Potentially Restoring Illegally Griefed Bases

[KoriJenkins]

Whether or not to include ban evaders who don't x-ray or dupe seems to be a point of contention for this.

So what if griefs by ban evaders are only reverted if they were done within a certain time period, or done by someone proven to have committed crimes 1 or 2 above? I feel like that would make the ban evasion question less gray.

[Burger]

I don't see any need to complicate things with all these caveats and statue of limitations and whatever. I'm sure Yukar would appreciate a simple, clear-cut rule without a bunch of stipulations and debate like:

- if a base was found and griefed by illegal means (ie x-rayed/exploited and destroyed with duped materials), then it will be restored

it's that simple

[KoriJenkins]

I don't see any need to complicate things with all these caveats and statue of limitations and whatever. I'm sure Yukar would appreciate a simple, clear-cut rule without a bunch of stipulations and debate like:

- if a base was found and griefed by illegal means (ie x-rayed/exploited and destroyed with duped materials), then it will be restored

it's that simple

Ban evasion is illegal. Actions taken by ban evaders wouldn't happen if they operated within the rules rather than trying to subvert jailtime.

[MisterStrawman]

2 suggestions I want to make:
-We should probably have some minimum radius around spawn within which this doesn't apply. My only reason is that it's just too chaotic to deal with it, plus if you build really close to spawn, you can pretty much expect to be griefed anyway, legally or otherwise. Most cheating is done in that area anyway, since there's some window of time between a new player joining and getting caught cheating. My initial suggestion is 5k, maybe 10k, but I'd like to open that for discussion.

-To keep things as simple as possible, I think we should only restore a base that is found through illegal means only (provably unambiguously, of course). Griefing and raiding a base is trivial once you know where it is, and it's really not stoppable once you have the coords, thus I don't think we should consider whether it was purely griefed through illegal means if it was found legitimately. Besides I don't expect there to be many cases where a base is found legitimately, but then griefed illegitimately. I'd imagine some of you might disagree with this, but this suggestion is an effort to greatly narrow down "gray area" cases.

As for what constitutes "illegal means", so long as we can come up with a complete definition, then I support the proposal. However I don't yet think this is an easy task. I think that as a standard, the cheating in question should be very directly to nothing other than whether it was essential to finding the base. We want to include things like exploits that find a player's coords, and x-raying portals. I don't think we should include player cheats to find gear, and with that gear finds a base otherwise legitimately. A ban evader shouldn't count unless the reason for the initial ban was directly related to finding the base. Much like the reason I don't think the griefing itself should be considered, a good standard might be to ask if a competent player could have done the same legitimately. Or perhaps to say, your base should be as safe from cheaters as it is from legit players. This is, of course, not considering pure luck, obviously there's a chance any legitimate player can find any base just by chance, so I'm sort of assuming there's a method to find a base.

This doesn't eliminate all the gray areas, but I think it helps to reduce them. This still leaves a lot to discuss. One case I thought of that I can't make up my mind on is if someone flies to a base. On one hand, using the standard from the previous paragraph, a legit player could have done the same with an elytra, but speed is relevant. If there were a hack where a player could fly fast enough to get hundred of thousands of blocks from spawn, they'd be able to cover a lot more ground and search for bases than a normal player. I don't really have an answer for this (and many other things), but I'd like to bring it up and see what everyone else thinks.

[MutualistManiac]

2 suggestions I want to make:
-We should probably have some minimum radius around spawn within which this doesn't apply. My only reason is that it's just too chaotic to deal with it, plus if you build really close to spawn, you can pretty much expect to be griefed anyway, legally or otherwise. Most cheating is done in that area anyway, since there's some window of time between a new player joining and getting caught cheating. My initial suggestion is 5k, maybe 10k, but I'd like to open that for discussion.

