Omicega

I'll admit that this is an area of lore I'm not really that strong on. I spoke briefly with some people recently about this, actually, and this particular chapter of lore seems to have some less-than-ideal documentation on the wiki and to have been primarily done through news articles. I am aware of a general streak of xenophobia running through Elyra, though, owing to the Hegemony's belligerent attitude and the Lii'dra invasion both, but while I'd like to expand on this in a cautious manner (I don't want to encourage a streak of one-note xenophobe characters by any means), I think that I'd like to end up pulling in some faces who were around in that era of Aurora's history -- ideally members of the Vaurca lore team, if possible, for where Bursa is concerned -- and collaborate extensively with them on bringing the wiki up to standard regarding those events. I don't think news articles and the like should be a primary source of information for worldbuilding aspects like these. I don't foresee anti-Vaurca/Unathi sentiment being a central feature of what I'd ideally like to write into Elyran culture. I'd like to tie it into something martial, maybe, in order to channel it towards something a bit more constructive or well-rounded than just 'we hate aliens'.

At the very minimum, I'd like to add an Elyran analogue for Sol Common/Tau Ceti Basic that's more or less specific to Elyra itself, although ideally it would have some level of penetration beyond just Elyra into places like the Coalition. This would be somewhere further down the line, though, as I'm aware that something on the scale of an entirely new language is probably beyond a lone lore deputy's reach, but it would be something I'd really like to push for. Languages lore is an aspect of the Aurora canon that I think gets overlooked a lot, and since languages are an area of personal interest for me IRL anyway it's something I'd love to sink my teeth into. Splitting Freespeak isn't something that occurred to me, to be honest, although I only have vague and less well-conceived ideas about how I'd tackle other languages. The main one that came to mind for me, actually, was Tradeband and how it doubles up as a Spur-wide language of culture and affluence and the mother tongue of Dominians -- an isolated people parked light-years away from Sol proper. I'd like to do a potential split between Classical/Lunar Tradeband and Morozi Tradeband (placeholder names, just to give you an idea), hooking in the existing partial intelligibility system that's already in code to give them 90-95% mutual intelligibility while still giving some level of differentiation between them due to the decades/centuries of linguistic drift. As far as getting to grips with planets go, like I said in my opening post, I'm trying hard to care less about the nitty-gritty details first and foremost and to work 'backwards' (so to speak) from an interesting and eye-catching concept or idea. Something like Assunzione or Gadpathur are examples of how I'd like to end up going about things -- a strong and immediate concept that hooks you in (a planet with no star? A post-apocalyptic hellscape?) and grabs the reader/player's attention far more effectively than statistics about planetary industry. I think these more grounded aspects of lore are really important, too, don't get me wrong -- how any potential location lore fits into the existing jigsaw of the Spur is of paramount importance, and if I had to criticise Assunzione and Gadpathur specifically on this angle it's that they're kind of like lore 'islands' in a way, with not a lot of importance to the setting. Industry is just one way I think you can tie a planet into the greater lore framework -- Pluto is tied in as a major source of helium-3, for example -- but things like Eridani's unique culture and Dominia's weird and almost alien customs are good examples too. I'm definitely interested in trying to tie in interesting themes similar to these into location lore. Referring partially to one of my previous answers -- I foresee having to work closest of all with the IPC lore team, considering how intimately interwoven human and IPC lore already is. I'm entirely up for this -- synthetic lore is something I already have a real interest in, and I love playing my IPCharacters and playing around with the themes of synth lore as a whole. This is an area I'd be really invested in getting into, personally. Skrell are probably the next biggest candidate for collaborative lore, given how they've already sunk deep into several human megacorporations and the position of power/clout they enjoy relative to basically any other alien species in the Spur. Again, they're an area of Aurora I happen to have an interest in, even if my character concepts for them can never quite get off the ground, but I think there's a lot of potential for really exciting and even gritty interactions between Skrellian areas of lore like the Federation itself and some aspects of human lore -- particularly with the Alliance weakened post-KOTW. In short, though, the Skrell are another species I personally like, and I'd very potentially be interested in integrating them with human lore a bit more than they already are. Tajara aren't really a species I associate very closely at all with human lore and how it works. The main points of overlap are the Tajara ban from Solarian space and the ongoing story of D6 in Mendell itself, as near as I can pick out, but ultimately I would be happy to leave Tajara lore mostly to its own writers and wouldn't foresee much interest from my end in collaborating with them at this point. I don't think they have the same level of relevance to human lore (and vice versa) as IPCs and Skrell do. These are my sentiments towards Unathi as well, too -- there's some overlap here with Dominia and Zavodskoi, off the top of my head, but again these aren't areas of lore that particularly grab my attention and as such wouldn't be a priority for me at all. Finally, I have essentially no interest in dionae or vaurcae at the time being. Neither race has particularly caught my eye despite reading through their species-specific lore, and as near as I can tell they have very limited overlap with human lore as a whole outside of Zo'ra's status inside the Republic of Biesel itself. Of all the alien species on Aurora, these two would be by far my areas of least interest. This doesn't mean that I wouldn't be open to collaborating with their respective lore teams if the right project or angle should come up for it, though -- all I'm saying is that in all honesty I wouldn't have any overt desire to pursue anything like that on my end. Mictlan -- yes. It stands out as something of a blank slate right now, and I think it's a great example of lore that missed the mark in terms of its unique hook. Essentially, I see it as something I could really get to grips with without upsetting too much established canon, and given its newfound importance in the lore as the biggest new member of the Republic of Biesel I think it's the perfect time to give it actual relevance for once. That said, the plans I have for writing something around it are in a very early stage and are extremely vague, but suffice to say that there is an interest in developing it. Eridani -- no. Eridani isn't really one of my favourite areas of lore, because I find it way too cheesily cyberpunky for my liking, but despite that I think it holds up well in terms of player attraction and general interest. Way way further down the line I could see myself interested in making some more nuanced changes to it, primarily for believability's sake, but right now I have no real plans to touch it at all personally. If I had complete, unilateral control and didn't have to worry about immediate feedback? I'd like to hypothetically implement an initial overhaul to the languages currently present in game along lines such as these: addition of Elyran Standard (placeholder name) as an Elyran analogue to Sol Common. This would be a fully-fledged language in its own right. splitting of Tradeband into Classical/Lunar Tradeband and Morozi Tradeband. These would have high (90%+) mutual intelligibility. Another direction to take this would be making Morozi its own language and splitting it from there into High and Vulgar Morozi, but on the whole I'd like to solve this with a Tradeband split more so than introducing another parent language. addition of more prominent dialects as full 'languages' in game (NHP Common and Gadpathurian Common as children of Sol Common, 95%+ intelligibility, for example). This would be a lot more contentious due to potential bloat (the dreaded b-word...) as well as the coding that would be needed to accent-lock these specific languages to prevent them being taken willy-nilly. Anyone familiar with Baystation may already know how the Selenian-ZAC interaction on Bay works -- this would be what I'd be aiming for here. Skrell get Solarian Common to shore up some aspects of their lore that drive me mad. If there needs to be a new 'human only' language to replace it, I'd like to see Elyran Standard slide in and take up that mantle rather than handwaving another new language in to fill the void. very potentially hooking the existing mutual intelligibility/partial understanding system into pre-existing human languages. I don't think Freespeak should be 100% unintelligible to a character who speaks Basic and Common, for example -- I'd like to see maybe 25-30% of the words able to blend through. This would probably be contentious to a lot of people, though, and the partial understanding system seems a little barebones as well. This is something I would have an interest in but would be a lot more cautious pushing forwards (hypothetically, anyway) That's about it as far as a longer-term plan would go. This would already need a lot of collaboration with other members of the lore team, and while I think Aurora languages could be pushed further and expanded on even more angles than this we'd just be entering the realms of pure speculation. Like I mentioned in my previous answer -- no, I don't really have any plans for Eridani. It has a lot of characters in-game representing what lore it does have already, and I don't think it has any issue at all attracting new players invested in both the 'corporate' lore and the 'dreg' lore. Some of the planets there are barely more than names on a wiki page, yes, but as a whole the Federation has a very strong playerbase and far less problems to solve than other areas of human lore. I'd be open to giving it more detail and so forth further down the line, of course, but right now I have zero plans for it personally. Unless there are little offcuts of really wacky legacy human lore sitting around that I'm not aware of (like the extraneous Dominian House page tracked down and obliterated by Schwann a while ago) -- nothing is immediately jumping to mind here. I'm a big proponent of reworking/recycling existing settings in the canon rather than out-and-out deleting them where possible, especially when they might already be incorporated into players' backstories to some degree. Even something like Mictlan, which is building a reputation as a problem child, isn't something I think can't be saved with a strong concept behind a rewrite.

