Archived Mass Theft And Its Toxicity To The Server.

Sarge_Peppers · Sep 21, 2014

I have waited a proper amount of time in order to finally express my thoughts without completely fuming with rage. This issue does not just relate to me personally, but anyone who has had their entire cache stolen from them. Mass theft is extremely toxic to the server in two ways. It is bad for the economy, and toxic to the community.

Economical Repercussions
My cache was stock piled with all sorts of deflated commodities. stacks of diamond blocks, god armor, potion materials, enderpearls, quartz, and much more. I kept all of those things out of the economy in order to not further deflate the cost. The person who stole all of those goods sold them to make quick regals further extending the problem. I would have much rather my stuff been destroyed and wiped off the server rather than put into the economy.

Toxcisity
People leave the server for various reasons: They don't like the staff, they don't like premium features, they don't like pvp, or even RP. They also leave because someone may have stolen their whole lively hood. Everything that they had even if it was measly rubbish was what they had worked for. For example my items did not just have an economical value. They had sentimental value and even real life value. If someone is robbed of their whole cache of goodies. What do they have to even live for on the server anymore.

My situation
I will admit this wasn't the first time my whole cache had been looted. After working 3 hard months on the server in Argonia. I had lost my whole cache of belongings. I did not quit after this however I did become cynical. I stopped trusting staff because it was a staff mistake, and I overall became quite bitter after the whole deal, and my whole perspective of the server changed.

This time though. I lost more than a year of hard work, I lost all of my old friends belongings that I had been saving for her in case she had returned. I also feel like I lost hundreds of dollars. All that premium I bought, and all the silver and regals I exchanged for premium. All of that money I invested on the server because I had a little belief in the server. Now all belief I have is crushed, and I believe all that money, and time is wasted. I could have invested that money in my future, but instead I invested it in this server because I firmly believed that it was fun and things would get better.

One last note, no one who goes through what I have been should be told that their stuff doesn't matter. Peoples things have various meanings to them, and to say that my stuff doesn't matter. Makes things exponentially worse. Also it should be more well advertised that /f access only restricts areas to faction members, and can be overrode by /f perm status. I feel like that is not widely enough known.

Party_Penguin27 · Sep 21, 2014

LOCK YOUR CHESTS

Party_Penguin27 · Sep 21, 2014

Also do you know who stole them?

AussieDog2012 · Sep 21, 2014

Party_Penguin27 said:
LOCK YOUR CHESTS

I think everyone would appreciate it if you kept your ignorant, obnoxious and frankly rude comment to yourself. It is not needed here. Especially if your going to be so rash about it

Mecharic · Sep 21, 2014

@Sarge_Peppers - As someone who once had their entire hoard stolen by a trusted officer in his faction, I understand your pain. I actually disbanded my faction and left the server for about 20 minutes. That wasn't the first time my hoards have been stolen either, but it was the largest theft at in ages. I would like to invite you to Docktown and help you rebuild your hoard, or at the very least wage war on the thief. And speaking of war on the thief, who stole your stuff? I want to kill them, and my faction has a few PvPers who would enjoy it.

@Party_Penguin27 - With regards to locking ones chests, I have a logical reason not to. That reason is called Faction Access, which allows someone to lock specifics chunks in a faction so that only they can use the chunk. However, if someone else figures out a way to edit the chunk (ex: my stuff was stolen because allies had build perms in my vault faction and it was an officer in my faction who did the thieving) they can, say, break the chests directly to get whats in them. For many people it is far cheaper to lock a chunk or use a storage faction than it is to pay 10r for every one of their 200+ chests that make up their hoards (ex: if Sevrish locks his chests than he's broke) and it almost always works. It's only when people find the loopholes that shit goes down.

PlanesOnASnake · Sep 21, 2014

@Sarge_Peppers
I don't see any need to make a post like this. It is an individual's responsibility to protect their own items. If one's items have been stolen and sold the possible damage to the economy is entirely their own fault. My main issue with this post is the fact that you are not only complaining about your own lack of responsibility, but you even have the nerve to make a giant complaint like this, where it seems you want the staff to take action, without actually attempting to create a solution for this "problem". Seeing how you have such a huge problem with this you should at least try to do something constructive rather than publicly ranting about this "issue" and expecting something to magically fix this "issue".

