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This is a suggestion, but I firmly believe that it's not optional if Schine wish to prevent their project from being covertly tanked over time for the entertainment of a small group of players within the greater Starmade community.
There are a few players willing (and able) to pay to host a server as their private trolling grounds. They currently do and have been for a long time. The owners then can & do bring in alternate identities (alts) as admins and from there overtly abuse their powers. The owners maintain a form of plausible deniability over the situation through alts, thereby keeping clean public faces here in the forums as respected members of the community. When a particular badmin alt starts becoming too problematic, it is sacrificed as a scapegoat. New alts can always be seasoned and voted in as a new admin by the admin team.
The specific nature of the abuse is pretty much one-trick, and is less damaging to new players (who may or may not even continue playing Starmade anyways) than it is to journeyman players who are interested in playing this game long-term. A player who has invested weeks or months into building an impressive homebase is targeted either secretly or on some thin premise of violating non-existent rules. Their HB protection is removed, and the admins and/or their alts or associates arrive to destroy the base and steal all the ships and materials opened up by breaking the HB protection.
Of course an admin need not do this, because they can admin-spawn anything without ever earning or stealing resources. So this is overt trolling/griefing with the sole purpose of crushing and infuriating the player target, who is then told they were at fault or simply banned after the trolls get their lulz over the inevitable rage-out. If the victim or another witness attempts to appeal to the server owners over the incident, a polite blow-off is given "we'll look into it" or "we've investigated the logs and find nothing out of the ordinary."
That is what is happening, what has been happening for a long time now (years). The perpetrators are well-known and well-respected here and conduct this business entirely through false identities.
The victims aren't new players who may or may not stick with the game anyway, they are players who have invested enough time to potentially be long-term additions to the community.
I believe that possibly hundreds of potential long-term members of this community have been driven off either as victims or witnesses of this outrageous behavior on one of Starmade's busiest and most popular servers, and not unreasonable assume that this is the best Starmade has to offer.
When I first started this game I passively watched this happen to two other players, then I was next and realized it was an inevitable outcome and there was no point in investing months in building and play time since it would surely be undone at the whim of some capricious badmin. I quit for several months, then eventually came back and realized that it was only one server that just happened to be one of the most popular and that MOST Starmade servers are safe.
But new players don't know this. Many will conclude that since the server is so popular, this is the standard in Starmade and there is no point in wasting time with this game.
Some may be pretty resilient, but many will be instantly driven away forever, leaving the Starmade project one player less. The popularity of the server means that a large number of players will be drawn in and exposed to this.
Over months and years how many hundreds of potential Starmade assets have been lost for this small group to get their lulz?
Is such a threat to the game's long-term existence of concern to Schine? To Schema?
If so, efforts must be made to find viable ways to create a Schine or Council run official server or set of servers. Because Schine has a vested interest in preserving the player experience over their own cheap laughs.
Not reasons why it "can't possibly happen," but ways it CAN happen. So that if new players get shafted by badmin trolls on one popular server, they will know at least that it wasn't the official server and that such behavior is not the standard in this game and may decide pursue other servers instead.
NOTICE: Please take discussion of why Schine can never fund/host a server to another thread.
I'm normally open to all opinions, but since the problem this suggestion is addressing is about trolling/abuse/harassment, if you hijack this thread with garbage about how it can't happen, I will assume you are trolling/harassing to derail this topic and report you instantly. I'm absolutely not interested in claims that it's impossible for a game development company to successfully run a server, since that's obviously false on its face.
I'm only interested in hearing about economical & intelligent solutions to the problem.
There are a few players willing (and able) to pay to host a server as their private trolling grounds. They currently do and have been for a long time. The owners then can & do bring in alternate identities (alts) as admins and from there overtly abuse their powers. The owners maintain a form of plausible deniability over the situation through alts, thereby keeping clean public faces here in the forums as respected members of the community. When a particular badmin alt starts becoming too problematic, it is sacrificed as a scapegoat. New alts can always be seasoned and voted in as a new admin by the admin team.
The specific nature of the abuse is pretty much one-trick, and is less damaging to new players (who may or may not even continue playing Starmade anyways) than it is to journeyman players who are interested in playing this game long-term. A player who has invested weeks or months into building an impressive homebase is targeted either secretly or on some thin premise of violating non-existent rules. Their HB protection is removed, and the admins and/or their alts or associates arrive to destroy the base and steal all the ships and materials opened up by breaking the HB protection.
Of course an admin need not do this, because they can admin-spawn anything without ever earning or stealing resources. So this is overt trolling/griefing with the sole purpose of crushing and infuriating the player target, who is then told they were at fault or simply banned after the trolls get their lulz over the inevitable rage-out. If the victim or another witness attempts to appeal to the server owners over the incident, a polite blow-off is given "we'll look into it" or "we've investigated the logs and find nothing out of the ordinary."
That is what is happening, what has been happening for a long time now (years). The perpetrators are well-known and well-respected here and conduct this business entirely through false identities.
The victims aren't new players who may or may not stick with the game anyway, they are players who have invested enough time to potentially be long-term additions to the community.
I believe that possibly hundreds of potential long-term members of this community have been driven off either as victims or witnesses of this outrageous behavior on one of Starmade's busiest and most popular servers, and not unreasonable assume that this is the best Starmade has to offer.
When I first started this game I passively watched this happen to two other players, then I was next and realized it was an inevitable outcome and there was no point in investing months in building and play time since it would surely be undone at the whim of some capricious badmin. I quit for several months, then eventually came back and realized that it was only one server that just happened to be one of the most popular and that MOST Starmade servers are safe.
But new players don't know this. Many will conclude that since the server is so popular, this is the standard in Starmade and there is no point in wasting time with this game.
Some may be pretty resilient, but many will be instantly driven away forever, leaving the Starmade project one player less. The popularity of the server means that a large number of players will be drawn in and exposed to this.
Over months and years how many hundreds of potential Starmade assets have been lost for this small group to get their lulz?
Is such a threat to the game's long-term existence of concern to Schine? To Schema?
If so, efforts must be made to find viable ways to create a Schine or Council run official server or set of servers. Because Schine has a vested interest in preserving the player experience over their own cheap laughs.
Not reasons why it "can't possibly happen," but ways it CAN happen. So that if new players get shafted by badmin trolls on one popular server, they will know at least that it wasn't the official server and that such behavior is not the standard in this game and may decide pursue other servers instead.
NOTICE: Please take discussion of why Schine can never fund/host a server to another thread.
I'm normally open to all opinions, but since the problem this suggestion is addressing is about trolling/abuse/harassment, if you hijack this thread with garbage about how it can't happen, I will assume you are trolling/harassing to derail this topic and report you instantly. I'm absolutely not interested in claims that it's impossible for a game development company to successfully run a server, since that's obviously false on its face.
I'm only interested in hearing about economical & intelligent solutions to the problem.
