A time for Peace and a time for War Or When does an issue require Staff intervention and when should it be Player resolved.

That’ how the title should read but it was too long 😀

I feel its time for a refresher on the general rules and how they apply. Yes, I know its been done before but every now and then its good to review. Side note; if you are on your phone this is a longer post and may be easier to read on your computer. Up to you.

DISCLAIMER:
I encourage you to read through the whole post and keep an open mind trying not to read it as if it were accusatory. It’s not aimed at anyone I promise. It was prompted by the latest rash of forum drama as well as other (not related to the latest drama) instances I’ve seen in game and been involved in. I know that text based communication its easy to misunderstand the emotional tone and therefore easy to take the wrong way. Read this with Morgan Freeman’s voice in your head haha.

Also this is not the place to rehash issues from the present or past that have been closed. I may use general examples they will not doubt bring to mind some drama from the past but it is not about any of those instances. I have to use examples of what to do/not to do so the point is easily understood by all. Do not bring up “this person did this and they didnt get in trouble or i was told this isnt ok yada yada yada”. Whats in the past stays in the past. This is to help move forward into the future.

On to the main subject The general rules of Piratecraft.

1) As Godsdead (the owner operator of the Piratecraft server for those who dont know) has always said “The rules are mildly vague on purpose so that each situation can be taken in its own context and sorted appropriately” I paraphrased a bit there but you get the meaning haha. Also it would be nearly impossible to think of everything that could go badly and list them all. So what we have is a nice framework to bounce different situations off of to come to a reasonable conclusion. Its not going to be perfect or 100% fair 100% of the time but neither is life.

2) There are many Phantoms rules that seem to find they’re way into the consciousness of the player-base here on Piratecraft. Sometimes its a slight rewording of an existing rule from the rules page or other times just something straight made up that seemed it could be/hoped it was a rule to get another player/s in trouble because you dont get along.

3) Not every situation breaks a rule and needs staff to intervene! Staff members are not here to settle player disputes. The whole game play of the server is one that allows players to settle their own disputes in game. I.E. in game communication, war, siege, pvp, an open world environment, you get the picture. Just as in life, in Piratecraft part of growing and maturing is learning to problem solve for yourselves. It’s a great tutor to give you the experience you need to excel in real life as you become an adult. If your already an adult a good place to work on your social skills haha.

Staff are here to keep cheaters out, make it a safe place for players from ages 6 to 50, fix, develop and implement game/server mechanics/plugins, develop new game play aspects, enforce rules when need be, and make this server a fun, cool place to spend time on. Admins, mods, build team, media. I know for a fact that some of the admin and mod team spend between 8 and 20+ hours outside of the game after school/work working on the back end of things for the server/website/wiki/games/etc… Plus the times when they are in game at least 50% or more of that time is spent fixing server issues and tending to player issues.

The folks on the build team and media spend a ton of time doing jobs outside of their actual playtime as well making sure there are amazing places to explore and use like arenas, the hub, event worlds ect…

And of course Godsdead who spends nearly every free second at work and after work sorting out issues and working on future plans. Its insane the amount of work and technical know how it takes to make a server run and run well.

The reason anyone on staff does it is because of the friendships and they love the server and want to help it be better.  On to the rules refresher 🙂

THIS IS NOT A COMPLETE SCENARIO LIST JUST A FEW EXAMPLES

PirateCraft Rules: (copied and pasted from the rules page)
Rules can change at any time, up-to date rules can be found at any time in-game using /rules.

You are responsible for all activity on your account and from your IP.

This is not to hard to understand. If you are playing on this server and others have access to your computer/wifi like a brother/sister/parent/friends and they come on to Piratecraft and get banned its on you.  Dont let your friends/siblings get you banned. 😀

There are also too many times a player gets banned and then all of the sudden they have a brother/sister that starts playing for the first time ever on the server. Coincidence! I think not. Staff arent dumb we know its you.

