Mendicant Cheating

[Lefanis]

And my point is that all OOG communication which substitutes for rather than complements IG communication is exclusive, fun-ruining clanning. And I think that this point is patently obvious.

If the OOC communication is exclusionary, which on the scale you mentioned earlier, it is most likely to be, then I agree with you. But there's already a rule against excluding people, (no exclusive clans).

IRCing or messaging in itself isn't the problem, but it can become the problem if other players are coerced to use it or excluded in some way from the happenings ingame because of not using these tools. And we do have rules for to handle such eventualities.

[Vellos]

The IRC. And nice accusation

The IRC is not an example of a communication: it's a means. And it doesn't replace, it complements.

[Vellos]

Note:

The prevalence of OOG communication and the normalization of it also makes identifying multi-cheaters much harder, as they can more plausibly claim that a lack of IG communication (which Tom can monitor) is in fact not because of multi-accounts, but because they chat somewhere else.

Want to catch multis more easily and reliably? Get people to communicate IG.

[Anaris]

Want to give some details of incidents where OOG communication replaced IG communication in a way that wasn't bad for the game?

There have been several conversations that Bedwyr and I have had on IRC that we agreed to consider the gist of to have been discussed by our characters, in private, for simplicity's sake.

The Magistrates are more than capable of saying, "Yeah, this def wasn't malicious and didn't actually hurt anyone: nbd." We've done it before and we can do it again; it's not hard. That's the point of having a non-robot as a Magistrate.

But refusing to make a rule because someone somewhere might hypothetically have an easily dismissable Magistrates case brought against them is just silly.

Making a rule that clearly and deliberately encompasses cases you know will not actually be considered violations is a terrible idea, and reminiscent of the actual actions of some, and purported actions of a number of other, governments that could be named.

Even if no Magistrates ever use it to punish someone who has not done any other wrong, it still has a chilling effect on the playerbase. If that effect were purely to reduce unnecessary OOG communication, it might not be so bad. But it wouldn't. It would make them scared, and upset. And it would make more of them leave.

Purely so that you don't have to actually think about a case, but can just say, "OOG communication? Guilty! Case closed. Next!"

[DamnTaffer]

Note:

The prevalence of OOG communication and the normalization of it also makes identifying multi-cheaters much harder, as they can more plausibly claim that a lack of IG communication (which Tom can monitor) is in fact not because of multi-accounts, but because they chat somewhere else.

Want to catch multis more easily and reliably? Get people to communicate IG.

Only if your multi cheater is an idiot.

[Indirik]

Unsurprisingly enough, 99% of them are.

[Tom]

Also: it is costless to prohibit something we think is bad for the game (OOG communication substituting for IG communication). Enforcing it may be impossible, but we lose nothing by

Oh yes, we do.

We lose every other rule we make, because players won't take them seriously anymore. How can you take a rule serious that is unenforceable? And if you don't take that rule serious, why any other?

It will NOT make any rules that are nonsense.

[Scarlett]

FWIW, there are at least some people who, if they read something to the effect of:

'We can't police out-of-game communication, but we discourage it as against the spirit of the game. This doesn't mean you should point fingers other players whom you think are guilty of it, because we can't stop them - but if you're doing it, know that we don't approve and it will be one mark in the 'no' column if you ever need anything from us.'

...would listen.

[Geronus]

But my point is that the "I know it when I see it" is just a way of saying, "I will give no advance guidance that Magistrates could refer to." Which is a way of saying, "I will give no guidance to players until they are in a Magistrates case."

Because players don't have enough common sense to know when they're behaving badly? If something is at a level where we are likely to consider it abuse, than the player(s) involved are probably also well aware that what they're doing is questionable. I can't think of many edge cases that would involve OOC communication, that is unless of course we go and do something like what you're proposing and add a shiny new rule that opens up a thousand questions about what is and what is not appropriate OOC contact. You've already as much as admitted that not all OOC communication is bad, so where exactly would we draw the line, hmm?

The entire point of Tom's position is that the fewer the rules and the more general they are, the more leeway we (and also the Titans) have to decide for ourselves whether any given scenario seems "wrong". And that's just fine with me; no point in making a million rules to cover every contingency. The more rules you have, the more you end up needing in order to clarify the original rules and cover situations you didn't think of when you first made them. All in all, I think I prefer Tom's approach.

[Gustav Kuriga]

Sometimes simplicity in rules leads to complexity in enforcement. Just let you all stew on that for a little while. Maybe some of you will get it.

[Vellos]

FWIW, there are at least some people who, if they read something to the effect of:

'We can't police out-of-game communication, but we discourage it as against the spirit of the game. This doesn't mean you should point fingers other players whom you think are guilty of it, because we can't stop them - but if you're doing it, know that we don't approve and it will be one mark in the 'no' column if you ever need anything from us.'

...would listen.

This is exactly my point. Thank you for making it better than me.

[Anaris]

This is exactly my point. Thank you for making it better than me.

If that's all you meant, then why didn't you say so?

That is NOT a rule against OOG communication. That is exactly in the same spirit as the RP guidelines against using OOC information or RPing someone else's character.

[DamnTaffer]

Unsurprisingly enough, 99% of them are.

And yet, you don't catch very many

[Anaris]

And yet, you don't catch very many

Bahahahahaha!

That's the most ridiculous conclusion I've seen in this thread, and there have been a number of them.

We catch plenty. You just don't notice usually, because they're not particularly prominent characters and we don't publicize it.

The cheaters we don't catch quickly are the very, very few who are smart. I can count on the fingers of one hand the cheaters I know of that were smart enough to evade the simplest cheater-detection tools we have today.

[DamnTaffer]

Bahahahahaha!

That's the most ridiculous conclusion I've seen in this thread, and there have been a number of them.

We catch plenty. You just don't notice usually, because they're not particularly prominent characters and we don't publicize it.

The cheaters we don't catch quickly are the very, very few who are smart. I can count on the fingers of one hand the cheaters I know of that were smart enough to evade the simplest cheater-detection tools we have today.

Well then, do continue to rest on your laurels.