Good morning, Community. We made it to Friday. Just think, only seven Fridays left before EA.
Today, I’d like to talk to you about moderation and the appeals process.
First, a word from our sponsor:
Need adventuring gear? Come on down to Sproggets Bedsprings' Adventure Emporium. At the Emporium, if we don't have it, you don't need it. Don't mind the Rogues, they are on their way to die at the Garrison.
Monsters and Memories is a game in Beta. You should expect things to change. Hopefully for the better but there may be some growing pains. As such, here is a change to the Play Nice Policy, https://account.monstersandmemories.com/policy/pnp:
Former policy
Progressive Penalty System
Most violations follow a four-tier escalation:
Warning: Educational response explaining the violation with policy guidance.
3-Day Suspension: Complete account suspension with clear expectations for return.
14-Day Suspension: Extended suspension with termination review.
Permanent Ban: Account termination for severe or repeated violations.
Not all penalties will follow this structure.
Updated policy
Progressive Penalty System
Most violations follow progressive moderation:
Warning: Educational response explaining the violation with policy guidance.
Suspension: Complete account suspension with clear expectations for return.
Permanent Ban: Account termination for severe or repeated violations.
Not all penalties will follow this structure.
The reason for this change is that we were hamstrung by having hard numbers and this gives us more flexibility to do what is appropriate instead of following a schedule.
If you violate the PNP, you should be contacted by Customer Service (CS, GMs) and told why. This comes both in-game and through email. When an action is applied to your account, there is a generic 'you did bad' email that is sent that does not have a lot of details. Generally, we will follow-up with an email with more details but if we spoke to you in-game that may not happen. In any case, at that point, any further discussion of the action will be done over email.
Let me say that again: further discussion of the action will be done over email.
When you decide to take it to the forums, Reddit, or Discord, that complicates things. This is not censorship or hiding anything. I'm not telling you NOT to do those things but nothing happy will come of it for us or for you. Players who tend to do this spin things their way, leaving out crucial bits and that only re-enforces the original decision and may lead to escalating moderation.
Of particular note is that if you decide to start DMing Developers on Discord about your name change, we will automatically escalate moderation. They are busy making the game, aren't generally aware of CS issues, and cannot help you. Therefore:
Appeals
We use email to communicate actions done an account and if you want to appeal that action, you should reply to the email that you received. Internally, when we get an appeal, it goes to the entire CS team and someone who is not the original CS who did the action will review and respond. Everyone on the team has a chance to review and we discuss outcomes with the team before someone responds. There is no (little) ego involved in this. I've had my actions overturned and there are no grudges or hard feelings about that. We sometimes get it wrong and the appeal lets us correct that.
"Let me explain! No, there is too much. Let me sum up."
If you violate the PNP, you will have actions applied to your account in an escalating manner.
If you have actions applied to your account, please appeal them using email.
If you appeal, someone other than the original person will respond to you after the appeal has been reviewed.
Please do not expect good outcomes if you decide to take it outside of the email process.
Absolutely do not ping/DM the Devs over it.
I hope that helps. This is a Community based game and you will come into contact and conflict with other players. Keeping that contact respectful while considering the Community as a whole will generally prevent you from ever having to know more about these systems. Oh, also, don't cheat. You know what a bug is and continuing to use a bug becomes an exploit.
SOMEONE wanted me to put this in here, too, as a reminder: A campfire DOES NOT indicate a camp. You having a campfire doesn't mean it's your camp, the lack of a campfire doesn't mean that it's not a claimed camp.
