I feel like this is a really totalitarian-esque way of moderating a server. Obviously, you can ban whoever you want, but it just seems a bit unfair to me that people get banned for private DMs that they make without any action and in private.
Also, I think it's really uncharitable to ban craig on the accusation of cheating. It is an extremely common thing for people to joke about hacking in private, and I think given what dakotaa said about requiring a higher level of evidence to ban people for hacking in vzl's ban a while ago, I would request that at least the idea that craig was hacking be reconsidered. If the threat alone that he made which was also in private on discord is enough to be blacklisted, then I guess so be it.
On a serious note.
He was banned for more than hacking, and the context of the conversation made it clear that it was not a joke. I would prefer to not comment on bans like this, but given the unprecedented amount of blacklist bans we have issued over the past few weeks it is probably best. The increase in bans has been mostly due to the warning we made to players about our policy for withholding information from staff.
I feel like this comment is more from a place of mistrust, regarding the vanguard bans than anything else. So I will address those now, to end the discussion. The attitude of the blacklisted players from Vanguard, and those defending them has not been surprising, but still disappointing.
Vzl was banned for consciously exploiting the server and manipulating staff when confronted. He withheld many exploits that he abused consistently throughout the map to get ahead and constantly lied to staff.
Sky was mainly banned for being complicit with vzl. We knew that he was aware of multiple exploits that vzl was using. His ban was then later extended for avoiding the ban.
Their attitudes after their bans have been nothing short of a certain kid, who likes the letter "G". After the bans, vzl was sending videos of exploits to countless players and attempted to join on alternate accounts, and was also coaching other players how to do so. We tried our very best to cooperate with them, take their suggestions throughout the maps that they played, and even when we were made aware of them exploiting on the server, we gave them many chances. VZL & Sky did this to themselves. If we wanted them gone, we would have banned them mindlessly ages ago, like many servers would when presented with players with their attitudes. But we didn't mindlessly ban them, we had intense discussion and reasoned that their behavior was unacceptable.
At the end of the day, we only issue blacklist bans if we believe that the server will be better off for it. We have yet to find a case that we don't believe this to be true.
As for xporn & fluxxx - xporn contacted me and acted incredibly entitled and tried to put words into my mouth. His claims of abuse were absolutely ridiculous. If you're unaware of the situation, an admin had items in his inventory that are very commonly used by admins. Voter keys and barrier blocks, among other things. These items are often spawned in to fulfill the requirements of what ever task they are administrating. The admin made a mistake, when leaving their pc to attend to a personal issue, as a result, was killed and dropped his inventory. This is a rare mistake, but it happens. We have all done it at some point. When the admin returned, they realized their mistake, promptly reported it to Myself and Dakota and went through trying to retrieve the lost items. The admin retrieved what they believed to be all of the items, and afterwards, xporn contacted me
demanding the items back. Failing to mention that he had a stack of barrier blocks that he had hidden and traded some to another player. Fluxxx was issued a less severe ban for being aware that xporn had hidden barrier blocks, and not reporting it to staff, as the player had been given one, and hid it in their enderchest,
Craig's ban was an entirely different thing. Craig was involved in a very complicated situation last map, in which he caused, alongside another player, a disgusting situation involving many people who did absolutely nothing wrong. Craig personally attacked me, when I had done nothing to provoke him, "just because", we allowed him to continue playing, and admittedly, he had done nothing wrong in game recently, however - the evidence we have been provided, not only proves that he has used cheats, which is a usually ban-able offense, but threatened to reproduce the situation he has manufactured before. The context of these messages was not a joke, this was clear.
The integrity of the server is very important to us, and from these recent bans we believe that we have cleaned up the server significantly. We openly
welcome comment or criticism of any aspect of our server. However, these absolutely unsubstantiated claims of abuse or misconduct from permanently
banned players are pathetic. We do not claim to run a democracy, but we do believe that we have a fair system for allowing people to play on our server, even if we dislike them as people.
We have banned some of our best friends for abusing their positions. We take abuse very seriously. However - the player's have to do their part too. We treat exploiting as we would admins abusing. If you have any genuine questions or comments about any of these issues, or otherwise, please feel free to contact me.
