Skull132

Instead of cherry picking, please read the paragraph in full. Or just the final line of the post, which is a summary in and of itself: "If it's an issue [you go talk to them]". As I mentioned, keeping a strictly professional attitude indoors is something you can do if you start legitimately paying staff. Why? Because it requires a decent amount of effort to detach yourself emotionally enough to pull it off. Which is why I do not mind if people nag on each other, as long as everyone involved is okay with it. Like, we have over 50 dudes in chat, all from different cultures and with different world views. There is a lot of grounds for friction and misunderstandings (a good example here is Paradox not being comfortable with Arrow's sense of humour, eg the "Opinions" joke), and we should acknowledge and work to solve this, instead of trying to assimilate everything into a white room with no distinguishing features. A decent example of this is PoZe and I. We both get passionate about code sometimes and some of our disagreements on how to do something can be very fun to watch, I am certain. But at the end of the day, I do not think less of him, I would hope he doesn't think less of me either; I review his code, help him out, merge his code, and life goes on. Psure we've even talked about it a few years ago. And again. No one is actually seething, outright undermining, sabotaging, etcetera. Not that I can see anyways. Arrow is trying to communicate, @ParadoxSpace needs to respond (to Arrow first and foremost). Arrow still merges Paradox's PRs, work gets done, and so forth.

As I explained before to Paradox in private, you will likely not find anyone that matches the desired image of "innocent" within our community. All of us get irate, all of us take jabs at each other, all of us make failed jokes, etcetera. Even Chada will eventually drop down from his zen if you try hard enough to get him annoyed. Countering with, "Well, you said mean things too!" is a bit pointless to that end. Ultimately, we should act like adults and should be able to understand that the expectation to remain cordial 24/7 is reserved for an environment where you're actually paid a salary, and that things will get heated. Either dismiss some stuff in your head, or speak to the person (as Arrow is trying to do and Paradox is responding to, intermittently) about your issues and misgivings. Becrying staff toxicity is not really productive unless there's actual malicious intent or other tomfoolery at play. Eg. attacks that are uncalled for. (And no, referring to a clear mistake as a brain fart does not quality.) Oh and yeah. If you act dismissively towards someone, as Paradox has done in cases, then expect them to act dismissively towards you as well. If this is an issue, you go and talk to them. And expect both of you to have to make changes, not just a point of, "Hey can you cut it out while I continue? Kthx." ONCE that fails, you make a staff complaint.

Hi, complaint's mine to oversee. First, to quickly cover some ground already covered elsewhere. The following assertion is not up for debate in this complaint. The testing of PRs is not the job of a Head Developer nor that of a maintainer. The job of a maintainer is to ensure in the stability and functionality of the codebase. Due to practical concerns (we merged over 70 PRs last month), we rely on the authors to test them and to present relevant information. If a bad PR gets merged, then the maintainers have two options really: to acquire a bugfix for the PR somehow, or to revert it. The latter was done in this instance. Further note, I'd prefer primarily to see dialogue on this matter between @ParadoxSpace and @Arrow768, since this is largely a matter of interpersonal communication. A large deal of evidence submitted to Alb, and by proxy to me, was just banter or a heated discussion. Banter and discussions where both sides can be perceived to be at fault: take the TCFL vs ERT debate. Arrow posted a sarcastic comment disvaluing player opinion, perhaps he should not have. Paradox, in the same discussion, should not have ridiculed the idea of trying to keep ERT relevant (because 'we need ERT!!!!!!!!!!!!!') and should not have personally attacked Arrow's activity (considering i play more). Note that we have about 500 regular players a month, if not more, so insistence that your opinion is somehow more important than the other 499 iiis. An old joke the Head Developers deal with quite regularly. Specially as of late. Ultimately, I would prefer that the staff team actually be able to communicate internally effectively, and either: simply roll with the shit, instead of assuming the worst or taking it to heart; do a double-take and communicate immediately about a matter being taken too far or off-topic. If taken far enough, point two will effectively mean the issuing of strikes and eventual dismissal (or GH bans if relevant), dependent on behaviour.

