ghrey303 [totemo]

[ghrey303]

During the admin hunt, Rokku117 found a diamond-selling villager and asked in Whiteoak for us to come over. I took advantage of the situation, unsure if it was a bug or a bonus. Totemo deleted the villager and asked Rokku and I for diamonds, and we complied. It was revealed that the villager was an accident. No more was said to us about a ban until the actual event of the ban.

 

I apologize for the situation and would gladly return any and all diamonds. The event was exciting, but the diamonds themselves were meaningless to me. I admit I said I wanted to get diamonds before getting "caught." I was thinking about having been found out, and that language bled in. We were indeed caught and seemingly completely reprimanded. The ban that came afterwards was a sad surprise.

 

I'm thankful for Rokku for helping me with the appeal system. I understand that mods are extremely busy tonight, but the surprise ban and lack of communication has deeply concerned me...

 

I didn't intend to exploit the villager for an advantage over others. I said I intended to just squirrel them away. My actions on the server and this revision have revolved around preparing a one-stop shop for the public through the reed tower and the villager market. Villagers being broken recently have made that difficult. I hope to play on the server again soon. 

 

*Edit: I want to include my thoughts about asking Rokku and Switch to turn off dynmap. If it was indeed a bonus, then similar to the admin hunt, the finder would benefit. But if it was a bug, it was important that others weren't involved. It was meant to keep it an isolated event, and it kept the server from making an equally mad dash to abuse the villager as we did.

Edited December 12, 2013 by ghrey303

[totemo]

We're busy at the moment sorting out the exact details of what was done.

 

However, lack of communication would seem to be more your problem than my own, considering that you and Rokku117 exploited this mistake to the tune of nearly 7 stacks of diamond blocks and were not at all forthcoming with that information.

 

I will determine the exact details and discuss this more fully when my priorities allow.

[ghrey303]

We're busy at the moment sorting out the exact details of what was done.

 

However, lack of communication would seem to be more your problem than my own, considering that you and Rokku117 exploited this mistake to the tune of nearly 7 stacks of diamond blocks and were not at all forthcoming with that information.

 

I will determine the exact details and discuss this more fully when my priorities allow.

 

Thank you for the quick reply, totemo, and for your time. I apologize for not being forthcoming about the amount of diamonds we had. I assumed that you already knew the contents of our inventories. I just don't know what abilities the admins have on the servers. I thought that the amount of diamonds you asked for was somehow correlated to how many diamonds we had on us, as I knew that Rokku had more than me. You requested that we give you diamonds in public chat. This made me believe that the incident was not as severe as it actually was, leading me to believe that the exploit was in some way forgiven, and that we had been reprimanded as you saw fit. I apologize again for exploiting the villager.

[ghrey303]

BUMP; Hope to hear from you soon, totemo. 

[totemo]

Here are what I see as the facts of this matter, reconstructed from the server logs and my own recollection:

 

•  To set up the Shopkeepers plugin on PvE, I copied the configuration folder from testing.  This had the unfortunate and unintended consequence of copying some "test" villagers to PvE.


•  The villagers were located approximately 700 blocks from spawn, and therefore their presence went unnoticed by the staff.


•  One of the test trades was to sell diamonds for 1 dirt apiece.


•  Rokku117 found the villagers and called ghrey303 to bring dirt to trade.  They also excavated dirt from the area surrounding the Shopkeeper villagers.


•  Rokku117 made an attempt to contact tompreuss to ask about the trade.  However, the admin hunt was in progress and tompreuss was distracted by that and messages from other players.  Rokku117's message was vague and did not convey any sense of the severity of the issue with the villager.  It was easily misinterpreted as a query about the legitimate shopkeeper at spawn.

2013-12-11 22:46:23 | [Rokku117 -> tompreuss] What do we do about these villagers?

2013-12-11 22:46:33 | [tompreuss -> Rokku117] uh

2013-12-11 22:46:35 | [tompreuss -> Rokku117] busy

2013-12-11 22:46:38 | [Rokku117 -> tompreuss] Can we have them?

2013-12-11 22:46:44 | [tompreuss -> Rokku117] busy

2013-12-11 22:46:48 | [Rokku117 -> tompreuss] ok...

2013-12-11 22:46:54 | [tompreuss -> Rokku117] admin hunt

2013-12-11 22:47:01 | [Rokku117 -> tompreuss] I know

•  Another player was also present, but did not use the trade and consequently was not banned. He in fact warned the others that it would be unwise to use the trade.


•  I discovered the use of the bogus trade in the Shopkeepers trading log file, teleport to Rokku117 and deleted the villagers.


