Forums » General

"Be Nice" - Forum Policies and Usage Guidelines

Jan 23, 2016 incarnate link
The Vendetta Online forums exist to promote the healthy, positive interaction of our game's community, providing a means for players to give constructive feedback and make suggestions about the game, plan for Events, and other topics.

These forums do not exist to provide a place for people to level nasty, personal attacks against other individuals or guilds.

They also do not exist as a place to level public accusations of cheating or "raise public awareness" of possible game exploits or violations in policy: These issues should be addressed privately to the developers via Support Tickets, which will be investigated in the extensive game-server logs. The reality is that there are too many dramatic people, with dramatic accusations (which usually prove to be unfounded), to allow every single case to turn into a flame-war that continues burning and harming the community for months or years to come.

General Behavioural Guidelines, Across All Forums

- Keep Language to PG-13. Avoid foul language. This should be self-explanatory. If you break the rule, a guide or administrator may edit your post to censor it. Consider this act a warning, and avoid repeating this in the future.

- Do not personally attack individuals. If you are engaging in a vigorous debate about a passionate subject, then debate the subject on its own merits, and not the other individual. Messages that contain only attacks may be deleted outright by forum administrators, and the person posting them may be muted on the thread. People who continue this behaviour, despite administrator warnings, may begin to lose access to forums for longer periods of time, until it effectively becomes permanent.

- Post in the Right Forums. If you have an idea for a game enhancement, that goes in the Suggestions forum. If your game is crashing or breaking in some apparent way, that goes in the Bugs forum. If you want to talk about something completely unrelated to the game, post it to Off Topic. Etc, etc. Do not inappropriately post subjects to General just because you "want more attention" for the issue, that is not acceptable.

- Do not harass over differing play styles. Not everyone wants to be a trader, or a pirate, or a miner. The game allows all these play types, and we consider the "sandbox" nature of VO to be one of the game's greatest strengths. If an individual or guild plays in a way that you dislike, or employs strategies or techniques that you dislike, but is clearly not violating the game's policies.. then live with it, quietly, or go play a different game. If there is a concern over an individual or guild exploiting the game in way other than intended, then that should be raised by private Support Ticket with the developers directly, and they will take action and comment on whether the behaviour is permissible or not. But if it is deemed permissible by the developers: get over it. It is reasonable to post mitigation ideas to Suggestions that might result in a better game-balance for all players, but this must be done in a positive and responsible manner consistent with all Suggestions activity.

Enforcement and Escalation

The forum administrators are VOLUNTEERS, doing their best to enforce the guidelines WE give them, please don't blast them for giving their spare time, for free, to try and make the game forums a more pleasant place. Administering the forums of this game is like trying to bathe a house-cat: it's a great way to get scratched and mauled without any personal benefit. Admins don't even get free game accounts or anything else, they just get to deal with grumpy people all the time. Not super fun.

If you have a problem with Policy, bring it up with us (the developers) in a Support Ticket, because we're the ones who actually define what the Forum Admins are doing. Don't blame them for executing the policies that we define.

Edits - When possible, admins will try to edit your post, to sanitize out any bad language, inappropriate embedded image links, or negative/attacking behaviour, while hopefully retaining any other informative value your post might have. This should be considered a warning. It is not an excuse to complain about the admin, or call them a "nazi". They have taken the extra time to be as minimally invasive as they can, and preserve what they could of your post. Don't make them repeat that process constantly, I'll be inclined to just ban you from that forum.

Message Deletes - If you post a message that's just an attack on someone else, or is just re-raising the same melodrama that has already been locked elsewhere, or some other content that really has specifically negative value.. the Admin may just delete your entire post. If so, pay attention. Don't do that again. People who keep creating problems that require administrative action will become unwelcome.

Thread Mutes - If you keep violating the basic strictures of the rules above and the Rules Of Conduct on a given thread (for instance, posting repeated personal attacks), you may just be muted on that thread. This will prevent your account from posting and replying any further on that particular thread. It will also be brought to the attention of the development staff, and repeated thread-mutes will be evaluated as reasons to mute someone on a given forum entirely, or kick them off the messageboard as a whole, or other (more severe) action.

Forum Mutes - If you get muted on an entire forum for a period of time (like a week, or a month), this is basically a strong warning to permanently alter your on-going behaviour, or you will not be welcome on (any) of our forums at all.

Circumventing of Mutes should NEVER be done. If you have been muted, live with it. If you then choose to log in with a different account, and continue posting on the given thread, or forum, we may consider banning you from the game, forever. We don't care if you have "more to say" or "don't think it was fair". You can always submit a private Support Ticket to the developers, telling your side of things, but DO NOT EVER CIRCUMVENT ADMINISTRATIVE ACTION. It may escalate to..

Full Account Banning - This is really bad. Basically, it means we never want to see you around again (in the game, or forums), and we will pursue all legal means to make that happen. This is the last thing we ever want to do.. we just want to make fun games for people to enjoy. But if you force us to protect our community from you, we will do so with both experience and resolve. The ramifications go way beyond these forums or game. For instance, if you are banned but won't go away, that becomes network abuse, which constitutes a violation of the Acceptable Use Policy of your internet service provider (ISP). Things just go downhill from there. This is in our wheelhouse, as one of us established the abuse department at a major Tier 1 ISP, and dealt with a lot of high-profile, international situations. Please just "Be Nice" and enjoy the game and forums, and help make things better and more fun for everyone.

If you feel an admin has horribly wronged you in some way, you can always submit a Support Ticket to the effect and let us (the developers) know. But, know that this game and forums have been live since 2002, and the number of times we've ever reversed a volunteer-guide's actions can be counted on one hand. Generally, our volunteers are pretty great, and adhere correctly to the guidelines we give them.

This post is basically a more detailed and nuanced explanation of the existing Rules Of Conduct linked to the left. The content and issues listed above are obviously not the only situations where we will take administrative action, but they cover some of the more particular cases that have emerged over running this game.
Aug 24, 2018 incarnate link
Additional Policy: No Forum Alts.

People keep creating "forum alts", so they can engage in conversations from multiple "personalities" and support their own arguments on Suggestions, or concoct situations that convince people of the "reality" of their in-game alts, or occasionally have arguments with.. themselves.. over dumb stuff.

This is super annoying. Do not make "Forum Alts". You can make alts in the game all you want, have fun with that. But not on the forums. Pick one name (account), and stick with it.