Casperf1

I think this is an awesome idea. IPC's are great to play as, but their current appearance leaves a lot to be desired, really. They look bad. Plus, I dislike how they have to chose a Positronic brain due to our lore. After forcing evolution with cybernetic implants and prosthetics, it'd only make sense that people would ditch the remains of their useless organic bodies completely. This would kinda honestly open up tons of role-play avenues, like Nik said, if we didn't have to be just Positronic anymore.

Neat! It'd be even cooler if the cane was telescopic (if blind people use those?) like the baton or something. Buuut, I talked to this character a few times IC'ly and he seems really well presented, plus Enkas is good so

That's awesome. Also we should probably throw the SM into the Sing for obvious reasons. Thanks, Canon!

As a sidenote, I really enjoyed this one, too. Though I think having it first person, or present tense gives a way more "choose your own" kinda vibe to it. Still neat, regardless.

I always knew you were Spanish, 1138. Buuuuut. I know English natively, which is about that. However, I'm also half Spanish, and can speak it a very little bit. Circumstances growing up did not mean I was always around my Spanish speaking parent, so as I grew up, I didn't manage to learn as much of the language as I'd have liked to. And what Sammac said. Foreign languages in the UK are just terrible. Back when I was at school, it was either French, or German, depending on if you joined the school on an odd or even year, which was just dumb. Spanish did exist as a choice, but it was a GCSE, and in order to pick that, you had to have scored really high on your pre-determined foreign language the previous 3 years. And... Not a lot of people managed to do that, myself included.

Those were great to read. Nice work!

This is kinda why I asked to avoid referencing this exact situation like eight times. It's in the past, occurred with a member of staff who is no longer active, and is very likely going to foster unnecessary hostility. But as a note, I'll say that I disagree with that, and had I been here, I would've argued against whoever was saying that taking a hard suit was power gaming. My original thingy still stands though. It would be really helpful if you could elaborate on what you mean by: "Just let us play." and "Act like an Administrator of a Heavy-roleplay Server.", since these are very valid points that staff can learn a lot from, should they be worded into constructive feedback.

Seems like a neat idea! I have the artistic capability of a foetus though, so. Aaaaand. What kinda Newsletter do you mean?

Yep! Correct. But! There are a myriad of ways of doing this, each unique to the individual member of staff, even with a general outline, things tend to be case-by-case, and have to be looked at subjectively. Which is why I think criticism, suggestions and feedback should probably be emphasised as such important tools for the community to utilise more often than we seem to do currently. Even though I think that this was a response to Sound, I'd like to interject, if you wouldn't mind. I believe Roleplaying has a different meaning to everyone, much like Acting, or Happiness, or anything, really. But regardless, I'll give you mine. I would say that Roleplaying is placing yourself in the shoes of another character in a fictitious or non-fictitious situation, one that, generally, you would not normally be in. This can be accomplished via various mediums, and it just so happens that our medium has the origins of a rather imbalanced video game, and still retains a lot of individuals and mechanics that adhere to its 'arcade' roots. This mentality and behaviour obviously clashes with the environment of our Heavy Role-play server, which, as an "Administrator of a Heavy Role-play server" we try our very best to uphold such an environment. Whether this is by seeing a situation as unjust, meta/powergamey, or generally unnecessary, we all do this with our own, subjective ideas and viewpoints with the intention of bettering the community and attempting to further Role-play and the environment we strive to uphold, not because we hold a personal vendetta against anybody. Again, Tainaava, simple terms of "Behave like an Administrator of a Heavy-roleplay Server" (a point I would debate that we are currently doing to the best of our ability) and "Just let us play." serve very, very little purpose in assisting staff to make things generally better for the community, at best. Please elaborate on these points, as I think they are very important, but their current state does very little to assist us. Indeed, and this is something that we, as a community, are more than capable of changing. Staff are but one aspect of the community, however, and cannot do this alone.

Indeed! Apologies, Tainavaa! I genuinely didn't see your other post at the top of the page. But yes, as for your question. What is to stop us from not only adding to things, but from removing things as well? The answer is: nothing. And that's the beauty of it. What we have can be changed for the worse, but it can just as easily be changed for the better. If possible, I just really want to avoid referencing actual community examples, if it can be helped. Even if they are possibly the best examples of what staff potentially shouldn't or should be doing, further acknowledging these examples will likely just swerve things off-topic and kinda draw in what I think would be unnecessary hostility, "Person X doing this, that and this." and I don't think specifics or name-calling would be best served to what we are talking about, and again, would just draw more hostility, which I personally don't think is constructive. (though it could be argued we are terribly off-topic already anyway) But still, it would really help if you wouldn't mind acknowledging my original post, when you can. In that point, they would be breaking one or more rules, don't be a dick, and we also have a pretty sure "No ERPing" rule. If they are breaking OOC rules, thats more than fair for admins to step in and say "No." What Tain is saying is, basically, if someone is not outright breaking a rule, like in your example, don't stop them. Tain wanted to take a hardsuit, absolutely no where was that a rule they she couldn't, it was a norm, it was something some people did religously, but then it was suddenly a problem, and it turned into a big problem here on the form. From Tain's standpoint, I think it may be viewed as the problem coming from an admin "not letting the player, play the game." Yep. I placed ERP in brackets as uhm... an attempt at... funny. AHEM! But yeah, as a note, ERP is met with an instant ban so don't do it. But! Onto your point. Again, this is just the best fiction-example I could come up with that I think we could look at subjectively, if anybody has any better ones we could use, that'd be great because uh. I'm not the best at examples. So. Personally, I would not see two people deciding to RP (granted their situation should generally be good enough to realistically consider voiding their job over) as breaking Rule One. Even if they are treading the fine line between Corporate Regs and OOC Rules, these two would not explicitly be breaking any rules that they could be punished over. However, as a result of their actions, they are still hindering over characters and basically ruining the round for other players. May I ask, what would you prefer be done in such a situation? Leave them to their Roleplaying, or intervene and make sure the engine was set up, and submit to Security. Or instead, simply warn them that they should not be picking such an important role, if the do not wish to fulfil the role IC'ly, and leave the rest to be dealt with IC'ly?

