Peppermint

Good.

I've lifted the ban and replaced it with a warning.

The way we do unbans is that the forum link is put into your notes to list as an explanation for anyone else reading through it (so here me saying I was wrong with my judgement and happy to drop it down, so shouldn't need to worry about others' judging)- so there will be context added. And yes, that's correct. As specified too, the note is already being re-written to make it clearer.

ERP is just an easy catchall term for adult content - less so having sexy time with people as it would be elsewhere. The problem is that it puts the other person in a really bad spot. It insinuates they were trying to get your character's dick out which shifts all sorts of uncomfy, unfortunate pressure onto them. Does that make sense? I don't know if I'm explaining it well; late, but wanna get this resolved given it's 24 hours.

I've looked at what was said during the PDA conversation. To be clear the extent it was going toward was deemed not ok. However it wasn't as not okay as I thought it would be. I'm willing to drop the ban to a warning, but I'm unwilling to remove the link entirely. The admin who placed the note has also said they're gonna edit it to be a bit clearer.

Is this in regards to the previous note I mentioned? I'll look into who placed it and talk to them.

I was originally busy at the time and read the intent here wrong. I'm not lifting the ban as it's only 24 hours but I'll do my best to explain what the issue here was and why I can't just write it off as playground humour. You were originally spoken to in regards to explicit content so far as I can see on your note history. It doesn't show the details of it so perhaps I'm getting confused given the wording. That's why it wasn't just a note/warning. But already seem to have blurred the line of what is ok. The thing is, to the person you're saying not to get your dick out too, it immediately creates a situation where your character was implying theirs's was doing exactly that - attempting to undress your character for questionable purposes. This kind of thing sticks. It doesn't matter if it's observers or other players, but this kind of stuff causes issues. People aren't going to want to interact with someone who's trying to 'get people's dicks out' or the like, yeah? It's really just the kind of thing that gets cemented onto someone's reputation in a really bad way. I do not believe you were being malicious, or attempting to do that. If it was a question of me thinking you were actually out there attempting to put those kinds of allegations onto people, it would have been a perma ban instead - I don't, which I touched on in the ticket; that it was a 24 hour ban (the smallest we give out) due to trying to make it clear this kind of thing is a really big no-go here. I hope that clears it up. If you wanna, you'll need to put a staff complaint up if you still disagree. Locking and arching for now.

Well I don't have anything else to say on this. Don't tell people "I don’t care what year it is, maybe I just don’t want some lady pulling out my dick for me.” You have another note of going over the line. That's all from me. Appeal denied. Need to make a staff complaint justifying it if you wanna. I'll edt in some more info a bit later.

So far as I see this, it depends if there was any hint the intruders were hiding amongst the crew before this. @Infernalistgamer Do you remember if there was at all? I'll check through logs in a few days given the holidays, but that's where the crux of it will be I think.

I'll be taking this. Few questions. - It was red alert at this point, right? What were the antags doing? - How far into the round was this? @Roostercat Need your reasons as to how you feel it was meta gaming + the warning wording as it looks like they just went purely off of having the janicart?

1) Seems pretty clear to mean in a social response - socially and lawfully, IPCs do have very little autonomy. 2) Yes, but it's a very much high stake thing, and in general you'd be hard pressed to explain why your IPC did that. Nothing here seems to not have been read, or read incorrectly. I don't think she has missed anything and would do fine with a synth WL.

Me. Peppermint96 for ckey. Locking and archiving. You'll need to make a new post on the staff complaint forum with your reasons for it being invalid.

If you disagree with the ban reason and want it overturned, you need to make a staff complaint rather than an unban request. If you agree with having broken rules and whatnot, then fine to continue here. Which would you prefer?

I don't agree that sandbagging should be more common. And people get point blanked here is, tbh, not something I think is wrong, but that's generally not something the server seems to want and that's entirely okay. But sandbagging to large extents just completely removes a lot of tension - if something is set up to be really strong, it should be really strong, and that's my frustration here. I know it's unfair I can give feedback based off of what I hear over aooc and msay and whatnot, but I think the original plan of going 'lighter' on weapons when we originally thought only 2 badly armed sec officers coming is the good kind, because it balances the playing field but doesn't tip it toward the other - as opposed to clearing oxygen out of an area because the intrepid fucked up and left, venting the place. I don't know. For lower key events it probably makes more sense, but for this one in particular I think the Horizon fucking around and finding out would have been much more satisfying. Not from a desperate urge to hate on people and lose their characters or anything - I'd be happy with just some map edits to make the Horizon a bit more messed up, the moon thing being destroyed, ect - but just so we don't get these Horizon keeps winning situations. It is okay to lose on every other kind of round, and maybe in events it should be more doable too.

For reference, I wanna make something clear after seeing it crop up. People were not ahealed or anything, just had their damage reduced by a bit. Before anyone yells at the staff peeps who did it that is.