-To keep things as simple as possible, I think we should only restore a base that is found through illegal means only (provably unambiguously, of course). Griefing and raiding a base is trivial once you know where it is, and it's really not stoppable once you have the coords, thus I don't think we should consider whether it was purely griefed through illegal means if it was found legitimately. Besides I don't expect there to be many cases where a base is found legitimately, but then griefed illegitimately. I'd imagine some of you might disagree with this, but this suggestion is an effort to greatly narrow down "gray area" cases.

As for what constitutes "illegal means", so long as we can come up with a complete definition, then I support the proposal. However I don't yet think this is an easy task. I think that as a standard, the cheating in question should be very directly to nothing other than whether it was essential to finding the base. We want to include things like exploits that find a player's coords, and x-raying portals. I don't think we should include player cheats to find gear, and with that gear finds a base otherwise legitimately. A ban evader shouldn't count unless the reason for the initial ban was directly related to finding the base. Much like the reason I don't think the griefing itself should be considered, a good standard might be to ask if a competent player could have done the same legitimately. Or perhaps to say, your base should be as safe from cheaters as it is from legit players. This is, of course, not considering pure luck, obviously there's a chance any legitimate player can find any base just by chance, so I'm sort of assuming there's a method to find a base.

This doesn't eliminate all the gray areas, but I think it helps to reduce them. This still leaves a lot to discuss. One case I thought of that I can't make up my mind on is if someone flies to a base. On one hand, using the standard from the previous paragraph, a legit player could have done the same with an elytra, but speed is relevant. If there were a hack where a player could fly fast enough to get hundred of thousands of blocks from spawn, they'd be able to cover a lot more ground and search for bases than a normal player. I don't really have an answer for this (and many other things), but I'd like to bring it up and see what everyone else thinks.

Most people have expressed similar concerns, and I think we are all in agreement in what needs to be decerned. I think that my proposed distinctions that I outlined in my post on this topic covers most of them.

I think that such a distinction can be easily made by delineating between necessary grief items, and subordinate grief items. A base would be eligible for reversal if it was griefed using "necessary grief items". These would primarily include access to the base (coords) and materials needed to complete the grief (items directly causing damage to the base). Both of these conditions would need to be proven to have been used in the accused manner upon the base requesting reversal for the eligibility to be sustained. However, either condition (coords or items) would suffice for reversal if proven.

This broad principle of "necessary grief items" would be able to include any item (or coordinate) which was obtained illegally or used in an illegal manner. In this way, it would be a superior standard for rule-keeping when compared to the alternative which would be logging every single specific item which would be seen as not being allowed. If one obtained, through some unknown (but illegal) means, a cheat pickaxe and used it to grief a base. They would not only be banned as a result of creating such items, but the grief would be seen as eligible for reversal. Likewise, the use of duped items would result in this outcome as well. Also, if a group used duped TNT on a base, but only one or two among them created the duped items, the base would, by this principle, still be eligible for reversal as the important aspect here are the "necessary grief items" which resulted in the grief.

Given these parameters, we could reason that a base found via fly hacking would be eligible whereas one found by a hacker using aimbots at the time would not be as the flying was used to find the base in question. The same applies to the destruction of the base itself. If it was done with duped tnt then it is eligible, but if the player who griefed it just happened to have duped items that were not used on him then the base would not be eligible.

The further problem of certainty is an issue already on the server with relations to banning. If we are willing to accept a margin of error there then why not here either? and if we cannot accept either's margins now then should we not raise our skepticism towards all hacking claims? The suggestion was made that a distance limit should be implemented in this rule, but I think that this is not needed. If someone fly hacks it may be harder to catch them within 10k of spawn, but that should hardly make under 10k a hack free for all. The same effect could be achieved by simply increasing the burden of proof for eligibility, and this would not have the issue of looking over near spawn underground bases or portals.

[KoriJenkins]

2 suggestions I want to make:
-We should probably have some minimum radius around spawn within which this doesn't apply. My only reason is that it's just too chaotic to deal with it, plus if you build really close to spawn, you can pretty much expect to be griefed anyway, legally or otherwise. Most cheating is done in that area anyway, since there's some window of time between a new player joining and getting caught cheating. My initial suggestion is 5k, maybe 10k, but I'd like to open that for discussion.

