About the "New Player Test"

[Former-GM-Circe]

Rankin, I'd hope by this stage you'd have no problem answering 5 random rule questions completely.
You are a mod afterall, dear.


I pulled up the script when writing my first post, and "kill stealing" is in the possible answers. In case the script had been changed between when I last had my hands on it, and server implementation, I personally jumped ingame and went through the NPC until I got the question. Upon inputting "kill stealing" he marked it as correct, and moved me onto the next question.

The fact that you feel that you need to "sort" your players at all is disturbing to me. This is an extremely elitist attitude.

What I said was we do NOT sort players. Any player who joins heRO has the desire to join heRO. Does it count as sorting if every single heRO player is automatically in the group of "heRO players"?
We will not be sorting, as I stated. This is why all players must read ALL the rules.
You stated you do not see the reason for the WoE rules in the Guardian, as you do not WoE. As we do not sort, you get to see them all. There is no "No WoE rules" group that you desire.

I hardly find the refusal to make only some rules viewable to only some players elitist.

It's RO. There are an insurmountable number of servers. There are no lasting consequences that anyone - staff or player - can affect. This hard-line approach is only going to serve to alienate the server from its players - particularly prospective players. You write as if these rules are sacred words. I agree that they are important, but the weight which you assign to them is far too great.

There are a decent amount of RO servers out there. However, the large majority of those will have rules that players are required to follow.
If the rule breaking happens in heRO, the consequences are going to happen in heRO.
If rules are broken on the heRO forums, then the consequences happen on the heRO forums.

We don't pretend to employ "lasting consequences" outside of our domain: heRO.
You may compare them to the outside world when you say that the weight we assign them is too great. But this ISN'T the outside world. this is heRO. You stay in Pandora's place, you follow Pandora's rules. Unlike in the real world, it's easy to move on to another server if you don't see yourself being able to uphold them.

That's just silly. Nobody expects anything to be written like that. This whole sentence reeks of cynicism.

Then why on earth is everything written the way it is? The whole of the rules could be chopped down, easily understandable, and get the point across in just a couple of paragraphs.

Consider point form. It makes it easier to reference and remember at a glance, and you aren't forcing a bunch of filler down with it. If anything, your rules right now are less effective, because of how intrusive and overbearing they are.

Of course not.
Which is exactly why they're not written like that. This is why they are a simple, clear list of Do Nots with explanations.


This is also why they are not listed as a simple point form list. Rules like "Respect other players" are open to the players' interpretation of what respect is. And so, we try to clarify that line by explaining that insults, flaming and the such come under this.
Not to mention, that if you don't want to read the explanations, then don't. Just about every rule has a title/top line that says the rule in short form; "Do not bot", "Do not macro", "Respect other players".
If you so wish to skip the longer parts and read just the top lines, then do so, but the rest will remain there for the players who actually want it there.


Once again, how is saying that every person who joins heRO has the desire to join heRO "sorting"? It's not.
We're not sorting rule breaks and non-rule breakers via this NPC. The NPC has no ability to "see" who failed the test. He'll let everyone try again.
The rules are there to educate and inform the player base, both established and incoming.

In the end, bad players will find their way in regardless of what you do to "sort" or even filter them. If someone is hellbent on raising a commotion or causing trouble for the staff, then they are going to do just that.

On the other hand, it is less likely that a good player will stay and commit time and commit themselves to a community if they are immediately (first log-in!) treated like they have immigrated to a locked-down police state. And that's what it seems like.

In summary, punishment should come after breaking the rules, not before. Give your new players the benefit of the doubt. Punish those who need to be punished.

Yes, deliberate rule breakers will still try and break rules. However, not every player IS a deliberate rule breaker. Many times we've had players unsure, or even PM asking us what specific rules are. So now, we make sure they know.
If players have a problem with being expected to know the rules before they enter our server (or view having to know the rules as "punishment"), and think that the rules NPC is too much for a server to have, then they'll very likely have problems with other areas of the server (especially if they want a homunculus. )
The NPC is exactly as he appears. He states the rules, and then he tests you on them. If we wanted to punish players, I'm sure we could make him disconnect, jail or even ban players if they got answers incorrect.
But we don't, nor will we ever do that.

And besides, we all know that GMs share a common fault. Every single GM on every single private server has an ego which needs to be fed. And kick/banning foolish rule breakers will satisfy that urge while simultaneously heartening the community.

Anyone who believes that all GMs, or even the majority of GMs, from any server, are on staff to feed their ego are sorely misinformed. While some GMs are known for such (and these are usually the very public cases seen on places like RMS' Hall Of Shame), for the majority, it is a near thankless task that consists of many, many hours and a lot of stress.
We don't LIKE banning and punishing people. It's not a hobby. We'd be delighted if everyone followed the rules so that we'd never have to punish someone again.
But we have standards for our community, and we expect them to be held. If a player is to break them, then so be it. But we do not enjoy it.
We don't like having to wake up our senior staff, or in their case, being woken up by the younger staff members at 3am, because the server is being attacked.
We don't like being accused of bias or corruption because someone didn't like the fact that they got caught rule breaking.

There is very little when it comes to working on staff that feeds one's ego, and what little there is, isn't a common occurrence.
Most of what does "ego feed" is when our own work goes well, and everyone should have some sort of pride in their own work, whether it be at school, a company, or working for an RO server.