I watched, didn't play. My thoughts were mostly covered in the previous one, but after this latest event I....am not so sure. I'm aware my own stance on player death and the like is very different to most people's, but I didn't like the lack of consequences in this one. It is okay for the Horizon to lose sometimes. People signing up to boarding raids to fight solarian marines on their own shuttle should not be, in my opinion, VV edited to try and ensure they have a better chance of survival - it takes away a lot of the tension and minimises the impact of player choice. If people want to charge an entrenched marine position in shorts, loot their armory for better gear, ect, they should expect there's a good chance they'll die. Doubly so when server tick rates mean an IPC is hellchungus charging down and killing everyone as they cannot die in time. My other frustration is the sense of scale. The Horizon got bodied in simulations vs a cruiser (?), and struggled a lot against a tiny baby FSF ship. But through the deletion of the weapons on their big ship, a lack of ammo, and general intervention to play nice, we'll have a bunch of players happily regaling us about that one time their character went all doom guy and shot up a sol cruiser before boarding them and killing marines. If mechanics are so disconnected from lore like this, it causes an annoying cognitive dissonance where you have to bend the events around whenever they're brought up. It felt like there was too much staff intervention and it cheapened things a lot, coupled with the issues brought up in the previous thread of using the ship for military purpose anyway.

Appeal accepted.

So, my take on this isn't great. You have a lot of notes and many of them should probably have been escalated, but that's an argument for me to have elsewhere. However a lot of them are also the same thing - you pushing your luck on what you can get away with, and then pleading innocence in DMs. I really don't buy it any more. That I gave you a temp ban and not a perma job ban like I was thinking was me trying to be nice. Instead you then went and bragged about it in discord, I assume because the punishment was really rather lax. It's not a good look. This is pretty much reinforced with what you've typed here. I will lift this as it's your first unban appeal, but it's with the understanding that second perma appeals are generally rather difficult, if not outright impossible to appeal. You're really close to being removed entirely. Got it?

Heyo, I'll be taking this as Read applied the ban upon my request, given I was off for the night and she was free. Will get around to it tomorrow.

I've not played this arc, but I've watched rounds here and there so take my experiences with a grain of salt. That said, I generally feel the issue here is that people don't really know what they want. Prior to this we've had entirely non-combat, non-risk events and most of them were complained about for being boring and railroad-y. We've had combat events and people didn't like them because they were scared of losing characters. People really just don't seem to have a good grasp on what they want an event to give to them, and so I'd implore people giving feedback to say more about what they do want - such as those using the kotw arc as a comparison point. I do agree with the dissatisfaction of the increased milsim nature - or, really, the 'threat' of it if that makes sense? More and more, I look at Aurora discussions and there will be people wanting militry ranks, different general quarter alerts, ect, ect, and I have to say it's a bit worrying as that would completely end any interest I had in the server. That said, nothing much there has actually really happened? We have guns now and whilst I do have my own criticisms there (The Horizon is giga ridiculously silly strong and will murder anything and everything if played by competent people), it's been a fun addition. The general barrier it feels here is lack of content. We don't have many interesting exo planets. People often talk about how much they miss what Bay does with theirs, and we don't have anything similar here. But there just aren't that many people adding things - mapping is not very hard and the community is lovely with offering help. If you see a gap, maybe taking some personal responsibility and adding it yourself would be nice. I would also love many interesting exo planets to explore, fun away ships to mess around in ect, but that times a lot of time and effort - being a ship actively exploring for phoron is great, but we still have barriers when it comes to content right now, as NBT hasn't really been fully done for that long. I do feel there has been a certain lack of willingness to listen to feedback taken on by certain members of the lore team, and there has been some poor attitudes here and there on both sides - but that's what happens when people don't use their nice words and completely pile on people whilst telling them how hostile they are and how shit their events are, ect. Obviously everyone is passionate, but putting that passion into something constructive is better. It's so saddening to see people attack the dev team for not being approachable (????) when you can just look into the code channel and see how willing to help people are. Or the lore team for dismissing concerns they'd probably be more receptive to listening to if they weren't being told their ideas should be used as toilet paper. It's ridiculous. Be polite, and you'll get much further. This bizarre 'the staff is out to get us' talk is very self-obsessed and straight up weird. I really implore people who feel like that to actually try and engage with folks more, take a look at staff complaints and how problematic staff members have been handled, and maybe consider joining one of the teams - people are nice, promise. That said, this talk of telling people to hold off on their feedback is just as worrying. People giving feedback should be encouraged and this 'wait for the end of the arc' when people are already not having fun is just as silly, and makes it feel like issues are being dismissed. Especially when it feels like there's been attempts to shut conversations down and wait for official channels fairly regularly here and now, though my memory is a bit spotty and I could be entirely misremembering. Tl;DR. Catch more flies with honey. Milsim bad, no more of it please but right now it's probably okay. KOTW event good as lots of variety.