As per the announcement on Discord yesterday, Jackboot has been dismissed from the position of Lore Master. He will remain as the Unathi Species Maintainer, as the matters pertaining to this decision do not immediately overlap with his abilities to write lore. The way forward with the lore team is to establish a new leadership, with the intent of resolving certain matters internally. For this purpose, @Mofo1995 will be promoted to the position of Interim Lore Master. Further more, a new Interim Deputy Lore Master will be recruited from among the current writers. In order to free up time and energy, effective this promotion, Mofo will no longer be involved with the CCIAA team, with the leadership of that being taken over by Lancer, and he will take a step back from the Tajaran Species Maintainer position as well (though the current arcs he started will be concluded). Some more information about recent events: No policy or specific decision established by Jackboot will be reverted. It will be up to the new Lore Team leadership to manage as they see fit. The Interim Lore Master and his Deputy will work together with the Lore Team and general server leadership to establish leadership within the Lore Team. If this is successful, then after a time, they will be promoted to Lore Master and Deputy proper.

Alternatively. Play visitor. Some security players might enjoy dealing with this kinda stuff.

The one proposed by @Conspiir is waaay too messy, visually. There's 4 elements for your eyes to focus on, and they're all in their a different visual style. Even the original is leaning towards that: the text and the NanoTrasen logo do not match at all. And the logo + text do not match the sprites. Another issue with the TC torch specifically is its likeness with the Bay12 Torch symbol. Which is why I would rather avoid it.

Well. Let's find out how long this lasts for.

+1 dismissal. A change based on preference in a matter where there is no objectively better answer. Your inability to find the appeal of the backpack sprites does not mean that there is not one. It is not a valid argument in this case.

Ban lifted. You should be able to join again.

Indeed it would make sense if the mirror was caught based on an IP match. But. It's not. What ticked off the detector was something else. Any other explanations you can come up with for the matter at hand?

Putting this out there just for the sake of transparency. While we are delighted to see that there are kind individuals within our community who are willing to Nitro Boost our public Discord server, we would like to inform you that we are not going to utilize any of the benefits from it. So you are better off spending the boost elsewhere, should you wish to. Ultimately though, your money, your freedom. The decision is primarily based around the amazing anti-consumer model that Nitro Boosting is meant to enable, and we do not wish to partake in it.

If we were to follow the democratic wish, we'd replace the sprites but not the mechanics. Though the mechanics may have merits beyond initial negative reaction.

Just for clarification. The specific medium of a feedback thread was deemed unnecessary. This is a style specific question: for every person that prefers one option, you'll find another who prefers the other. What are we going to gain from this thread? Count the amount of people who like either one, and then make a decision based on that, while wholly accepting the fact that the feedback posted here is horribly under-representative of the community at large? No. And there really isn't much feedback beyond that you can offer about the sprites. If we wanted metrics on this PR, we would go around this another way. Specifically by initiating a vote on the server. Since pure numbers in this case would be a lot more interesting. But that also seems over-stretched for a simple PR about one simple object. Ultimately it should be the development team's job to judge whether or not a specific detail of implementation (which a singular sprite is) matches established convention and content.

Think about it. That is literally how Discord wants to make money with it. By introducing benefits the server owner isn't in charge of. It's devilish.

> Some randos boost your server. > You make use of it, and there are benefits for everyone (provided the user cares for this shit). > Those randos leave/stop boosting/stop giving a fuck. > You now lose your boost. > You are now presented with an option to either remove the serve-rwide perks, to the displeasure of your server population, or are required to boost the server yourself. lmao.

That'll be up to the playerbase and administration to hash out, ultimately. I don't think we have instances of that at present happening, so we hopefully won't in the future, either.

I agree.  I disagree. I disagree on the premise that the implementation of this feature is no longer as simple as you assume it to be. The new system that I am developing is not a simple matter of, "Select from a list and call it a day". The system is more tightly integrated with others, there are more requirements applied to the input data, and what's more noteworthy, is that I want the contractor status to be more visible. So much so that it would be incorporated into your rank in-game. It is absolutely not imaginable that we allow for the creation of an n + 1 lore entities of such notoriety. If a person wants to have their own pet little corporation, then they can use the currently existing loophole and just be contracted directly under NT or some shit.

