Ricky_the_banshee

Hey, it's all good. Like I said before, I'm not a huge fan of necessarily calling this a 'staff complaint' due to how much of a negative connotation it weights in. From a staff member perspective, I can totally understand how the negative implications would take the forefront whilst investigating a concern from another community member. To make it absolutely clear. I was not trying to make a racial joke in IC, or have some double meaning behind it OOCly in case anyone involved in the complaint or observing may have these suspicions. It was just a very poor choice of a message to stich that message too. What I just hope is that this misunderstanding is cleared up, and that people understand that this was just that. A misunderstanding, and to my part, poorly worded response to an IC message. In restrospect, just a few extra words could've made it clear that I was referring to the hair, but due to external distractions while I was engaged with that chat, I ended up going for the worst one in that context. If its possible, I would like for the strike to be rescinded. If any other else needs to be said, I will do what I can to answer them

BYOND Key: rickymadenson Staff BYOND Key: Loorey Game ID: This occured on the Aurora discord, specifcally the SCC-Relay channel. Reason for complaint: Hello. Earlier this day, I was partaking in the Relay channel in-character as my character, Eva Meier. I regularly do this on occassions where I have downtime between work or just downtime in general to partake in some IC chatter. I had a conversation with another character ICly, Tesset Gainsbloom and others. The chatter between our characters mostly involved talks about strict parents, and jokes about dying their hair. During this talks. Gainsbloom revealed that her hair colour was unnatural, and that she kept her 'true hair colour' a secret. During this exchange, Meier tried to poke at it to get an answer. From one of the exchanges, Meier commented on how her mother would refer to her as a 'dreg' for dying her hair at a younger, rebellious age. Upon this exchange. Gainsbloom was unfamiliar with the term drag, but also included in her messenging that she would keep her hair colour a secret. This is where the incident occured, and I believe, where the misunderstanding took place: In retrospect, I realize now that it may have appeared as if Meier was implying that 'dreg = brown', and I am here to make clear that this was NOT my intend with this message. her comment was intended to be a 'gotcha' to the hair colour secret that Gainsbloom was keeping. I did not intend for Meier to imply in any shape or form that Dreg and 'Brown' is somehow a synonymous thing. Evidence/logs/etc: This is the message exchange from before. And this is the actual strike that I was given. Additional remarks: Again, I do not like calling this a complaint, but I would have appreciated if this was at least talked about to clear things up. I understand strikes are ultimately up to staff's discretion as they just one of many tools for staff to deploy, and given the implications that were assumed, this could have been a much severe punishment otherwise. Nevertheless, I do not think this strike justifies remaining as a permanent stain on my record. I only discovered this message a little later after the initial post was already made, and I will admit that it got me fuming and see red given the accusation. Thankfully, after checking things with a staff member and looking back at the message in context, I see why Loorey could've interpretated that message the way it was.

After some thinking, I will say that I am genuinely in favour of acknowledgement of character contributions in events, or rounds in general. Anything to push the narrative forward, and for that narrative to be rewarded would theoretically inspire more players to want to partake and contribute in rounds other than just for the sake of being there. I too, an am oldie, and I see where alot of the sentiment, feedback and even frustrations that spark from this topic stems from. It can be incredibly soul-sucking or tedious to feel as if the contribution you had in a round was largely unrecognized. You discovered the Secret Tomb of Nyarlatotep? "Archaeologists uncover the tomb!". Awesome, great, I guess you were a part of it -- "HORIZON MAKES BREAKTHROUGH COMMUNICATION WITH PURPOSE. WE DO NOT HAVE ANY PICTURES OF SOMEONE SPECIFICALLY SHAKING THE HAND OF A PURPOSE BOT, EVEN THOUGH THERE ARE REPORTEDLY IMAGES OF THIS." So that interaction may as well have never happened other than being a passerby memory that will unintentionally sound to others as bragging. I can't speak on how the staff or lore writers feel this part, I can imagine there are some elements from their side that might be grating or bothersome to write around. I think the individual deaths of crew after times more prominently featured than their individual contributions, and I agree that its been deeply rooted in the server culture to cheer and guffaw and close encounters with death, than some of the meaningful interactions beyond just combat encounters. However, I will say that I do urge the consideration into the possiblity of "glory seekers" that has been attributed or argued as a potential fear. While it's easy to simply look past them and dismiss their attempts as fruitless, or regard them as asinine on the grander OOC part. I think not addressing it will just allow a polar opposite variation of the "the thrill for death" to swap into the "thrill for glory". Where ones participation instead becomes one's attempt to be a main character. Simply dismissing them as some "loud minority" that are being silly with their characters and antics, ignoring as a festering problem is what led to a culture of anticipating who kicks the bucket at the next major event. And while it may not be everyone that partakes in it, the fact many recognize it as an existing phenomenon for it to be talked about even here should be telling of how much of an impact it can (sub)consciously have on people. tl;dr just give people a model or a name reference pls. But yes, main character wannabes deserve their kneecaps broken even harder for it, and should be ignored as a "minor issue" were this shift to come.