Be polite & respectful to players (no trolling, harassing, bullying, etc)
Respect other players. If you’re angry against a player, use a pirate insult, nothing else.
Do not try to troll players and do not attack a player repeatedly without a valid reason.

No one wants to see people get bullied and no one wants to be bullied/harassed/trolled. I think we can all agree on that. Sometimes people are just anuses though, and do things they think is fun/funny to trigger folks or  maybe for revenge or just plain meanness since they are more powerful. Thats what this rule is intended to prevent.

What seems to happen is players twist the definitions of bully/harass/troll to fit their own needs and frustrations in game. This is the source of 70% of the drama on the forums and in game. This comes about in different ways like;

A) They want to cause some one to be punished for lashing out so they purposely try to trigger them. In this case both parties are at fault. The instigators are the bullies and the intended victim ends up making a bad choice and saying things in anger that normally cross a line.

If you are getting angry for any reason at some one/s do yourself a favor and screen the folks baiting you and either /ignore or just quit the game for a bit. If they continue when you resume playing screen again and contact staff via a pm here or on discord.

B) If you are killing some one over and over aka: spawn killing you are harassing them.

If you have lost a siege and continue to attack the winners as they loot you and get repeatedly killed they are not braking the rules. If you lose a siege it sucks to sit back and watch all your hard earned loot be taken but it is the rules of siege. The winners get a set amount of time to take what they can as their reward.

C) If you or you and your friends decide to repeatedly siege a player/s over and over you are harassing

If your crew and another crew are at war and your are attacking the same base over and over  you are still harassing. If you dont get in the fist time you probably wont. So move on to the next base. Or lay in wait till they come out later.

I think we get the picture. Again if you feel some one is harassing you Screen/video the situation. /ignore or log off if/as soon as possible and make a report with the evidence.

Anything any member of staff says, goes.
Do not contest staff decisions.
No justification will be given for denied demands.
If you have a problem, contact the concerned staff member by private message on the website. If you have no answer after a few days, then create a polite and respectful support ticket on the forums.

This ones pretty clear and means any Mod or Admin. If you go off in game or on the forums about a decision made by a staff member it will not go well for you. It is best if you feel you were treated unfair to wait at least one day to cool down and then send a PM to the staff member asking to open a dialogue. Do not go from staff to staff begging, venting, or trying to get a different answer. Staff discusses everything and will know what your up to. This will not go well for you.

No hacking, cheating or exploiting glitches. No client mod(s).
Do not hack, cheat or use glitches.
Do not use any minecraft client modification (Apart from Optifine)
If you find an exploitable glitch, contact a staff member.

Another pretty clear one. Just dont do it. There are many ways staff has to know whether someone is hacking, cheating, xraying, or glitching. Staff has no obligation to give any warning prior to handing out the disciplinary action for these violations. On occasion players will get asked for n f3, resource folder, and other screens but this is not a prerequisite for disciplinary action but a courtesy or as an extra step in evidence gathering.

No begging. Goods will not be replenished.
Do not beg in chat. Do not beg staff members.
Lost goods won’t be replenished. Do not ask.

Simple, no items will be returned even if its a server issue as things could get duplicated.

Only claim land intended for use. Do not build close to spawn.
Claimed land must have a purpose (building something).
Claiming land can’t be used as a tool or weapon against someone else. Do not claim land to siege a player.

This one is another that gets abused and used as fodder to get other players in trouble.

A) Claimed land has to be for a use. It needs a purpose. We dont want a bunch of odd or small claims littering the country side blocking potential legit building/base projects. This keeps things nice and clear for all players and dosent leave the landscape all messed up with weird half arsed small builds that arent being used.

B) Using claims as a weapon for siege or other aggression towards another player. The first part about siege is straight forward. The second part about aggression lends itself to interpretations that can be twisted to get a player in trouble.

