For those who haven’t seen, AO has some in-game rules. Two in fact with the third just being a little acceptance compliance. Macroing of any kind is not allowed. Not sure anything other than fishing or maybe an autoblock thing would be useful for this but yeah nothing new there. However I want to talk about the second rule.
It says “abusing a known bug to gain an advantage can be punished with a temp ban or perma ban depending on severity”.
In case you hadn’t noticed I italicized “abusing”, “known bug”, and “an advantage” since all of those, in my opinion, need to be defined just a bit. What constitutes a known bug? Bugs posted in #bug-reports? Bugs the mods know? Is it just word of mouth or something where known bugs are just general bugs the community knowns without them being written down or logged somewhere? What about “an advantage”? What is “an advantage”? Something no one can do without utilizing the bug? How is “abusing” separate from just “using”? To what extent is needed to say something is being abused?
Not asking Vetex to give us an essay on what each of those mean but it barely solves the problem to begin with. Now instead of having to try to find out what the rules are you are given the rules and one of the two of them requires you to dig even further. These are rules, their contents should not be hidden or left up to much interpretation. One mod could know of a bug that allows someone to, idk, buy something for 20 galleons and sell it for 30. Clearly advantageous, abusable, and exploitable. But if one mod knows about it and others don’t how can it be properly enforced? Ideally they’d tell their fellow mod buddies but then the mods know about this bug and the community don’t. Do the mods need to know about it or do the community? Both? Neither?
Now I am only slightly concerned over this because I do not follow the game as religiously or devotedly as others may. I can’t really name one bug I know about and there are apparently enough busted bugs out there to warrant a whole rule dedicated to them. I may accidentally utilize a bug for my own convenience and just get banned for it despite me not really knowing it was a bug or that how I was using it was “advantageous”.
So how would I go about changing this rule?
I’ve just bitched about this rule and it’s very poor, in my opinion, definition. I think the rule should be changed to focus heavily on the “advantage” part. Put more emphasis on that and leave the known bugs thing to the side as more or less examples of things to stay away from because those are known to give advantages. What would these “advantages” be? The advantages of bugs are the acquisition of renown, galleons, infamy, items, or kills. A bug that does not result in obtaining any of those, in my opinion, could not be described as an advantageous bug.
Now what’s a “known bug”? A known bug is a logged bug/glitch. They should be logged, filed, sorted, and displayed for all to view. This would give clarity as to what bugs are known to be advantageous and could prevent players from doing it. A counter argument would be that it gives players access to all the bugs so that they can utilize them. However if they do use the bugs or at least have evidence against them of them using them they can be banned and two the log of bugs could have two versions, one for the mods and one for the public. The public will get ones that detail the bugs while the mods’ version will do that as well as have ways to preform the bug so they know what exactly to look for.
What is “abusing” compared to just utilizing or accidentally using? I think this is far easier to identify and spot than the other two but still clarification is always nice. I’d define “abusing a (known) bug” as “utilizing a bug to gain an advantage”. You are taking advantage of a bug for a favorable outcome, that is “abusing” a bug.
So with all this being said this is how I’d reword the rule.
“Exploiting or utilizing a known bug to be in an advantageous, favorable, or superior position or condition to acquire renown, galleons, infamy, items, and or NPC/Player kills can be punished with a temp or perma ban depending on severity”
The “known bug” portion will include a hyperlink to a google doc or something similar with each “known bug” listed. If these bugs are really an issue then it shouldn’t be hard to list them down. Moderators could be tasked with managing this document.
As new bugs are discovered they could be added and since a player can view them at any time there shouldn’t be really any notable excuse. But I think one more rule would be warranted. My rule change does not cover bugs that are not discovered by the community but are still abused so to that I suggest a new rule.
“Hiding or concealing the existence of a bug in order to exploit or utilize that bug can be punished with a temp or perma ban depending on severity”
Ideally someone both abusing and hiding a bug should be perma banned as that is entirely malicious with it’s intention. They had no intention of bringing it to light and instead chose to use it to boost themselves or to target others. No reason as to why this should be allowed.
There could be some other rules or things added, like what a “bug” really is but I honestly just wanted to cover these two. Broadly you can assume and define a bug as just a glitch or an unintended result of a series of actions. That is widely understood but I think not all bugs should be punishable. Some may just be fun activities one may do. Going into the dark seas and not dying by using a hammer is a bug (had only just remembered that one right now and I will not go back to fix my statement of being unable to recall any bugs) but it does not provide an advantage and thus should be fine but with the current rules it could be described as an advantage given how loosely defined it is. This change is just to clarify the rules as how I understand them now and how I believe they were intended to be, leaving less room for gray areas or potential abuse of power. I don’t think any mod I know would do something like that but I am not one to always whole heartedly trust authority.
Alright thanks for listening to my TED Talk™️. Here’s the TLDR:
TLDR
Change the second rule
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“abusing a known bug to gain an advantage can be punished with a temp ban or perma ban depending on severity”
| v -
“Exploiting or utilizing a known bug to be in an advantageous, favorable, or superior position or condition to acquire renown, galleons, infamy, items, and or NPC/Player kills can be punished with a temp or perma ban depending on severity”
this would also feature “known bugs” as a hyperlink to a google doc (or equivalent) w/ a list of “known bugs” listed and updated by the moderation team
Add
- “Hiding or concealing the existence of a bug in order to exploit or utilize that bug can be punished with a temp or perma ban depending on severity” as a rule
K that’s it now I gotta welcome someone.