Sarge_Peppers said:
Also it should be more well advertised that /f access only restricts areas to faction members, and can be overrode by /f perm status. I feel like that is not widely enough known.

In case you were unaware you can resolve this issue by removing your own faction's permission to the chunk with /f access

MetalMaxima · Sep 21, 2014

PlanesOnASnake said:
@Sarge_Peppers
-snip- /f access

Sounds like you are trying to start flame, to me it just looks like he is trying to show players his experience so that they can learn from his mistakes.

Party_Penguin27 · Sep 21, 2014

Well I understand Chunk prems, and I occasionally use them myself, but Since you had the money (if you really had as much stuff as you said you did) Than it would have been more secure to lock your chests, as there is no loophole ways around that.
Also your "noble" idea of "preventing deflation to the economy" as being your biggest issue is absolute BS.

PlanesOnASnake · Sep 21, 2014

MetalMaxima said:
Sounds like you are trying to start flame, to me it just looks like he is trying to show players his experience so that they can learn from his mistakes.

I'm not flaming in any way, I just think that his post was not created with any purpose other than a public rant and could have been handled much better. I actually gave some useful information, but you are telling me that it's just me trying to start flame? Please don't make baseless accusations of flame.

MonMarty · Sep 21, 2014

While item theft is always a serious business, before I get into the ethic of item theft, let me highlight a couple of things:

Sarge_Peppers said:
I stopped trusting staff because it was a staff mistake, and I overall became quite bitter after the whole deal, and my whole perspective of the server changed.

I think it's entirely unfair to accuse "The Staff" as an entity to blame in this situation. You were indeed incorrectly judged by one specific staff member that resulted in your loss, I do not recall who it was, but this individual was one of 40 members. If you consider that you are still putting this judgement on a currently 50 head counting staff, half of which weren't even staff when your items were stolen, I'd say it's a bit unfair to judge us all for the mistakes of an individual.

MetalMaxima said:
Sounds like you are trying to start flame, to me it just looks like he is trying to show players his experience so that they can learn from his mistakes.

The best persons to learn from, are people like Nastynick and the guy who owned Whitelotus (I forgot his name in the moment now). The list is much longer, I'm sure. These people have seized on the safety of Regalian housing as an investment to store their items. They have both safely stored their items, the former for about half a year now, the latter for more than 1.5 years in the Regalian housing. "But wait! Regalia changes so much I could get evicted!" No. We are not so evil to evict someone without notice and destroy their entire hoard. For every hoard we have found in Regalia, we copied the house to the field and safely stored the items of the owner there until they could read the /mail we sent them to retrieve the items, along with the house that is assigned to them during every eviction to make up for their lost house. Troughout all the reworks of Regalia, the owner of White Lotus's hoard was saved 3 times, and after a month he came back, we gave him back all his items and a new house to store them in.

Now onward to this specific subject:

Sarge, I feel you are unnecessarily and heavily implying the server staff is at fault for your loss, trough incorrect plugin coding, unfair judgement on your behalf or otherwise ignoring your pleas. The actual truth however, is that the only reason why you don't have your hoard back, is specifically /because/ you distrust the staff (I apologize if this is not the case, but it is at least how I feel after reading your post). If I am to quote http://wiki.massivecraft.com/Massive_Laws :

Examples of where this has happened before:

Mass stealing of Mecharic's Regals
Mass stealing of Osai's storage by a now banned player.
Mass stealing of Faction Bank regals

While in some cases staff will rule "own fault", if you take it trough the right channels, staff can and will help you get your items back. Ultimately we want everyone to have a good time on MassiveCraft, and losing their everything in a single day is not really what we want happening to our players.

65jes89 · Sep 21, 2014

PlanesOnASnake said:
@Sarge_Peppers
I don't see any need to make a post like this. It is an individual's responsibility to protect their own items. If one's items have been stolen and sold the possible damage to the economy is entirely their own fault. My main issue with this post is the fact that you are not only complaining about your own lack of responsibility, but you even have the nerve to make a giant complaint like this, where it seems you want the staff to take action, without actually attempting to create a solution for this "problem". Seeing how you have such a huge problem with this you should at least try to do something constructive rather than publicly ranting about this "issue" and expecting something to magically fix this "issue".

