To start things off for people that aren't aware, scamming, griefing, and deathtrapping are allowed on Prison, and have been for years. There were 0 exceptions to this rule, until a few weeks back. Severe Scamming (serverwide rule) was added to the rules a few weeks ago due to a situation on Prison where a player was griefed hundreds of spawners; this crossed the line and was a one time situation where the griefer got punished. This sparked a new rule, Severe Scamming (permanent ban). On the surface this rule is very reasonable, especially on places like Skyblock where people amass thousands of spawners but griefers would only get banned for a week. Prison is a bit of a gray area, as scamming/griefing is allowed, but certain situations have crossed the line. Recently this rule has caused a lot of confusion and unjust situations on Prison and this thread will discuss all the problems with it, as well as some solutions. What Defines "Severe Scamming"? The rules say "very serious scenarios that result in a mass amount of stolen or scammed valuables", but this is already a rough start as a "serious scenario" can't be defined. Staff Members have been saying the "limit" is $25 IRL, which also leads to tricky situations. $25 USD can be $100m from one person, but $75m for another. $25 USD can get you 25 skeleton spawners or 50; the point is that there can't be a hard limit on IRL trades. You can spend $25 USD on Ancient keys and get 10 money pouches that get you a total of $5m, and getting scammed of that $5m would be considered Severe Scamming, all because it's "$25 worth". This sounds like a problem until the same situation is swapped for someone buying 5 mythical keys and getting scammed 5 mining backpacks, a chunk loader, and $3m, which would be considered a big loss. Point is, the limit of what is considered "Severe" is so flexible that you can't get a reliable amount. Scamming is specifically stated to be allowed on Prison, as long as it isn't a "severe case" according to the rules. Scamming and Deathtrapping are a Part of the Game MCCentral has created an environment on Prison where players need to expect the unexpected. With these scenarios that are otherwise against the rules on other parts of the server, they are perfectly fine on Prison. Players know that anything could be around the corner, and have to be extra careful when doing basic tasks like buying items from shops and accepting teleport requests. For a community built upon being skeptical and careful, I don't think there needs to be any exceptions, regardless of the circumstance. Scamming Is Allowed - Unless They're Rich Scamming is a huge part of Prison, and anyone playing for longer than 3 days can identify common scams and/or at least protect themselves from being scammed under any circumstance. A common scam, such as setting a simple fall trap at your plot is perfectly fine; even teleporting players directly into it is directly fine. You can deathtrap rookies with iron armor and an inventory of sticks, or sign scam someone with $2m. The problem lies where the wrong person falls for this trap. Let's say you have a simple signshop scam. You have a sign that sells people 2304 sticks for $1,000,000,000,000, hiding in lava labeled "Click the Chest!", which drains whoever's balance of all their money when they click on it. Something like this is totally on the table, but if the baltop player teleports to this plot and loses $500m, then the player who owns the scam has now broken a rule. Nothing different has changed than the person who fell for the scam. We can take this a step further. Let's say you're in the PvP arena deathtrapping. You start at the A names and work your way to the Z names, /tpahere'ing every player on the server. You get a few inventories of minerals, maybe some pickaxes, even some stacks of tokens and that is perfectly allowed. A player with 5 mining backpacks and a Level 70 pickaxe accepts the teleport request and you kill them, suddenly you have broken a rule and gotten permbanned for it. All you did was go about your routine of teleporting the whole server to you, and what you did was completely fine until the wrong person fell for it. This is where I believe the rule goes completely out of line. Scamming/Deathtrapping is fine unless someone rich falls for it. I think it's insane that a player can have a normal scam but if the #1 guy on baltop falls for it, then you've done something wrong. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ I think this rule should just be reduced to "Severe Griefing" on Prison in specific. This stops the situation that made this rule come about in the first place, and leaves others to be. I think it is 100% fair to permanently punish players who grief hundreds of spawners that have been built up during a map, but that situation is completely different from someone getting scammed due to them falling for something stupid. One is a breach of trust, the other is one's stupidity collapsing in on themselves. Feel free to leave thoughts in the replies, hoping I'm not the only one that thinks this rule has the potential for some crazy bullshit to end up happening soon. NOTE: I feel that I explained the community's overall understanding of the rule, if there is something that doesn't line up with the rule then please leave a comment
I completely agree with this and think it's incredibly well written and perfectly details everything wrong with this rule. Well said Carter.
