muting is a bid no no. It just pisses people off and dosent actually fix anything....

 

I would break the rules to have that applied to my account

 

It would reduce the number of rule breakers simply due to the drastic decrease in users we'd see for living under a punishment system like this. Ramping up the punishments quickly leaves less room for mistakes. I would be terrified to move or breathe on the server if there was even the remote chance that doing the wrong thing and then possibly making another mistake would result in the possibility of losing anything I'd worked for. People wouldn't put money into the server because what if something goes wrong and I accidentally get framed and the staff doesn't check the logs or checked the wrong logs or something's wrong with the logs and suddenly my features are gone?? Even if this were caught after the fact and fixed if (it did happen), there's that loss of trust. You take away paid features for non-abuse of those features and you're pretty much showing people the door and saying "We just want your money, we don't really want you."

We do use occasional demotions back to builder at Andrew's discretion for very serious offences (usually accompanied by a good month tempban) and imo the more serious offences and punishments should be left up to Andrew. He's the one who has to deal with the out-of-game consequences of angry people who have had stuff revoked, and he's the one who needs to resolve them, and quite frankly with the number of repeat offenders, he simply doesn't have time to keep track of who's doing what, who's done it how many times, and laying out pre-determined revoking of things. And no, that power can't go to the GAs, or even Revan; even if they follow the guidelines to a T, Andrew's the one who will be getting the angry e-mail, and especially when it comes to features, Andrew's the one who has to deal with possible legal and paypal and server upkeep consequences (which, mind you, is why features are only revoked on severe or repeat offender abuses.)

Do punishments across the board need to "ramp up quicker"? No. Should Andrew maybe make an example of some of our most serious and/or repeat offenders more often? I do believe this should be the case, if anything, but he needs to be incredibly picky about who he makes an example of, and the examples should be made prudent to the most common multi-user issue of the time the example is made (ie. scamming, autofarming, PvP hacking, whatever is the most common complaint of the last month or so.)

Another idea that popped into my head after I typed all of the above that would work better than a straight up revoking would be a suspension of features for a certain period of time. I don't really like either idea though because both would piss me right off to the point of not coming on for a good long while, but at least with a suspension you're not completely losing what you paid for and you will get it back, but again these hypothetical suspensions would have to be solely at Andrew's discretion. I personally would rather just have Andrew make the occasional example of very serious offenders to remind people that he has less of a tolerance than most of the staff and can send you back to square 1 if needed.

Mutes, maybe, it would depend. Limited to a certain amount of time, and a certain number per day, it's a possibility but not a very good one. TomKelly is right, usually a mute will just cause more problems than the little bit of peace global would get for a short period of time, and is subject to abuse, accidental or purposeful.

 

I'm saying your punishment was a reward, I'd love to be banned from the lotto :p

 

Loss of donation features won't ever happen. People paid for those, there's real money behind those, taking those away will likely result in legal issues. (Correct me if I'm wrong)

Ban from lottery, this is more of a reward than punishment for most people.
The only time I can see this being a viable punishment is when someone has to pay back a debt and has a lottery problem. And even then it isn't really a punishment, more of a preventive measure.

Muting in chat may work, but I'm not sure when. Because usually by the time muting is a viable punishment, a ban would already be issued.

 

I'd like to see some of these implemented for repeat offenders. That would allow the everyday player to not have to live in fear of the punishments, seeing as they would have to repeatedly break rules.

 

I believe if it is legal to permaban users who have broken the rules, which is technically taking away features they paid for, that it is legal to take donation features away from those who broke the rules.

 

Just make sure you wait 90 or 180 days or whatever paypal has set the time limit to, for someone to be able to do a chargeback through paypal. Then permaban them, they can't do anything about it at that point. This is a generalization of the paypal process but I think you'll understand what I'm saying.

 

I know I am not active but this thread caught my eye. I have not read everything below the OP but in response to that I have to say that I have said ECC need to have the /mute or even better /tempmute. Like temp bans make temp mutes unappealable. Again I have been away for a good while but if chat was anything like it used to be this would be a god send to the Mods.

Oh I just read what Kuke said about muting not being effective because the person would be banned already. Well in most cases of chat abuse the temp mute could be issued and be used as a much more serious warning the "please stop". It could even be the first warning for more serious issues and a 2nd warning for your average spammer. I think a temp mute could save a good deal of time for mods doing ban appeals as well as a good number of bans would never actually happen.

Just my my .02 Eco Dollars.