn't sell on GE, it doesn't cash in towards your fine in the destruction box. >:]

Ah somehow I missed that. Why not just require pure GP, the player can GE all his items?

 

PS: Prepare to be flamed by every would-be skiller because this will drive down the prices of all mats.

 

This sounds like a nice idea and a good way to punish those pesky manipulators lol

Manipulation is not a banable or mute-able offense.

it causes deflation, it would make the prices of nats go up.

 

edit: oh i missed one of your questions.

I don't want to *require* pure gp because I would prefer the destruction of their bank to be a more personal action.

Dumping a bunch of GP into a box is very impersonal.

Throwing that precious godsword, that served your monster hunting so loyally for all those years, into some "destruction box" holds much stronger symbolic value.

But in the end both ways of destroying your bank would be available.

Leaving some freedom of choice to the player is important.

 

That and I'm pretty sure manipulation is bannable. Manipulation, relies on lying to other players. Which is essentially scamming.

Recruiting for manipulation clans in w2 is definitely mutable. Jagex gave the go ahead for that to their Pmods a while ago.

I've seen several Jmod posts clarifying, the natural merchanting is okay, but the pyramid schemes are not.

[D Jay99]

While theyre in lockdown anyway wouldnt they just bot more to pay their fine?

[Grimy_Bunyip]

While theyre in lockdown anyway wouldnt they just bot more to pay their fine?

Probably.

But this problem holds true with banning too.

Wouldn't they just bot their new account back up?

 

It doesn't solve that issue, but, nothing really does.

 

the hope is that, the symbolic impact of throwing their bank with their own hands is a stronger deterrant to botting than a ban.

[xpx]

That would be much, much more lenient than banning. Stats >>>>> money. I'd be completely fine if this was imposed on me.

[Grimy_Bunyip]

That would be much, much more lenient than banning. Stats >>>>> money. I'd be completely fine if this was imposed on me.

Completely agree with you, but how would you punish them statwise? =\

Do you actually have any ideas? Because I'd love to hear em.

 

Anyways my thoughts on this:

You can't just reset their stats to 0, because then we might have lvl 3's with quest capes and soul wars capes.

But what if you went ahead and reset their quests as well.

Then you might have lvl 3's with those chompy ranger hats.

but what if you reset chompy ranger hats too.

well then there would be something else weird, and yet another thing, and yet another thing after that

But what if you reset *everything*

Then you might as well have banned them.

Only with banning, you can unban if you make a mistake.

Whereas if you reset everything in their stats, and how are you going to unreset them?

What if they gained xp since the reset? how would that be factored in?

 

I mean I guess they could tack on a "10x less xp for the next 10 million xp you gain" condition on top of the destroy your bank fine.

But then cooking would get more expensive because freshly locked down players would just spam cooking until they hit 10 million.

And if you did it for 10x for 1 month, they'd just wait out for 1 month

 

I mean I'd love to think of a punishment that could effectively punish them statwise, without doing something funky like creating people with lvl 1 herblore with overloads or something.

But I just can't think of it.

[Dragonlordjl]

That would be much, much more lenient than banning. Stats >>>>> money. I'd be completely fine if this was imposed on me.

But you're almost maxed. A whole lot of manipulators don't have many maxed skills, mostly combats.

 

I think the best fix for price manipulation is to go whole-hog CommunistScape.

 

Make it where you can only own X amount of high-level items before the GE starts ignoring your offers. For example, you can only own 3 copies of an AGS-- one to use, one to placehold, one to lend. You can only own 2 copies of a spirit shield/sigil-- one to use and one to placehold. If you own more than that, any buy offers for more of those items will never fill. These limits would NOT apply to discontinued items.

 

This would go a long way towards destroying the manipulator clans, as people would no longer be able to snipe expensive, rare items or perform complete buyouts in the GE. Sure, people would still junk-trade, but eventually people would be able to get a CS'd item with really rare items like spirit shields.

[Grimy_Bunyip]

i thought of a new problem to my idea, and added it to the cons list:

 

-Cheaters Spend All their money on stats.

Knowing that if they get locked-down, they will lose all their money.

Cheaters would be more inclined to spend all their money (namely on skills that spend money quickly like prayer/herblore).

Potentially driving the price of the expensive prayer and herblore sills even higher.

[xpx]

jagex has already used the stat/quest wipeout before as a less harsh punishment for serious offenses. Also i don't understand why you all hate price manipulation that much- if you don't give into them, they will lose money. Jagex is responsible for all the chaos going around in the economy, should we ban them? oh, wait, lets steal 90% of their employees, steal most of their food until they fix it and pay us 90% of our money back? Great idea :D

[Grimy_Bunyip]

jagex has already used the stat/quest wipeout before as a less harsh punishment for serious offenses.