1. First and foremost, I think a lot of this lore ends up looking 'untouched' due to a lack of maintenance. As far as I'm aware, the current human team has done a lot of work going over older pieces of lore recently in order to bring them up in terms of quality. In my app, I mentioned Elyra specifically as an area I'd like to improve because the application itself only called for one example, but you're absolutely right in that things like Mictlan are in similar need of attention. I don't think they're beyond saving, and I'd certainly like to look at things like Mictlan if I got the chance, but they wouldn't be as much of a priority for me personally on account of simply preferring other areas of the lore. That's it, really. 2. I'm not unduly concerned about this angle of things beyond how my real life situation might change in the weeks and months going forward. I've had a lot of disruption in my academic and working life on account of COVID, and it's probable that my free time might get cut drastically compared to what I've become used to once (or at this point, if...) lockdown finally lifts for good. Other than that, though, I don't think that a lore-centric position brings as much baggage with it as something like a proper administrative staff position might. A lot of what I found contributed to burnout in the past when I was staff were things like an overexposure to staff-only information wearing down my ability to enjoy the game for what it is, and I don't think that really applies here. 3. Since the app was a human lore app, specifically, I tried to stay well within the boundaries of human lore. The obvious answer here though is that I think human lore is intimately locked in step with IPC lore in particular, and I foresee coordinating with the IPC team as a big priority for anything to do with human lore. Other than that, though, I don't think there's an undue amount of integration with other species in areas that don't verge into general lore (I'd view something like Biesel as more of a general lore thing now rather than specifically human, for example -- and you could say the same about megacorporate lore) and this isn't really something I'd like to focus on changing, at least initially. Species lore tends to be pretty insular as it is, in my experience, and I don't have an issue with that. I remember that deadchat conversation from a few months back, yeah. All I can say here is that I don't really intend to make it a secret that I can get fired up and angry about things -- 'passionate' is the usual word people use to excuse this behaviour, which is why I was on the fence about writing it in my app at all to begin with. With that said, though, I have always operated under an understanding that there's a difference in the level of expectations players can and should be held to and those which apply to people in positions of authority, such as lore or administrative staff. I don't sugar-coat things to an undue degree and I prefer to have frank and forthright discussions about anything I don't agree with. The best thing I can say here in the moment -- without trying to sit around and sleep on what the best possible answer might be -- is that I already recognise this as a potential issue, but I don't foresee it being a problem for me going forwards. I am aware that expectations for staff members' behaviour are more stringent than those applied to the playerbase at large, and where working within the lore team itself is concerned I'm confident I can uphold those same behavioural expectations regardless of how I might feel about something in the heat of the moment.

