A call to arms (against Alex)

[TheRealMonty]

Dear friends and foes,

whether you are fighting for Hollywood or Celestial, perhaps not fighting at all, I think now is the right time to put our differences aside and address a different issue.

As you may have noticed, our dear patriarch (Alex) and his A-Team bestowed some quite controversial moderation actions upon us.

A significant number of players were warned for slot filling, in our opinion wrongfully.

Definition of slotfilling:

I'd like to argue that Celestial (and others) that were punished for this, are innocent as I see no correlation with rule breaking. While some didn't do any attacks when they declared it can also very well be due to the reason that they ran out of resources for nukes and missiles which Celestial and other blocs have used in the past. The strategy of nuking/missiling has been used many times in the past and is a proven form of alternative warfare.

As the wise Changeup said:

"It's important to remember both these spheres are at war, with Ro$e sphere having lost the conventional war, and has been launching nukes at HW in order to close the damage gap. In case you aren't aware, this happens and has happened in nearly every global since 2018, where one side loses/gives up conventional warfare (due to various reasons, such as not having military units, the enemy having superior tiering/numbers etc) and tries to equalize their damages, sticking to nuking infra and soldier only warfare, at most flashing units."

Interestingly enough, even nations that did conduct attacks were warned as well so we have sent Alex our appeals, but he is ignoring each and every one of them.

 

I hereby declare a protest and urge people unhappy with mod actions to waive this flag we made until Alex decides to consider our appeals.

Use this flag to show support for your brothers and

Disclaimer: We do not have anything against PnW mods personally, we just disagree with their moderation.

 

"Politics begin where the masses are, not where there are thousands, but where there are millions, that is where serious politics begin."- Vladimir Lenin

[Darth Ataxia]

I read in RON that supposedly these are new mods. If that’s the case then they need to have some basic training of how aspects of the game work, especially with regard to what they’re going to moderate. Even the worst war guide will have something about turreting (which has existed for years in other games) and the other strats people are being penalized for. 
 

They don’t need a nation but they do need to know how stuff works. 

Edited July 18, 2022 by Darth Ataxia
Clarity

[Alex]

I have already responded to a similar thread here:

Quote:

I'm the one that issued all of these warnings, and to be very clear, even any attempt to do an attack I have given the benefit of the doubt on and not issued a warning. It is possible that there were nations who received war slot filling warnings that had wars where they did missiles/nukes, but it would clearly state in the warning that it wasn't for those wars but for ones where they had been at 12 MAPs for at least a couple of days and had not done any attacks.

Quote

It's been said that this is because they aren't doing attacks, aren't choosing/capable to win the war, and are just wanting beige, but it should be noted that nations who did do attacks have also still gotten warnings.

Unless I made a mistake on a warning, this is 100% not true.

It's also worth noting that on all war slot filling violations or multi reports, aside from a few instances, I have been making all of these decisions myself. At some point we will probably get to the point where I feel comfortable letting the hired moderators make these calls, but to date I have been making these decisions personally.

Please also see:

 

[Anri]

 

16 minutes ago, TheRealMonty said:

Interestingly enough, even nations that did conduct attacks were warned as well so we have sent Alex our appeals, but he is ignoring each and every one of them.

 

I was declared on by a total of 4 nations. Out of those 4 nations the only nation that was forcibly peaced was the nation that did not do any attacks against me. 

[GoldenPope]

Never change Alex.

Since you've ignored my entreaties on discord for 3 days now despite multiple pings.

Please see the four below wars that you personally marked as slotfilling despite people making attacks. 

"I'm the one that issued all of these warnings" - Thank you for clarifying. Finally. 


https://politicsandwar.com/nation/war/timeline/war=1381198
https://politicsandwar.com/nation/war/timeline/war=1381200
https://politicsandwar.com/nation/war/timeline/war=1381206
https://politicsandwar.com/nation/war/timeline/war=1381210

Edit: Congrats you finally got me to create an account on the forum- since I've been ignored on other mediums. 

Edited July 18, 2022 by GoldenPope

[Miller]

Define attacks. I’m literally sitting on someone who declared on arrgh with the explicit reason of trying to be beiged, they did a token utter failure and then sat back and waited to be beiged. Is that ok to you?

[Alex]

5 minutes ago, GoldenPope said:

Never change Alex.

Since you've ignored my entreaties on discord for 3 days now despite multiple pings.

Please see the four below wars that you personally marked as slotfilling despite people making attacks. 

"I'm the one that issued all of these warnings" - Thank you for clarifying. Finally. 


https://politicsandwar.com/nation/war/timeline/war=1381198
https://politicsandwar.com/nation/war/timeline/war=1381200
https://politicsandwar.com/nation/war/timeline/war=1381206
https://politicsandwar.com/nation/war/timeline/war=1381210

Edit: Congrats you finally got me to create an account on the forum- since I've been ignored on other mediums. 