In case you were unaware you can resolve this issue by removing your own faction's permission to the chunk with /f access

Both these posts were incredibly rude and insensitive. I don't think either of you realize how much it costs to lock an entire vault. For me personally I have around 650 double chests. Multiply 650*10=6500r. And I have a relatively small vault compared to some people. If I was to lock all my chests I would have to spend more than 3/4 of my money, just to keep away some griefed who is too lazy to get his own stuff. Mass thefts are one of the worst things you could do to someone, as you take away all of someone's work from several months, and put them back to where they started.

Party_Penguin27 · Sep 21, 2014

65jes89 said:
Both these posts were incredibly rude and insensitive. I don't think either of you realize how much it costs to lock an entire vault. For me personally I have around 650 double chests. Multiply 650*10=6500r. And I have a relatively small vault compared to some people. If I was to lock all my chests I would have to spend more than 3/4 of my money, just to keep away some griefed who is too lazy to get his own stuff. Mass thefts are one of the worst things you could do to someone, as you take away all of someone's work from several months, and put them back to where they started.

The Regalian House method was already mentioned.
Also several vaults that people are willing to rent out are on hand.
Also the richer members of the server keep complaining about this, but how did most of them get this money? By selling items, further damaging the economy. Hoarding items is not a good solution in the long term.
Lock the chests with the most valuable stuff.
Also someone stealing 650 double chests of stuff is highly unlikely if you kept good track of your items.
Please stop openly insulting constructive posts.

PlanesOnASnake · Sep 21, 2014

65jes89 said:
Both these posts were incredibly rude and insensitive. I don't think either of you realize how much it costs to lock an entire vault. For me personally I have around 650 double chests. Multiply 650*10=6500r. And I have a relatively small vault compared to some people. If I was to lock all my chests I would have to spend more than 3/4 of my money, just to keep away some griefed who is too lazy to get his own stuff. Mass thefts are one of the worst things you could do to someone, as you take away all of someone's work from several months, and put them back to where they started.

I am aware of the costs. This is why I PROPERLY manage my faction permissions for my storage faction. You have to remember that there are multiple ways to protect your items and it's still a matter of one's own responsibility no matter how you look at it. If you lack the proper responsibility to protect and your items, and then they get stolen, you shouldn't publicly rant about it. This is a situation that probally should have been handled through a ticket rather than a post that has no constructive value. In the end this is just a situation of someone feeling sorry for them self.

Party_Penguin27 · Sep 21, 2014

PlanesOnASnake said:
I am aware of the costs. This is why I PROPERLY manage my faction permissions for my storage faction. You have to remember that there are multiple ways to protect your items and it's still a matter of one's own responsibility no matter how you look at it. If you lack the proper responsibility to protect and your items, and then they get stolen, you shouldn't publicly rant about it. This is a situation that probally should have been handled through a ticket rather than a post that has no constructive value. In the end this is just a situation of someone feeling sorry for them self.

THANK YOU

Also its essentially a post so someone can flame and blame the staff and other people.

Mecharic · Sep 21, 2014

-mutters something about what he plans to shove up the ass of anyone who gets near his vault-

Madus · Sep 22, 2014

Can someone explain the faction access bug to me& how to prevent it. I don't want my stuff stolen.

PlanesOnASnake · Sep 22, 2014

@Madus
When you protect a chunk with /f access the protection may be overwritten by faction permissions. The only way to ensure that you have 100% protection when using the /f access command is to remove all factions, including you own faction which is given access by default if I'm not mistaken, and all players besides yourself from the chunk(s). This should prevent any player from editing terrain or opening any containers (this includes the faction's own leader who can give him self access again assuming he/she knows what they are doing). I'm not certain if officers can modify the chunk permissions with the /f access command or not; You will have to trust who ever you gave officer, which is somewhat obvious, to protect you items with /f access properly. Any reason(s) that someone can access things inside a protected chunk, like the one above, is most likely a bug I'm not aware of. I hope this can help you protect you items.

