Link: https://www.sylestia.com/forums/?thread=105585&page=9#83 Author: Nalar Time Posted: 3/24/2023 at 12:36 PM I have to express my concern over the screenshots provided. If this was a private discord server, as it is implied, then why is it fair to have screenshots putting their info out for everyone to see? Not to mention, encouraging people to go into private spaces, take screenshots, and then tell everyone about it isn't exactly something i can condone. Its tantamount to having someone take your diary and read it in front of a class of people. I would also like to question the validity of the screen shots. From what i am able to tell, someone DM'd krin with a bunch of cherry picked screenshots from a private server. How can we know that their intentions are good? How can we know that they are not just taking things out of context to get someone they are mad at in trouble?

At the end of the day, Sylestia is my business and I am the owner. As the owner, it is my responsibility to manage the business with the help of the other administrator/artists. We are all financially impacted by the state of Sylestia and have dozens of years invested into the site combined.

In a situation such as this, an executive decision has to be made where we consider what the best outcome can be. Given the circumstances here, we unanimously felt that this was our only option. The group of banned players was actively trying to recruit and sway neutral players to their side by twisting the truth and lying about why they were banned. Literally, some were mass sending out unsolicited PMs (on Sylestia) to dozens of the game's active players with the sole purpose of getting them to agree with them and to be against myself and Faiona. In that situation, they took away our option to handle this privately. They started involving the public sector of the community. There literally was no other option for us but to bring everything to light.

Regarding their "private" Discord. We did not invade their space. Members of these channels came forth to us, unprovoked, on their own volition. We simply responded to the information that was brought to us.

Regarding the validity of the screenshots, we took great measures to ensure 100% authenticity of the content. We did not merely receive tiny clipped snippets of this and that. We were shown the full chat logs - thousands of messages. Whether or not that is sufficient enough is for you to decide. But that's what it is.

I still feel like a lot of this is splitting hairs. How is it fair to punish someone for lowering prices or giving away things because they mentioned the sylestian economy in a group chat with friends, while someone else may independently decide to sell their max stats for 20k, just because they want to? Or someone deciding to give a team of super stats to a newbie out of kindness. Im failing to see the distinction there, regardless of intention, the result is the same, and given the infinite breeding mechanics in this game, I feel its inevitable for pets to lose value over time. As someone who primarily earns gold in game through breeding and selling max/super stats, thats just an inevitability that I accepted a long time ago. I cant control what other people choose to price their pets at, nor do I want to. If they purchased that pet, or put the time and effort into breeding them and they want to choose to price them really low, I feel that is their prerogative, regardless of whether their intention is to sell quickly, help others or change the economy.
Additionally, if a handful of players could bring down the economy of the entire site, then clearly it must be extremely fragile to begin with.
The whole concept of economy is built on supply and demand, as supply increases, demand drops and prices do too.

Wow, that's just awful to hear about players who would actually want to ruin such a great game. But thank you so much for doing whatever it takes to keep this game a safe and kind environment. Many of us players have your back krin <3

I totally get where you're coming from. It's impossible to police intent as an ongoing policy. But I think the larger issue is the very real, very harmful, and in some cases very dangerous harassment of admins/artists/players. That alone justifies a ban. It seems to me that Krin wanted to provide some evidence so that we didn't feel this was coming out of nowhere (especially with those players spreading false information about what happened and accusing Krin of banning them for being LGBT+, etc.). But Krin didn't want to share the messages of the super harmful things that happened (which I know really did happen, as some of them happened to me). So he opted to share the only screenshots he felt he could - which were about tanking the economy.

I really appreciate your attitude to players being able to sell things for whatever they want - that's my attitude as well. And I do see this discussion getting bogged down in details sometimes that do feel like splitting hairs (arguing about which metaphor is a valid comparison and which isn't, for example). So yeah, I totally see where you're coming from. I just feel like it might be valuable to re-centre this conversation a bit around the more important issues of harassment and threats, as (at least from my perspective) that's the real issue at hand here, and the real reason bans were necessary.

EDIT: I forgot to quote. This was in response to https://www.sylestia.com/forums/?thread=105585&page=14#132

Link: https://www.sylestia.com/forums/?thread=105585&page=13#121 Author: Nalar Time Posted: 3/24/2023 at 2:13 PM I must ask you who sounds more like a sheep to you; - the person blindly agreeing with whatever the authority is saying no matter how much poor judgment they are showing or - the person questioning information from an unreliable source with no evidence to back it up.

I tried not to respond to this because it is a bit low-brow.

But yes, I am not one to challenge authority, but I would know how to handle issues more maturely and dignifiedly. As a grown adult, I have better things to do with my time. Also, why would people post their private information there if it is unreliable? Completely stupid and an excellent way to get banned. Some kids these days are incredibly spoiled.

Do what you need to do, stay safe and thank you for still trying to discuss this with your player base(since if I was in the same situation, I wouldn't be able to keep my cool over being threatened the same way that you are)

Maybe, but based on the original thread and the screenshots, I dont see verifiable proof that every user who was banned was actually participating in that, so I choose to focus on what was posted. Krin stated that bans were issued because Regarding these recent bans, the core issue is that this group of players (about 10-20 players make up the main group of instigators) has been taking both short-term and long-term measures to destabilize the game's economy
If the core issue is the economy side of things, I feel at least some of the bans were unjustified. If airing my opinion gets me banned, so be it.

I second atriella.

Link: https://www.sylestia.com/forums/?thread=105585&page=14#137 Author: Atriella Time Posted: 3/24/2023 at 2:50 PM Maybe, but based on the original thread and the screenshots, I dont see verifiable proof that every user who was banned was actually participating in that, so I choose to focus on what was posted. Krin stated that bans were issued because Regarding these recent bans, the core issue is that this group of players (about 10-20 players make up the main group of instigators) has been taking both short-term and long-term measures to destabilize the game's economy If the core issue is the economy side of things, I feel at least some of the bans were unjustified. If airing my opinion gets me banned, so be it.

Your thought process is acceptable here but skewed toward the banned ones. I try to rationalize all perspectives, but they are part of a group mentality. The crew and the captains go down with their ship. Some may still swim to the surface, but hopefully, they learned something or have a good story. You can get fired or banned for just about anything, but in this case, I see it was for just enough reasons. Just think they got some of them. Those who remain should look at themself and question themselves. At the same time, people not involved should work to keep themselves safe from falling down a similar path. Seems simple enough to me.

That's fair. It's definitely hard to address an issue like this when any verifiable proof of the worst parts of it is not able to be shared for privacy reasons. And I can totally understand not wanting to take a stance against the players in question without that kind of proof. The only reason I'm willing to take so much on faith is because of my own personal experiences with several of these players, and I certainly don't expect anyone who hasn't been through that to just believe everything without proof. It's tricky all 'round and there are no easy answers unfortunately ):

I wouldn't worry about getting banned for speaking up. Obviously, I have no way to predict what the admins decide to do, but the fact that they're letting us discuss this in a public forum and listening to our concerns goes a long way to reassure me that users won't get banned for disagreeing with their decisions.

EDIT: Forgot to quote. This was in response to https://www.sylestia.com/forums/?thread=105585&page=14#137