•  I misread the log file, due to my unfamiliarity with the plugin, interpreting the number of trades executed as the number of items actually traded, and asked for that many diamonds to be refunded.  At which point I had initially thought the matter to be closed, with no significant harm done.


•  In reality, Rokku117 and ghrey303 had each acquired on the order of 1500 diamonds over the course of 18 minutes, trading dirt that they had on hand and what they excavated from the site.


•  When asked about the trade, I clarified in chat that:

2013-12-11 23:06:26 | <totemo> it was a mistake and obviously not intended

2013-12-11 23:06:35 | <Rokku117> Oh. Weird

2013-12-11 23:08:40 | <totemo> it was a test trade that got copied across by mistake

2013-12-11 23:08:44 | <Rokku117> Ahh ok

2013-12-11 23:08:46 | <Rokku117> lmao

• Immediately after that, Rokku117 decides to discuss the situation with ghrey303 "off the record":

2013-12-11 23:09:31 | ClanChat: [wofficers]<Rokku117> Ghrey do you have xfire or steam,?

2013-12-11 23:09:39 | ClanChat: [wofficers]<ghrey303> steam, yup!

...

2013-12-11 23:11:26 | ClanChat: [wofficers]<Rokku117> Then we shall talk where we arent being recorded

• Neither Rokku117 nor ghrey303 volunteered any information to staff about the number of diamonds that they had acquired.


• I subsequently discovered the full extent to which the trade had been utilised in other logs.


• ghrey303 did not return to his chests because of a desire to exploit the mistake as quickly as possible before they were caught:

2013-12-11 23:32:19 | ClanChat: [whiteoak]<Rokku117> Welp, i guess we need more dirt lol

2013-12-11 23:32:27 | ClanChat: [whiteoak]<ghrey303> I have a double chest still haha

2013-12-11 23:32:31 | ClanChat: [whiteoak]<Rokku117> D:

2013-12-11 23:32:36 | ClanChat: [whiteoak]<Rokku117> Why didnt you grab it!

2013-12-11 23:32:44 | ClanChat: [whiteoak]<Rokku117> Dont worry about it ;D

2013-12-11 23:32:48 | ClanChat: [whiteoak]<ghrey303> because I figured we would be caught by the time I got back

• When prompted as to whether he might not be telling me everything, Rokku117's response was obtuse.  He took a full 10 seconds to think about it:

2013-12-11 23:36:37 | [totemo -> Rokku117] do you need to tell me something mate?

2013-12-11 23:36:47 | [Rokku117 -> totemo] ?

• Rokku117 and ghrey303 were then banned to prevent them from moving any diamonds, which might complicate recovery.

 

To summarise: 

 

• Due to schedule pressure, mistakes were made in setting up the special villagers and in correcting those mistakes.


• Rokku117 and ghrey303 attempted to exploit the situation.


• Their communication to staff was ambiguous and staff were distracted by seemingly more important matters.

 

 

I've deliberated on this matter for longer than I would care to admit.  I've also consulted with all of the P admins at length, on several occasions over the last few days.  

 

One of my difficulties in making a decision on this is that the situation arose as a consequence of mistakes made by myself.  The heart of the matter, therefore, is to what degree the players are to be held responsible when such mistakes happen.

 

What I have concluded is that:

 

• Though I try to avoid them, mistakes will occasionally happen, particularly when people are under schedule pressure, as occurred with the update to 1.7.


• You took advantage of these mistakes.  Incidentally, I see that Rokku117 has decided to engage in rule lawyering in his appeal: you should by all means try that with a real world judge some time.  I'll quote from the PvE rules: "No use of bugs or exploits to gain an advantage over other players". It was a bug in our configuration. End of Story.


• I consider that bugs are, in fact, inevitable.  What matters is not whether they exist or who put them in, but how you as players deal with them.  In this instance, you attempted to exploit the situation to the maximum degree and did not volunteer any information that might have been utilised by staff to correct it.


• Both Rokku117 and ghrey303 assert in their appeals that they were unsure whether the trade was intended or not.  I have several thoughts about that:
  
  • Firstly, no reasonable Minecraft player who is familiar with PvE, as you both are, would consider a trade from dirt to diamonds to be balanced or in keeping with the style of play that the staff have configured.  If you wish to argue otherwise, I will be happy to replace all of your diamond gear with the equivalent number of dirt blocks.
  
  
  • Secondly, you both acted guiltily. It is clear that you were aware that what you were doing is wrong. Rokku117 decided to discuss what to do with the diamonds off the record; ghrey303 expressed his fear of "getting caught".
  
  
  
  
• Overall, you both acted in bad faith.  You could easily have avoided a ban by clear communication with staff and by not exploiting the mistake.  Ultimately, you gambled on not getting caught and being able to weasel out of it if you were.

