A couple of nights ago I hosted two real-time games. A user by the name of Matt-o (http://warlight.net/Profile.aspx?p=983443025) joined both of them, and then proceeded to tell us that he wasn't going to take his turn because he wanted to be banned from the game, something about him being too addicted. Anyway, naturally I was a little bit peeved and I was a little bit abusive towards him, then he had the NERVE to say he was going to report me after he ruined my games. I thought nothing of it, what kind of person wouldn't understand my actions here, but no, I came on a couple of hours later to find myself suspended for 48 hours. I was completely bemused by this, and extremely frustrated not least of which because I am participating in a multi-day tournament and would not be able to take my turn when required. I come back from my suspension now to find that for some unknown reason I 'surrendered' in two tournament games, completely ruining the tournament for myself and my team, and we were going pretty well in it.

If you're going to push the "them's the rules" line on me, don't bother, if you can't see how patently ridiculous this suspension was then I've nothing else to say to you. As my thread title says, this has probably dissuaded me from ever buying a Warlight membership.

I guess you will have nothing to say to me then. Everyone thinks that things done to them are unfair or patently ridiculous, but to me it sounds like a perfectly reasonable punishment, if you were abusive to him as you say.

Yeah, that guy sounds like a complete dick for joining and ruining your games (if it's like you say), and I too have snapped at people in the past for that thing, so I understand 100% where you're coming from and the kind of frustration that would lead to your outburst. However, I think it's a little unrealistic to think that the rules will be bent for you.

Consider it from the other perspective. What constitutes a situation where the rules should be bent in your favor? Where do you draw the line that can be crossed before it's ok to break the rules? Why should Fizzer be put in a situation where he has to make judgment calls as to whether your breaking the rules was validated or not? It's a much simpler and fair system to make a few simple rules and then follow them if they are broken. The alternative is a much greater hassle and will create a lot of problems when you get forum posts like "Hey, I got banned for saying _____ and this guy didn't get banned for saying _____. Totally unfair!" and the arguments that will follow.

If you're having issues with someone repeatedly joining and ruining games, there is a blacklist feature which prevents them from being able to join your games. Just ignore them, boot them if they go over time, then blacklist them and they won't ruin another game of yours.

I expect a bit of reason and sensibility when dealing with a situation like this. I was clearly aggrieved and I would've expected a bit of leeway accordingly. I'm just saying that whoever moderated this incident could've weighed up the case and come to a different conclusion, that's all. The rules are obviously there for a reason, but I was reacting to someone who actively ruined my gaming experience with no intention of trying to play the game properly at all, the rules are there to improve the experience and in this case my experience was ruined by a rule breaker only for him to then have me suspended. I wouldn't have even cared that much, but like I said this suspension ruined a multi-day tournament. Why should I even bother starting multi-days if I can be suspended at the drop of a hat like this? It's ruined the game for me and I can't justify dropping $30 on it when it's so easily ruined like that.

As for the blacklist feature, I am well aware of it and I make extensive use of it but it can't pre-empt someone I've never encountered before doing something like this.

Doesn't sound like you could be or were suspended at the drop of a hat. It sounds like you were and could only be suspended for behavior which you are aware of and could easily avoid. Your whole "I was going to pay for membership..." tag is a predictable whiny red herring. Whether you were or were not ever intending to buy a membership is entirely beside the point.

The rules exist for everyone's benefit, abide by them or leave. Why should anyone else give a rat's ass? The only person who might remotely care about your hypothetical purchase is the site's owner and he's the one that suspended you. What did you conclude from that? I conclude that he cares more for his rules and the environment they're designed to create than for your self-justifications for breaking said rules. But my all means deprive him of your hypothetical $30.

Oh look, a strawman response. It wasn't a red herring, just my feelings regarding the issue; I was talking to my friends just the night before this happened about getting a membership because I've been playing a lot recently and would like the things that come with membership. Like I explained in my last post, the rules are obviously there to make the game experience good for everyone, mine was ruined, the only person who felt the need to complain about this was the person who aggrieved me, everyone else in the game seemed to appreciate where I was coming from with this? Even if you are going to keep on justifying the upholding of the rules for the sake of them being rules, surely you can see where I'm coming from with this one? I'd like to hear what the owner has to say about it, that's the main reason I made this post, not for some self-righteous person like yourself to come along and judge me. I wanted to make contact while I was suspended but that was out of the question seeing as the only page I had access to for two days was a blank white screen with text explaining the suspension and nothing else to go off.

I'm very sorry you had to deal with Matt-o. I have no idea what made him go off, but he's been dealt with. I can understand that you were angry and I don't blame you.