Hi Carter, I'll leave my response to these points below! "What defines 'Severe Scamming/Griefing'?" At this time, the Senior Moderator and Administration teams decides what Severe Scamming/Griefing is compared to normal Griefing/Scamming. My original idea was having around $25 USD value for the line between regular Scamming/Griefing and Severe Scamming/Griefing, since this is quite a notable amount of money to spend on MCCentral - it can majorly impact someone's gameplay experience if it is abruptly stolen from them. That is not okay with us, as we want people to enjoy their playing experiences as much as possible. It is in the user's best interest doing the Griefing/Scamming to not get anywhere close to this line, or they may face at least a 6-month ban. All server entities (in-game money, items, etc.) can be turned into a monetary value based on what the item(s) are going for in the current time of season. Not all things won from keys, for example, are worth the same; for example, a Common prize will not be monetarily the same as a Legendary prize. It is simple-minded thinking that items that come out of these two rarities are valued very differently. Yes, all keys are either $2.50 or $5.00 per (excluding Factions), but that does not mean the items won out of those are worth $2.50 or $5.00 to the community. Some are less, some are more - depending on rarity. "Scamming and Deathtrapping are a Part of the Game" Correct. We did not outright take away the ability for someone to be lazy and obtain items this way, they can still sit there and smirk while they deathtrap people for their items so long as it doesn't fall under the Severe Griefing/Scamming rule. You can still do both of these... "Scamming Is Allowed - Unless They're Rich" Yep, that's the point of the rule - if the items have no notable value compared to something that has a high IRL value, I do not see why the latter should go unpunished for or why the items with no notable value should be punished for. If it's not notable, it's easy to get back. If it is of value, they have either worked a lot for it or purchased it from our store to obtain that value.
The first point, you literally just said exactly what we already know, but in different words. Second point is valid, you did not outright remove the ability to scam. Your last point is also valid. Honestly, the majority of people that have the money for this, are very careful and don't get scammed often, but there are exceptions. Honestly, I think there just needs to be a very clear line between what is considered severe scamming, as right now its not very clear what can be considered severe scamming. For example, some players may consider 2 chunk loaders worth $25, whereas others may consider it only $20, which leads to problematic situations.
Thanks for clearing some things up, but I think you missed the biggest point of this post, mainly under "Scamming is Allowed - Unless They're Rich". The point isn't to punish those who are scamming little to no value, we all know that's ridiculous. I think the problem lies where someone scamming now needs to make sure the wrong person doesn't fall for their scam - I'll be talking about a more basic scam as an example. Let's say someone has a standard "I'm quitting! /p warp Cxrtr for free items and money!" and they have a signshop scam behind lava with a chest saying "free items!", when clicked you click a sign that buys a shit ton of sticks for $10b, sucking all the money out of your balance. The owner goes offline and leaves this forever. Obviously a person losing $100k is no big deal, but if the baltop player with $500m falls for this, would that be punishable? The scamming player did nothing different, simply advertised their plot like normal, but under this rule they can now be punished for the wrong player falling for it. We all understand that if someone directly scammed $500m in an IRL scam it would be punishable without a doubt, but how about a situation like this?.
Okay so that is a good explanation, BUT, there’s not pointed out in the rules what exactly is severe scamming (amount of irl/igm). So Its uknown when it’s severe scamming, in my opinion this rule needs to either be made clear or removed.
