Scheveningen

I don't think this issue is related at all to moderation as they only handle the OOC aspect and implications of in-game problems.

Furthermore, the whole 'lore enforcement' thing? Good luck with it, as there is genuinely 0 way to incentivize to regular human players who have 0 whitelists to speak of to start discriminating against the species who are viewed as not remotely equivalent enough to humans/Skrell. The disproportionate amount at which Sinta/Tajaran/etc are paid should clue folks in that this sort of xeno-discrimination doesn't only go that far, because the economic aspect of "species-ism" is one of those massive cornerstones that proves there's a systemic attempt to disenfranchise the rights of said species by the richest elements of NT and probably the entire galaxy, if we consider that it is likely that certain xenos would likely earn 70-85% of the human's galactic credit in various places for the same job, ranging from Sol to Tau Ceti, respectively. Ergo, just off that basis, it's incredibly likely that discrimination extends to greater lengths such as social discrimination and legal discrimination in certain areas because they would be symptoms of the greater problem. Of course, OOCly people would rather avoid addressing that because that conversation has real life ramifications and implications, upon which very few people want to have that discussion because opinions are a little like butts; everyone has one.

It is simple, you don't. If your character isn't agreeable, stoic, polite and/or un-controversial, the character doesn't survive the onslaught of criticism that a character is flawed in certain ways. Certainly not right now, anyway. Which is ironic because that's something we should be going for (allowing characters to have flaws, that is), but I can't tell you how many times I've been shut down by a lesbian pow-wow between a janitor and the captain whenever I try to be a little creative and perhaps a bit mean when dealing with other characters as another character completely different from my most well-known ones, and likewise I attempt to shoot for a unique approach that tries to break the mold people get too comfortable with. Yet this gets endless amounts of hate over it, that it is better off to skip trying to be interesting and just roleplay a completely munted snowflake like everyone else. Either you resign yourself to not breaching the hugbox or you consign yourself to endless amounts of irritating criticism bordering on harassment from individuals who think they somehow know better than I do on how to roleplay my own characters.

Let me rescind this entire post for a bit while I figure out what went on.

Probably because not everyone's a combat god at this game and doesn't realize that the strength in humans is using kiting to their advantage. they're the most balanced race and have no significant advantages or disadvantages. It's like playing Imperial in the elder scrolls, it's a good baseline to build any type of character off of.

Screw them! I do what I want!

Proposition: I think we need an energy sword sunday. Every Sunday, the admins should run the "Energy Sword Sunday" special event at most once. The event should be run ideally at the start of a new round, and the event should of course be voted for by a 2:1 majority. If the vote fails the admins can try to call a custom vote for it again. It must at least meet the 2:1 majority, 6:3 is acceptable, 11:9 is not. Admins can also choose not to call a vote for an Energy Sword Sunday event if not enough supervising admins are on or nobody is particularly feeling silly. Upon activating the event, everyone is equipped with combat hardsuit armor (or other robust RIGs/voidsuits depending on the character's species) as well as their basic equipment as they spawn in, in addition to an energy sword in their hands. They also assigned the HIGHLANDER goal to be the last individual on the station standing. The AI and borgs are zapped into becoming combat cyborgs with power hammers, and they are spawned at arrivals. Latejoiners should have modifiers to have an energy sword and riot armor spawned in for them, but respawn for dead players is disabled, and latejoining may also be disabled for administrators if they so choose to at any point (i.e., 3 people left alive). The game type temporarily changes in display name to an ALL CAPS indication: ENERGY SWORD SUNDAY! Likewise, the OOC event info displays that the current round is an Energy Sword Sunday special event for latejoiners to recognize the round type. There are a few proposed and ENCOURAGED guidelines to Energy Sword Sunday: 1. Use your energy sword as a carbon mob, use your power hammer as a combat cyborg. You are permitted to dual wield energy swords and collect other energy swords as trophies. 2. Do NOT seek out non-melee weapons, be fair in risking yourself in combat. Soap and slips, however, are allowed. Admins have full license to gib gun-toting cheaters! 3. Be courageous! Be active in searching for your enemies! Admins have full reason to gib people who choose not to fight! Camping is case-by-case acceptable but complete passiveness is not. 4. Teaming up temporarily is absolutely acceptable, but all temporary alliances are expected to be broken eventually. THERE CAN ONLY BE ONE. 5. Admins are permitted to adminbus at 30 minutes. 6. The round is expected to go into overtime at 60 minutes. Admins should port all survivors to the thunderdome. They may, if they choose, adminbus the survivors in the thunderdome so long as it adds to the fun. Obviously, this is intended to be a fun variation of highlander mode. The server rules that apply is abiding by basic human decency and not being a dick, but otherwise roleplay rules should be fairly relaxed and allow for a little bit of meming, and OOC in IC should be acceptable while Energy Sword Sunday is active during a round. Wort wort wort.