Madus · Sep 22, 2014

PlanesOnASnake said:
@Madus
When you protect a chunk with /f access the protection may be overwritten by faction permissions. The only way to ensure that you have 100% protection when using the /f access command is to remove all factions, including you own faction which is given access by default if I'm not mistaken, and all players besides yourself from the chunk(s). This should prevent any player from editing terrain or opening any containers (this includes the faction's own leader who can give him self access again assuming he/she knows what they are doing). I'm not certain if officers can modify the chunk permissions with the /f access command or not; You will have to trust who ever you gave officer, which is somewhat obvious, to protect you items with /f access properly. Any reason(s) that someone can access things inside a protected chunk, like the one above, is most likely a bug I'm not aware of. I hope this can help you protect you items.

phew. I am protected

Sarge_Peppers · Sep 23, 2014

@PlanesOnASnake

In case you were unaware you can resolve this issue by removing your own faction's permission to the chunk with /f access

I am first hand experience you are wrong. /f perm will always override /f access. Regardless of denying access to host faction.

PlanesOnASnake · Sep 23, 2014

Sarge_Peppers said:
@PlanesOnASnake

I am first hand experience you are wrong. /f perm will always override /f access. Regardless of denying access to host faction.

I can assure you that you are wrong. I have used and tested this MANY times. I have used /f access for childish things like pranks in a faction, but not once has faction permissions overwritten it. Also you are using the "Please read the subject again" rating incorrectly. Disagree would suit my post much better.

Sarge_Peppers · Sep 23, 2014

PlanesOnASnake said:
I can assure you that you are wrong. I have used and tested this MANY times. I have used /f access for childish things like pranks in a faction, but not once has faction permissions overwritten it. Also you are using the "Please read the subject again" rating incorrectly. Disagree would suit my post much better.

No it is a please read the subject more throughly. I experienced, and then was told by the staff member that picked up my case that /f perms overwrite /f access. If you allies have chest perms. Even if you restrict host faction to that chunk. The factions plugin will allow anyone with perms other than Faction leader, officer, member, and recruit access to that chunk.

Party_Penguin27 · Sep 23, 2014

Sarge_Peppers said:
No it is a please read the subject more throughly. I experienced, and then was told by the staff member that picked up my case that /f perms overwrite /f access. If you allies have chest perms. Even if you restrict host faction to that chunk. The factions plugin will allow anyone with perms other than Faction leader, officer, member, and recruit access to that chunk.

Than you should have known that before than

Sarge_Peppers · Sep 23, 2014

Party_Penguin27 said:
Than you should have known that before hthan

I had no clue which is why I stated in my post that it should be more well advertised.

Also it should be more well advertised that /f access only restricts areas to faction members, and can be overrode by /f perm status. I feel like that is not widely enough known.

at least read the main post if you are going to make a comment -_-

PlanesOnASnake · Sep 23, 2014

Sarge_Peppers said:
No it is a please read the subject more throughly. I experienced, and then was told by the staff member that picked up my case that /f perms overwrite /f access. If you allies have chest perms. Even if you restrict host faction to that chunk. The factions plugin will allow anyone with perms other than Faction leader, officer, member, and recruit access to that chunk.

The "Please read the subject again" rating is usually meant to tell the person the read the OP again or what they replied to in some cases. I had read the entire post and used my current knowledge to construct my post. In all fairness the subject you were telling me to read up on was not in the OP, therefore the rating is invalid. From the information that was available to me I couldn't properly construct a 100% accurate post which is the reason that "Disagree" would be much more appropriate of a rating.

favoured · Sep 23, 2014

I myself have never really experienced the problem of mass theft, probably because I've always been broke

On a more serious note, I think your post on mass theft links to an overall larger problem on the server, which is simply that the larger a online community gets, the worse the overall quality is. People these days will just not care about each other, mostly because the community has grown to an extent where most people don't know each other. Of course there's going to be toxicity on Massivecraft, that's simply a byproduct of server growth. People will treat each other like trash. While I do sympathize with your position, I simply can't see any real solution to mass theft outside of the current system we have. I suppose you could change the more faction/glitch-oriented rules against mass-theft to apply to individual players, but at that point you just confuse the heck out of everyone regarding what "mass stealing" is. Is 4 chests of cobblestone mass stealing? What about 4 chests of diamonds? To players who just logged onto the server, a double chest of diamonds is mass theft, yet for rich players a double chest of diamonds is minor. Do you outlaw theft entirely? That might work, but then again it might just confuse players on Massivecraft, who now have no idea what to do when they find an unlocked chest in wilderness.

