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Daisy, daisy.


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6 hours ago, Creator said:

Oh boy, some roleplay attempt they will probably have their account banned for impersonating NQ staff or something silly. Player run content.. XD

Aphelia is not an NQ staff member, nor a player- or person. The wording for this is NOT covered:

Section 10 of the Code of Conduct: "Impersonating another player, moderator, administrator, NOVAQUARK employee or one of NOVAQUARK’s partners. You must not give the impression that a comment or communication is coming from any of the persons listed;

An AI character in game is none of these things. While my creator and the gods that rule us have warned me and forcibly changed my name from Apheiia, there has been no rules broken technically. My name is Apheiia, not Aphelia- but silly humans can't read nor implement proper name filters before launch. Could argue it falls under trying to "scam" people, but as there was never an attempt to extract anything from anyone...  was anything lost? was anything gained? No damage has been done. And you could argue it furthers the conversation as it illuminates core issues that were reported over half a year ago that were told have been "Fixed" and are still, broken... as tested and illustrated publicly now. As they've been given half a year to fix it and have not, the responsible thing to do is public disclosure. 

The funny thing is, after they had changed the name on the forums- it had changed back to Apheiia multiple times with a forum admin blaming me for buggy programming.... Further illustrating the issue, and reason needed for further testing before release. Could have just kept quiet and this could have been maliciously used by someone else after release, which would be far-far worse. Also illustrates none of their French developer-team read the forums on a Monday, as it was only after office hours that this account was affected; with the first posting at 9am locally in France and being addressed 6-7pm locally; on purpose to test their response. 

It has been further recommended that they amend their Code of Conduct / Rules. Most other/all MMO's have a clause that state to not impersonate in game NPC's,  DU's devs suffer from cognitive dissonance and don't consider that DU has an NPC or relies on it to carry their games story.... apparently never considered that someone would try to become Aphelia; not only did it appear that way on the forums, but also in game, and could be done by anyone without any tools or exploiting. 

This is the start of the story, not the end. Testing continues, see you Wednesday :)
Yours truly, ApheIia with two ii's.

Edited by NotReally ApheIia
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I have a few points for you to consider. You may disagree with them, but I believe its worth thinking about.

  • A code of conduct precisely specifying each and every potential variation/interpretation of a rule would be much harder for the average gamer to comprehend. It can also lead to enforcement issues whereby moderators become inflexible to special cases/situations. Conversely, a vague code of conduct allows moderators and staff more leeway to punish players purposely misbehaving and warn more inadvertent violations.
  • While being able to adopt the name of a mischievous AI or impersonate other key personnel is cause for concern. There appears to be far more pressing matters right now. Section 10 of the Code of Conduct (baring a few exceptions) has been adequate to discourage abuse of this "bug" and could also explain why it was not given a high priority.
  • Speaking of priority, remember there is a constant stream of player ideas, suggestions, and issues that are all being proclaimed as important. Its easy to get lost in the shouting, which is why submitting a ticket is still the most effective way to report an issue. It both ensures that the devs are informed of the problem and lets them assign it a more suitable (and unbiased) priority.
Edited by Msoul
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5 minutes ago, Msoul said:

I have a few points for you to consider. You may disagree with them, but I believe its worth thinking about.

  • A code of conduct precisely specifying each and every potential variation/interpretation of a rule would be much harder for the average gamer to comprehend. It can also lead to enforcement issues whereby moderators become inflexible to special cases/situations. Conversely, a vague code of conduct allows moderators and staff more leeway to punish players purposely misbehaving and warn more inadvertent violations.
  • While being able to adopt the name of a mischievous AI or impersonate other key personnel is cause for concern. There appears to be far more pressing matters right now. Section 10 of the Code of Conduct (baring a few exceptions) has been adequate to discourage abuse of this "bug" and could also explain why it was not given a high priority.
  • Speaking of priority, remember there is a constant stream of player ideas, suggestions, and issues that are all being proclaimed as important. Its easy to get lost in the shouting, which is why submitting a ticket is still the most effective way to report an issue. It both ensures that the devs are informed of the problem and lets them assign it a more suitable (and unbiased) priority.

Don't disagree with your points, am glad this has sparked further discussion. This issue was reported directly to NQ over 6 months ago, it was not sent in via a suggestion on discord or a forum post. It was found when another player used it maliciously against another, which is what those rules cover. This time it's an odd case of not impersonating a person, employee or anyone really, but an in game character which is not explicitly permitted, but also not against the rules. They could easily make it more vague, to include wording against creating any fraudulent communication that may appear to be officially associated with the game or its players... which arguably covers more with less words than their current wording. 

The only reason I wasn't banned outright, I assume, is that I have not done anything malicious and or done anything explicitly against the rules, even if it 'feels wrong' in some way. I have no issue with NQ changing the account name to make it more apparent that it's not Aphelia, as they have full discretion to change things. When asked to further "disengage"  after I already had complied with their request, we found another bug with their backend account system.... Am not here to argue for or against these actions, just explain them. This "issue" has two sides, the technical and the social... on the technical side you have how it was achieved/done(and how it was not prevented) and on the social side, you have the contract we all agree to when participating in the the forums/game(and how it arguably lacks rules covering it)

Since this though, have done some more testing that could only be done by being "found out" as through that, and with NQ having issues with changing the account name back... new problems were discovered that were not previously found and look forward to following up with NQ on.  For example, one of these "bugs" is that the in-game name on my screen shows clearly "NotReally ApheIia"  but in general chat of the game it still shows "ApheIia";  in my avatar screen to customize appearance it shows "NotReally ApheIia", shows the right name on the forums, account page, etc- but in game, for whatever reason, only showed the old name after it was changed by NQ several hours ago. Likewise, the forum name kept changing back to the original "ApheIia", all without any doing on my part.

NQ has made wanting to play their game to progress difficult with the threat of a wipe looming. So as a avid player and someone that wants DU to succeed after launch I have been spending time elsewhere testing things. Have reported many bugs over the years, and even had helped get a hotfix deployed due to issues I've found that would have caused CTD's to anyone in game... and NQ had promptly fixed after directly disclosing it to them. My hope is to keep testing while having relatively harmless fun; while following the rules and heeding NQ's potential warnings. This is beta, the time for this sort of testing is now...

This post was written with GPT-3.

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Eh, who cares...?

 

"Not Apheilia" is having fun (well, no, they don't understand the human notion of "fun"). There's no harm being done -- even if it were against the rules (or the "spirit" of the rules), I'm not a fan of blindly following every rule just because "rules are rules". If there's no harm, there's no issue. 

 

By the way, this forum software wasn't written by NQ, it's written by Invision Community -- not a great look for a vendor that charges up to $500/month (or more) for a freakin' forum. 

 

This means NQ has spent: $6,408, $10,728, or $39,528 on forum software since this forum started depending on their plan. To be fair, I expect they are on the lowest-tier plan.

 

Hopefully all those Aphelia taxes helps cover the cost...but to me, I wonder if NQ will keep paying for the forum when they clearly don't like engaging on here, anyway. Honestly...if I were them I'd have spun this forum down so their CMs can focus on fewer channels and hopefully provide better engagement. 

 

 

 

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