I wasn't online over the weekend, and going through a very large backlog of DMs and tickets on Discord now. When I get on P&W, I typically do the following:

In-game messages -> Player Reports in-game -> Forum -> Discord Tickets & DMs

So I am not ignoring you, there is just a very large volume of things for me to attend to, and I have not even seen your pings yet.

4 minutes ago, Miller said:

Define attacks. I’m literally sitting on someone who declared on arrgh with the explicit reason of trying to be beiged, they did a token utter failure and then sat back and waited to be beiged. Is that ok to you?

No - and the rules explicitly state this.

Quote

4. War Slot Filling

Moderation Points Guideline: 25-75
Expiration: 2 Years

Declaring war on a nation without the intention of fighting them is punishable by a nation strike and additional punishment for multiple violations. You are not allowed to declare war on nations to prevent them from being attacked by other nations. This same rule applies with spies and espionage operations. Knowingly participating in having your war or spy slots filled is also considered a violation of this rule.

Declaring war on your allies is generally considered war slot filling and against the rules. In cases where relationships between nations or alliances are not clear, moderators will use their best determination to decide if nations are allied and therefore war slot filling or not. One example of this type of rule-breaking behavior would be leaving your alliance to declare on someone in your alliance or a nation in an alliance allied to your alliance, and then rejoining your alliance.

Moderation discretion must be applied when interpreting and enforcing this rule. One example of behavior violating the rules would be declaring war on a nation and sending attacks with minimal units, or using 'Fortify', to appear to be fighting a war, when in reality the attacker has no intention to engage in a real war and is attacking with the purpose of preventing other players from being able to attack the target or to otherwise benefit the target nation.

War Slot Filling violations will generally result in the war in question being manually peaced out by a moderator.

 

[Schirminator]

18 minutes ago, Alex said:

I'm the one that issued all of these warnings, and to be very clear, even any attempt to do an attack I have given the benefit of the doubt on and not issued a warning. It is possible that there were nations who received war slot filling warnings that had wars where they did missiles/nukes, but it would clearly state in the warning that it wasn't for those wars but for ones where they had been at 12 MAPs for at least a couple of days and had not done any attacks.

To clarify, what if I have 5 nukes so I declare 5 wars. Then before I get enough MAPs to launch them, 3 get spied away. Am I at fault for the two wars that I didn't launch those nukes? I didn't intentionally slotfill but circumstances forced it to be that way. From the community reaction, its clear that this has never been called out during a global before and until now, was considered a valid war by everyone in the game.

Another strategy that's common is declaring several wars and one-shipping those wars for nation that don't have navy and suddenly they buy navy. The original intent there was to beige but the damage is relatively minimal. Now you can't one-ship an opponent who has 150 ships so you give up on it. But is that your fault and should those people also receive warnings for slot filling? Of course not.

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

@Alex

 I want to point out that this happened because of you. You have allowed this to happen for multiple years, YEARS. You have allowed this to happen for so long that it has become a literal military strategy known to every block in the game, and then suddenly You change how you enforce it. 

 

If you want to change how you enforce the rule, that's fine, it's your game, but have the decency to make a post and/or an announcement in game saying that you are aware of how things used to be, but you are changing it, and state the reason you are changing it.

 

Let people know that the enforcement is changing, as opposed to changing without telling anyone, and punishing people for not being aware of how you are switching enforcement. You're giving people strikes for something that was allowed for years, as far as I understand.

[Alex]

18 minutes ago, Schirminator said:

To clarify, what if I have 5 nukes so I declare 5 wars. Then before I get enough MAPs to launch them, 3 get spied away. Am I at fault for the two wars that I didn't launch those nukes? I didn't intentionally slotfill but circumstances forced it to be that way. From the community reaction, its clear that this has never been called out during a global before and until now, was considered a valid war by everyone in the game.

Another strategy that's common is declaring several wars and one-shipping those wars for nation that don't have navy and suddenly they buy navy. The original intent there was to beige but the damage is relatively minimal. Now you can't one-ship an opponent who has 150 ships so you give up on it. But is that your fault and should those people also receive warnings for slot filling? Of course not.

I generally agree with you on this. This is where moderation discretion gets applied, and it may not always be possible to have the full context in front of me making these decisions.

[Prefonteen]

Sigh.

Which genius has been advising you this time alex?

7 years of random outbursts of idiotic moderating decisions during global wars, yet it took you a huge investigation by half the community to consider axing the most blatant and game-constricting cheating (npo) the game has seen.

Id say im disappointed but its par for the course.

Edited July 18, 2022 by Prefonteen

[katashimon13]

48 minutes ago, Alex said:

I wasn't online over the weekend, and going through a very large backlog of DMs and tickets on Discord now.