Yeah, I'm sorry @Scheveningen - I didn't realise these were private, and only just realised from being pinged about it in the other discord. They were posted to the staff chat as an example of what was going on and I thought they were part of what had been discussed with you both. That bit is on me and I take full responsibility. I've gone ahead and hid both posts that show the DM details, though the admin taking it will be able to see. I don't want to delete them as a way to cover it up or the like. It's definitely dumb and embarrassing, though more on my side than yours - I don't think this makes you look bad as opposed to it being handled poorly.

- Anyone can ascertain 'another individual got x' with zero proof and it'll never mean anything without actual details. And even then, people handle cases differently or not, with entirely different contexts. Whether you like it or not, you have a very long history of negative interactions with others leading to admin action and have to my mind long since burnt out on good will or the benefit of doubt when it comes to things like this. The fact of the matter is that you did not have to attack someone else after already being told by Cybs it would be looked at. - Yes, lots of people argue ICly. Lots of people get told to chill when it starts to become an OOC problem. This whataboutism means nothing and entirely misses the purpose. When I'm being told you're alluding to someone being a nazi, attacking them oocly on the character they play prior to this, and then joining IC interactions that previously had nothing to do with you or your character as personal attacks onto them, the evidence really just doesn't look good. If you were previously part of the conversation, sure. But that's not what happened, and I have no reason to doubt the judgement of three other staff members who weighed in on an issue I didn't have much understanding of. You don't have to interact with someone on the relay in an entirely different comment - instead you went after what their character had previously said for no reason I can see, in the exact same manner you were OOCly criticising them previously for what character they have chosen to play. - There is no personal attack here. This was a group choice by other staff members too when I asked what they thought should be done. Unless you think this is a co-ordinated effort from pretty much the entire relay team to get at you, there's just no grounds whatsoever for taking this as a personal thing when anybody else would also be told the same. Edited to be a 'lil more neutral.

Hey, been asked to comment for transparency. All of my logic and reasoning is in the staff relay channel for those who take it - I'm not sure if I'm allowed to copy/paste it over if it's a discussion. - I was approached by @Sputnik5927 who gave me a rather long breakdown of an OOC metagrudge that looked pretty well documented to me. However I've been away from direct Aurora contact for a little while, and therefor wasn't really sure on the details. - I asked in the relay mod chat if anyone knew anything about this and what had previously gone down, as another mod had said they'd handled it previously. - I also copied some details of Sputnik's complaint over and asked the group what they thought, with my reasoning being those comments I linked to you looking very similar to a player taking OOC grievances IC after being told to OOCly stop. However I wasn't really involved previously, so asked what they thought. - There was general agreement that this looked like a meta grudge, so I asked about punishment. I was under the impression it was going to be a ban, given a long history of relay strikes and in-game notes/warnings/bans regarding cruel comments to other players. - Spoke about the ban and whatnot. Strikes really don't mean anything, so a temp ban was suggested. Other mods were poked, other people were brought in, ect, as, again, this wasn't an issue I'd been following. And the first thing I was told following me saying that I was willing to handle it was that I should get someone else involved if I was harassed in DMs over it. - Ban given. Seems very clear case of metagruding to me. You were under no obligation to start an argument with someone's character you don't have to interact with after previous issues brought up. - You DM'd me. I made it clear you should take it to the forums. Arguing over discord is loss-loss and I do not feel I am at any obligation to handle things like this in my spare time away from server issues. It's a hobby, not a job. I gave some reasoning and then closed my DMs. Nothing about this is targeted by anyone. Nobody is looking for an excuse to get rid of you, or you'd be gone - case and point there was talk of a perma ban instead being entirely justifiable. TL;dr: You really had no reason to continue an IC argument against someone you did not have to interact with in that space. Entirely uncalled for and was just another outlet sought in my view. I feel the ban was entirely fair. It would be different in game if forced to interact in the same department or something, but that's not what happened. Nothing about the conversation or space forced you to start another conflict.

I only watched it, didn't play. Agree we should probably split up responsibilities some. Operations should really be responsible for all loading I think; I don't see why they can't also assemble shells. BCs should still be allowed I reckon, but only if there's nobody else to do it. I'm not sure how to give others other jobs though without making the horizon even more crazy strong. Issue with giving a giga weapon like the leviathon is that it's kind of hard not to justify just using it straight out, and it's not that limited. I think it should need more hands-on somehow by engineering/science, or just require a lot more power before you can shoot. Agree with the mapping issues. Destroying the bridge and thus consoles is a bit too easy on pretty much any ship. Exact same thing happened whilst fighting the tcfl as SFA yesterday - one shot to either's bridge entirely ended combat until we boarded. Shields are also probably doing too much. Half+ of the sol's ships rounds completely missed and got eaten by them. I would like direct damage from 40mm and the like to also be more lethal if possible. People shouldn't be able to shrug off a bunch of rounds, like some engineers did after getting shot in the main hallway.

Okay, cool. I'm content with how it went down. Thanks.