CKEY/BYOND username: Omicega Position being applied for: Human Lore Deputy Have you read the Lore Team Rules and Regulations wiki page? Yes. Past experiences/knowledge: As far as staff positions on SS13 go, I've held staff positions on other servers prior to coming to the Aurora. The most notable of these would be CM, where I was a moderator and later administrator for a period of almost two years. I have some understanding of how server staff works 'behind the curtain', although I'm aware that there's a lot of differences between an administrative position and a lore-related one. I wrote lore snippets known as 'infocards' for a sci-fi themed roleplay community, which ranged from being basically long-form examine descriptions to more extensive blurbs about the setting's location lore. I've dug up some of them to serve as examples of my past work. I've been roleplaying semi-actively for a long time now in other communities -- primarily forum RP -- but my foray into SS13 as a roleplay medium started in around 2017. Examples of past work (please provide in a Google Doc or other easily accessible external link for sake of space): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GjUxhDSuPhXVXQDL3Ffu2RymqsFOjozD4h9oHQL48w4/edit?usp=sharing - These are examples of the infocards I mentioned as evidence of past experience. These were written throughout 2020 and are therefore relatively recent. There are other examples of general writing I could potentially include here, but most of them are either quite old, not entirely relevant, unfinished, or some combination of those. I’m happy to provide them if people are interested in seeing them, but I don’t have an extensive history of lore contributions here on Aurora or elsewhere on SS13. 1) Why do you want this position? Why do you believe that you could be a better deputy than others? The reason I play on Aurora at all is the strength of its lore and lore-related features. I've never made any secret of the fact that one of my favourite mechanical aspects of Aurora is the accent system -- something that helps players tie background lore more directly into their characters in a simple and effective manner. The world on offer in Aurora's lore is something that's kept me hooked trying new characters, new concepts, and new creations since basically day one, and it's out of a desire to put my own passion for the lore here to good use that I'm applying. I like writing and I'm confident that it's something I'm good at, and as I've grown to enjoy Aurora's setting more and more I've found myself wanting to contribute to it in a concrete manner more and more as well. I like to focus on aspects of lore beyond just the ‘quality’ of it in a vacuum. Something I like to bear in mind when writing lore or conceptualising anything is how it fits into the existing ‘framework’ of lore already on offer, as well as how this could translate to interesting characters, interactions, or setups within the game itself. In my view, there’s no point writing a planet that has reams and reams of detail to it if there’s no good ‘hooks’ off of which to build a character, antag gimmick, or something else that actually has potential to be taken by a player and turned into something interesting in-game. This is what I’d call the most important aspect of lore writing for me, actually -- taking a step back from the content itself and trying to view it from a casually browsing individual’s point of view, looking for where the unique selling point might be. 2) What are three things you enjoy about human lore? Why do you enjoy these things most? These should be ranked from one to three in descending order of favouritism. My absolute favourite aspect of human lore is (and people probably saw this coming) the megacorporate themes of the setting as a whole -- and more specifically, Idris Incorporated. Each of them offers a unique and interesting flavour to its contractors and often has strong tie-ins to particular areas of specifically human lore (Idris and Silversun, EPMC and Eridani, Hephaestus and Himeo etc.), and without the due attention and care given to human megacorporate lore I think the Aurora would suffer greatly. One of my big complaints about this aspect of lore was how thin on the ground it was on the wiki until recently, but thankfully some rewrites have cleared that up to the point where there’s a ton of scope to work with each of the big corporations and their named subsidiaries. Secondly, Solarian lore in general is something I enjoy Aurora’s general take on. Casting the largest human nation in the setting as something of a ‘bad guy’ is an interesting twist on the traditional angle of a somewhat xenophilic and open human nation forming the centre of a lot of sci-fi settings, and it throws the whole world into (in my opinion) a grey area for Solarian humans in particular, with the constant tug-of-war between Biesel’s crushing corporatocratic themes weighing up against the Alliance’s instability, xenophobia, and authoritarianism. The Human Wildlands lore added in the wake of the King of the World arc is something that only built on the lore I initially enjoyed reading when I came to Aurora, and the way the Alliance has developed throughout that arc and beyond has only made it more interesting to me. Finally, a more specific area of lore that I liked reading and playing was just Gadpathur. I just really enjoyed some of the themes it delved into. It’s pretty cheesy, even for Aurora lore standards, but I’ve seen some really engaging characters and round-related gimmicks built off that one piece of lore in particular. I had a lot of fun conceptualising, creating, and then implementing my own Gadpathurian character as well! The only criticism I’d level at it is that I think it’s a bit too wordy overall for what it is, but it’s one of the specific parts of human lore I’d hold up as a perfect example of the kind of ‘unique selling point/hook’ thing I mentioned in my last answer. 3) What is an area of currently extant lore that you'd like to improve or see improvements made upon? Why do you believe this area should see improvement? In a word -- Elyra. I think Elyra's lore is a huge question mark for human lore as a whole at the present time. I find it to be underdeveloped in general, with very short pages for its planets (if they even get full pages!) and an uninspiring and bland general theme of being the ‘nicest’ and most utopian human nation in the Spur to live in or have a character originate from. They lack a language of their own, unlike other major human players (Tradeband for Dominia, Freespeak for the Coalition, Common for the Alliance and Basic for Biesel), instead doubling up as speakers of Tau Ceti Basic for some inexplicable reason. I don’t want to go into too much detail as to why I think Elyra is bad, since I think the broader issue here is just a general lack of detail across the board, as well as a lack of any recent attention being given to the nation as a whole. For me, it effectively relegates Elyra -- a chunk of human lore that’s ostensibly on par with the Alliance or the Coalition in terms of its size, number of locations for character origins, etc. -- to being essentially glorified planetary lore. I think it’s a huge shame that locations like Aemaq with its chemical seas have fallen under the radar due to being smothered by Elyra as a whole, and I think fleshing Elyra out via more detail and some level of rewriting/revising existing lore would really help bring it into its own as a diverse and interesting character origin point. 4) Assuming you are given the position, which area or project would you like to work on first? Why? Ideally, I’d like to cut my teeth on a smaller and more focused piece of lore as an initial project or area of work. An example would be a specific Elyran planet rather than tackling the nation as a whole -- Medina, for instance. Elyra draws heavily on real-world cultural analogues that I have a lot of interest in already (Persian influences, for example) and I’d really like to build off of those existing themes and help flesh out one aspect of its lore in particular before trying to move work towards bringing it up to the same standard as other pieces of human lore in general. Starting with something I have a personal interest in seems to me like a good way to ease myself into potentially writing for things I maybe don't enjoy or appreciate as much further down the line, at the very least. 5) How effectively do you work in a team environment? Remember that you will be both working in the human lore team and the greater lore team. Your responsibilities are not just writing lore, but being a small part in something larger. I'm no stranger to working as part of staff teams in roleplay communities and beyond. I understand that this position doesn't offer carte blanche to just print off lore as and when I feel like it without consulting and collaborating with at least the rest of the human team itself, if not the greater lore team as a whole. In fact, the collaborative aspect of writing is something I actively enjoy in the right environment -- I find that feedback or active co-writing from other people invested in writing more often than not improves the end product. 6) What is your disciplinary history on the Aurora, if any? (Bans, Warnings, Whitelist Strips) Why did you receive these? I have never received any bans, formal warnings, or whitelist strips of any kind on the Aurora that were not later overturned. Here is the complaint regarding the one formal warning I briefly received before having it quashed and removed. (link) Notes: This goes without saying, but I’m happy -- and almost eager, even, I guess? -- to answer any questions anyone might have about this app as a whole. I’ve tried not to drone on and on and on and give overly wordy answers to anything, but there’s a lot more I could say about gunning for this position and what I think about human lore in general!

