Yeah, that would obviously work. /sarcasm.
Hyper seems to be the only one who figured out what I meant. The point is that punishments don't hurt because they're generalized. Customized punishments, that hit exactly where it hurts the most would be much worse. Granted, applying them would take more time, but they would be more effective. Like removing PM rights.

Who uses PM's anyway?
Yes, It'd be pretty cool for me to get a title.

Also gaywad wouldn't work because of the new weasel policy etc

I totally see what you're saying and do agree, to a point. I really don't want to sound like a jerk, but it's 3AM and I'm drunk so you get a bulleted list of counter-points (sorry in advance):

- If you don't care if you are banned and misbehave, then you won't be around much longer. I'm escalating warnings/tempbans/permaban activity as I go, and it won't be long before someone has increased their tempban up to 360 days. I gave out a 7 day IRC ban just the other day.
- Most people misbehave for attention. Having a custom title will just draw more attention - if I was labelled a 'walrussucker' I would proudly display it and personally add it to my sig just to draw *more* attention to it.
- What is "embarrassing" enough to each user is going to be unique and not worth our time to record/track, and half of them aren't going to be feasible.
- The internets make it really, really easy to fake not being phased by such a punishment. Even if I was horribly embarrassed and flush-in-the-face and really let down by my new custom title, I would still type and act as if I were king of the world. The particular strategy only works well IRL.

I think SA has a great system: Every time you screw up you have to pay $10 (you need to pay $10 to post in the forums). I was thinking about tying in user registrations/payments to the forum system - so if you post badly, you get booted out. If you want back in, you have to buy another copy of Cortex Command.

Because we don't have a huge community like SA does, we can't keep the forum running with registered-users-only. We'll need to split it up into a "public, everyone-can-post" area, and probably a "read only" area that includes all the modification stuff, contests, and other events I have planned.

Of course, it's probably months away and I have yet to hammer out the details - or even if Data wants to do it at all - but I think the threat of losing ten actual dollars from your pocket is reason enough to behave. If you wish to misbehave, you can - it'll just cost you another ten bucks every time. No permabans.

Not a fan, but I can see your logic. Perhaps push this out to when your ban period extends beyond 3 months?
Also, not a fan of splitting the forum. That would be disastrous for the modding scene if unregistered users could not mod. True, most of our established modders are registered, but many of the "start-up" modders are not.

See: Abdul Alhazred and Sunrise. Both Crablings, as far as I'm aware.

Weasel's strategy would be effective but....Tyranical. Oh, and while you're here Weasel, two things.
When in the crap are you gonna make another devlog post? And when does Grif's ban expire? Just so I have an idea of when to have the fallout bunker finished by.

You guys should really PM a moderator about these things rather than clutter up threads. - p3lb0x

I would actually WANT a custom title even if it is embarrassing.

I kinda like the idea of merging both strategies.

First you get a warning, then a short temp-ban, then your ban length doubles with each infraction, until you have to pay 10bux to come back again. essentially you'd get around 10 "warnings" of varying degrees before it actually costs you something... hopefully people wouldn't see that as tyrannical

But again, that's just an idea I had in the back of my mind - it hasn't been discussed, hammered out, or approved. Maybe we'll think of something entirely different.

Ok, that seems agreeable, in my book, but it would be better if the 10 bucks fee would be more as a fine than a requirement for posting in the first place. And besides, you could start lower and increase it just as you increase the bans, i.e. doubling it with each screw up (2-4-8-10-20).

Yeah I was thinking, anyone who purchases the game can access a (Certain part) of the forum. I have no idea what data's plans are on this, but I would consider it likely that mods would be full-version only, and therefore mod stuff would appear in that particular forum.

If you don't heed warnings and are banned from that forum, the only way to get back in is with a new username - and ergo, a new purchased copy of CC. Also has the benefit of you losing your username and any benefits associated with (there may eventually be benefits for postcounts or forum badges or something).

So it's not a "punishment fee", it just happens to be the purchase price of the game. I wouldn't be comfortable having a sliding scale of fees to be paid, like parking fines

Wait, so I won't be able to stay a crabling? Crabs are awesome. Also, on a side note, mods in the free version, if anything, encourage people to buy the game.

Yeah, probably right there.

Perhaps a better "member-only" thing would be early access to builds and news. Any induced forum separations, I think, would be more detrimental overall than helpful for control.
So far, we have only a few troublemakers out of a much larger population of perfectly reasonable members, and bans and warnings take very good care of them. Trolls would not really care about getting into the "members-only" area much, since their fun is not in aggravating a specific group but anyone who would fall for them.

*completely back on topic* /sarcasm

I think this is just not feasible because you would have to have a psychologist just to friggin figureout "what hurts the most"-generalized) and quite frankly The $10 idea sounds a bit harsh... possibly have it more like the double every time for an offense 2.50-5-10-20-40-80-...

however how would you keep up with ban evasion? for example if I had an account... and I got banned I could just go change my ip and make a new account right? or am I just dead wrong?

Paying money if you mess up seems kind of over the top. Arent we trying to welcome new members?