There's a certain class of people who only want to stir up trouble - they come in and start calling everyone nasty names, attack their teammates, and do other mean things. These people only have fun when they can ruin other people's fun. Really, WarLight isn't a game for everyone. These people can go play a different game. The rules are presented to everyone, even paying customers - whether you're a member or not is irrelevant.

You say that you expect more leniency when you're responding to other people who are behaving badly. This sounds great in theory, but it really doesn't work in practice.

These people are trying to provoke a response out of you. They want to know they're causing you anguish. The best thing we (as the WarLight community) can do is to ignore them. Blacklist them, report them, and ignore them. But never, ever fire back and show them that they're making you unhappy - that only fuels them more.

Your idea to make the rules no longer apply when someone is behaving badly is really only going to be counter-productive.

So what you're saying is this game is only worth it to you if you have the freedom to break the rules?.. You say 'when it's so easily ruined like that' like as if you can't stop yourself from breaking them again and having your gaming experience ruined again and lowering the value of the game below the $30 threshold (for you).

I don't get the drop of a hat thing... are you saying he responded quickly to the rules being broken and that's a bad thing?

He's not doing anything randomly or out of the blue...

And personally what you did was rather unkind to me. It's like I'm out there all the time working hard to slay the trolls and here you are feeding them and making things harder for me.

In closing, stop whining, pay the $30, report the trolls, don't feed the trolls, enjoy the game without suspension, GAME ON. If you can't bring yourself to obey the rules, then don't pay the $30, get suspended again, and do us a favor and don't whine about it because you asked for it.

The problem is that matt-o didn't care about the rules or that progamer was breaking them, he reported progamer to be a dick, and now nobody is happy. Surely your suspension of progamer is also a response to a troll? Generally people report others out of personal grudges rather than genuine displeasure, which is clearly the case from what progamer states here.

I always expected pro-gamers to behave more ... you know ... professional?
He caught you off guard, because you gave in to the temptation to respond to the provocation. Live with it.

If You want to know my opinion Im truly disguised by the level of discussion here. Its not elementary school, when people are punished for bad words. We are not immature kids and I fully understand PROGRAMER. First time I get suspended here, Im leaving this game for good.

If your attitude is that you can just do whatever you want and that you'll leave at the first sign that things aren't just going to follow your sense of entitlement, then you will probably not last very long. I don't think it's too much to ask that we act decently and civilly to each other, which is essentially what the rules are about. It has nothing to do with bad words, it has to do with treating each other with respect. If you are capable of doing that, then you won't ever get suspended. It isn't hard to avoid suspension.

If someone is trolling and provoking you, then just report them and ignore them. Then they get banned and you don't.

Since Progamer did not provide us with links to the games in question, we can only specualte on what grounds he was suspended. However, two wrongs don't make one right, and insulting people who spoil your games is not wise, as proven here.
I for one would prefer if Fizzer spent his time on improving the game for us all, rather than wasting his energy on playing referee for those who won't obey the rules. Because that in fact IS elementary school behaviour.
Play nice, or get suspended. Get that into your heads.

hey programer, i hope you reconsider, because the ladder is real fun.
about matt-o, i went through the same thing. moreover, he insulted me, and i probably said some nasty things to him as well, before reporting him. it was annoying because i had waited around 15 minutes to start the game, and that guy just decided not to move. given that context, i think it was unfair for you to be banned. i would have been really pissed off if i had been banned because of that.
a way of dealing with that is not to take seriously reports from players that are been reported all the time, because we know they are irritating. for instance, that guy qaddafi appears to be a troublemaker; i wouldn't give much credit to reports he sends. the same goes for matt-o. they would go to a kind of report blacklist.

Fizzer: I really don't see why it can't work, he was the only person who complained, the only reason he complained is to be a troublemaker, not because he had a problem with anything I said or did. It seems like common sense to me. It would appear to me you handle each suspension on your own so I don't see why you can't work on a case-by-case basis. You even acknowledge that he has succeeded in trolling by having me suspended, yet you give him that gratification anyway. I can't understand the logic in this.

Alex: I'd love to but after this I just can't. I can't justify spending money on it when I know another troll can come along at any time and ruin it for me again. I've dealt with Qaddafi on more than one occasion, thankfully he's on my blacklist now and I don't see much of him at all.

You don't know what a straw man is (hint: a "straw man response" is an oxymoron unless you are writing the response under a pseudonym for the purpose of arguing against it). You also don't know what a red herring is apparantly, I thought I made it clear when I added that your point about buying a membership had nothing to do with the complaint, but you can't help some people.