I don't understand how you can say this without recognizing the point as to why humans were originally supposed to be the species with the most advantages in the first place, because of social advantages. I.e., you could not be a head of staff without either being a human or a Skrell. Skrell are the only species that humans are roughly considered equal to on the combined technological, cultural and social scale. The Unathi are not as strongly industrialized yet, the Tajarans have an eternal civil war spanning their entire planet stopping them from gaining progress, the Dionaea are the Dionaea, the main Vaurca hives cannot reproduce their technology and are considered the equivalent of a Fallen Empire from Stellaris. The technology they do have is quite frightening and they could be considered to be a precursor or forerunner based on how far back in the lore they go, but they have no access to materials to reproduce their tachyon rifles, their industry and their advanced armor, for example. There are IPC nations (particularly, Purpose) but I don't think you can play a character directly from Purpose, yet. Not a lot is known about it ICly nor OOCly. Rounding about to the original point, anyway. Humans were supposed to maintain their baseline balance as well as having the best use of alcohol mechanics in the game. A speed boost, pain resistance while alcohol metabolizes in your system, and the fact that it takes a very massive amount of alcohol to overdose as a human goes to show they're the best race to make use of it. Quite literally no downside until you purposefully start to 'get drunk' or push towards the OD limit. Humans were also meant to be socially superior to the only races aside from Skrell, because they were simply around longer in the NanoTrasen corporation whereas the other species haven't been around with the corporation for more than 30 years. And that's kind of the issue. Humans barely have social advantages over the other xenos because we granted xenos privilege to become the various heads of staff. If we didn't do that, humans would be the best species to play alongside Skrell, because they would have the best gameplay opportunities in the game.

We don't really need additional changes to humans right now. Humans have some of the best alcohol tolerance in the game and they exploit it perhaps moreso than the other species. Apart from that, they're the most balanced and have no strengths nor weaknesses. Aside from their blatant ability to abuse alcohol to their advantage, of course. You probably mean higher pain threshold, not lower. A low pain threshold means you drop to the floor faster than other people when receiving a blow of equal force.

_ Explain exactly how I'm the one that's the malicious person. Don't forget this nonsense either when you made this comparison directed to me, since we're discussing things that happened a year ago. How's your attitude changed since then, if we're gonna talk about how super important our histories are?

Whenever you get close to recognizing a problem, you always repeat this same pattern of throwing the blame onto others as an excuse for your own behavior. This isn't something a rational, well-adjusted adult does. If you're content to behave like a child, then you shouldn't be terribly surprised when you get treated like one. This is an instance where you're helping in proving the exact same points of the individuals who have arguments for allowing the ban to stick. And yeah, actually, I am right in this instance, you are wrong. The truth stings and you can try to bury it as much as you like but it's not gonna happen. I'm also not going to stop commenting just because you say so, because I have plenty relevant reason to comment especially when you continue to name-drop me. You don't have to be a moderator to post here, btw. I'm not going to go away just because you insist I should. For as long as you persist to behave the way you do and continue trying to change how history actually went down with you, I'm going to call you on it. Specifically because of your insistence that this be the standard of treatment between other community members: How about you go away? Have you ever considered that, perhaps, going away? This community is obviously not the right one for you. Go finish off that project you had and market it as SS13 with blackjack and hookers and go make your own community with its own standards and see how it goes for you. I genuinely think you'd be better off doing your own thing. No, seriously, how about you ask Tishina/Drago in DMs the two following questions, and then bring the logs forward; Because I'd love to see how they compare me to you. You have pathetically weak arguments if you have to resort to, "WHAT ABOUT SCHEV, WHAT ABOUT HIS HISTORY?!" and "sToP pSyChOaNaLyZiNg mE" as the best possible defense for yourself.

Most of what you say has nothing to do with why you should be unbanned from this server, due to your conduct and your very toxic viewpoints on how this community should be run. It wasn't just an epic zinger either, because there's plenty of evidence that stacks up to create this image of you repeating this pattern where you get wound up over what should be nothing to you, and your usual response to 'issues' you see only makes addressing the issue even more uncomfortable and difficult for everyone else that has to respond to you. I entirely agree. It is fortunate that you finally understand where the issue is now and one part of why you were permanently banned. However, you don't seem to understand the concept of consistency and actual improvement. Or, rather, you don't care.