I disagree wholeheartedly. If there is one consistent issue that I have had with our lore, then it is the fact that it is spread way too thin. And choices to give player excessive freedom, like in this case, are a major contributor to this. Lore quickly becomes irrelevant if people have the ability to create their own pet little faction or take their own pet approach to a solution. This not only undervalues the importance of lore as is written and developed by the lore developers, it also creates a situation where the attention of the lore developers is spread out over a multitude of factions that have to accommodate a shit load of different ideas "Because a player might want to do this". The result is that the lore, beyond the key points that we do still enforce mechanically (species), can largely be ignored and is irrelevant in game play. The idea currently is to, first, reduce the number of officially supported contractor factions to a handful. And to give each of them a specific feel, background, specialty. This would distinguish them from each other, and help reinforce their image in-game. And later, hopefully, the lore developers can use those existing and reinforced factions to actually do things that are relevant to the player base and in-game characters.

So the aim is to put more weight on being dead. Counter-point. As Coalf pointed out in Discord, considering the nature of the game, people still die regularly or for no reason, and having to wail over a deceased comrade who's perma-gone each round will get draining for the player base. So the death of the character gets minimized through that process alone: the abundance of death cheapens it. From this. A counter-proposal. Make cloning an off-station off-round thing. The thought process is pretty simply. If we cannot change death being cheap, then let's still make it a bit more punishing than it is now, in order to get folks to dislike it. You're basically removed from the round if you die, which will hopefully want to make you die a wee bit less. And it mitigates some of the RP shenanigans around, "Oh hey. You're back up again. Here you, right where you left off."

Have to say. This threw me for a loop. You cite roleplay benefits, and yet, in your opening statement, you only bring out issue with appearances. Considering the game's capacity for visual fidelity, this has to be the least important trait. Specially when when the core of the character, how they act, is different, as per your definition of a clone. Further regarding the definitions. Everyone knowing something does not make it quantifiable. It'd be as good as staff starting to ban people who are obviously here to wreak shit. Why even require evidence of someone being a dick, when we can just cut out the middle-man? So a concrete definition would be necessary and "Has the same appearance as character Y," does not really cut it, as has explained per numerous examples above. Now, contrary to your opinion. This has been punished in the past and has thus been proven to be against the rules on specific occasions. One case was a character ban, wherein a player attempted to dodge said character ban by creating a new character with a new name, a new appearance, and altered mannerisms. But it was clear upon inspection of the character's background and general conduct that the character was basically still a clone/continuation of the banned character. So it was squashed. Which leaves us with a case wherein character duplication with intent to dodge punitive action is banned as a general rule. There is also a certain limit of sensibility. Despite your attempts at making this seem like a regular happenstance, it really isn't. Were it to ever become the norm, or was one player to be caught creating an n-amount of characters who are essentially the same, into various roles, it would probably be a violation of the roleplay rules. Because as you do point out, it can be interpreted as bad roleplay. I just disagree with the qualifiers. And this brings us to the general point about how our rule set is added to or subtracted from. We aim to minimize niche or outlier rules, unless absolutely necessary. If you want to see a reason why, go read up on the Apophis era rules. It only escalates rules lawyering, because you validate the idea of, "Well, it's not explicitly mentioned in the rules, so staff can't rule on it!" So this likely won't be added.

That's up to you, Jackboot, and Nursie to hash out. Our only requirement is that we not get 3 Skrell deputies. Regarding the more general complaint. We had a meeting between myself, Arrow, Alberyk, Jackboot, and Mofo. Regarding the points of general conduct and rules. It was discussed to implement a set of Lore Writer guidelines. The purpose of this would be to codify the general SOP (how development is done, who to talk to), some rules (staff limits, responsibilities) and so forth. So that the expectations and requirements for both the writer and the leader would be clear. @Senpai Jackboot can expand on the idea in a bit more depth here. And I would also like for the input of the writers to be considered when he's finished his draft. Regarding the points of management. What myself, Alberyk, and Arrow presented was that the lore devs attempting to communicate between and track multiple projects in one channel is a mess ready to rot. Or well, a mess already rotting. Projects are either placed into a google doc that's nominally passed in lore chat every now and then, or whole new discords are created for projects, none of which are really tracked anywhere. It is clear to say that this is not exactly sustainable nor very easy to keep track of. The general recommendation was for the Lore Team to take up the use of the forums or Kanboard, for the purposes of tracking projects and their progress. This is sort of like how developers have Github: one centralized place, where all active and relevant projects are pinned, and their status can be tracked easily enough. We also suggest the creation of project specific channels. All of this would help concentrate and slow down project specific discussion, while keeping it in a concise place and thus available to the leadership for feedback. It would also assist project managers in having a go-to place to centralize information at. Of course it would also involve work and effort from all of you, to find a decent system that works out. But in our opinion, it would make lore development a more concise. It should also help in things actually materializing, instead of a google doc being worked on for a month or two, and then fizzing out.