I may be self-righteous, although I think of that used more when one is imposing their moral judgments on another as opposed to saying you don't give a crap (can one be a self-righteous agnostic? maybe). I am not judging you other than your ability to use certain expressions intelligibly. I also pointed out that the the "drop of a hat" line didn't make any sense, which is a judgment about the logic of the point.

The only real point in all this is that sorting out the details in an spat where two players behaved badly ("but the other guy started it") is too great a burden on the site owner. Could you imagine how difficult that burden would be to manage in practice? Disagreement in one game or forum or even offline can spill over into an exchange within one game chat screen. It might even be among a player's multiple accounts. The only workable system is to penalize all significant violations without regard to instigation.

I am willing to bet you the $30 membership fee that you do not have two or more kids. If you do, I will buy it for you. Cause any parent with 2 kids would understand this problem without your naivete.

It wasn't a 'red herring', I was just adding my thoughts on the matter to explain that since this is the case well then I can't justify buying membership. I don't see why you'd think that it was, is there any other way at all I could mention it and you not accuse it of being a red herring? It was relevant to the point.

I used 'drop of the hat' because I got suspended seemingly without any arbitration or anything like that. I couldn't protest or make a case for it, it was just an instant suspension for what is a fairly innocuous crime to say the least.

Well that's your opinion, I believe there could be another way to do it that wouldn't result in instances like this where one idiot has abused the system in order to do nothing other than ruin the game for me. Perhaps a voluntary moderation team? There are other options.

I have three children, not that it matters and not that I want anyone to pay for the membership for me either. Seeing as I try to be a good parent I listen to what my children say and judge them according to the scenario, not simple blanket bans. That doesn't teach them anything other than my might is right over them, which isn't the kind of lessons I want my children to learn. This is besides the point though, because the analogy isn't exactly the same, I have a vested interest in raising my children properly because I want them to have good lives, I can't speak for the owner obviously but I can say that he's not going to be raising a 'good community' for our benefit, but for his.

Progamer - just know that everyone here is not out to get you. Morally we feel for you and know that things happen and it sucks. Matt-o is just a provoking troll and a tattle-tale and you happened to be on the other end of it.

I do agree with the rest of the group in the sense that you DID break the rules of the site (obviously if you got suspended) and someone reported that rule breaking. I think that for all the time Randy has to look at reports he will just see who got reported, see what they said, then give out the punishment if they are outside of the rules. I think looking at the context takes too much time and if he spent a long time researching reports, he'd lose time into creating new features and updating the site. Frankly I'd rather have him spend less time on reports so that he does have that extra time. I think if this site gets to be much bigger and Randy is at the point where he needs to hire a second hand, he'll probably delegate that task to another person who will have more time to thoroughly look at the details.

What I've learned on this site and others, is that you can't let anyone on the internet get under your skin (trolls) and then stoop to their level. It's hard for a troll to keep egging on you if never respond. Considering it's just two games in your case, just let it play out and then follow the blacklist procedure.

Since we don't have the game link and can't see the text, we can't assume what was said and what wasn't said. But there are ways of insulting someone without cursing at them.

Now whether or not you buy a membership is up to you. I highly suggest it as it supports Indie gaming and also the more people that join means that the Randy gets more motivation into getting new features out quickly. The ladder is a lot of fun and having the ability to create tournaments and custom games is very enjoyable. I'm sorry to hear that you're upset about the suspension but we just want you to understand why we are siding with Randy.

It's not about sides, I'm not against the owner or the site now, I just believe something else could've been done about it, the system could be better, I offered a suggestion of one way in which it could be better. Since the system is going to punish me, even when most people here seem to agree I was perfectly justified in my reactions, I can't find any reason why I'd want to put my money on membership right now.

The problem we find is that in order for the system to be efficient, it has to be consistent. And that is what we're seeing, a system without bias. Even if most people agree with you, there still has to be that standard of rules to abide by or else there would be no system.

I'm curious, do you think you could post the link to your game? I want to try and see what went down in one of those games.

Hopefully with time you'll find your way to membership but it's totally your decision and your decision only to join.

There are various complicated community rating systems that could be applied instead of the simple report-to-admin thing that we have here now. Some of them might be worth looking into, and maybe they could be put up for a vote on uservoice and eventually integrated into the game (if there isn't something like that there already). See if there's a suggestion there to change the banning system that you like, and if so then cast your votes for it. If not, discuss it not in a whiny "waaah I got banned" thread but in a "lets fix this constructively" thread - Come up with specific ideas for how a better suspension/ban system could be run without adding too much workload to the admins. I think you'll find that you'll end up with quite a good discussion on how things are and how they could be made better.