"So here is a good deal: if you're toxic, I'll breed more toxicity. I expect people to do the exact same if I'm toxic towards them." Good luck getting this appealed, then.

Lemme clear some things up. 1. The nature of me making the ban request was not motivated out of a single, insignificant argument by itself. I wrote up the ban request as a last straw measure due to your complete inability (or lack of want) to change your tactics when discussing problems, and your general disposition towards people. You are/were one of the loudest voices in this community, and that actually carries a massive responsibility because people tend to notice the loudest voices. Those people tend to be the biggest motivators for change, but when your tone seems unfocused or with the intent to be particularly toxic, people will have difficulty liking you. When you are not liked, it becomes difficult to get your points across, because when you are disliked for your behavior you become scrutinized at every opportunity for anything you have to say versus what you have said and done. On the positive end of it, the loudest voices that speak rightly and appropriately can cause such positive changes to the community and its internal mindsets on issues. I do not care to recall exactly when your attitude problems began to truly ramp up in severity, but I believe it to be a mistake of the administration to not give you more adequate, escalated discipline to reign you into the understanding that there are boundaries that should at least be avoided in crossing. I will not list 5 paragraphs full of examples of your attitude as evidence because such examples of your attitude can be found through your forum posts, server logs and discord messages from when you were not banned. Likewise, this isn't a subject to dispute the evidence, but rather to appeal the ban. Ban appeals are usually made under the principle of, "I did wrong, but can I be granted leniency, please?" Staff complaints are the polar opposite side of the spectrum. You normally issue those if you think the staff member did a bad or the evidence is disputed. 2. The ultimate reason for the ban request being written on my end was because I viewed your attitude, disposition and method of dealing with problems as inherently toxic and awful for the community environment to just allow to continue. I've already pointed out that I think it's a failure on the administration for not taking additional measures to punish any of your past behavior much harder than they actually did. Yes, I'm sure the permaban seemed like it came too soon because you never earned a substantial tempban prior to that. Given your past behavior and also your knack for escalating situations with your tactlessness, I'm not necessarily as shocked. Like I said before, I had no intention of negotiating or making amends with you before because I did not believe there was any reconciling with you to be had. There was next to no chance that any discussion with you would end in, "I could stand to not be an ass" because plenty of people have had that discussion with you before and you simply disagreed with them and did not change. That and I was pretty pissed with you! Won't lie, that definitely factored into writing up that ban request. In retrospect I don't regret any of it because I don't think a change of words I could've used would have changed my thoughts on it. I still take issue with your behavior. There were times where I actually thought you could stand out as an upstanding example to this community, but the amount of times you threw all that away by behaving bitter and pissed off at people just made me equally bitter and pissed off with you. 3. I'm well aware of my past behavior and my past (and even current) negative influences on this community. And if I see behavior that seems dangerously close to my worst behavior on this server and I call it out, it should probably mean something, regardless of the hypocrisy involved. I have experience and recognition with being a shitty person, plenty of it. I'm attempting to improve for the better, one day at a time. The important question is, what are you planning on doing to improve for the better? Not asking that as an internet-dick-measuring contest, asking that genuinely, what do you plan on improving yourself upon if this gets appealed? It is an actually important question. I don't really care about what you think the state of this community is, only thing I care about is what example you plan on setting. I will not deny there are plenty of issues with this community, there are some things that can stand to be far better than it is currently. But before we can confront those issues, we have to be better than the issues we tackle, or else we will fail in dealing with them. 4. Anything I hadn't directly responded to is something I don't think is relevant in addressing, and is likely better suited discussing through another means. This isn't because I don't care about, for instance, the presentation of certain administrators who openly admit to being drunk while moderating/administrating, assuming that is at all true. It's a separate subject from what I think is actually important regarding this thread, and one could actually say that bringing up such an irrelevant thing is simply seeking to cast blame upon others in order to excuse their own behavior. Something to think about, anyway. But more or less, TL;DR, I won't personally support this appeal until you promise that your behavior will improve in three ways: 1. Attitude/general disposition towards others (case-by-case, naturally, won't ask you treat somebody with respect if they told you to off yourself, for example) 2. The words you choose to address issues you see either through an in-game or out-of-game format 3. Fair and reasonable treatment of other community members when discussing any array of discussions If you can't or won't show that you have any interest in improving any of those three, then clearly this appeal is a waste of time and should be denied.