Warden is the only security role that really needs to go from being eligible for antagonist rolls. There is no real way to deal with one not acting in good faith without throwing it up into an ahelp, and I personally don't have the time or patience to launch into a debate about whether wardens killing the HOS 30 minutes into the round and assuming direct control over the armoury (and by extension the only way you can forcibly remove them, really) is valid play or not. I can think of at least a couple of times I've had other security roles rolling antag contribute to my enjoyment; I can't think of a single time a traitor warden has done anything that wasn't just flat-out infuriating to deal with. You could say this is just a player issue rather than a mechanics issue -- and it is, to some extent, but given my experience on all three sides of the antag/security/other department triangle during all kinds of loud and quiet rounds, I don't think for a second you can trust the 'average' antagonist player with full access to the station's entire supply of lethals right from the get-go. You can't fix the player issue -- if we could, we could just remove all job restrictions on rolling antag up to and including captain and HOS -- but since we evidently can't trust even command whitelisted players to not abuse their antag-given power and permissions I don't see why a role even more powerful than some traitor command roles would be should get a by ball. I'd much rather see a traitor CMO cut loose than a traitor warden, for example. Don't even get me started on what happens when security rolls more traitors than just the warden themselves, or when the security traitors are totally-not-broken IPCs with surge protection (enjoy handling those in a manner consistent with believable fearRP/IC self preservation, especially with the armoury gone!) Traitor warden is the root cause of a lot of these issues, though; inconsiderate antag players, questionably balanced species, lower pop rounds, and additional antag rolls rolling up in close proximity can all just compound it to the point where you might as well cryo and wait for the ERT.

Charger is a phenomenal writer and almost unparalleled in his ability to create unique, inventive, and just genuinely fun characters. I've enjoyed essentially every interaction with him ICly, and OOCly I know he has the right attitude for playing here in general -- something I'm a hundred percent positive he'll be easily able to translate into high-quality command play! This is an easy +1 for sure.

BYOND Key: Omicega Character names: Alicia Parker -- Security Guard Yingmei -- Bartender Mahisa Quraishi -- Security Guard ZH Ji-Seon 451 -- Surgeon Maria Faraci -- Engineer I have others on top of these, but these are the five I've played the most of recently. How long have you been playing on Aurora?: Since mid/late September of 2020. I dabbled for a few days at a time in the distant past, too. Why do you wish to be on the whitelist? I want to play some of the head of staff roles as well as a consular officer from time to time. I'll be honest and say that I don't really see why these roles are gated off to begin with -- I certainly don't think the whitelist helps ensure any level of quality in the players and/or characters that I see in these roles, personally -- but this is really what the answer boils down to. Why did you come to Aurora? I played on CM for a couple of years -- primarily held there by the roleplay angle, believe it or not -- and left in about October-ish of 2019 following a final decline in standards that couldn't really be ignored. I went to Bay for a brief while before migrating to Hestia after a few months of trying to cope with Bay's community wore me out. Having tried Aurora for a brief period around that time I never found it gripping enough to fully engage me (that and the footstep sounds were atrocious), but when I dipped my head back into Aurora in late September this year I haven't really looked back. I love the standard of roleplay on offer here and find great enjoyment in getting involved with the community. Have you read the Aurora wiki on the head roles and qualifications you plan on playing?: I have. Have you received any administrative actions? And how serious were they? To the best of my knowledge I have never been banned, formally warned, or had administrative action of any sort taken against me that was not later overturned. ======= Please provide well articulated answers to the following questions in a paragraph each. Give a definition of what you think roleplay is and should be about: I think it should be about fulfilling interactions and ongoing personal storylines between interesting and fleshed-out characters. I personally prefer playing characters that are more on the 'grounded' end of the scale (more of a working everyday individual than a novel protagonist or something), so I have a natural tendency to prefer that end of things, but ultimately I really enjoy seeing the creativity other people put into their characters and how they can bring interesting interactions to the table. I don't necessarily agree that it's something everyone has to agree on, at times -- sometimes your characters will be put in places you'd rather not have had them put, and dealing with that in a believable manner is part and parcel of roleplaying a character properly. As long as the setting as a whole maintains a level of believability that rides above a certain level, I think roleplay really does just boil down to the way individual characters interact with one another and build relationships; whether that's on a longer-term scale, or in the context of a single round. What do you think the OOC purpose of a Head of Staff is ingame? First and foremost -- they are the most important factor inside a department where new players are concerned. They have the most weight in ensuring that cadets/apprentices/interns don't end up confused and lost and alone for two hours, and should use their influence in this regard to make sure these sorts of players have a fulfilling experience as learners in learner roles. This duty of care extends to their department as a whole, of course -- the head of security has an integral role in coordinating security's response to antagonists on secret rounds, for example -- but I think it should mainly focalise on learner roles. Finally, they are the one line of IC contact between the ongoing round and online staff in the form of Central Command (and distress beacons etc), and need to have this in mind depending on how the round is playing out. In short, they need to be ready to fax as well as being switched on with regards to their department and its workings. What do you think the OOC responsibilities of whitelisted players are to other players, and how would you strive to uphold them? I don't really think whitelisted players have any extra responsibilities ahead of other players, to be honest. I'm going to be blunt and say that I've seen absolutely no difference in quality from command whitelisted players and players without the whitelist; there are people of all levels of quality on both sides of the scale. They have more of an ability to impact the round of non-whitelisted players, for sure, but I think the same basic concepts of decency, empathy, and an overall understanding of what it means to try and make the round fun for everyone involved (antagonists included) apply to heads of staff and whitelisted roles just the same as they apply to anyone else. I can only say that I'd try to play my heads of staff with the same level of quality as I apply to the rest of my gameplay here -- with the same care and attention to how other players' rounds are affected by my actions. Could you give us the gist of what is currently happening in Tau Ceti and how it affected your character and their career? The most recent story arc with the Solarian invasion weighed extremely heavily on Alicia (my main character at the moment). Being at odds with her home nation took its toll on her, and while the initial strife following the invasion itself has mostly settled down, anti-Solarian sentiment is something that continues to pop up from other members of the crew. Clandestine and other canon events helped shape a good few key aspects of her personality so far, and I've done my best to incorporate development offered to me by the server's ongoing storylines into her personal arc. Now Biesel and the Spur as a whole are moving into a quieter period, the fallout from the Solarian incursion is giving her more and more thoughts about where to take her life from here -- whether returning to Silversun and the Alliance is ever going to be worth it, or whether somewhere like Biesel and its intense corporate presence is something she can stomach for the longer term. What roles do you plan on playing after the application is accepted? Head of Personnel, Head of Security, and Chief Medical Officer for the time being. I don't know how much I'll touch consular officers or chief engineers in the near future, if ever. Captain is something I'll probably never touch. Characters you intend to use for command or have created for command. Include the job they will be taking: I won't be using any of my existing characters for command. I have a concept in mind for a Golden Deep IPC as a head of personnel, but it's still being fleshed out. I really enjoy the concept of the Golden Deep in particular, and it's not something I've had much room to explore on account of most of the fitting roles being gatekept behind the command whitelist here on Aurora. IPCs are a race I've really been eager to dip into in every respect after getting the whitelist, and I am excited to see how I can blend an IPC's goals and motivations in with the gameplay and roleplay opportunities afforded by roles like the head of personnel. On top of that, I have a Lunan HOS concept that I want to float, I think. I'll be happy to update either this post or add a later post with the characters' names once I have them fully finalised. EDIT: I'm playing these characters in command positions for now: Bianca Costa-Leveque, Head of Personnel Quu'quuii Xim'naa, Head of Personnel Lucia Zhao, Head of Security How would you rate your own roleplaying?: I've been around, both on SS13 and on other games with roleplaying scenes. Aurora has given me a lot of fun and interesting creativity space to play with as far as character concepts and the general quality of lore goes, and I think by now I'm beginning to feel way more adjusted to that. There are some roleplayers here and elsewhere that still manage to blow my mind in terms of the inventiveness and overall quality of their roleplay as well as the speed with which they can come up with it. I don't want to put a number out of ten on what I think my ability is, but I've been roleplaying for upwards of a decade now and feel as if I have a pretty good grasp on building and playing new characters as a whole. Do you understand your whitelist is not permanent, and may be stripped following continuous administrative action? Yes. Have you familiarized yourself with the wiki pages for the command roles? Yes. Extra notes: This time around I should actually have the time (and motivation) to devote to the week long trial, barring anything else unexpected cropping up. This app is essentially lifted from the last one I made with adjustments made as necessary, since as far as I am aware the last one was only failed due to me only managing to fit one (1) command round in during the entire period.