-To keep things as simple as possible, I think we should only restore a base that is found through illegal means only (provably unambiguously, of course). Griefing and raiding a base is trivial once you know where it is, and it's really not stoppable once you have the coords, thus I don't think we should consider whether it was purely griefed through illegal means if it was found legitimately. Besides I don't expect there to be many cases where a base is found legitimately, but then griefed illegitimately. I'd imagine some of you might disagree with this, but this suggestion is an effort to greatly narrow down "gray area" cases.

As for what constitutes "illegal means", so long as we can come up with a complete definition, then I support the proposal. However I don't yet think this is an easy task. I think that as a standard, the cheating in question should be very directly to nothing other than whether it was essential to finding the base. We want to include things like exploits that find a player's coords, and x-raying portals. I don't think we should include player cheats to find gear, and with that gear finds a base otherwise legitimately. A ban evader shouldn't count unless the reason for the initial ban was directly related to finding the base. Much like the reason I don't think the griefing itself should be considered, a good standard might be to ask if a competent player could have done the same legitimately. Or perhaps to say, your base should be as safe from cheaters as it is from legit players. This is, of course, not considering pure luck, obviously there's a chance any legitimate player can find any base just by chance, so I'm sort of assuming there's a method to find a base.

This doesn't eliminate all the gray areas, but I think it helps to reduce them. This still leaves a lot to discuss. One case I thought of that I can't make up my mind on is if someone flies to a base. On one hand, using the standard from the previous paragraph, a legit player could have done the same with an elytra, but speed is relevant. If there were a hack where a player could fly fast enough to get hundred of thousands of blocks from spawn, they'd be able to cover a lot more ground and search for bases than a normal player. I don't really have an answer for this (and many other things), but I'd like to bring it up and see what everyone else thinks.

What if the reason for the ban (relating to ban evasion of course) was for doing something illegal to a similar base?

I think flying to a base should count as "finding illegally" mainly because new players don't have access to elytra.

One thing I'm not certain I agree with is the radius proposal. While I agree that literally restoring bases 100 blocks from Spawn would be silly, there are bases within 5k that were definitively griefed illegally (see Flying Castle) and done so blatantly and on camera. I agree that there should be some limit, but that limit should probably go out the window when it concerns bases that were effectively historic builds.

I don't know how many places Phrasings destroyed exactly, but there's good reason to believe at least a few were within that radius and would be disqualified because of it, and I actually think the Phrasings griefs are a perfect way to test this policy (neutral, unoccupied historic builds) and gauge its popularity.

I asked Yukar if he would consider exploits "illegal means of finding" and the response was essentially that it "wasn't up for debate" but I wasn't certain if he meant no or yes. I'm going to make a case for both including and not including it.

For starters exploiting coordinates is illegal in basically every way. If a person were to exploit to find a base, they would be banned at this point. By that logic if, say, Segoria was found and griefed by someone who exploited to find it, or used the illegal coordinate leak from early 2020 that was deemed illegal to follow up on, they would be jailed. But would their actions be considered illegal?

To argue the base should be restored is easy, the actions were not legal. They broke rule 2, and were punished, and their actions against other players should be reverted.

To argue the base shouldn't be restored is also fairly easy. The actions weren't legal, but the act of restoring a base that was griefed by someone through exploits will almost certainly lead to endless complaining every time a base is destroyed that it "only could've been found with exploits."

On this issue, I don't think there's a right or wrong answer, and it might be best to leave individual cases like this up to admin votes rather than anything else. Sometimes leaving something a bit vague allows for interpretation, and making things too specific can create demands from players who don't have a right to one (in their specific case).

I think we can all agree though that ban evasion should only be counted as illegal means if the person involved was directly linked to the base in question. I think the radius is a good idea (though I think the Phrasings griefs should be the exception to that).

It I was writing the rule right now it would be "A base is eligible to be restored from a grief if it was found with illegal means, or destroyed with illegally obtained materials."

