How to handle bans and toxic players

[Jazz]

Even if it was a crime (it isn’t) surely it’d be classed as Fraud not Robbery

[CheesyKnives]

If you feel you’ve/ someone else has been suspended/banned unfairly, talk to/get that person to talk a mod. They don’t bite (I think) and are very reasonable.
However, an unmoderated queue is not the solution. This encourages oh its ok ill just be moved somewhere else and a repetition of bad behaviour.

What a suspension (most people arent banned forever, that takes quite a bit of effort) teaches it that the action that you have done is wrong. And that you shouldnt do it again.

Hobbles off becuase I make no senseeee :^)

[Alice]

@Nanako

Throne of Lies is a paid game. It costs money to enjoy the service, it is not provided freely.
If you pay to participate in the game, and are them deprived of your ability to play said game, you should be entitled to a full refund. If you are not refunded, you have been robbed.
In very plain terms, banning players is theft. I find it entirely unconscionable. You have taken their money and decided, for whatever reason, to stop providing the thing they paid for. If you do not compensate them for this, you are a thief.

Christ on a cracker… Did you even read the terms of conditions you agreed to when you created the account? You are not buying the game per-se as the account still belongs to i42 and they’re allowing you to play on their servers and by the agreement it’s perfectly legal for them to remove your access for any reason whatsoever.

This is not robbery, as i42 is not holding you at gunpoint or anything like that, nor is it theft nor fraud as this was explicitly outlined in the ToS.

Every online game does this and this can be easily avoided by not being a toxic twat in-game. And frankly, looking by the #justice logs, if you somehow get banned, you deserve it.

[NuclearBurrito]

@Alice

nor is it theft nor fraud as this was explicitly outlined in the ToS.

ToS = Town of Salem = Fraud

Get wrecked

[Nanako]

This is a game, not an asylum. The goal isn’t to provide mental help, its to provide a game for people to play.

Seperating such players from the rest does solve the problem - because the problem is those people disrupting the main game. You seem to be under the impression that the problem is the mere existence of those people.

[TryphonX]

@Nanako

Throne of Lies is a paid game. It costs money to enjoy the service, it is not provided freely.
If you pay to participate in the game, and are them deprived of your ability to play said game, you should be entitled to a full refund. If you are not refunded, you have been robbed.
In very plain terms, banning players is theft. I find it entirely unconscionable. You have taken their money and decided, for whatever reason, to stop providing the thing they paid for. If you do not compensate them for this, you are a thief.

This statement is false. When you open the game for the first time, you have to make an account. Meanwhile steam gives you 2 hours of playtime of any game to request a refund. When you are prompted to make an account you are asked to read and accept the Terms of Service. In these terms you will find this:

“The scope of the Community Guidelines and determination of disciplinary action is solely up to the discretion of Imperium42®, LLC. Although Imperium42®, LLC can issue disciplinary action on your account, not limited to warnings, suspensions, and permanent bans for any reason, Imperium42®, LLC will generally only issue disciplinary action for extreme measures and generally will issue warnings or lower-level suspensions before higher-level suspensions/bans, although not always. If you disagree with these moderation practices or any part of the Community Guidelines or this document, do not play the game.”

This is explained in more detail below, I’m just not going to paste the whole thing here, I linked it above anyway, if you’re curious about what you were supposed to have read.

@Nanako

My proposed solution then, is not banning, but tiered play.
Allow two modes of play. The moderated and the unmoderated queue.
The moderated queue works as normal, it is what we have now.
The unmoderated queue is a wild west. No rules, no holds barred. Nobody is allowed to report anyone else in those games,whatever happens, happens. Total freedom. Anything said or done in those games will be ignored, no action taken against such players
Only in the moderated queue will reports be allowed and reviewed

Pretty sure this “Wild West” solution would not even be legally possible since the game is PG13. Even if it is however, you can already do a “no-rules” game, if you make a 16-player private lobby. We don’t enforce rules there, anything that happens in those games is the host’s fault. So if you really want something like this you could make a discord server for exclusively “Wild West” games and post it on our reddit for anyone else that might be interested.

@Nanako

This should be a wholesale replacement for banning. At no point ever, should anyone be banned from playing the game that they played for. Only restricted in exactly who they can play with.
The unmoderated pool will be populated not only by those being punished, but also by those who, for whatever reason, can’t tolerate rules and oversight. Racist names will be common, fools will spam their websites, gamethrowing will be commonplace, people will experiment with unusual and probably poorly advised tactics without fear of reprisal, some people will play it just to learn, without any worry about failure.

Whatever happens in the unmoderated pool stays there. It will act as a containment zone for all the most chaotic players and behaviours, leaving the normal moderated pool as a quality-assured experience of fair play

You’re literally describing every developer’s worst nightmare here. You can’t have a PG13 game and make this an official gamemode. As I said above, you can organize this on your own.

One more thing, having that unmoderated pool would not work because there won’t even be enough people for it 24/7.

I think I covered all your points, nothing more to discuss. If you wish to, you can just organize your own private games and even link the server mentioning it’s for wild west games on reddit. Cheers!