Hello, I don't know Butter all that well OOCly but I tend to main security and have come up against their antag play a few times. I'm mentioning this specifically because there is a pretty uncompromising and vicious post going after that particular aspect of their gameplay, and I can say that I've had basically no issue at all with their play in that regard. In fact, on the one merc round I've shared with them as part of the same antag team, they were the loudest voice against a gunplay focused angle of antag play, and were essentially entirely pacifistic until the end in spite of how other team members chose to escalate things. As far as their IC conduct goes regarding non-antag play, I also have no complaints. I've interacted with their trialled head of personnel on a few occasions and think it's a well-portrayed character. Their OOC conduct is also very cordial. I think they deserve positive more feedback than they are getting, hence why I'm posting at all, since I've sat on the fence about it for too long. +1

I don't believe that Diona do feel pain or suffer enough from a stunbaton to be considered reasonably detainable by those methods, as my video evidence demonstrates. Unless there's some sort of code difference I'm not aware of between my local copy of the Aurora repo and the live server, I'm contending that even if I had resorted to my baton and disruptor I would have had no hope at all of grounding you. I emptied three full stunning weapons into a Diona in the footage provided with no visible effect other than a white screen and a few pain messages on the Diona's BYOND client, for reference, so I find it impossible to agree with your assessment that they react meaningfully at all to pain.

@Yonnimer Hello. I had a brief discussion with Alberyk just now on Discord about whether to open a new complaint directed at you or just to post in this one, and Alb told me to just post here again and @ you so you'd be aware of the post. When I initially wrote the complaint I knew you were someone who played Diona to a large degree, but I didn't know you were in fact the species maintainer for it. If you weren't deadminned during the ahelp and ticket exchange between myself and Garn, and assuming my video evidence is an accurate portrayal of how Diona react to stuns from carbines, batons etc., I'd like to know if you said anything in msay/asay or another staff channel to try and correct Garn when he pushed forward with the idea that a stunbaton is enough to detain a Diona successfully. Barring there being something wrong with my test conditions on the local server, I don't see how this is accurate at all, and I'm being blunt and straightforward when I say that I'd like to know if you took any action at all to let Garn know that he was warning me to employ entirely ineffective methods when arresting Diona in the future. Obviously I cannot see mod or admin chat but if you were able to see it and the ongoing ticket and didn't at any point say anything about how resistant Diona are to pain then I want to expand my complaint to include you for your inaction as the ultimate authority on the Diona species and its workings on a ticket that came to involve confusion about their exact mechanics. I am aware that you were involved as a player in the ticket and I'm not suggesting that you should have taken it, but if you didn't say anything at all in mod/admin chat regarding the confusion -- that only got highlighted because I specifically went out of my way to test these things locally! -- I'd like to know why.

I think it should go without saying that I wasn't aware Diona were so resistant to pain while I was being spoken to by Garnascus, otherwise I would have contested the decision even more fiercely in the ticket itself. It was only because someone unrelated contacted me after the round and advised me to test the effectiveness on non-lethals on Diona before posting this that I bothered to look into it at all, otherwise I would have taken him fully at face value.

