This is quite a sexy suggestion i love this.

 

I would love to see a fine system in place and this sounds like a good way to do it except for one thing. Many of the people who will commit these crimes are broke. Not all but many, thus this would create some negative balances and etc from there. I see no other flaw with this and would love to see the economy play a role in illegal actions.

 

It's a great suggestion. I like the "/fine <player> <crime> <degree>" idea.

Then it just pulls the correct punishment from a predetermined list. That or the crimes have values and the degree and instance are the multipliers.

Let's say grief has a fine value of $500. If you commit "Grief 3" and this is the 2nd time you've been fined for griefing, you're fined $3000. ($500 base value * 3 degree value * 2 instance value).

The only possible con I see is that you'd need a way to track this through the plugin for each player.

 

Hah you know, in my US Government Studies class last week, it dawned on me that we are indeed a lot like the government. This is a wonderful suggestion, Revan. :)

 

Money doesn't need to be taken out of the economy. The fact that a select few people hold a significant amount of money(Millions) does not mean that the speed of money being put into the economy has quickened, in-fact the rate of expansion is on-par if not lower than it was expected. Taking more money out will only hurt the economy.

The fine system is interesting but flawed. Cursing here and there is not against the rules, and whilst it may be used against repeat offenders semi-effectively, there is a serious flaw in it; its up to moderator discretion. We may have mods here and there that warn people for things which are not against the rules(Say I die in lava and say "damn it" in-chat). In all honesty, i don't feel safe when anyone outside of Gameadmin+ can take money away from me.

When you say grief, i'm assuming you mean grief in protected towns. The fine system would be interesting in this place but the value of blocks is subjective between people. If i were to have my vault griefed i would value it at $2Mil whereas the server would value it at around $1.4-1.5mil. This would cause --severe- anger and additional problems between mods, the guilty party, and the victim.

Are there problems in the justice system? Yeah, sure, but there always shall be. I find that the rules we have now are adequate and more than capable of dealing with the issues. Taking people's money away for things like cursing is absolutely absurd, especially considering the fact that it is not against the rules unless in specific incidents. The last thing we need is an even more present rulebook than we currently have.

Taking people's money away for cursing, especially considering the fact that if people are going to continue to curse no matter what, is completely absurd. If someone's going to curse up a storm, they're not going to care about the fact that they're going to be fined for it. In addition, what do you propose would happen when their balance is in the negative?

Numbers doubling like that can grow extremely quickly and extremely fast. The last thing we need is negative balances, or even censorship.

 

If they're being banned multiple times for cursing why don't we just permaban them instead of fining them? I mean, in theory if we give them 3 chances their fines are only going to be $800

 

If I was builder who decided to grief and got fined $2,000, I would simply quit and move on.

I don't really like this suggestion. I mean, it makes sense, but I do not want to over complicate the punishment process.

 

While I agree with some of the points raised there are some holes here with this. Basically the most numerous of ecc's easy to swat criminal element are the builder and resident classes. These users form the bulk of all of our greifing and scamming. They also form the poorest elements of our community. While it is true that greifing can be very profitable for a new player I feel that fining is not the best solution.
I tend to agree with what Ike has said here. I do not feel that we need to fine for vulgarity, we ban for it and then they appeal. The process repeats, we take notice and then the punishments get longer and more permanent until we turn around and just say "hey no, you don't listen, you keep lying on your appeals we are better off without you."

I propose instead if you really want to be systematic in negating any profit from grief I suggest for the basic couple of tiers
Tier 1: Acts of basic negligence, greed or rage

• minor value blocks, farm damage 1-50 blocks. Basic negligence sort of stuff.
• Minor acts of destruction and vandalism fewer than 50 blocks
• blocks of greater value 1-5 gold, emer, dia, lap etc

Basically a slap over the wrist for these offenders, some time served, removed from the town they were part of and maybe asked to repay somehow but not required.