No - and the rules explicitly state this.

do.... the mods/other admin not help with that giant backlog at all? ........
i understand wanting to handle things your way but like... shirley some of it can be filtered with a bias toward heavy caution? like tiered moderation????

so lets say... someone knowingly filled spy slots multiple times.... lets say over the course of 2 weeks? and they were reported multiple times over the course of these 2 weeks.... how many warnings would they have on their nation... would they still be allowed to play?

the rules state that its an offense to assist the defending nation... if one is declaring for beige... it would be assisting the aggressor not the defender (at least with how wars actually go and there is no real even amount of slots in a set range)

rawr

[Kyubnyan]

44 minutes ago, Schirminator said:

To clarify, what if I have 5 nukes so I declare 5 wars. Then before I get enough MAPs to launch them, 3 get spied away. Am I at fault for the two wars that I didn't launch those nukes? I didn't intentionally slotfill but circumstances forced it to be that way. From the community reaction, its clear that this has never been called out during a global before and until now, was considered a valid war by everyone in the game.

Another strategy that's common is declaring several wars and one-shipping those wars for nation that don't have navy and suddenly they buy navy. The original intent there was to beige but the damage is relatively minimal. Now you can't one-ship an opponent who has 150 ships so you give up on it. But is that your fault and should those people also receive warnings for slot filling? Of course not.

Can confirm. If people building ships to the point where I can’t get an IT after declaring on them with little to no navy I wouldn’t attack either. I have employed this strat in many losing wars and it’s honestly baffling that it could be considered slot filling. This has huge implications on how moderation will be handled in future wars as well and this does not sit right with me.

[Dullard]

Alex is PAINFULLY out of touch with the community 

[Horsecock]

I don't believe for a second that a single Ro$e member with 0 military would declare attrition wars on multiple max military 700 infra HoF (who they're not even at war with) members with the honest intention of doing damage. Even the ones who did attacks only did so specifically to AVOID slot filling moderation. And yes, I'm arguing against my own benefit here, since having our slots filled massively helps us.

Edited July 18, 2022 by Horsecock

[Zei-Sakura Alsainn]

21 minutes ago, Horsecock said:

I don't believe for a second that a single Ro$e member with 0 military would declare attrition wars on multiple max military 700 infra HoF (who they're not even at war with) members with the honest intention of doing damage. Even the ones who did attacks only did so specifically to AVOID slot filling moderation. And yes, I'm arguing against my own benefit here, since having our slots filled massively helps us.

If we're not at war, why were you attacking as part of the enemies blitz and continue to do so?

 

Seems pretty clear to me you've been in it from the beginning, the fact you choose to maraud around and harass others while doing so or that because you declared less wars than fingers on a hand on HW people at one point isn't really a defense to that. 

 

[Horsecock]

1 minute ago, Zei-Sakura Alsainn said:

If we're not at war, why were you attacking as part of the enemies blitz and continue to do so?

For profit. That's what raiding is. We had information that a global war was imminent and chose to use it to our benefit, to take advantage and raid. If you know what a HoF war looks like, you know that this isn't it. For the record, as an alliance we made a total of 9b war profit (loot minus all expenses) in just the first 3 days of the war.

[His Holy Decagon]

Funniest part is that it takes moderation to prevent/address slot filling, and not the notion of it being scummy, frowned upon, and mocked by a majority of the community.

[Horsecock]

1 minute ago, His Holy Decagon said:

Funniest part is that it takes moderation to prevent/address slot filling, and not the notion of it being scummy, frowned upon, and mocked by a majority of the community.

Not sure if I agree with that one, so let's clarify what's happening here: Ro$e did NOT intend to slot fill, they did not specifically want to benefit the people they declared on by filling those people's defensive slots. The problem is that what some of them are doing is, strictly speaking, against the rules that have been well established for a few years now.

[KindaEpicMoah]

[Wren]

En yikes tm.

 

Edited July 18, 2022 by Wren
How to anger the gods.

[Horsecock]

Just out of interest, has anyone actually gotten banned for this?

[chad]

Just now, Horsecock said:

Just out of interest, has anyone actually gotten banned for this?

Currently no regarding this round of mod points being put out. 

[SleepingNinja]

18 minutes ago, Horsecock said:

Not sure if I agree with that one, so let's clarify what's happening here: Ro$e did NOT intend to slot fill, they did not specifically want to benefit the people they declared on by filling those people's defensive slots. The problem is that what some of them are doing is, strictly speaking, against the rules that have been well established for a few years now.

It's almost like Celestial might actually know this and are declaring attrition wars just to be annoying and spiteful. Kinda like how they're probably annoyed you "sided" with HW in the opening rounds.🤷‍♂️

[Horsecock]

7 minutes ago, SleepingNinja said:

It's almost like Celestial might actually know this and are declaring attrition wars just to be annoying and spiteful. Kinda like how they're probably annoyed you "sided" with HW in the opening rounds.🤷‍♂️

How is it annoying to have your slots filled? The annoyance here is that they're railing against the game admin for enforcing his rules.