In that context, we all know what illegal means refers to (x-ray, flying, exploiting, some cases of ban evasion) and by leaving it vague you can go case by case. If you were to say "A base is eligible to be restored if it was found through x-ray, exploiting, flyhacking, etc" I think you'd just create an endless amount of whining every time a base is leaked by an insider.

I will say including exploits as illegal means is conveniently possible due to the fact that both Wilburia and 3 Words were not griefed by the exploiter, but the base's inhabitants, and the contents storage chests can't be restored.

[MisterStrawman]

I think that such a distinction can be easily made by delineating between necessary grief items, and subordinate grief items. A base would be eligible for reversal if it was griefed using "necessary grief items". These would primarily include access to the base (coords) and materials needed to complete the grief (items directly causing damage to the base). Both of these conditions would need to be proven to have been used in the accused manner upon the base requesting reversal for the eligibility to be sustained. However, either condition (coords or items) would suffice for reversal if proven.

I disagree with most of this, you can be pretty creative in your griefing, so what's required for it beyond access to the base (this part I do agree with) is irrelevant, as is the griefing, in my opinion. Let me pose a scenario, let's say a player with a well hidden base who has put thousands of hours into it discovers that a cheater found his base through presumably illegal means. We already run into a major problem here, even if the cheater does nothing further. The cheater now has the coords to the base, and the player now has no incentive to build anything further in that base. The cheater will get banned, but could blurt out the coordinates at that point, or maybe give them to someone else who will come along and grief it maybe months later. The resident of this base would pretty much have to give up on it. You could also have the same exact scenario except this time, the cheater immediately dupes TNT and destroys the whole place. My point here is that the griefing itself doesn't matter, it's finding the coords. The only real difference is exactly when the base gets destroyed.

If we take the same scenario, except this time the base is found legitimately, once again, the moment it's found, it's pretty much over. If that player wants, they can leak the coords, or farm gunpowder, wither skulls, etc. The damage is already done. If instead that player, who previously wasn't cheating decides they don't have the patience to farm materials, dupes some TNT and blows it up, to me it seems kind of silly to say "Restore my base, it wasn't griefed the right way."

All of this is of course assuming both that the player whose base was found is in it for the long run, and also that we're ignoring item stashes being restored. In practice, having time to stash as many of your items away before they get blown up is actually important, but I'd like to treat that as a separate issue, and keep this conversation basically about building structures.

The real gray area cases for this emerge when you look at cases where the cheating involved in obtaining the griefing items is less significant (x-raying diamonds to create a pickaxe, for example) and to that I think distinguishing between necessary and subordinate griefing items will overcomplicate things. My suggestion is basically to throw out the griefing itself as a criterion altogether. I could see some extreme cases where we might have to revisit this, but I don't want to have to deal with "My long time ally betrayed me, and here's retrospective proof that he x-rayed" followed by "here's how he used the gear found while x-raying to do x,y,z to my base."

@Korijenkins
I get the sense that I wasn't clear enough, but my main point was that the griefing itself is sort of irrelevant as I stated above. I think our fundamental disagreement is the importance of "historical" sites near spawn vs the importance of an active base that a player is spending hundreds or thousands of hours on. The places Phrasings blew up were (correct me if I'm wrong) well known, with public locations. Anyone at any time could have griefed them, the fact that the person who happened to do it duped TNT to do so just seems incidental. That's not to say that it's acceptable, but if those places were all restored, how long before someone else dumps legit TNT on it, the lavacasts it, or spawns withers? Once the coords to a place are public, protecting it over the long term is basically impossible just by the nature of the server.

I know in some sense I might be overestimating how easy it is to grief a base that you know the coords to, and I'm also in principle assuming that the timing is irrelevant, when in practice it can be very relevant. I'm not even convinced myself that we shouldn't consider the manner of griefing, but I think there's a case for it, and it might solve more problems than it creates. So I can think of some good arguments against it, but want to steer the discussion just to that point for a minute. My goal is to keep this simple, and reduce consideration for gray areas, since wishy-washy admin interpretation is the main thing that ends up pissing people off.

