Frances

Then are you ready to accept that? Because staff aren't responsible for some great evil. I see a lot more undue complaints/objections being risen by players than I see instances of staff preventing things they should not prevent. I myself am not sure what exactly "just playing" entails for you. I believe Casper was simply asking you to narrow down your problem so he can respond to it better, not dismiss you.

Except the problem is on another side staff are being told to stop telling people to deal with things "just cause". And sometimes there's no helping it - in the case of the complaints against Sue, an agreement could not be reached after 25 pages of threads, at which point the administration cut in and said "this is our consensus, the rationale has already been explained, if you still can't understand it we don't know what to say to you anymore". Yes, you can ignore these complaints, you can brush them off, perhaps the staff will side with you and you won't be punished at all, but in the end, you're still getting bitched at unfairly and that's terribly unfun. I've seen lynch mobs form against players (recently Sue, but there have been others), and it's not an experience that can be solved with staff alone. Staff aren't all-powerful. They can't control users, tell them what to do in all instances, and direct their thoughts. This is a problem for the community as a whole to solve.

If the server status thread says the server is [DOWN], you can pretty much be sure that it is. Staff update that thread pretty much religiously, and the moment the server goes back up, you can be sure they'll post there. So I'm guessing it's simply a really long downtime.

I respectfully disagree. Player-staff relations might not be ideal, but the core of the problem remains that everyone is stressing way much about minor things. It's not just the staff who are responsible for that, and most of the (imo) undue complaints are made by regular players. And that again can be attributed to poor communication. The reason why staff are the ones claiming the rest of the staff is cool is because they've had the most opportunities to interact with staff in all sorts of contexts, and realize that that everyone there is just regular ladies and gents. And I've seen it myself; having been on both sides of that, I can confirm that no one on staff is a terrible, power-hungry shitter. They want to help, but if people are scared of them or feel uneasy around them, it's a sign that they're not getting their message across properly.

I definitely think that staff should make an effort to minimize OOC intervention. This is kind of ironic because I'm bashing myself for my own mistake, but in the case of the hardsuit, there was little to no reason why the issue couldn't be debated among command, ICly. (Besides maybe saying a traitor would expect to find hardsuits in EVA? I seriously can't imagine a situation where an antag would be completely boned simply because a department relocated their hardsuits.) Generally, I would like people to keep in mind they should attempt to let players do their own thing as much as possible. A player shouldn't have their actions be blocked without a good reason, and these reasons should always be explained to them in a manner that's clear and on-point. I sadly can't tell you about specific instances, as I haven't had many run-ins with staff, and I'm not on staff anymore so I can't see how ahelps and issues are handled, but I trust some other players should be able to explain their gripes in a comprehensible manner.

And I feel the need to stress that hugely. Every single person I have met on the staff has been there because they love the game, and want to make the community better. They very rarely hate any particular users (and when they do, it's usually because these users are being dicks OOCly, not because of the way they play), and really, what concerns them is the user experience, not upholding the rules. It seems what we have is mostly a communication and ideological problem. Soooo, let's work on that.

IC, or OOC? Because if it were IC, very much so. It would be even cooler if we could get artists to draw the occasional pic for it.

I have to back Swat up. As I have often said, there's nothing wrong with action as long as the roleplay happens somewhere. In a lot of these cases, the roleplay is around the fighting, not during the fighting itself. Trying to mount a realistic operation, heading into battle with your comrades, getting injured, retreating, that's all roleplay. You shouldn't have to roleplay the fights themselves, because the game already takes care of that for you. (Well, you can if you want, but it's going to be very difficult if more than two people are involved.)

I also really wish for, like, an actual class for staff to take on how to talk to people. I remember one of the very first things I was told when I became a mod was to be firm with users you were dealing with, so they wouldn't get the idea to bullshit you. And while I think the "authoritative" approach has its uses (mostly when you already know someone is bullshitting), it shouldn't be the default stance. I was guilty of it, and pretty much everyone else was guilty of it to a degree. I've played and gotten boinked on several alts (I assume people just leave me be on this ckey because they trust me), and I have to say, being contacted by staff is pretty scary, and generally not a fun experience. Especially when you're not doing anything wrong, staff tries to figure out what you're doing, and after justifying yourself you're simply left with a "don't do anything bad though, mmkay?" It's intimidating, and I want staff to feel like people I can play the game with and have fun with, not like people who constantly look down upon me. And I'm pretty sure it's not any staffmember's intent, but it's being done unconsciously in a lot of cases. If someone's being an asshole, go yell at them, yes. But if you don't feel like you can be friendly to a complete stranger on any given day, don't take the case, leave it to someone else.

I believe we need more than that. I believe communication needs to be established with the staff, and everyone needs to explain clearly what they're doing, what they want, how they hope for things to be run, etc. And I would honestly prefer if the staff didn't hold back, too. Internally (when I was on staff), I have seen people express frustrations against others, and instead of actually communicating this frustration (in an appropriate manner conductive to dialogue, obv.), too often, these feelings were left bottled up, and simply resulted in people's cases being dismissed instead of staff and players actually meeting to share and understand differing viewpoints on an issue. And if staff believes players are ridiculous or misguided in their clamors, then I would much rather these players be answered to honestly than be brushed off.