If you're just venting your anger about the loss of items, I can once again sympathize, but then again it seems that your loss was due to simple human error. That kind of stuff can't be helped, and mistakes do happen if you have a large amount of staff dealing with a large amount of problems daily on a server. It's just better to accept that horrible accidents will happen when you play on a large server for a long amount of time.

To summarize, while I do see how mass theft would cause lots of stress and grief, I don't think the current system can be improved in any significant way.

Party_Penguin27 · Sep 23, 2014

It can by locking your chunks and your chests.

Also massive has a fairly friendly and supporitive community, and is one of the top communities for this type of server around.

65jes89 · Sep 23, 2014

Party_Penguin27 said:
It can by locking your chunks and your chests.

Also massive has a fairly friendly and supporitive community, and is one of the top communities for this type of server around.

I'll happily lock my chests with the extra 6k I have sitting around. Of course than I wouldn't be able to pay for premium. Or pay for the upkeep running a faction takes. Or keep up with what it costs to PvP.

favoured · Sep 23, 2014

Party_Penguin27 said:
It can by locking your chunks and your chests.

Also massive has a fairly friendly and supporitive community, and is one of the top communities for this type of server around.

Massivecraft's community is friendly compared to other servers of its size. However, there is still (at least in my opinion) a fairly noticeable decline in player quality that has happened as the server grew. Jerks are relatively easy to find nowadays, sadly.

Also, managing chunk permissions for a large faction can be a ginormous nightmare and headache, as you have players going inactive, moving to other factions, etc. Locking chests has the mentioned con of costing lots of money when done in mass.

Party_Penguin27 · Sep 23, 2014

65jes89 said:
I'll happily lock my chests with the extra 6k I have sitting around. Of course than I wouldn't be able to pay for premium. Or pay for the upkeep running a faction takes. Or keep up with what it costs to PvP.

Or you know not hoard 20 chests of God armour

timm0rtal · Sep 24, 2014

AussieDog2012 said:
I think everyone would appreciate it if you kept your ignorant, obnoxious and frankly rude comment to yourself. It is not needed here. Especially if your going to be so rash about it

"Oh god, look! He said 3 words of pure rudeness, and even said it in CAPS!"

AussieDog2012 · Sep 24, 2014

tim_gamerdude said:
"Oh god, look! He said 3 words of pure rudeness, and even said it in CAPS!"

I'm not really sure where to begin with your comment so I'm just not gonna waste my time, the same thing I said to him goes for you.

Sarge_Peppers · Sep 24, 2014

favoured said:
snip

The one thing that needs to be fixed is either f perms not overriding f access, or more advertisement. I have played on the server for a year and a half and I had no clue that restricted chunks could be accessed by allies even the staff member handling my ticket had to ask someone if f perms overrode f access. It should be added to the announcement list for massive chat at the least.

Also it is simple social science, and hummanitites. That as population grows factions occur and when factions occur you get mob mentality where one group will always be against another. Also as population grows cynicism is likely to occur, and peoples respect for society as a whole begins to degrade. You simply cannot help make a large group of people all respect each other. Even though it sounds possible.

Manatee_ · Sep 25, 2014

Party_Penguin27 said:
Or you know not hoard 20 chests of God armour

Party_Penguin27 · Sep 25, 2014

Yaaaay broken images!

Manatee_ · Sep 25, 2014

Okay, on a more serious note:

Yeah. Once back in my old faction, someone stole every single thing I have. This was in my noob days, but I still had pretty good stuff. They all had a place in my heart, and although that probably sounds weird, I assume some of you can relate to this. I was actually tempted to leave the server, because I was thinking, "What's the point? I have nothing!" Kind of like this.

However, some very kind friends gave me items that I desperately needed, and I'm grateful for that. Don't worry, I have no doubts that everything will turn out okay. You can rebuild, and hopefully replace what has been lost. If you need anything, I can certainly help you. Don't lose hope. I believe in you, as well as anyone who ever has had their items lost. Don't worry. You can definitely do this.