BYOND Key: (This is your Byond Login/Ckey) Omicega Staff BYOND Key: (This is the Byond Login/Ckey of the staff member) Garnascus Game ID: (If applicable. Game ID of the round on which the incident took place. If you don't remember the exact one, then the round after or the round before works as well.) ca7-dvs0 Reason for complaint: (State your reason for your complaint) I'm not satisfied with receiving this formal administrative warning for excessive force used against a Diona antagonist and want it either struck from my record entirely or downgraded to a note. Evidence/logs/etc: full logs of the encounter and ticket logs non lethals comparison vs human and diona Additional remarks: I don't have a lot to say other than what I said in the ticket and that I'd like a second opinion on the logs present. It's come to my attention that the Diona in question was played by Yonnimer, another member of staff and someone intimately familiar with the species as a whole, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't think this factored into the nature of Garn's approach to my ticket. I am vaguely aware that there have been issues with the strength of Diona antagonists during past eras of Aurora. My experience with Diona, as I said in the ticket, boils down to the Bay iteration of the species, where they are to my knowledge banned from being an antag at all due to how powerful they can be. I would accept being spoken to about some of the things Garn mentioned in the ticket -- that much is fine -- but I'm contesting having it made into a formal warning given the context of the round and several other factors. I don't know how I can be expected to be familiar with every niche of every weird species here -- Diona don't feel pain on Bay at all, among other things that make them vastly more powerful -- and I don't agree with the ruling that I should be expected to put my rifle away in the middle of an ongoing firefight to engage an armed Diona that seems to actively be trying to take someone as a body shield. For reference, the Diona in question didn't die, as was alleged by Garn at one point in the ticket, and they were to my knowledge successfully detained following the firefight. This encounter came at the very end of a round wherein the raider team took the head of security and the captain (all of command staff at the time) hostage and made several disjointed threats regarding their safety along with vague, incoherent demands, so tension had been extremely high for a long time. I am not sure what the roleplay rationale behind two raiders deciding to leave their ship and decapitate Pun Pun in the bar was, but considering that as of the time of the logs in question they were already considered more than hostile I want to contest the formal nature of the warning. I feel as if this is a textbook example of baiting security into a firefight for no good reason and I don't think this was taken into consideration during Garn's handling of the issue. Furthermore, I am contesting very strongly that you can detain a Diona non-lethally at all, as Garn says. Here is some of my local testing uploaded as an MP4: https://streamable.com/lbnee6 I was told by Garn that a stunbaton would have sufficed, but here I empty an entire energy carbine, an entire disruptor pistol, and an entire stunbaton into a Diona I'm playing on an alternate BYOND account without it suffering any ill-effects whatsoever. It went whitescreen during the whole process of being shot, but at no point did it go to ground or seem impaired by all the pain damage being inflicted. For these reasons and those I've already listed above, I'd like the decision looked at again.

Not to be a downer here, but this seems like the kind of thing that could start a precedent for OC Dominian house cape custom item requests. Wouldn't a more elegant solution for something like this be something like implementing a recolourable stripe on the generic Dominian cape loadout item, along with a customisable name and description field?

Hi, The player complaint rules tell me not to post if not involved, but since I'm directly referenced in evidence here I'm assuming that's enough "involvement" to warrant a post. If that's not the case, sorry! I had no idea who Carpe was before the conversation I had with them in #human-general on the lore Discord. All I do know is that I saw a discussion about Aurora human lore drawing heavily off "X culture/ethnicity from present-day Earth but in space!!" and decided to get involved, because I think that kind of worldbuilding has some definite merit to it even if it's kind of unrealistic and hand-wavey from a real world point of view. What I got out of it was (to me) an unreasonably aggressive back-and-forth with someone who doesn't know me at all, and while I was unfortunately stuck on mobile to boot. I've dealt with more than enough people using the same kind of dismissive, snippy, rapid-fire "umm" and "no?" argument templates both here on Aurora and in other places, and I felt entitled to call them out on it. What really annoyed me was the insincere apology afterwards -- or at least, an apology that I'm going to just flat out label as insincere. There's no actual proof of this beyond their continued behaviour, but similar faux-apologies are things I've had to climb past before, and personally I think I was about as gracious as I could be in turning it down. I didn't buy it then and I don't buy it now. Anyone who knows me even vaguely here knows I have a temper that's probably even shorter than short. I've flown off the handle with people a few times; but when I'm actually pushing the boat out and apologising in good faith, I like to think I mean it. I'm going to be really generous here and say that maybe it's just an issue with how Carpe words things, but given the continued pattern of behaviour here -- some of which I experienced personally as a first impression! -- I don't know if I'm really buying any of the repeated apologies for their tone, behaviour, or anything else as overly genuine. It feels like part one of the strategy is to piss off the other party debating you, and then when they call you out on it or, God forbid, lash back out, you retreat behind the time-tested apology/excuse hybrid shield and become immune from retaliation. I don't buy it, personally.

Security as a department offers gameplay on both extremes of the scale. In extended or low-intensity rounds, you might as well not exist from a gameplay perspective, but the amount of stuff you can (or have to) do slowly creeps up with the amount of bad stuff happening. The sweet spots are when you have literally nothing to do, because you can chairRP in the bar or whatever, or when you have something antag-related that's actually engaging to pursue. This essentially writes off a ton of stuff like random welderbombs, ninjas stealing the spare at 00:30, corrupt form wizards, and more or less anything related to malf AI, because all of those are things that you tend to get agitated into trying to deal with while having no way of actually doing anything about it. This doesn't really tend to happen to any other department -- nobody starts yelling at paramedics for not being able to go and locate someone dying somewhere on the station with no sensors or GPS -- but when you have pressure being put on you from multiple angles to do something about the bad thing happening and you can't actually stop the bad thing unless the bad thing basically lets itself get caught, it can get very old very quick. You also have a dynamic where a portion of the playerbase holds two very opposite views on security in parallel and without a shred of irony -- the idea that security is monopolising all of the interesting antag behaviour while simultaneously being expected to teleport to medical on command to deal with the latest group of raiders who've walked down virology stairs and interrupted the roleplay session in reception. I feel like a lot of the non-security playerbase wants to have their cake and eat it too regarding antagonist behaviour -- security is expected to get the 'shitters' into the brig (or deadchat) ASAP to appease people who'd rather not be disturbed pursuing their quieter extended roleplay moments, but those selfsame people will turn around a little later and start pointing fingers when more 'interesting' antagonism (which is subjective anyway) is interrupted by often-realistic consequences. In any case, all this thread is doing so far is showing that people are shit at debating this kind of thing in good faith. Being criticised for not engaging event characters with admin-level gear on a canon event round is one thing (yeah, let me just essentially permakill my character while bending over backwards to the doublethink here -- security monopolises antag/event stuff too often except when I think they should push things into a gunfight ASAP, in which case how dare you not do your job???), but when any and all arguments regarding security eventually get boiled down in some respect to the same vague, passive-aggressive accusations of the entire department's being bullies in some way or another it really does make you think. tl;dr I don't know who Carver is but his post has all the hot takes you need, read it instead

I can't really agree with this, though. Zavodskoi tides aside, the vanilla NT security uniform is white and blue. Idris security (I know right) tends to be turquoisey-teal with a lot of white on the uniform underneath, and EPMCs have bluish-white-grey highlights all over them as well. I don't think of black as being security's aesthetic colour; it's blue, if anything, since that colour shows up a hell of a lot more. This seems like a weird way to defend your point here.