Ban lifted. If there's issues connecting, please PM me.

I mean, I am already in the process of implementing this. Along with locking down contractor factions to specifically named entities. My view is that allowing too much freedom in this regard will devalue the ones the lore could be focusing on. And it'll also make them a hot mess.

So, there is a relatively long list of items to unpack here. And I may not get around to all of them in this first post. But we shall try to get the ball rolling at least. First and foremost, regarding the recruitment of a new deputy. We are of two minds on this. VT, you were told that an existent deputy coming under review would be a possibility and said, "We can discuss that later". Well, it was discussed, and a decision made. Claiming ignorance or holding faith in a previous instance, effectively discarding this note as, "unlikely to happen", was a decision you made and it bit you. You could have at least asked and drilled deeper about it, instead of binning it immediately in your mind. However, this is not to say that the situation could not have been handled better by Jackboot either. He should have been more firm (1) in handling the issue, by either slowing you down and making sure you are clear on the matter, or by just resolving the issue immediately, before permitting you to open up the apps. Arguably the latter would most likely have been the optimal solution. As an immediate fix, the hard limits on deputies have been codified, and we are considering applying heavier oversight to the recruitment of the lore team down the line. Moving on, regarding oversight and general management. This is a bit of a harder nut to evaluate, and I will be gathering a bit more feedback on the subject from other lore devs. In general, though, there does seem to be consensus that Jackboot focuses on specific elements of lore while neglecting others. I have also heard mentions of him having bias towards the creative decisions of specific individuals over others, but, as noted, this is due for a bit more discussion, to be carried out this week. One general solution that has been proposed for this has been the separation of the role of lore master from that of a species maintainer. Specifically, to ensure that the lore master is able to focus solely on actually managing lore, instead of actively writing it as well. Granted, this does have issues, specifically regarding motivation (someone who wants to be purely a manager is harder to find than someone who's willing to do managing as a side job). But we shall see. Related to management are also the two following notices. Firstly, regarding the complaints raised by Neinbox. Much like Abo has said, we find these bordering on excessively nit picky, to use a set of phrasing. If the established modus operandi for the lore team has been the review of works in progress via Google Docs, then you are obligated to enable this as a member of this team. If you do not wish to do so, then understand that failure to partake in the modus operandi of the team is grounds for removal. An analogy would be: the developers use Github to submit code for review. It is possible to use other means, like email, to submit diffs, but I assure you, your contributions will not be reviewed nor admitted if you did not go through the established channels. Overall, I feel like Jackboot should have been more active in resolving this, at least finding you an active replacement (2) while you were on leave for a good few months. He gave you a lot of space, and there has been regular pressure from myself, since January, to get Diona development actually active again. (And no, promises of hidden projects are not a good thing to try and fly with me.) The second note is related to what Moon said: While I disagree with the interpretation of these as "threats", I do see a bit of a trend. Jackboot is lenient (3). Very lenient. In my opinion, had he just put you up to the fact that your activity needs to improve, then that conversation would have perhaps carried less animosity with it. And perhaps this would have applied to others as well. One thing to take into consideration, due to the fact that most staff slots are limited, is that inactive people should be getting actively rotated out. And this does include basically letting people know that their activity is at an unacceptable level and it is time to go. This applies more so where the billet count is more limited (e.g. species maintainer positions). The numbers indicate a minimum amount of places I saw wherein Jackboot could have and should have acted in a manner more firm and to the point. This would be my bet at one of the core underlying issues here. I am curious to know what @Senpai Jackboot himself thinks of this interpretation. Addendum: "We" refers to all of the Head Admins and Head Devs, as per our internal discussions. "I" refers to my personal views and interpretations.

Doesn't fully address the issue, simply shifts it. The core issue is that there is no mechanic nor sure fire way to get an agreement. So saying that there is one that'll be made is a non-answer. IMO some sure fire way of ensuring a theme is picked for the team must exist. Possibilities include: Mechanical voting amongst team members. Designating a team leader who has the final say. Randomly picking from a pool.