I’ll throw in my two cents just because! I think this rule should be removed. This is obviously causing a lot of confusion for a lot of players, and now scamming feels like it’s being discouraged as a whole. I see why this was implemented—to act as a safety cushion for huge monetary losses and to keep certain players engaged in the server—but allowing prison to remain as a free-for-all would be in the best interest of the average player. Keeping things plain and straightforward for the average player is the best way to go about things! The real things that need to be revised are the accessibility to MCC’s rules for a new player in-game. Also, punishing one for another’s ignorance seems unfair. ღ
I thought I would share my opinion on too. As far as I know the rule originates from the situation where one player trusts other player on their mine. Then the trusted person steals from that mine a significant number of spawners. It is estabilished that a scam over $25 irl is a severe scam. Now what a deathtraper, tpa scammer should do in this situation? On one hand it is allowed to deathtrap people and so on but now it becomes dangerous for the person that tries to scam to keep continuing it because there is literally no way for them to set up a trap this way that they are sure that they scam for below $25 only. Now what should they do? Ask the potential victim if they have more than $25 worth on them before trying to scam them? What if one of the warps leads to a death-trap? Every time a player decides to warp to a new place that is being for example advertised in the chat, they should at least take off their gear before warping. Let's say rich player warps there with their gear on. What now? How can deathtrapper protect himself from being banned if a player with good items falls for it? Should there be a window poping up with the info: "You are about to be scammed, please check if you have more than $25 on you, if so please turn away". Now one of the vital rules of this sub-server: scamming, which also includes deathtrapping, tpa scam is simply broken. Like I don't see a way how someone can scam now (what is totally legal) without being in a danger of being banned. I don't think it's the right way to go here. My conclusion is that: deathtrapping, tpa scam should be excluded from the severe scamming rule. The rule's origin is not even connected to tpa scam, deathtraps at all. This exception would be the first step to bring the rule in better direction. Like tpa scam, deathtraps is something that the victim can fall for on their own. I can assume the so called "rich" players that for sure are on the server for a while, should be aware of the mechanics of this sub-server, what is allowed to do be done here and they should cautious during the play. If they fall into deathtrap, tpa scam on they own (well, they have to accept tpa request or warp somewhere with their gear on to be scammed, it's not like it happens without their knowledge), the deathtrapper should not be banned in any way for doing what is literally allowed. I have been scammed 4 times total so far, scammed for loads of good items. I learnt my lesson and haven't been scammed since 2 seasons now xD. I would not have seen it fair really if I had fallen into the deathtrap now with my gear and the scamming person got banned because they randomly scammed wrong person.
Okay so lets be real here- The only reason this rule exists is because someone uniquely stupid allowed visitors to set perms in there mine. The whole idea of punishing everyone for what was most likely a one off event seems so stupid to me. Like the person who lost all there stuff was 100% at fault for what happened since they set the perms like that in the first place. They weren't tricked or anything like that, they literally just did something stupid. Now on to a bigger issue, I've seen many different things be sold for irl money on prison. For example; Player heads (I recall one season someone's head was sold for 10usd), Armour & pvp gear, Spawners, Pickaxes, Mining sets and pretty much anything out of the crates. This is where the issue starts. If I convinced a good pvper to give me access to there plot and then steal a few dubs of P4, Weapons, Gaps and Player heads that could easily amount to a pretty high value. Would this be considered advanced griefing? because it doesn't seem like it would be. Another issue is that things may have higher value in the eyes of specific players, I may be willing to pay irl for something most players aren't. For example I could pay another player $25 usd for a dub of apple pickers. If they where then stolen from my plot there commercial value would be completely different to what my personal value of them was. Would this be considered griefing? And what happens if people scam in a pair, If two players scammed me spawners equalling up to $26 usd ($13 each) would it still be bannable? Also on a side note, this is prison players we're talking about. Some of which are petty enough to purposely fall for a trap to get people banned, I know I am. Either remove the rule or make scamming as a whole bannable.