Onto the other main point of this thread: What constitutes "illegal means" of finding a base. I'm perfectly fine with considering fly hackers to be such illegal means, but I'm not so sure that the line should be drawn at whether someone found the base by breaking the rules, or if it should be drawn at whether a legit player could have effectively done the same. I think the former is the intuitive answer, so I just want to make the case for the latter for now. I think exploits should be covered, once we come up with a working definition of "exploit". X-raying portals certainly. There's a lot more to say on this, but I'm gonna wrap this up for now. In some part I don't want this to turn into an excuse for people who don't hide their bases very well to get protection they don't deserve. I see a big difference between "someone had to cheat to find my base" and "the person who happened to find my base was cheating".

Had more to say, but I have to leave, but I'll be on tomorrow to continue this.

[KoriJenkins]

@Korijenkins
I get the sense that I wasn't clear enough, but my main point was that the griefing itself is sort of irrelevant as I stated above. I think our fundamental disagreement is the importance of "historical" sites near spawn vs the importance of an active base that a player is spending hundreds or thousands of hours on. The places Phrasings blew up were (correct me if I'm wrong) well known, with public locations. Anyone at any time could have griefed them, the fact that the person who happened to do it duped TNT to do so just seems incidental. That's not to say that it's acceptable, but if those places were all restored, how long before someone else dumps legit TNT on it, the lavacasts it, or spawns withers? Once the coords to a place are public, protecting it over the long term is basically impossible just by the nature of the server.

I know in some sense I might be overestimating how easy it is to grief a base that you know the coords to, and I'm also in principle assuming that the timing is irrelevant, when in practice it can be very relevant. I'm not even convinced myself that we shouldn't consider the manner of griefing, but I think there's a case for it, and it might solve more problems than it creates. So I can think of some good arguments against it, but want to steer the discussion just to that point for a minute. My goal is to keep this simple, and reduce consideration for gray areas, since wishy-washy admin interpretation is the main thing that ends up pissing people off.

Onto the other main point of this thread: What constitutes "illegal means" of finding a base. I'm perfectly fine with considering fly hackers to be such illegal means, but I'm not so sure that the line should be drawn at whether someone found the base by breaking the rules, or if it should be drawn at whether a legit player could have effectively done the same. I think the former is the intuitive answer, so I just want to make the case for the latter for now. I think exploits should be covered, once we come up with a working definition of "exploit". X-raying portals certainly. There's a lot more to say on this, but I'm gonna wrap this up for now. In some part I don't want this to turn into an excuse for people who don't hide their bases very well to get protection they don't deserve. I see a big difference between "someone had to cheat to find my base" and "the person who happened to find my base was cheating".

Had more to say, but I have to leave, but I'll be on tomorrow to continue this.

My logic is that someone who griefs a base with duped TNT, regardless of the location, isn't part of the server and thus isn't subject to being included in whether something is "well-known" by the community. The builds themselves are historic, let them be destroyed or maintained by active players who are part of server history, not hackers who aren't.

In all likelihood the griefs would be reverted and then done again by Azdin or someone else a week or a month later, but at least they would be being done by someone who actually played on Sim and belongs in the community, not an external cheater who just wanted to laugh at exploding TNT.

The reason I'd include flyhackers is because a new player wouldn't have access to the means of fast travel that established players have. By flyhacking they're essentially instantly acquiring 2-4 DBs by matching the value of god elytra and rockets. Resources are required to explore around Spawn, even if most of Sim can afford them easily.

I agree that in a perfect world exploits would be covered, but I disagree that there's a big difference between "someone had to cheat" and "they found my base while cheating" at least in the eyes of players. You're going to have people making false claims if this policy is enacted and includes exploits, which is why I think they should be included case by case but not specifically in the actual text of the rule itself.

The thing I disagree with somewhat strongly is the idea that coords are all that matter. Segoria's coordinates were leaked by a hacker ages ago. It was made clear by the admins that trying to go to those coordinates would be punishable, and Segoria remains an active, expanding base. What a base restoration policy would do is guarantee that if that hacker showed up on an alt to grief it, the damage would be temporary. Knowing this exists would give the inhabitants of bases some peace of mind I believe.