I agree. Let's replace Humans with Roegadyn

Agreed. It kind of breaks the immersion considering alot of these calls are supposedly coming from people that are all the way down planetside. Their access to the common channels at times makes it feel like they are just a department away, if it wasn't for the occassional reminders that they are not.

Agreed with the posts above, and most all else. This mechanic so far has only caused alot of confusion and dissary, in particulair in the main discord. Suggestions and implications were made that this mechanic extends to other roles outside command as well. It sounds like there is alot of confusion on what exactly this "age weight" affects. Posts above provide screnshot evidence of the lines in coding that showcase that it mainly affects command, (which even then IMO, is still a net negative as it disables player freedom due to mechanical priorities implemented.) This has not stopped the debate from spiraling out of control, with fears that this will still somehow end up leaking down the line into other roles. With how obscure of a line this was to, a quite apparent, many people it only seems to serve as a potential fear at how this could diminish people's choice in what character achetypes they would wish to portray in said roles. Even within the position of command. It is nice to see seasoned, mature and older types of characters in their slots with more gray on their head than healthy hair. Player freedom should still take priority in that matter. If our command staff will consist of a bunch of 30-40 year olds, then that's simply what people are playing. We have existing restrictions such as whitelists, species limitations and hardcoded minimum ages for command slots already. There is honestly no need for a mechanic like this, other than to cause a needless 'meta' to gain a better chance at a slot.

I'm pleased to announce that after months of juggling around things in life, I've edited 'the Challenges SOHEC faces & Corruption' section of the app in the document!

Oh, hey. Absolutely. I've been looking back and forth at the time to sit down and finish writing this up, but life has been VERY busy (Work, personal life, Uni, list goes on.). I'll try and make some time in a few weeks to see if I can finally wrap everything up.

Hey there. Just again, I didn't meant to personally attack you over this. I want to reiterate that this announcement happened to be one of the main topics of that night that became a discussion point on the relay, so I used it to present my case for what I deemed an issue following the chat. I think what mainly caused some raised eyebrows was that very implication of assuming leadership "downstairs" through the choice of words. "As the commander present and below resdeck" implied your character assumed direct leadership over a off-screen detail. It was one of the problems people had back on the relay when it was first brought up. It may have been unintentional, but it still gave off a sense of self-importance towards the character that was imposed with little as much consultation from the community or staff for that matter,. a I understand now that this was written without the knowledge of there not being any known security/armory present on the resdeck as per the wiki's information (which frankly, is still a problem with how the resdeck is mostly orientated around headcanon to allow the slice-of-life elements to blossom), but ultimately changes nothing about the issue regarding imposing one's character with a "self-relevant" role. After all the responses, I do agree that there should some security presence down in the resdeck shouldn't be ignored. I also agree that I don't realistically expect resdeck occupants to sitback and kick their feet up on their imaginary office desks like its all nothing, but I also think that becoming proactive shouldn't equate the shenaniganry of "resdeck militia" or "organized security details" when again, nothing in the wiki backs up the possibility. Not to mention on top of it all, it only hypes up people's self-importance when it comes to pretending their characters still had a "relevant" role in an event they were not actively present for during a round on-server. No command character should (un)intentionally impose this notion that their character can elevate themselves off-screen with a vital role such as this. The ambiguity of who or what organizes evacuation, security and emergency services on the resdeck should be left within that ambiguity. We have a rule/IC-regulation that only those on-shift as command staff are permitted to assert their authority as command staff, whereass off-duty command have little to no powers and are no different from a visitor/passenger/assistant. I was generally surprised this wasn't a thing in the first place, and staff-written announcements never hurt in these matters. I feel like alot of these problems during events would be solved if there was something like a resdeck bunker for players to (optionally) evacuate their characters to. Not everybody has to be present in it, and the decision on whether their character remains in their quarters for safety or prefer this hypothetical bunker would ltimately still leave the choice with the player on where there character was off-screen. On the note of player characters being affected by this, I never said that this shouldn't be the case. How characters are mentally or physiologically affected by this despite only being on the resdeck shouldn't be a problem at all. These events end up being high stakes, and with everything located on a single ship, its more likely for people to feel the (after)effects of tehse events more prominently than back when the station was just the workplace and people lived in their places of residence (sometimes these places being outside of Tau Ceti). So long as we don't have "John Chef mentioning that time when he built an improv flamethrower from his kitchen tools and equipment to fend off the invading lii'dra attacking the resdeck communal bathrooms" or "Jane Captain informing people they specifically were the ones that coordinated everybody to the resdeck vault because they are the ones who simply felt like promoting themselves with that vital position", these events can have lasting effects on even those who weren't directly involved in-round and that shouldn't change.

Works for me! I'll get to it as soon as possible. I've been wanting to expand a little more much earlier, but IRL obligations meant I had to focus on those instead. o7