[Closed] Run-by theft : punishable or not?

Discussion in 'Empire Help & Support' started by JesusPower2, Oct 3, 2015.

?

Can/Should staff be able investigate cases of run-by theft?

Yes, staff can already ban players for this. 0 vote(s) 0.0%
Yes, staff should have a way to enforce all EMC policies. 5 vote(s) 71.4%
No, because players are reponsible for 'proof', and that's impossible because they aren't staff. 0 vote(s) 0.0%
No, it's too difficult, so players should build walls and cower in fear. 0 vote(s) 0.0%
Yes, but items aren't returned in casese of theft, so players should still build walls. 0 vote(s) 0.0%
Potato! Why?...because SMP7. 3 vote(s) 42.9%
Multiple votes are allowed.
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  1. I'd like to ask for clarification from staff here. I think any reasonable person who reads the story below would say that, yes, this is clearly theft. The point that is unclear is whether or not staff are able to take action, or if because they lack the ability, EMC players should look to their own defenses. (Or perhaps both?)

    TL;DR
    Policies against theft are clear, and this case is clearly theft. Are staff able to enforce the rules here or should players look to themselves? (e.g. disable item pickup flag on their res, build walls/doors around their farms to prevent theft of drops while they're farming etc).

    ##

    The details:

    A player I know wanted to buy some iron. Because this player and I have common friends, I told her to come by and I'd give her a discount off my shop price. The area was clear, we stood off to the side of a teleport location, so I felt safe "tossing" her the blocks. How wrong I was. Just when I'd tossed the blocks onto the ground [Redacted] came running for them. I moved over them trying to pick them up, but because of bad luck he managed to get three stack of blocks. He took off and refused to give them back.

    I reported this but no action (that I can see) has been taken. This player of 140 days is not banned and I'm unlikely to get my iron back. At some point if/when he returns he'll have stacks of iron blocks waiting for him.
    Keliris likes this.
  2. Thats why I always do the pay first policy. You pay then I drop c: If I do not give them that is scamming and I get banned. Thats my way to protect myself from events like this.
  3. even then the buyer will have that problem
    you only safe yourself with that :/
  4. Well I can still be punished if I do not give the items to them. Saves them a bit of the issue also.
  5. First. It is a violation of the rules to publicly accuse (name) another player so I removed the player name from your post. Please remember this in the future.

    As to your concern. I understand your frustration and that is why we have flags for item drop and item pickup. These are your safeguards against this type of 'theft'. You can set the res to globally not allow item pickup and then add player flags to allow the specified player to pickup and conduct the trade.

    As for Staff and what we can do. Almost nothing. There is no way to prove that items were dropped and no way to prove they picked said items up. Sure, you can see this but we as Staff must have 100% proof to take action. So, unless someone admits to taking the things we have our hands tied.

    Again. This is why we created the extended residence flags to stop this type of issue but that means the burden is on you (or the res owner) to make sure the flags are set as desired.

    tl;dr - If it is on the ground it is basically free game. Protect your stuff with res flags.
  6. you can also use a chest and an access sign
    also 100% safe
  7. I'm sorry this happened to you but I appreciate you posting what happened as a warning to others that this behavior is occurring. I have never even thought of using the item pickup flag to prevent theft and I wouldn't have thought people could get away with this kind of behavior. I hope you turned the move flag for this person off.

    Don't let the bad apples ruin the game for you, there are so many really nice people on EMC.
    JesusPower2, Salmatic and Gawadrolt like this.
  8. Along with these two answers there is also /mail (player) In which the items will be delivered to your buyer, and only they can recover it as it's directly to them. Yes, this does cost r to send mail, but in reality they are another alternative way to keep the items safe from thief. I understand your frustration, but there are many alternatives that you can do that will prevent all of this.
  9. Thanks, MrSocks. I didn't mean this at all like a rant against staff. (I'm frustrated at the player and the situation, not staff.) What you just said answered my question. It's not a position I like, but I'll keep it in mind as I'm sure it will be quoted in the future.

    Yeah. In this case, the player who stole the items wasn't involved in the trade. He saw a trade between two other players and decided he could profit.
    Keliris likes this.
  10. Wrote long post, deleted it. This irks me. Staff response is lack luster in this kind of encounter and not being able to name someone that obviously acted maliciously is just as frustrating. That's why I get so many pms about why I put my "If you don't have money do not bid, you know who you are" on my auctions.
  11. I understand there are ways for players to prevent this. Try to avoid the "blame the victim" train of thought. I was more asking if the anti-theft policy was enforceable, and the answer is that this is not considered theft.

    For comparison, consider locked chests in the frontier. Neglecting to lock a chest certainly doesn't make the contents fair game. So I felt the issue of "an item tossed to a player" deserved clarification. (which it received, thanks again)

    So I think we can close this thread as it has been answered.
  12. Sadly, it does make it 100% fair game as far as reporting goes :( Mods won't do a thing. I've reported near 50 frontier griefing incidents so far in EMC.. They will only track broken blocks, never the contents of a chest or the actions upon it. For some reason there is a lot of newer players that play Minecraft as if it's Skyrim, "Ooo! Chests, must loot! Can't help it, need 24 wooden Hoes so bad..." It makes it really hard to keep a public farm stocked (or to run a large outpost). It also means theres a ton of newer players that would be banned right now if they tracked those things.

    On the plus side... You can report harassment and people can get temp banned for that. If they are going out of their way to continue and harass you and a mod witnesses it. So if the mod was on, and they saw the incident take place and the person was taunting you on general about it... They might take action against them. They would most likely not be asked or forced to return the items though.
    JesusPower2 likes this.
  13. I think it's kind of unreasonable to expect anyone selling anything to have to take a flag from everyone and give a flag to buyer, drop it, then reverse everything once again just to throw a stack or two of simple items. /mail is an auction but it gets kind of expensive when you have multiple slots to send. I don't know if it's even possible to have a good way to do it so yeah. It's not a great way to do it but there really isn't any way I can think of that would be better.
    JesusPower2 and MrsWishes like this.
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