Interesting, did not know that :o

 

Also i don't understand why you all hate price manipulation that much- if you don't give into them, they will lose money.

I hate it because it's immoral and inefficient, that's all. :P

 

Jagex is responsible for all the chaos going around in the economy, should we ban them? oh, wait, lets steal 90% of their employees, steal most of their food until they fix it and pay us 90% of our money back? Great idea :D

hmmm... interesting...

*strokes beard*

[BeNiceOk]

That would be much, much more lenient than banning. Stats >>>>> money. I'd be completely fine if this was imposed on me.

But you're almost maxed. A whole lot of manipulators don't have many maxed skills, mostly combats.

 

I think the best fix for price manipulation is to go whole-hog CommunistScape.

 

Make it where you can only own X amount of high-level items before the GE starts ignoring your offers. For example, you can only own 3 copies of an AGS-- one to use, one to placehold, one to lend. You can only own 2 copies of a spirit shield/sigil-- one to use and one to placehold. If you own more than that, any buy offers for more of those items will never fill. These limits would NOT apply to discontinued items.

 

This would go a long way towards destroying the manipulator clans, as people would no longer be able to snipe expensive, rare items or perform complete buyouts in the GE. Sure, people would still junk-trade, but eventually people would be able to get a CS'd item with really rare items like spirit shields.

 

I would love a concept like this where you are limited on what you have, or at least can buy. There is an issue with this however. With merchant clans not being have to pick up higher classed items they will move onto raw materials. The only way to stop that is to put a limit on raw materials as well. Before you know it you will have a limit of 100 logs or 100 coal per hour that you can buy from the GE.

 

Granted limitings things to 100 per hour for raw materials might not be a bad thing in foresight, but it would change the game-play of skilling in a direction i'm not sure it should go.

 

As per the OT of banning,

Instead of making them pay a GP/Item fee to have their bank why not introduce a real life fee instead. Currently the payment for most members is 5$ a month. Why not make it so that every botted offense you have been proven to commit, your subscription for that account also goes up 5$ in addition to your botting punishment. Bot once, its 10$ a month and a 14 day probation period. Bot twice, a 30 day probation and 15$ a month, ect.. This increase in money would at least give Jagex some more cash from members who break the rules. That is more cash Jagex can spend on extra workers going out and catching these bots.

 

If the fee was introduced nobody would continue to bot on an account if it got caught. Also who in their right mind is going to buy an account from a botting company that requires 15 or 20$ a month to play on it. Not only would the fee cut down on botting, but RWT'ed accounts which botted too.

[Brady]

Manipulation isn't a bannable/mutable offense. I like banning/suspension more anyways because it actually teaches a player not to break the rules again.

[PereGrin]

this is an interesting idea. I have thought for a while that Jagex should put all discontinued items from banned accounts into the Ge for mid. Except the accounts banned because of phat duping of course. But even if an account got a 14 day ban for botting, why not just sell their rares in GE, and they come back to about 20% of the street value of their rare in cash. No more RWT selling rares for trade price....

[Johannas]

The idea is pretty good, but it's just making Jagex even more pushovers.

Bots are just going to increase since all they need is a 7k rune hatchet.

 

Having a 0% tolerance policy is much better.

A similar scenario is the authority policemen in the UK have compared to the US. If i have committed a serious crime i am more likely to submit to a handgun being pointed at me and give in to my crime as opposed to an outdated baton. I'm 1000% more likely to make a run for it if a bloke is standing infront of me with no gun...

 

Hope that made sense.

 

I believe the only reason Jagex hasn't done this is to rinse as much money out of membership as they can.

Remember a year or so back when they did a mass ban? Well i bet they had the names of every single person they were going to ban months in advance. But why ban them instantaneously? 10,000 people (estimate) paying another 6 months membership is a hell of a lot of money for a company just to throw away which is why they prolonged it as much as possible. I also believe this is what they're doing for the next mass ban.

 

I would like your suggestion alot better if items in the destruction box were actually destroyed as opposed to recycled back into the G/E. The only way rare items leave the game is through banned accounts. (I remember reading a blog post my Duke Freedom talking about the the rares he had and the effects on the economy)

 

Moreover, this destruction box could just be used a junk box. An easy way to dump unstrung bows etc.

 

Basically, if people want to play dirty, let them suffer the consequences.

Yeh, it sucks if you lose your account that you've spent 100 days on but you were made crystal clear of the rules, and the terms and conditions of creating the account in the first place.

 

I've played for over 7 years and never had a single black mark.

 

I feel Jagex are waaaay too lenient on rule breakers.