Suggestions

Perhaps the most difficult aspect of the situation concerning the bans is analyzing the failures of them and offering suggestions to prevent such a situation from occurring in the future.

In that light, here are some suggestions presented to the players and City of Heroes staff in general.

1. When any such action is taken in the future by the City of Heroes staff, there should be both in-game and web-based (such as the official forum) notification given.

2. Criteria should be published that clearly defines what the staff considers "abuse" and the criteria should be the minimum they will accept. An example given by Positron is that if they said that they considered gaining four levels in 30 minutes to be abuse, then people would gain 4 levels in 31 minutes and argue that they had thus not committed abuse. I believe such arguments as specious as the City of Heroes staff could determine an amount of time they could "live with" - such as 16 hours to go from level one to level 50. Part of the act of compromise involves accepting a situation you would not prefer, as applicable to all sides. As it is, players are simply gaining whatever levels they deem sufficient and then not logging of their characters to inflate the timestamp serve to only further undermine the City of Heroes staff's authority.

3. The official forum policies should be revisited. As an example, while an argument can be made that the game's Customer Support section is the proper venue for disputes regarding account punishment or action, it can also be interpreted as serving to cover-up un-even moderation, such as if players simply use the forum to compare punishments for given offenses.

I can understand such action taken on posts which serve to complain about specific punishment as public posts on the official forum are not the proper venue, but posts which are either non-confrontational or which describe more widespread action should not be censured.

Indeed, in this particular instance, such a policy may have actually been detrimental to the City of Heroes staff as players who do not frequent the official forums often learned of the punishments from other players in-game, and thus may not have received a completely neutral view.

4. The City of Heroes staff should clarify their position regarding such behaviors as "farming", in order to produce a more educated paying-community. If the City of Heroes staff is, for example, opposed to "farming" then they should state as such and define "farming" to the best of their ability so that players (who pay to play) can make educated decisions regarding their continued such status as players or their actions that constitute farming as defined by the City of Heroes staff. As it is, there are some players who believe such actions never happened, which sets up another "them vs. us" grouping of those who know they did and those who (reasonably disbelieve based on the lack of evidence) that is only fostered by the continued official silence regarding the situation.

5. The City of Heroes staff should make such actions as necessary to serve to end evidenced strife among members of given extra- and self-defined communities, such as "farmers".

6. Human nature being what it is, an acknowledgement and public apology for the way the recent situation was handled on the part of the City of Heroes staff.

7. Some sort of formalized means for the players to interact with the City of Heroes staff should exist. Of some concern with such a means would be the perceived perception that those players who enjoyed such regular contact with the City of Heroes staff (i.e. the Event Committees) also faced heightened punitive actions against them by the City of Heroes staff.