Hi, Tainavaa. H'okay, so. I think this is too broad a spectrum and doesn't particularly isolate or provide us with a great deal of constructive feedback that we can read over and implement. Saying let us play is fine and all but: Bombing escape, arrivals and the bridge simultaneously could be classified as playing. Harmbattoning players for no reason could constitute playing. Stealing from SSD for the funnies could also be classified as playing. "let us play" as a suggestion is considerably more difficult for us as staff to decipher and apply our own mentality to, especially dependant on the various situation(s) of players playing, or in case-by-case basis'. As an example: Say we have two characters, Donald and Ronald, the only Engineers. Donald and Ronald decide that they are going to spend their round (E)RP'ing in a corner, as opposed to setting up the Engine. There is no Security, Command or otherwise any personnel available to reprimand these two for Neglect of Duty. Or let's assume that there is a single Officer; they do not have access to arrest these two. Or even in the event that they did, Donald and Ronald decide to weld the officer into a locker and take their new-found love to the station exterior, in a Romeo&Juliet-esque state of defiance. Perhaps too specific, but still. It could be said that these players are just trying to play the game. But at the same time, they are causing issues for the rest of the characters on-shift in a massive IC way, effectively halting their game OOC'ly. However, wouldn't you still say that these two people are playing, despite basically breaking the round for others? I appreciate what you're trying to say, and I think that it's a helpful start. But, I personally think it is way too much of a broad point and really does not go towards giving us much to go on, simply put: There are too many situations and variables to summarise up in such a simple point/request.

And I feel the need to stress that hugely. Every single person I have met on the staff has been there because they love the game, and want to make the community better. They very rarely hate any particular users (and when they do, it's usually because these users are being dicks OOCly, not because of the way they play), and really, what concerns them is the user experience, not upholding the rules. It seems what we have is mostly a communication and ideological problem. Soooo, let's work on that. Yep! But, how do we work on that? I don't personally believe that it's a result of our rules, since personally, I think that they are quite open for interpretation and can be applied on a case-by-case basis, but I digress. Beyond trying to get the community to reach out to staff more, what else can we do? Also, I'd like to stress that the community should not and does not need to feel like they're stepping over land-mines with these issues. We as staff cannot do anything without knowing what the community are thinking. Whether that's agreeing with some particular aspects, that we can reinforce, by extension, or disagreeing with others, which we can begin to modify and change to suit community-wants. I think we can only enforce our own judgement as best as we can, but it is not always for the better.

Even though this is 1138's post saying that he may or may not be leaving (I personally really hope it's the latter, I love you) it raises important issues that have been brought up a lot, and that I've mainly been neutral on, until now. I appreciate and agree with this point, and definitely think it's something not too late to work on, as a community. Okay. So. Bare with me here, because I am not the best at phrasing or at forum posts or at talking in general, but... Back when ye old Aurora was established, it was intended that the Staff were subject to the player's whim, and were there to 'serve' the player-base. After all, there can't really be staff without a community. I will agree with others that over time, this has become less and less the case, and that some arbitrary limitations have been imposed at the expenditure of fun, for example: getting bugged by Security for moving tables and the-like may be realistic, sure, but it certainly is not fun (with a few exceptions, of course). I don't think Staff can come up with solutions to these problems that are being identified alone. I think that more suggestions are needed like the one Frances has made here. We have a whole Suggestions and Ideas board that we rarely present ideas and suggestions to better the community on. We seem more content to talk about and establish issues in a whole slew of threads and forum posts, which is fair enough (healthy discussion and all that) and then let them die down, unresolved. From what I see, these (numerous) issues are being called out and agreed upon, but not that many suggestions are being put forth by us, the community, in an effort help challenge and change these issues. A few of you guys are talking about not "Being able to play the game". What do you mean by this? What would you suggest we as staff can change to make sure you can just play and have fun? Also-also, in an effort to adhere to Franc's suggestion, I'm more than willing to put the fact out there that you can approach staff, and by extension, myself to talk to. I've seen a few people mention that they find staff intimidating, or find staff uncomfortable to talk to, which is fair enough. But I like to think that most of us are not that mean to talk to. So, if anybody does have any issues or suggestions or just fancies a chat, you're free to PM me here, on the Pager or Skype me at: Dion5227

I RP'ed with you a few times, and in one notable round, you were basically holding down the entirety of Medbay by yourself, as well as still being able to properly Role-play. You have my vote. Also one of my characters sorta owes you a drink.