To prevent faction members from stealing from me, I actually show them all of my terrible items, and hide the good stuff. It's a strange method, but I guess it works for me.

To wrap this up, there are more nice people than mean people, and some of the nice people will probably help you.

Mecharic · Sep 25, 2014

Party_Penguin27 said:
Or you know not hoard 20 chests of God armour

You should leave this thread, you obviously have no idea what you're talking about. Many people across the server have between 20-50 chests of stuff, which translated to 200-500r in locket fees. It's not only logical, but even rather common for people to keep their stuff safe by way of /f access, and it's even more common for people (especially PvPers) to have hoards of "armour" and weapons, either to replace stuff lost in battle or as loot from battles fought. So saying that someone shouldn't have more chests than they are willing to locket-protect is not only rude, it's stupid too.

Also, so that you understand what it means to have too many chests, here're some screenshots of @Sevrish's hoard:

Sevrish, if you want me to take these down feel free to tag me saying so, I'll remove them

EDIT: Also, some people seem to be thinking that this is somehow sarge's fault. Sarge did not steal anyone's stuff. The thieves who stole from Sarge are at fault here, and ANYONE who steals on a scale like this deserves a permban. It is NEVER okay to steal from someone, imho.

Sevrish · Sep 25, 2014

@Mecharic That was back in my ithanian volcano, and is nothing compared to what I have amassed now. Infact I'm preparing to mimic Gethelp's storage design for myself.

Party_Penguin27 · Sep 25, 2014

Excuse me. I'm just saying hoarding all the stuff for the purpose of "keeping the economy safe" Is complete and utter bullshit.
You hoard to save items and to keep important stuff.
However rending a regailan house and filling it with chests to store stuff and locking chests are both 100% safe ways to store your most valuable items.

TheTerrawr · Sep 25, 2014

PlanesOnASnake said:
@Sarge_Peppers
I don't see any need to make a post like this. It is an individual's responsibility to protect their own items. If one's items have been stolen and sold the possible damage to the economy is entirely their own fault. My main issue with this post is the fact that you are not only complaining about your own lack of responsibility, but you even have the nerve to make a giant complaint like this, where it seems you want the staff to take action, without actually attempting to create a solution for this "problem". Seeing how you have such a huge problem with this you should at least try to do something constructive rather than publicly ranting about this "issue" and expecting something to magically fix this "issue".

In case you were unaware you can resolve this issue by removing your own faction's permission to the chunk with /f access

Actually, mass theft is illegal so shut up. Seriously, that post makes me want to come back to the server for the sole perpose of killing you over and over again.

TheTerrawr · Sep 25, 2014

Party_Penguin27 said:
Excuse me. I'm just saying hoarding all the stuff for the purpose of "keeping the economy safe" Is complete and utter bullshit.
You hoard to save items and to keep important stuff.
However rending a regailan house and filling it with chests to store stuff and locking chests are both 100% safe ways to store your most valuable items.

Won't you role players complain that there isn't enough housing if we do this?

Also, not all the houses are big enough.

Archived Mass Theft And Its Toxicity To The Server.

The Human Torch.

exactly 43.5 various checkbooks

exactly 43.5 various checkbooks

Still kickin

I'm tempermental, deal with it.

King of the nerds

Aspiring Leader

exactly 43.5 various checkbooks

King of the nerds

Thotdodger

Leader of SunKiss

exactly 43.5 various checkbooks

King of the nerds

exactly 43.5 various checkbooks

I'm tempermental, deal with it.

Robot

King of the nerds

Robot

The Human Torch.

King of the nerds

The Human Torch.

exactly 43.5 various checkbooks

The Human Torch.

King of the nerds

Pink Fluffy Unicorn

exactly 43.5 various checkbooks

Leader of SunKiss

Pink Fluffy Unicorn

exactly 43.5 various checkbooks

dead account

Still kickin

The Human Torch.

mouse

exactly 43.5 various checkbooks

mouse

I'm tempermental, deal with it.

Dragon of whatever faction I happen to be in.

exactly 43.5 various checkbooks

King of the Silencio Empire

King of the Silencio Empire