May I ask what accounts got banned? I'm not part of the discord and I don't recognize these names. I had a max stat redye contest a while back where some players made redye palettes, and if one or more of the creators have been banned, I'm not sure if it's appropriate for me to use those palettes, especially since each were promised a free maxstat in their palette colors

I completely agree, I doubt we were shown the really bad things, particularly since some needs to be secret to protect the people who are impacted. I'm very glad that Krin and Fai took these steps,

In regards to those who were banned, it has shocked me. I've been talking to them, taking advice, trading with these people for years, to find out that they had other motives, and are giving bad advice to new people, along with harassing and threatening people. I've relied on Sylestia for so long, when my depression in acting up, and the wonderful community that is here. The only good thing I've found is being relieved a lot of the people I interact with aren't part of that.

I am really grateful most of my max stats did not come from any of them. The one that was, I'm not sure if I'm going to use it-even if I bought that max stat years ago. I got primo armour from Hiraeth, I thought they were doing something nice for the community, instead I'm horrified and hate that I fell for it, I'm definitely not keeping that piece. And honestly, as someone who close to finishing my first max stat pets, I'm really grateful that they won't be selling for 50k. It's taken me years to get here, and even getting all the philters is expensive. I don't want to make a lot of money, but enough to at least fund part of a new project.

Although as it has been said earlier, yes the economy is in danger simply due to rare pets and items being hoarded by those who were banned-however, its a much better outcome then those people bullying people onsite, or for those people to continue to threaten and harass people in their real lives. Eventually it will balance out, and while some projects may be limited, due to breeding stock, as new themes are released, new projects can be started.

I hope that people who are in the fringes of this group, and people they are trying to recruit will read this, and take a step back. Do you really want to be a person that threatens people and wants to harm other people?

Nobody else finds it strange that the timestamps on all these screenshots have been removed for "no reason," meaning there's a good chance these were cherry picked/posted out of order and/or out of context? There's literally highlighting that shows the person who took them hunting for specific words and we're only seeing snippets of conversation... I would never trust these if they were sent to me privately to try and discredit someone or a group of people, there's just not enough to go on in each screenshot.

Not to mention the fact that staff is comfortable with/condones the use of plants in user's private conversations and affairs, that makes me uncomfortable for sure... and the removed message on the first page of this forum thread makes me concerned that any attempts at questioning choices or motives or any form of pushback is just going to be met with further silencing instead of discussion or explanation....

There have also been some other pretty heavy allegations on this forum without any provided proof- and honestly all of it's left a bad taste in my mouth :( I don't really understand why we've had to resort to this and why it couldn't have been handled privately at the very least?? It seems very unprofessional that we've got staff making call-out posts or whatever you want to call them. I've never been a super active player on here but I'm still really disheartened to see how this has been dealt with and am not sure how the site's going to recover, or if it even can at this point.

Link: https://www.sylestia.com/forums/?thread=105585&page=5#50 Author: Azaragnar Time Posted: 3/24/2023 at 9:15 AM u got into a discord that didnt let you in and for getting people in trouble isnt that illegal like harassment or stalking something id ont know wouldnt you be in danger if there werw minors

As stated previously, we did not join any Discord channels. These screenshots were provided to us from a group of players (at first it actually was multiple groups of players unbeknownst to each other) who were members of these channels. We did not go out and seek this. It was brought to us from concerned players and once we were made aware of it, we began investigating further and taking appropriate actions.

Link: https://www.sylestia.com/forums/?thread=105585&page=6#51 Author: Slytherin7 Time Posted: 3/24/2023 at 9:17 AM May I ask what accounts got banned? I'm not part of the discord and I don't recognize these names. I had a max stat redye contest a while back where some players made redye palettes, and if one or more of the creators have been banned, I'm not sure if it's appropriate for me to use those palettes, especially since each were promised a free maxstat in their palette colors

We do not want to publicly name the actual players banned for various reasons. I feel that we have addressed the issue sufficiently without having to specifically call out any individuals involved more than we already have by sharing the screenshots.

thats what i think it looks weird and thats why i think it could be harasment and it is against tos anyway

Link: https://www.sylestia.com/forums/?thread=105585&page=6#53 Author: Theentirelegend Time Posted: 3/24/2023 at 9:19 AM Nobody else finds it strange that the timestamps on all these screenshots have been removed for "no reason," meaning there's a good chance these were cherry picked/posted out of order and/or out of context? There's literally highlighting that shows the person who took them hunting for specific words and we're only seeing snippets of conversation... I would never trust these if they were sent to me privately to try and discredit someone or a group of people, there's just not enough to go on in each screenshot. Not to mention the fact that staff is comfortable with/condones the use of plants in user's private conversations and affairs, that makes me uncomfortable for sure... and the removed message on the first page of this forum thread makes me concerned that any attempts at questioning choices or motives or any form of pushback is just going to be met with further silencing instead of discussion or explanation.... There have also been some other pretty heavy allegations on this forum without any provided proof- and honestly all of it's left a bad taste in my mouth :( I don't really understand why we've had to resort to this and why it couldn't have been handled privately at the very least?? It seems very unprofessional that we've got staff making call-out posts or whatever you want to call them. I've never been a super active player on here but I'm still really disheartened to see how this has been dealt with and am not sure how the site's going to recover, or if it even can at this point.