 

I'm setting the ban duration to 2 weeks.  You can each open an appeal on the 25th of December.  Read the rules (http://nerd.nu/rules) in the meantime.

[ghrey303]

Thank you for your in-depth reply, totemo. I again apologize for the situation and wish it had turned out differently.

 

Is a 2 week ban necessary for this situation? I understand the complexity of the situation, but I particularly see it as a one-time, first-time offense that is in no way repeatable. I have not before and have no intentions of further hurting the server in the future, and I have spent time in the past 4 days reading through the rules page and thinking about this situation.

 

I want to express how Rokku and I did not intend to do harm to the server or gain an advantage over other players. First, as I said, I had no intention of using the diamonds, and I have stated how I viewed them as in themselves meaningless. The situation was seeing an unusual and exciting villager, and being carried away by the opportunity to do something as novel as trade dirt for diamonds. Out of context, that action is inherently harmful, as it introduces materials to the server that were illegitimate. In the situation, however, thoughts of future use weren't involved. The reason why I didn't want to grab a double chest of dirt is because that would be excessive, and take me away from this exciting event. It wasn't about accumulating diamonds for me, but actually getting to do the trade. The future thought of traveling all the way back to Whiteoak and back was not in my mind.

 

What was in my mind, however, was the event of being asked for diamonds after the villagers were removed. This made "being caught" far more salient to me than not wanting to travel back to Whiteoak, and I knew when typing that, that it wasn't the case, and would likely be used against me. That's why I brought it up in my appeal ahead of time, so as to address it. This is a good example of how I've not meant to deceive you throughout this situation. 

 

I said earlier that the event of the villagers being removed It was not my intention to use the diamonds, as the chat logs should show. I never intended to deceive you as well, thus acting in bad faith, especially considering how I assumed you knew the contents of our inventories. The entire situation felt too good to be true, and I was certainly confused when you asked for 19 diamonds compared to the diamonds I had acquired. At that point, I assumed you were for some reason allowing us to keep the diamonds; I didn't know any differently. The situation was exceptionally unusual, and I didn't have much to go on. I wish you had contacted me in the game before banning the both of us. I would have gladly given the diamonds back if I'd known you misread the logs of the Shopkeeper mod, and actually wanted all of our diamonds back. Despite the number of diamonds we had traded, again, no significant harm was done to the server, as none of the diamonds had been used. Only when we thought you had allowed us the diamonds did we think about what we would even do with that many diamonds. I suggested decoration, since that wouldn't, or at least shouldn't, actually impact the server's economy. It was all a confusing situation, and I felt that the ban was premature before any of us could wrap our heads around what happened. 

 

My intention was never to gain an advantage over other players through the use of the Shopkeeper, nor actively harm the server. Many of my actions on the server have been geared towards helping players while not breaking the economy, particularly working to provide a source of emeralds and villager trades for others. I've tried to prevent silk touch books from being abused by closing off our last paper trader, as one that was donated to us was killed while I was banned, likely due to a 1.7 baby zombie. I've tried to be helpful throughout my actions on the server. And by reading through the rules in the past few days, I've seen the rule about preventing excess item drops as it hurts server stability. I plan to install a switch that can turn off the daylight sensor powering the tower, should it become overly full so that items remain on the hoppers. That's the best solution I can think of for preventing excessive demands on the server right now.

 

This was a very unfortunate event, occurring during an exceptionally busy time for the server, with at least 3 admins called away on their responsibilities for the event, and during a time of high server population. I truly wish this could have gone differently, and I ask that you reconsider our 2 week ban. I have read through the rules many times, and hope to return to the server soon. I truly am sorry that this happened. I will certainly communicate with the staff if something like this should happen again.

[totemo]

The ban duration was set in consultation with the P admins, by comparison to the ban you would experience for using xray, which historically rarely gets close to even half that number of diamonds.  I leaned on the side of mercy, believe me.

 

 

 

First, as I said, I had no intention of using the diamonds, and I have stated how I viewed them as in themselves meaningless.

 

You seem to be looking back on this through vaguely rose-tinted glasses:

 

2013-12-11 23:36:11 | ClanChat: [whiteoak]<Rokku117> Yall ready to fight all the Dgs?
2013-12-11 23:36:21 | <Rokku117> :D
2013-12-11 23:36:25 | ClanChat: [whiteoak]<ghrey303> haha we should keep some for decoration
2013-12-11 23:36:30 | ClanChat: [whiteoak]<Rokku117> Blocks?
2013-12-11 23:36:39 | ClanChat: [whiteoak]<ghrey303> and/or dgs

Everything you said indicates an intention to use the diamonds to build or summon doppelgangers.

[totemo]

Moving this to closed.  I have no intention of wasting any more time on it.