Other: Admin Smites

[sekki]

Hey all, sorry if this isn’t the right forum for this but this is fairly important to the community so I’m hoping we can help figure out a new way to approach this.

I think there’s a bit of a disconnect between how admins think of smites and how players think of smites.

I could be wrong but my take on it is that for the smiter it feels like a timeout, nothing too serious player can get back into it fairly quickly. For the smitee it’s a big blow to morale (the kind of thing several players have quit over) because a majority of players (at least afaict) try to play by the rules as they understand them (which may at times be at odds with the admin understanding)

Again I could be wrong but the scenario that appears to be guarded against with smite first ask questions later is the one where you assume that players are knowingly skirting the rules and will continue to do so in different ways that are harder to detect if you reach out. While this may be true, it’s also probably true if you smite them. So I don’t think smite first helps in this scenario either.

I realize it might be more annoying to do (and idk if folks agree that this is better) but an alternative to smite first could be to apply an in-game penalty - if it was an exp thing take away the exp, if it was a faction thing, take away renown etc. This discourages the behavior by taking away the “rewards” so to speak (and could still be appealed) without disrupting normal gameplay.

Another alternative which has been mentioned quite a bit in ncg is doing outreach first (like maybe just the email without the smite) as the first step. Especially for first time / first time in a while offenders.

[Skouth]

(the kind of thing several players have quit over)

And will quit over.
Can't be doing like this bullshit anymore

[Yukari]

I'm not about to speed run getting forum banned but you all know what I think of the admins

The real problem is penalising players without real proof. Instead they get emails citing some "compelling evidence". It doesn't matter if the penalty is a slap on the wrist, the thing is you're getting punished after mere accusations of foul play without so much as a chirp from the admins, and then YOU'RE expected to appeal to it when they were clearly wrong.

[Yukari]

Also why did I just have to reset my password just now? I was logged off and always just autofill my credentials. Odd.