I didn't have time to comment on the originals, but I'll leave my two cents on the updated sprites now. The new disruptors are very good. Initially I thought they were worse, but having slept on it and looked at the old disruptor sprites again I realised I must have just been very tired. I like them a lot! The new laser rifle I'm not sure about. Something is off about it -- I don't think the shiny white/chrome colour does it for me. It also looks very chunky. I think the sprite is too tall overall, even if the length is fine. I love the shotgun. It looks simple yet suitably futuristic. The initial new ion was, to be blunt about it, dreadful -- but the revised version looks really sleek. It's my favourite sprite out of the lot now, when before it was easily my least favourite. Thanks for taking the feedback so far on board regarding it, Kyres! The blaster and thumper sprites look... okay, I guess. I don't really have much to say other than that they're like sidegrades to the old sprites. I think you're trying too hard to stick with the old sprite designs with these and limiting the redesign possibilities, because the old blaster/thumper sprites really aren't that good anyway. I'd like to see you be a bit more adventurous with them. tl;dr these sprites could be merged as-is following the revisions and only the laser rifle would look out of place, at least in my book

Hello, Regarding Geeves' footnote about not wanting to post the rude DMs he received, presumably out of ostensible concern for my reputation or something, I'm going to firstly make it clear that I don't care at all if the DMs are shared, and go one step further and outright provide a Pastebin for anyone who's interested to look at them. There is nothing in there that I don't still stand by. https://pastebin.com/KMwn1QLw In addition to what I've said in there I don't have much else to add to this. I found the captain to be unhelpful, passive, and reluctant to step up to the plate in any capacity whatsoever while I was in round, and made no secret of my frustration with it. I admit that I think what I said was borderline OOC in IC, even if you could take cryoing out of the round as being a thoroughly IC mechanic. The main issue I have with this whole affair stems entirely from what Geeves said to me on Discord immediately after the fact -- namely, the threats that this should 'not happen again' and so on. I am perfectly fine with being warned, noted, or whatevered for my actions as long as it comes from a member of staff who actually has the authority to do that. I am not okay with being concern trolled and passive-aggressive apology fishing in my DMs in lieu of actually reporting an issue to staff so it can be resolved. I want to make it perfectly clear that I was not trying to call anyone's bluff by saying I would report it myself, and @MattAtlas can corroborate that I approached him on Discord about it within a couple of minutes. I said what I said with the full understanding that it was potentially a warnable/punishable/whateverable offense -- I think it's borderline at best -- but in the end I am fine with whatever the staff handling the complaint decide. As far as I was concerned, it was water under the bridge until I received the series of DMs insinuating that it would not be okay if it happened again, with very little actual substance to back that up. I am upset by how Geeves has chosen to handle this and I resent the footnotes to his complaint even more. The implication that I would not be okay with my 'rude' DMs being publicly shown is as irritating and aggravating to me as everything else about this complaint, as is the mysterious cabal of people Geeves has apparently spoken to who are allegedly backing him up. In short, I accept the complaint about what I said as being valid but wholly reject Geeves' behaviour in handling it. As Aurora development staff I would have expected him to take any potential rulebreaks he had regarding me to staff first and foremost instead of handling it as he did.

I appreciate the two extensions to no end, but ultimately I haven't really been able to pull up the motivation to play much command at all over the past weeks. A combination of factors throughout late November and December so far have torpedoed me to no end. I'll reapply -- probably with the same application -- when I have more of a chance to actually leverage the command hours needed in a relatively short timespan to power through a trial, but this can be closed now. Sorry for the inconvenience and thanks for your responsiveness on Discord regarding this app so far.

My thoughts haven't changed, but I will bump them again at Danse's request. There are rare exceptions to wizard rounds being bad (I just came out of one) but the overall sentiment still applies, and it isn't worth wading through the 9/10 funny meme ones to get to the one that's actually halfway passable and conducive to a high roleplay server.

Hi, I'd like to ask for an extension on this. I didn't play at all last week on account of the scale of the ongoing event catching me a little off-guard; I wasn't really up for figuring out a way to introduce new characters during a total Aurora lockdown that made any sense to me.

I am interested in the permanent repercussions of the arc much more so than the arc itself. I don't know if a week of Solarian ghost roles and a flat lore ban on your character living anywhere than the Aurora for X amount of time is really what I was expecting or hoping for. For me, this arc peaked at Clandestine -- which was wonderfully mysterious and exciting in every way except for the hellish lag. Everything since then has been a steady spiral downwards -- from the conspiracy that suffered very hard from having already-established players monopolise it and the generated activity/intrigue as best they could (and yes, I blame the lore team in part here for not trying more to dislodge said individuals) -- to the weird pacing where everything alternately stuck for weeks then unstuck again just as quickly. I don't know if most of these are objective criticisms, though, to be honest. I think it's more just that this arc really isn't for me -- it certainly offers a lot more for people whose characters enjoy taking a more active and (to me) unrealistic level of involvement in all these wacky tabacky megacorporate geopolitical affairs. I'm not really looking to stack any of my characters' arcs with 500 confirmed Solarian kills via ghostspawners or anything, and the opaque nature of the "no travel to/from Aurora for a week/whatever" is really constricting both my desire to play any of my characters, whether they are established or new. Still, Kyres keeps asking for feedback, so here it is -- now without any (or at least most?) of the cynicism with which I've delivered it before in dchat or wherever else.

