- Joined
- Dec 14, 2007
- Messages
- 405
Repost from the old forums, quoted from Azzer - http://www.bushtarion.com/forums_old/vi ... hp?t=18124
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It's been made blatantly clear we need a rulebook, or as close as we can get to one. ATM all we have is a "EULA", being used as a "rulebook" for a long time now, but really is more just "Terms and agreements", and something that (apparently) stops people sueing me when they lose their job because they stayed home all day to play Bushtarion.
Initially, I think what's needed is anyone posting in this thread to try and think up any "rules" they can (please try check somebody else hasn't already said it) - mainly the "don't"s, but if something is a grey area/unclear/something people ask a lot, maybe posting a few "can do's" is good too.
I'll start the ball rolling with just a few of the more obvious ones, and hopefully if we get a lot of data here, I (or somebody else) can turn it in to a Wiki page where the formatting and nature of it can be modified, and people can add/modify the rules on a nicer to use Wiki entry for a while then. It might be that this simply "won't work" - that it's too hard to really write a rulebook fair to everyone, that tells people what they can't do, but that never limits or threatens a player that is playing innocently (but perhaps just trying to play "differently").
NOTE: This is about rules. Not about actual gameplay changes. Please don't suggest things that need to change in the game, but instead, suggest rules - in other words, things people might/can currently do but should not do because it's "naughty"
* You cannot have more than 1 account - an account being your "username" you use to log in with. If you want to change your email address or nickname, you can do that from the portal. You cannot change your username once registered.
* You cannot ever use somebody elses account at all (by logging on to it as them, or simply controlling it after they logged in themselves).
* You cannot ever let somebody else access your account at all (by letting them log on as your account, or letting them control your account after logging on to it yourself).
* You cannot share your username and password with any other person.
* You cannot threaten anyone in a personal nature - threats should be limited almost as "roleplay", from one company to another, eg "All your gardeners are going to die" is ok, "I'm going to find out where you live and beat you up" is definitely not.
* You cannot use macros, bots, triggers, scripts or anything like that to automate your game for you. Automation refers to interacting with the game without requiring you to manually "process" each action. Something which detects incoming for you and sends your staff away would be illegal. Something which detects when it is sunny and plants your stuff for you is illegal (etc.). Something which plants all your seeds for you when you click a "plant all" button on your screen yourself is ok.
* You can use an "auto-refresh" (that does nothing beyond reloading the webpage you yourself have already gone to, and as long as there is no software that is reading/interpreting/logging/interactive with etc. that page at all). Basically this must be doing nothing more than if you had sat there and clicked "refresh" yourself every 10 minutes. Auto-refreshing for more than 2 hours is not allowed (you must have returned from wherever you'd gone!). Auto-refreshing a page quicker than once every 1 minute is not allowed.
* You cannot attack any other player if the attack has been "staged" at all - in other words, if the person you are attacking has somehow "agreed" to you attacking them, like a mutual attack. This especially refers to times when this is used in an abusive manner - to trade "free land" with people, to get "free troops" through use of bribing, to gain easy effectiveness, bounty, or lawfulness, to get a bounty removed from your own head, to get anti-rape to come when it wouldn't have done otherwise, to make a valid attacker lose lawfulness when they would have gained it, etc. etc.
* You cannot "news spam" a person - this refers to either constantly attacking/defending/recalling an ID over and over again, constantly donating alliance money in small amounts many many times (when one donation that was larger would have sufficed), or constantly scanning an ID (with any of the intelligence systems) to generate lots of "detected intelligence" news.
There's a few to start the ball rolling, let's see if we can get something productive out of all the recent debates on EULA, rule bending, one rule for some different for others etc. (and remember, something you think is/should be a rule, others might not, ultimately the responsibility lies with me to decide what should be a rule, and you to decide if you can play a game with those rules in place!)
Edit: I'll try and add particularly good/obvious rules as and when I see them posted here.
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It's been made blatantly clear we need a rulebook, or as close as we can get to one. ATM all we have is a "EULA", being used as a "rulebook" for a long time now, but really is more just "Terms and agreements", and something that (apparently) stops people sueing me when they lose their job because they stayed home all day to play Bushtarion.
Initially, I think what's needed is anyone posting in this thread to try and think up any "rules" they can (please try check somebody else hasn't already said it) - mainly the "don't"s, but if something is a grey area/unclear/something people ask a lot, maybe posting a few "can do's" is good too.
I'll start the ball rolling with just a few of the more obvious ones, and hopefully if we get a lot of data here, I (or somebody else) can turn it in to a Wiki page where the formatting and nature of it can be modified, and people can add/modify the rules on a nicer to use Wiki entry for a while then. It might be that this simply "won't work" - that it's too hard to really write a rulebook fair to everyone, that tells people what they can't do, but that never limits or threatens a player that is playing innocently (but perhaps just trying to play "differently").
NOTE: This is about rules. Not about actual gameplay changes. Please don't suggest things that need to change in the game, but instead, suggest rules - in other words, things people might/can currently do but should not do because it's "naughty"
* You cannot have more than 1 account - an account being your "username" you use to log in with. If you want to change your email address or nickname, you can do that from the portal. You cannot change your username once registered.
* You cannot ever use somebody elses account at all (by logging on to it as them, or simply controlling it after they logged in themselves).
* You cannot ever let somebody else access your account at all (by letting them log on as your account, or letting them control your account after logging on to it yourself).
* You cannot share your username and password with any other person.
* You cannot threaten anyone in a personal nature - threats should be limited almost as "roleplay", from one company to another, eg "All your gardeners are going to die" is ok, "I'm going to find out where you live and beat you up" is definitely not.
* You cannot use macros, bots, triggers, scripts or anything like that to automate your game for you. Automation refers to interacting with the game without requiring you to manually "process" each action. Something which detects incoming for you and sends your staff away would be illegal. Something which detects when it is sunny and plants your stuff for you is illegal (etc.). Something which plants all your seeds for you when you click a "plant all" button on your screen yourself is ok.
* You can use an "auto-refresh" (that does nothing beyond reloading the webpage you yourself have already gone to, and as long as there is no software that is reading/interpreting/logging/interactive with etc. that page at all). Basically this must be doing nothing more than if you had sat there and clicked "refresh" yourself every 10 minutes. Auto-refreshing for more than 2 hours is not allowed (you must have returned from wherever you'd gone!). Auto-refreshing a page quicker than once every 1 minute is not allowed.
* You cannot attack any other player if the attack has been "staged" at all - in other words, if the person you are attacking has somehow "agreed" to you attacking them, like a mutual attack. This especially refers to times when this is used in an abusive manner - to trade "free land" with people, to get "free troops" through use of bribing, to gain easy effectiveness, bounty, or lawfulness, to get a bounty removed from your own head, to get anti-rape to come when it wouldn't have done otherwise, to make a valid attacker lose lawfulness when they would have gained it, etc. etc.
* You cannot "news spam" a person - this refers to either constantly attacking/defending/recalling an ID over and over again, constantly donating alliance money in small amounts many many times (when one donation that was larger would have sufficed), or constantly scanning an ID (with any of the intelligence systems) to generate lots of "detected intelligence" news.
There's a few to start the ball rolling, let's see if we can get something productive out of all the recent debates on EULA, rule bending, one rule for some different for others etc.
(and remember, something you think is/should be a rule, others might not, ultimately the responsibility lies with me to decide what should be a rule, and you to decide if you can play a game with those rules in place!)Edit: I'll try and add particularly good/obvious rules as and when I see them posted here.