The terminology aggressive purpose gets used by anyone that doesnt like the fact that someone built/claimed close to them. There doesnt have to have been any aggressive acts committed from the claim just that there is a potential for it to be used against the complainant. Or the act of building close to another claim is considered aggressive.

Once again context is king and not all cases are not intended to be an act of aggression.

This relates to one of the Phantom rules that gets tossed about:

You cannot claim or build next to someones claim. You will notice that there is no such rule in the claims section or the building section of these rules. But you here this from players all the time in chat and on the forums. This is not something new Ive heard repeated over and over many time since I joined.

As I stated earlier this is not an invitation to reopen the latest drama. Pas is past we move to the future.

It does how ever need to be pointed out that there are certain criteria for it to break a rule and be addressed by staff.

Border disputes are not to be decided by staff this is a player resolved issue. What i mean by this is, if someone builds a base close to yours and you dont want them there you (the player with the issue) needs to resolve it in game. I would suggest a diplomatic solution first (where you ask nice and have a few solutions that would work to benefit both people involved) Then if that fails a military solution. Go to war and drive them out (with out it becoming harassment) or just agree to live in peace and go on with life or If you like build a big ole wall so you dont have to see them.

The best thing to do when you find a spot you want to build is to claim around the area you want to build in so that if someone comes along they will be forced to build outside your walls.

I understand there will always be issues and drama but as people we have to learn to overcome these things in a civilized manner. If we can practice here we will be able to better overcome them in real life.

No buildings or shops can be set up near spawn in any world. Try to move away from eyesight of spawn before claiming/building.

Self explanatory, if you can see spawn or any warp your too close and dont build/claim there

No advertising at all.
No advertising for websites, no advertising for servers, no advertising for mods/games/whatever : no advertising at all.

What is advertising? for the most part mentioning other servers in main chat, giving an ip address is most certainly a no no, asking other players to go play somewhere else, selling any outside products, things like that.

This rule gets used as a weapon sometime by players looking to get another banned. This is why staff takes into context what the situation was when the alleged advertising happens if its player reported. IE if someones a long time player telling a story and without thinking types the name of a server it might not warrant a ban but when some one is purposely giving out a server name and saying go play here its awesome and spamming chat, well thats a no brainer.  Basically every situation is different and context dependent. Staff is smart enough to know which case is malicious and which is not.

Do not game stats, bounties or abuse game mechanics.
Do not let yourself be killed by allies.
Do not repeatedly break blocks to increase your stats.
Do not use any method to circumvent automatic afk-kicking.

Because of the rank and reward system used here on Piratecraft gaining or farming stats instead of gaining those stats through normal gamplay is highly frowned upon. As with all things here this is about keeping a level playing field. The rewards and access to new commands for ranking are substantial and are there to encourage playing the game as vanilla as possible. So some farms that allow a player to afk and receive gametime as well as other methods that increase stats exponentially are not allowed.

Keep chat readable, English only and PG-rated. (No spam or caps abuse)
Write full sentences.
Do not write in any language other than English.
Do not spam the chat in any way or abuse caps.
Use pirate insults and keep the non-pirate cursing limited.

Simple dont be a jerk in chat and use English in main chat so everyone can understand what you are saying. The majority of players can speak English so it just makes sense. If this was a German server we would all speak German.

Use common sense.

These rules aren’t exhaustive.
If something doesn’t appear in these rules but seems like it should be forbidden, then it probably is! Ask staff members if in doubt

Rules for Building:

No offensive structures.
Do not build phallic symbols that could be offensive to anyone.

No building within eyesight of spawn.
Players should not be able to walk out of spawn and see your building.

No building outside of worlds (Not on top of nether)
You are strictly prohibited from building on top or underneath worlds.

 

If you have read this far Awesome. Ive been writing this for 2.5 hours and have lost my energy and train of thought hahah XD The main thing I hope you take away from this is that I need coffee.

We have rules for the betterment of the server as a whole and if you treat people like you want to be treated you’ll have a much better time. Im tired so Ill just stop right here 😀

Thanks