Coordinate leaks are clearly worse than anything else, but well-hidden bases are almost never found accidentally, and it would be fairly easy to see if the person who hypothetically "found" Segoria actually found it or traveled there directly.

[MutualistManiac]

If we take the same scenario, except this time the base is found legitimately, once again, the moment it's found, it's pretty much over. If that player wants, they can leak the coords, or farm gunpowder, wither skulls, etc. The damage is already done. If instead that player, who previously wasn't cheating decides they don't have the patience to farm materials, dupes some TNT and blows it up, to me it seems kind of silly to say "Restore my base, it wasn't griefed the right way."

I will have to be honest I don't see the issue with the first paragraph of your response. Using coords that are known to come from illegal sources is already an illegal action according to the rules right? If we KNEW that one obtained access to a base by such means then I would say that likewise any grief done by them should be undone as they would be banned. Do you mean to imply by your first paragraph that if a base was found by legal means, yet was griefed with duped items, that that is legal grief? and should be considered as such? Of course, those who found the base legit could then leak the coords, and those coords would be legal coords. However, if this leads to a legal grief then so what. That seems like a totally unrelated statement to the question. Perhaps it makes it a bit redundant, but I would argue that it would not as a legal grief is FUNDAMENTALLY different than an illegal one.

Your second paragraph makes more sense. However, I just reject it. "If instead that player, who previously wasn't cheating decides they don't have the patience to farm materials, dupes some TNT and blows it up, to me it seems kind of silly to say 'Restore my base, it wasn't griefed the right way.'" No, it makes perfect sense. It wasn't griefed the "right way" that is the point. Remember all this would need to be proven. If one was proven to have done this it should be reset. I guess we just disagree on this, but I think my interpretation is more in line with the point of this rule proposal than yours: to reduce the effect of illegal actions on the map.

The real gray area cases for this emerge when you look at cases where the cheating involved in obtaining the griefing items is less significant (x-raying diamonds to create a pickaxe, for example) and to that I think distinguishing between necessary and subordinate griefing items will overcomplicate things. My suggestion is basically to throw out the griefing itself as a criterion altogether. I could see some extreme cases where we might have to revisit this, but I don't want to have to deal with "My long time ally betrayed me, and here's retrospective proof that he x-rayed" followed by "here's how he used the gear found while x-raying to do x,y,z to my base."

This I agree is a problem. Of course, focusing only on illegally obtained coords would solve this problem, I cannot argue with that. However, I ask you, remember that this must be proven. This hypothetical is an issue, but I don't think we would ever have enough evidence to find one guilty of using a pickaxe made of x-rayed items. If we did KNOW this to be the case, and we KNEW that this item was used in griefing the base, then I would say yes it should be reset as it would not have existed without the illegal act or exploit.

Look if we really do want to discount all bases griefed by using illegal items then fine. The community should decide that, but I for one think we should consider it. Other than that there are no real issues with using my methodology to decern eligible bases from ineligible ones, or just using my method with respect to illegal coords not items used.

[Yukar9]

There's a lot of opinions on the exact details here, but it seems people are universally in favor of the general concept of base restoration, unless I missed somebody.

I personally don't care that much about the details, beyond some base guidelines I'll lay out, so I'd like to see if we can't move this forward without me. Unless ostrich or Strawman wants to lead this process, I'd suggest we come up with a way players can decide on this.

We could do something like this: 3 players who care about and have thought a lot about this issue form a committee, they have to iron out the details together, and when they unanimously approve an exact policy then that's what becomes the official policy, excepting an admin veto.

Now for the base guidelines:

Reverting would happen with logblock (or an equivalent plugin, if we switch to one as Skuller suggests.) It would not happen with worldedit.

Therefore players should not expect to get chests restored.

There's also a time limit of 90 days, as that's how long we currently store block logs.