Tier 2: Targeted destruction

• Basically a larger scope of the minor block values, ie town wide grief
• A larger scope say to 20 higher value blocks ish
• Basically where a rollback would be able to be requested

At this tier people would be able to or verging onto being able to apply for a rollback on their property to recover what has been stolen. I would recommend that repaying or recompense of some form being required for the player to return to the server. Especially in the case of targeted acts where higher value items are stolen.

Tier 3: Remorseless theft or destruction

• Serious, calculated or just plain widespread
• The player has come here to make a profit and expects to be able to keep some profit after appealing

Maybe for the greater sorts of acts of grief it might be something a GA could look into, say visit the perpetrators home or property and destroy what has been stolen via grief. The victim gets a roll back and the perpetrator loses what he has taken. Say the griefer gets perms to a town rich in high value blocks and then spends a night lifting everything of value and takes it back to his hidden home elsewhere then have a GA visit where they hide and remove it. Or if they sell to hand then clear their balance. Or if it is their inventory then delete what they have on them.
The blocks stolen are replaced by a rollback and the perpetrator loses all his profit and potentially then some in punishment. Basically the lesser forms of grief get the usual slap on the wrist and the more determined thieves get punished. I might be pushing it a bit far but I feel that the people who slot into tier 3 are doing it deliberately and deserve a harsher punishment. As said calculating the monetary value is rather hard and the person may not even have the sum or ever will do.

 

This is a good idea, but it does need a bit of work. I have also thought of some rule reformations, but those would be to relax the rules.

 

Relax the rules? Your an odd one. Most people want them stricter and mods tougher.

 

I don't think I should be banned for a joke...

 

We have to take lots of things seriously, if someone's claiming he's a permabanned user on another account then we ban until it's investigated properly. (This is because multiaccounting to bypass a ban is against the rules)

 

I feel that this is a good suggestion, however I also feel that if we did add this the staff would have to clarify as a team what each of us considers "Vulgar language", aswell as set a correct amount after we all think it would be fair to ban. We have to treat each situation for vulgar language exactly the same, meaning no mod makes a difference in the way they treat the situation, now having mods from around the world makes this very hard, as some of us see some vulgar words as unacceptable, while others use them in daily speaking patterns.
I agree with Ike, the system is somewhat flawed, however I think it could help crack down on the rule breakers who seem not to learn our rules.

 

Well therein lies the problem with the vulgarity rule. The staff team are striving to treat every incident the same even though it is not, and never will be. For the sake of the community harsher punishments must be placed on those who show no real interest in the server. If they are joining just to run around and curse-out everyone and troll, they must not be given the benefit of the doubt.

For good reason, more understanding is(and rightfully should) be given to the members who have proven their loyalty. When we run around banning people who have been here for months for cursing a few times instead of trying to resolve the solution but granting new members ample chances, we're sailing ourselves down a river without a paddle. Often times I've seen new users who spam and curse more than a drunken sailor on the USS Nevada yet old members be warned and almost banned for cursing once.

 

It is pretty obvious that cussing is against the rules... I mean, why wouldn't it be?

 

I mean, new users when they join, they automatically agree to the rules. It is their fault if they do not know them, and do not read them prior to joining the server. I think new players, no matter what the offense, should get the same amount of warnings/punishments as old players. For example, if a builder says "gay", or any other unacceptable slang, they just get warned, and quite often than not, say it 10+ times within the day before they get banned, and that is after a complaint is filed. But with an old player, you say such slang, and you are immediately banned. Also, mods say that new users get the same punishment, which is extremely inaccurate. Lets say that said builder banned for vulgar language decides to appeal, they often get a 1-6 hour tempban, but if a president appeals, they will get a 36 hour tempban. I don't get why everyone isn't treated the same, and often the punishments seem biased according to your rank. Whether you're a Builder, or an EcoLeader, you should receive the same punishment. The excuse of being new, being a builder, and not knowing the rules, is no reason to shorten the ban. I feel that if you are going to ban a builder, and a tycoon for example, for the same reason, they should get relatively the same ban time. instead, quite often, the builders ban time is about 1/5 of the older player's ban time.