About 8 months ago, I relaxed our no-griefing rules, specifically because they were causing entirely too much policing from the admin staff. As a part of that, we went from, “You can’t do it at all,” to “You can do it, but only with wood or twig, and if you use turrets, you have to take them down when you’re done, and you can do whatever you want against raid bases and outposts.”These adjustments were made to allow players to engage a more aggressive play style, and to reduce the amount of hand-holding and babysitting that the admins would have to do.
In the last 2-3 months, there has been a major escalation in the amount of situations where people will push the absolute limits of these rules and try to see just how hard/far they can push the boundaries of the rules. Let me just tell you: That shit is exhausting. Seriously, it’s kind of like being on year 3 of a 3-year-long roadtrip with two kids in the back pointing their fingers millimeters from each other’s eyes, yelling back and forth, “I’M NOT TOUCHING YOU!”
Stop that. I’m pretty much sick to death of having to amend the game rules on account of either rules lawyers that find one specific and ridiculous set of circumstances that I’ve not specifically written about and then they want to moan, “Oh, but it wasn’t in the rules,” or the people who just expect to get a second or third or fourth chance…? No.The server runs on good faith. The people who donate or subscribe to keep the server turned on do so in good faith that the staff and I will keep the peace. The people who play do so in good faith that they will have a fair and relatively stable gaming experience. People who play for free do so in the good faith that those of us charged with running the server will do so in an equitable and transparent manner.
Well, that’s goes two ways. We also put forth the community guidelines in good faith that people won’t try to be dick-nosed little weasels that will try and worm their way into any and every advantage with people, and, “You know, people can just complain, and the admins will sort it out, and if I went too far, I’ll say sorry.”
No. Not any more. Not ever again.
Read the rules. Take some time to grasp the subtext. Play to the spirit of the rules, and DO NOT BE A FUCKING ASSHOLE TO OTHER PLAYERS. Seriously. Play the game, raid each other, kill the hell outta folks, but there’s never a need to do things to intentionally push people off of the server and ruin their desire to play the game.
If you absolutely, positively MUST go super-hard and destroy any and everything around you, GO. PLAY. ON. SVRED.
Seriously, I made a server where you can be just as hard and just as nasty to people as you want. There’s even a monthly competition to see who can be the biggest complete bastard to each other. Do not make Main a hostile place to play.
I will be watching the rest of this year very, very closely. In the event that the whole boundary-pushing crap continues, we will go back to, “No griefing,” and the staff will be instructed to pursue it just the same way we go after hate speech. Likewise, someone claiming griefing when there was none will receive temporary bans. Yes, this server has an active admin staff. No, we are not here to hold anyone’s hand. Y’all need to consider trying to sort some of this stuff out between each other before you bring us in to deal with it.