And apparently a lot of people who play security hate it. The definition of insanity is doing the exact same thing and expecting different results.

Strongly against the removal of IAA, and the addition of other roles. Things are fine as-is.

I read more than just the above paragraph, but I suppose the testimony alone does indicate this won't work out without a lot of infrastructure to keep communications streamlined and tidy. But we'll see. Perhaps the disadvantage is better the way it is, perhaps it isn't.

I don't really find the headset issue to be much of a hindrance. If you really think you need interaction with the core sec department that badly you just go ask an officer to switch the bounce radio to the security frequency. If you need extra supplies you get up to go find them. SS13 also follows the formula of walking around to go on a treasure hunt for bare minimum essentials to ensure you have the best experience possible. If I'm ever an officer I'm most comfortable with a first aid kit (advanced or not, makes no difference), crowbar, two-to-three pairs of handcuffs, flashlight, filled oxygen tank (preferably a double capacity tank), gas mask in box with no breath mask in it, and all the typical stun tools in my belt or the webbing. I always carry a lunchbox full of stuff too in the event of round-start or even mid-round hunger or thirst.

Personal experiences are how we gather feedback. There is no feedback without injecting personal experiences into discussion. You are essentially insisting people not present their experiences, which are crucial for gathering different perspectives and thus paving the way for a proper conclusion. See yourself out of the discussion if you have no other way to constructively participate.

They are not really nerfed that much to start with. Cannot tell you how many times it has been of particular difficulty to me to have a large security team when I play HOS. When there are more officers in play, there are more independent variables to consider. Those independent variables each have varying ways to handle situations and also each have their own bus factor dependent on the situation. During specific round-types, they are more difficult to hold accountable if they break Corporate Regulations (because they become indispensable, rather than disposable as they start the round), and often when you do have time to hold one officer accountable, something else on the station is happening and you're one man down for removing the problematic officer from the department. Large teams are an absolute pain to handle as HOS, especially during high server population counts. Because of the fact the security department wasn't compact, it was difficult to manage and hold accountable. The sec department is far more compact now. It is a challenge to deal with group antagonists now, this is true. I don't even think crossfire deserves to exist as a game mode, because it adds far too many individual antagonist variables at once for it to be balanced with all populations. (Ever be the only security on crossfire? It's garbage, just like the game mode. But that's just my opinion.) Nonetheless, the challenge involved with dealing with groups of antagonists is, as they say, part of the game experience. You are not expected to 1v8, so don't make decisions that put you into a 1v8 situation. Security is nominally expected to have situational awareness and more game sense than any other role in the game in order to play the job effectively, let alone be able to roleplay in that position properly. If you find yourself being unable to deal with this, perhaps it's best to stop playing security if it upsets you that the job is challenging.

I see this on Secret Club where the baron's already silenced comms for smerds (aka low-born class workers) to prevent them from being able to communicate over the radio network. These people meet in person to discuss how to carry out their plots for good or ill. The distance and the cumbersome nature is irrelevant to people who want to carry out their plans. When an individual is motivated enough to stop a grave threat, they will not care about how difficult or cumbersome the resolution to a situation is. They will drive themselves to resolve it their way or die trying (in-game). If their game's community is capable of doing this, so are we. The difficulty of accomplishing a task is irrelevant to me because I log on to be challenged with various situations in-character. I log on to face down conflict or create it myself, and reap excellent reactions out of putting my best effort forward to accomplish what I want done. I do not always succeed, but failure is a teacher, and I am an attentive student. The meek characters will choose not to do anything about conflict and will be pushed aside as background characters. The ones who choose to be active in their involvement of the round will drive the narrative and experience forward and have the most enjoyment from their efforts. The goal of every officer before this change was to protect the station, its assets and its crucial personnel, in that order. The department divisions have perhaps changed up the priorities a little, but each departmental officer has a more relevant task of focusing on the post they are stationed in. They are expected to do whatever they can, even fight, to protect their department and the department's personnel. Do, or do not. Admission that you can only 'try' to accomplish what you want in a round is akin to admitting that you expect to fail, and merely insisting that others shouldn't be so disappointed when you do. Either be convinced you can succeed when you intend to roleplay on this server or don't try at all.

how does this affect your playstyle exactly, could you break down your process of how you played security prior to the test merge?