This is based on a recent post as a ban appeal by another player, my response was deleted as peanut posting (fair), but I do think my concern is relevant to server/community maintenance.
The ban appeal was resolved by pointing the offending player to observe the discord announcements for a rule change. Seeing as though players can be banned from discord, pointing potential GAME players to a discord thread for a rule change can actually be impossible for a certain subset of the CM-playing community. It’s also notable that you do not have to interact/join the discord at all to play on this server. As such, having a rule change that involves something that was commonly done previously only visible by checking announcements on discord (and the perfunctory 1-2 weeks that it was listed on server join) isn’t really viable in my opinion considering it’s a large swathe of the player base will have no idea such a rule is present unless they logged on during the period where it was attached to the server info in-game.
As such, I think ruling changes such as this should be amended to the proper CM rules page, as it is the most commonly pointed to/referenced text when people are ascertaining what is or is not okay to do on the server. While in this case the particular rule break is ostensibly covered by a broad reading of the rules, I don’t think it would harm anybody to explicitly spell out terms that are banned on the rule page when the term is explicitly, and specifically, banned (especially considering it was previously the most commonly used term).
tl;dr : Important rules and particularly rules that involve previous common player actions should be listed in a place that all players have access to and can be easily pointed to/referenced to for a new player.
I too agree. Some people can’t even access Discord, wiki & forums without VPN (like me), and are expected to know these “rules”. Althrough this problem didn’t touch me, I understand the concerns.
yeah its pretty unfair for returning players to get slapped by a week ban because they haven’t checked the discord.
TBH i really dislike this way of banning people and just saying “ignorance is not an excuse” clause. It seems so lazy. Like whats stopping you from just telling them that it isnt allowed anymore and noting them right? Not like we get thousands of new players everyday.
Normal people who just want to play dont really check the rules and only act what they deem is acceptable.
I was the one banned and I feel really frustrated. If the rules don’t enforce the use of Discord, why should I know a rule posted there and not in the proper rules. Even if it’s only a 7 day ban, i don’t think I’ll be returning. I prefer to remember this game fondly, the years of Carson, Windhelaer, Hiro, etc, than it’s current state, highly censored and policed, where i feel i can’t even fart without getting slapped by a ban because of an arbitrary hidden rule. There’s plenty other games.
Totally agree. It’s silly to sequester rule changes away somewhere a large chunk of the playerbase isn’t a part of and even sillier to ban people for not following rulings scattered to the wind like that. Please centralise them in game or something.