As mentioned in an earlier reply, the timestamps of the messages were only removed to hide the time that the screenshots were taken. This was to protect the identities of those who provided the screenshots. All of the screenshots in my post were from conversations since January.

Regarding context, Faiona and I had access to the full conversations. For obvious reasons, I was not going to dump thousands of Discord messages into this thread for an official announcement for Sylestia. Therefore, I only showed some of the key parts of the messages. You are of course entirely free to take that as you will. We are only doing this for transparency purposes as we feel it will yield a benefit to the community as a whole. If you do not believe us, that is fine and you are perfectly entitled to that opinion.

Regarding the removed post, it was posted by a banned playing using a secondary account. In addition to their message, it is strictly against the rules for a player to have multiple accounts - especially a banned player. For obvious reasons, this account was banned and their post was removed.

Regarding privacy, we attempted this back in December. We sent out a mass PM to a couple dozen players regarding concerning conduct and regarding the banned players from December. This unfortunately did not stop their actions, as they only have doubled down since then. Therefore, we were forced to take more drastic actions this time around.

A bit concerned due to the economy thing, while actively crashing and looking to harm it is absolutely something that should not be tolerated, is there now an unsaid threshold of whats "too low" a price? I know I've sold items low cost in the past for the sake of helping people catch up so they can participate more in events, wanting to help people out with projects, or in the case of pets either not knowing the market value or just wanting to give people gifts as thanks for kindness. If primo gear was a part that's especially worrying because I was considering selling it at similar prices, since I'd love to see more people reach endgame content and get vexxar rikkis for the sake of hopefully having more available for breedings and projects. The base cost of the gear is 76k in gold plus some grove mats, and due to extensive grove farming I have a pretty decent excess of almost all the mats/am close to cap, so i never really saw a problem with a pricetag of 200k. Would I get banned for doing that? Just very concerned due to how grey a precedent these actions set, truthfully scared to sell anything over fear it might get misconstrued as purposefully harming the economy when all I want is to hopefully bring more people into it through helping people get started towards selling things/projects of their own

Link: https://www.sylestia.com/forums/?thread=105585&page=6#58 Author: Serrorai Time Posted: 3/24/2023 at 9:30 AM A bit concerned due to the economy thing, while actively crashing and looking to harm it is absolutely something that should not be tolerated, is there now an unsaid threshold of whats "too low" a price? I know I've sold items low cost in the past for the sake of helping people catch up so they can participate more in events, wanting to help people out with projects, or in the case of pets either not knowing the market value or just wanting to give people gifts as thanks for kindness. If primo gear was a part that's especially worrying because I was considering selling it at similar prices, since I'd love to see more people reach endgame content and get vexxar rikkis for the sake of hopefully having more available for breedings and projects. The base cost of the gear is 76k in gold plus some grove mats, and due to extensive grove farming I have a pretty decent excess of almost all the mats/am close to cap, so i never really saw a problem with a pricetag of 200k. Would I get banned for doing that? Just very concerned due to how grey a precedent these actions set, truthfully scared to sell anything over fear it might get misconstrued as purposefully harming the economy when all I want is to hopefully bring more people into it through helping people get started towards selling things/projects of their own

No. We would not be looking to ban anyone for simply selling an item at a low price tag. Nobody was banned because of that simple reason. The reason that these players were banned was because of their intent. It was very clear and obvious to us that their intentions were malicious in nature; they sought to do harm to myself, my business, and its players. This is why they were all banned.

Player driven economies are always extremely finnicky in any game. In light of all of this, we will be looking to implement various controls/safeguards moving forward to help mitigate such abuse of the systems should such a situation arise again in the future. As we figure this out, we will most definitely share with the player base as changes are implemented.

Thank you for trying to be as transparent as possible with this. The harassment and risk of doxing is more than enough reason to ban these players. My well wishes go out to Krin and Faiona, and anyone else impacted by this.

While I understand the economic concerns, I am worried about what kind of precedent this might set and the paranoia it might inspire in players. I've always kept my breeding prices low, even for my rarer pets, and I'm pretty likely to sell my offspring for low prices, just to be nice/helpful, or just because I don't have room in my stables for them. I don't want to be afraid of selling for too low of prices, and I don't want other people afraid of buying from me because I don't have high prices. I feel like this is going to have long reaching effects on the attitudes of players toward giveaways, kindness, and setting their own prices.

I would potentially recommend making an edit to the original post specifying where you got the discord messages from, since that definitely unsettled me until I read further into the comments.