Walkers
Member
June 17th, 2018
- The incident being described below took place in a battle on June 12th, 2018. You can find the EldritchBot Log here: https://eldritchbot.com/fight?id=ryfMhn6l7.
- To add to that, Walkers managed to record the fight in question. The video is viewable here: .
- Lastly the herein referenced pictures are compiled into an IMGUR album that can be viewed here: https://imgur.com/a/KN2zbar.
- This post has been created collaboratively by leaders of The Elysian Pact.
Approximately 5 minutes into the battle, Walkers was situated in a tree away from view of people, he was invisible (but still wearing armor). Walkers spotted Kaphox walking around the tree attempting to hide that he could clearly see Walkers, before dropping down to him and then engaging him. The combination of these facts: 1) that Walkers was hiding out of sight, 2) invisible (though still wearing armor), and 3) Kaphox’s suspicious circling of his location, before attacking, led Walkers to believe that Kaphox may be using some sort of radar or map that reveals player locations. Incidentally, Magpieman, was in the voice chat with us when this occurred, and Walkers asked him if Kaphox could be screenshared. During this point, a few screenshots (Pictures 1-4) were revealed from Malen that highlighted previous suspicions that Kaphox had been using a radar in previous fights, including one where Malen directly confronted Kaphox, but appeared to act as if he did not understand what Malen was saying. Magpieman conceded that if Walkers had a high degree of confidence that Kaphox may be using something, they could screenshare him. As a result, Kaphox was messaged to not log off the server by Skuhoo, 18 seconds later Kaphox disconnected from the server. After some conversation, Kaphox mentioned that he was going to sleep. For those who know Kaphox this is very early for his usual sleep schedule. The next day Kaphox was hidden/showing as offline on Discord/Steam, which is very unusual for him, as he normally is around playing games (and in fact he was). Obviously this could be accredited to a myriad of reasons, but the timing is oddly coincidental. The suspicion is only compounded when one considers that as of the writing of this document, (June 17th, 2018 at 2:52pm EST - 5 days), Kaphox has still not logged back on to Loka. Something that, again, most who know him would agree, is quite odd.
The Administration’s Reaction:
Following the events of the 12th, Magpieman met in a voice chat with Malen and a few of us to go over the process of screen sharing with what was thought to be the intent to force Kaphox to be screenshared on the 13th. To our knowledge this has not happened. Bearing that in mind, Walkers confronted Cryptite to try to figure out what was going on, and something problematic came of it. The first issue revolves around this (Picture 5):
[18:48] Cryptite: We failed to have a freeze command for this circumstance; that's on us
[18:59] Cryptite: We're not banning him because we failed to freeze/ss him
The problem we see with this is that Cryptite’s reasoning here is not an adequate justification to not punish players in the context of this situation. Sadly, the reality is you cannot allow excuses for such a thing. There is no proof that they did not see the message telling them to not log off and thus could be avoiding it. In actuality, all that can be seen is the fact that Kaphox was told not to log out and he did so 20 seconds after. Plenty of time to see the message and go "oh no what do I do," and then log. If you allow excuses once, then you have to keep allowing them, at which point it then becomes elementary to avoid a screen share by saying 'oh I didn't see' or 'oh there's a storm, sorry' (an excuse that was accepted by the administration) and etc. Yes, the server has failed to implement a plugin that freezes and alerts players to such a thing, but the server continues to fail if nothing is followed up on shortly, or if they tell players to get over their concerns rather than discuss them. As soon as someone logs out, they can start removing/hiding most if not all evidence of foul play. Lastly, this is arguably irrelevant to Kaphox’s situation. Having a freeze command would not necessarily have prevented him from logging out (if we are to believe he closed his Minecraft without paying attention or to avoid a screen share). In which case, we are back to the same problem. In addition to the above comments, we took issue with the following mentality:
[18:54] Cryptite: Kaph will either continue to hack and get caught and be banned
[18:54] Cryptite: or he will stop hacking and, great, now he's not a hacker anymore
[18:54] Cryptite: or he won't come on Loka anymore
[18:54] Cryptite: and then he'll also not be an issue
These few lines can practically be summed up in this: “if he doesn’t log on then it isn’t a problem.” In a few words, this is a horrendous mentality and practice. First, how do you say that to the community that is negatively affected by the player’s actions (speaking in a more general scope)? Enforcement of rules and follow-through with punishments builds trust with the community and gives them faith in that server’s ability to be run successfully and in a healthy way. The lack of that disappoints players and leads them to believe that either the administration does not care or that they cannot be trusted, in some cases both. In either case, it ultimately causes players to move on to other servers. On top of that, if that person in question does end up coming back, who is to say that the administration will: 1) then issue a punishment and 2) be able to find anything incriminating if they then decide to do a screen share. This entire situation has been made that much more unpredictable and, frankly, worse, by the decision to do nothing.
Request:
Kaphox should be screenshared, all relevant files and folders inspected. If any of his files/folders were updated since logging, he needs to explain why they were changed, as Kaphox was attempting to appear offline since this incident he had no reason to change anything related to Minecraft so none of this should be an issue if all is well. If this is not done, the administration should recognize that regardless of whether or not there was a freeze command, a screen share was blatantly avoided and it is common practice for that to result in a punishment equivalent to not passing a screen share.
Why did we spend 2 days writing this?
There are two reasons for this post. As has already been elaborated above, to rectify the administration’s failure to act in any way shape or form to enforce a very clear practice in a situation that demanded it. This is especially necessary given that Kaphox is now a member of the staff himself. Staff members should and must always be held to a higher standard than regular players. Loka has a history of retroactively enforcing rules and this case is absolutely no reason for exception. Consistent courses of action must be taken. The second reason is to highlight this specific issue. There is a habit of “preparing for the future” instead of acting when it is most required. It is our hope that this post will bring that to light and push the administration to do what is in Loka’s best interest.
- Walkers
- Sparky___
- DeceitfulPear
- Xlan
- Malen
- ArcherSquid