BYOND Key: Omicega Character names: Alicia Parker -- Security Guard Yingmei -- Bartender I have others, but these two are by far the most significant and well-known, I think. How long have you been playing on Aurora?: Two months now in a solid block. I dabbled for a few days at a time in the past, but this is the first time I've really seriously played here. Why do you wish to be on the whitelist? I want to play some of the head of staff roles as well as a consular officer from time to time. I'll be honest and say that I don't really see why these roles are gated off to begin with -- I certainly don't think the whitelist helps ensure any level of quality in the players and/or characters that I see in these roles, personally -- but this is really what the answer boils down to. Why did you come to Aurora? I played on CM for a couple of years -- primarily held there by the roleplay angle, believe it or not -- and left in about October-ish of 2019 following a final decline in standards that couldn't really be ignored. I went to Bay for a brief while before migrating to Hestia after a few months of trying to cope with Bay's community wore me out. Having tried Aurora for a brief period around that time I never found it gripping enough to fully engage me (that and the footstep sounds were atrocious), but when I dipped my head back into Aurora in late September this year I haven't really looked back. I love the standard of roleplay on offer here and find great enjoyment in getting involved with the community. Have you read the Aurora wiki on the head roles and qualifications you plan on playing?: I have. Have you received any administrative actions? And how serious were they? To the best of my knowledge I have never been banned, formally warned, or had administrative action of any sort taken against me. ======= Please provide well articulated answers to the following questions in a paragraph each. Give a definition of what you think roleplay is and should be about: I think it should be about fulfilling interactions and ongoing personal storylines between interesting and fleshed-out characters. I personally prefer playing characters that are more on the 'grounded' end of the scale (more of a working everyday individual than a novel protagonist or something), so I have a natural tendency to prefer that end of things, but ultimately I really enjoy seeing the creativity other people put into their characters and how they can bring interesting interactions to the table. I don't necessarily agree that it's something everyone has to agree on, at times -- sometimes your characters will be put in places you'd rather not have had them put, and dealing with that in a believable manner is part and parcel of roleplaying a character properly. As long as the setting as a whole maintains a level of believability that rides above a certain level, I think roleplay really does just boil down to the way individual characters interact with one another and build relationships; whether that's on a longer-term scale, or in the context of a single round. What do you think the OOC purpose of a Head of Staff is ingame? First and foremost -- they are the most important factor inside a department where new players are concerned. They have the most weight in ensuring that cadets/apprentices/interns don't end up confused and lost and alone for two hours, and should use their influence in this regard to make sure these sorts of players have a fulfilling experience as learners in learner roles. This duty of care extends to their department as a whole, of course -- the head of security has an integral role in coordinating security's response to antagonists on secret rounds, for example -- but I think it should mainly focalise on learner roles. Finally, they are the one line of IC contact between the ongoing round and online staff in the form of Central Command (and distress beacons etc), and need to have this in mind depending on how the round is playing out. In short, they need to be ready to fax as well as being switched on with regards to their department and its workings. What do you think the OOC responsibilities of whitelisted players are to other players, and how would you strive to uphold them? I don't really think whitelisted players have any extra responsibilities ahead of other players, to be honest. I'm going to be blunt and say that I've seen absolutely no difference in quality from command whitelisted players and players without the whitelist; there are people of all levels of quality on both sides of the scale. They have more of an ability to impact the round of non-whitelisted players, for sure, but I think the same basic concepts of decency, empathy, and an overall understanding of what it means to try and make the round fun for everyone involved (antagonists included) apply to heads of staff and whitelisted roles just the same as they apply to anyone else. I can only say that I'd try to play my heads of staff with the same level of quality as I apply to the rest of my gameplay here -- with the same care and attention to how other players' rounds are affected by my actions. Could you give us the gist of what is currently happening in Tau Ceti and how it affected your character and their career? The current ongoing arc with the Solarian invasion is weighing extremely heavily on Alicia (my main character at the moment). Being at odds with her home nation is taking its toll on her, and while she's doing her best to suck it up and move through the fear and concern burdening her it isn't always as easy as it should be. Every day seems to bring a new and troubling piece of news from the Bugle, and the impending war (or conflict) is about to come very close to home -- potentially in and around it, considering that she lives in Mendell City. As someone involved more closely to many of these affairs than she'd really like, given her work as a security contractor on the Aurora, Alicia is riding a fine line between trying to protect herself and those close to her while not either torpedoing her career through a lack of engagement with her job or flat out getting herself killed through the events of the days and weeks to come. More than that is hard to say, since I have no idea how the rest of this arc is going to play out and where things will end up -- but suffice to say that canonical events regarding her have definitely impacted heavily on her personality and character development, and are a constant factor in how I play her round to round. What roles do you plan on playing after the application is accepted? Head of Personnel and potentially Chief Medical Officer in the short-term, as well as very potentially a consular or two. I'm not sure on that. I would look to branch out into Head of Security later on too, perhaps, but after the trial period. Characters you intend to use for command or have created for command. Include the job they will be taking.: I won't be using any of my existing characters for command. I have a concept in mind for a Golden Deep IPC as either a consular or head of personnel (probably a head of personnel, but I am still finalising the details). I really enjoy the concept of the Golden Deep in particular, and it's not something I've had much room to explore on account of most of the fitting roles being gatekept behind the command whitelist here on Aurora. IPCs are a race I've really been eager to dip into in every respect after getting the whitelist, and I am excited to see how I can blend an IPC's goals and motivations in with the gameplay and roleplay opportunities afforded by roles like the head of personnel and a consular officer. How would you rate your own roleplaying?: I've been around, both on SS13 and on other games with roleplaying scenes. Aurora has given me a lot of fun and interesting creativity space to play with as far as character concepts and the general quality of lore goes, and I think by now I'm beginning to feel way more adjusted to that. There are some roleplayers here and elsewhere that still manage to blow my mind in terms of the inventiveness and overall quality of their roleplay as well as the speed with which they can come up with it. I don't want to put a number out of ten on what I think my ability is, but I've been roleplaying for upwards of a decade now and feel as if I have a pretty good grasp on building and playing new characters as a whole. Do you understand your whitelist is not permanent, and may be stripped following continuous administrative action? Yes. Have you familiarized yourself with the wiki pages for the command roles? Yes. Extra notes: I'm going to be starting a new job next week, so my available time will be cut down significantly as far as Aurora goes, but I'll endeavour to put in the hours required if I do make it to a command trial.

Can I bump this without being crucified? I hope so. This is event is doubly annoying for bartenders now that fragile glassy items smash when thrown. It is also infinitely more annoying for IPCs, who can get whacked with a vendor-tossed item and have to go bug a roboticist to fix the red overlay they get treated to for the rest of the round. I don't know if I've ever seen rampant brand intelligence add something in the way other events can. Carp migrations and spider outbreaks stimulate some kind of interaction, the blob pulls engineering into the mix with an emitter, and so on. RBI doesn't really do anything other than irritate you and make you PDA an engineer for minor busywork.

Wizard is absolute anathema to a high roleplay environment. It boggles my mind that the lore writers and staff team as a whole here have gone to such lengths to craft such a high-quality roleplay environment and maintain its integrity over all these years, only to let it regularly get dumped on by the clown fiesta that is wizard. I don't even really care that it's low-impact on its own; to me, any round type that has wizard in it is just straight up worse off for it. There is nothing immersive about Mungo the Magnificient materialising on the station at 12:15 to grab the spare and then cast STAUN EI and whatever the EMP blast spell is over and over and over for the next two hours. It's just a pain in the ass. Every other game mode I can think of at least has some justification to fit into the lore -- even ninja, which is a close second to wizard in terms of how bad the gameplay is -- but wizard provides nothing either to those looking to click on things until they die (just one antagonist, albeit an obnoxious one) or to those looking for a good story.