These are some good example. These all appear to be instances of draconian measures being taken (both ICly and OOCly) out of "fear of the baddie". To which I'd say, deal with the baddie once they come up. Don't over-penalize other players because of it. (Like, seriously. If people can't behave themselves in ERT, give out ERT bans. It's not bad enough that we should gimp ERT completely.)

I remember Jason Sanders, and how once HoS Milo Hachert, along with a mob of people, beat him to near-death in maintenance because he had pissed everyone off this much (and Milo got in deeeeep trouble for it if I recall correctly). He used as justification that "his loyalty implant commanded him to seek out the better good of the station, and since NanoTrasen wouldn't fire Sanders, he actually had to take the matter in his own hands". That's the HoS, along with security, giving an outright mob beating to someone because that person slept around too much and no one liked them. Brilliant. And yet, the sole justifications I hear being used to restrict players' actions would, by that same logic, absolutely prevent things like that from happening. Yes, the HoS beating someone is terrible, terrible. But if they have a reason? And there's leadup? And it makes sense? And it's cool, or funny? The leading rationale behind any decisions taken OOC should be "is it cool/fun, and can it bother/harm anyone?" Nothing else.

Sometimes staff simply needs to assess a situation (if a group of people gets flashbanged and people start complaining, you probably want to understand what's going on so at least you can explain it to the people complaining.) As long as you don't actually get punished or take crap over it, it's all good. Some of these other things, however, I will have to agree are not okay. I've actually engaged in overpolicing myself, and have vastly reconsidered my stance since I was headmin. I think staff have started telling people how the game should be played, and that's not what staff should generally be here for. On one hand, we've got DOs now, which can engage in some IC character policing. So it's good that issue was mostly taken off the staff and put back in-game. But unless the case is a clear-cut one (such as a 19 year old geneticist), if there is any doubt as to whether a character's actions were questionable or not, then matters should be handled ICly as much as possible, not OOCly. The hardsuit debate, for example, ended up being mostly staff trying to impose their own gameplay viewpoint upon other players, while trying to justify it with IC/lore reasons that were tacked-on. (I was guilty of this too. I hadn't thought about it much back then.) It bugs me that players are given less freedom than they used to have, either for the sake of realism (if we went the full, 100% realism route, that'd be boring, so realism shouldn't be a be-all end-all goal), or sometimes for the sake of absolutely nothing. Just this morning, Baka told me the staff had a debate over whether "Flashman-Adler" was an acceptable surname or not. Like, wat. I remember that round where I was trying to get the warden to lose her shit (well it wasn't the warden, I had other motives, but I took the opportunity to do the exact same thing that another person had just done to her to get arrested because I thought it'd be hilarious). And the fact that you thought you couldn't beat me up or be a bit of a shit over it, I dunno, I don't get that? I don't understand what anyone gains in forcing players to show absolute restraint. Conflict is one of the biggest aspects roleplay thrives on. If security is destined to play an endless game of cops-and-robbers while acting all prim and proper, I dunno, that's just, sad. I get that there's a fear of shitters, abusers, powergamers, etc. But the baby is being thrown out with the bathwater here.

I've always been a fan of carelessly cheerful robots. We've had a few great players for that (DuckDuckNoose, SomeKindOfPony), but I find we're quite lacking on IPCs who aren't super serious atm, and I always thought that kind of personality was better fitted for IPCs than regular cyborgs or AIs.

The Tajaran lore overhaul brought a lot of new and interesting dynamics I've had fun playing with. The concept of loyalty is an interesting one, because even though Tajara are highly loyal to their race as a whole (and even more to their families), they are still a marginalized species, and it gives you a lot of leeway for cool internal conflicts of "helping your race" versus "providing for yourself through serving promising though somewhat dubious megacorporations". I wonder what would be the outlook of younger Tajaras on megacorporations such as NanoTrasen. Although humans are somewhat responsible for the race's "uplifting", Tajaras have also seen the destruction newer technologies can bring - and in a way, it's soooort of a little bit obvious that companies such as NT are mostly there to exploit Adhomai. I'm mostly saying this because I thought it could be of interest to you. I've played (and met) a few "space-faring" Tajarans and it's always interesting to see the different outlooks people choose to adopt towards humans.

I don't know, I don't feel like you expand enough on the subtleties of playing as Unathi. I mean, you seem to have gotten down the part that Unathi are an aggressive, warlike species, they're tough and act like badasses and get into conflicts a lot. But that alone isn't what people will be looking for in a good alien player. Playing an alien race isn't about following stereotypes to a T, but carving your way through making a complex, three-dimensional character, who is more than the tropes which define his or her species.

I'm here to have fun too, even though I post a lot, and I believe it's the same for many other people who post (and fight, and argue) a lot. The thing is there's nothing wrong with being passionate, and we shouldn't look at people negatively simply because they take issues to heart. It's the content of these discussions that's important. Not how much people talk about it, but whether they talk about it at all, or whether they don't. It's they "why is this a problem" that people need to expand on. Share stories, give examples of how you feel the administration has gotten tighter, make the problem a concrete, observable one, so that it can be addressed.

I guess what Baka is asking, though, is more like "what is it you would like that you feel like you are not getting right now, and why?" The "Aurora has changed" complaint is pretty common, but we generally get nothing more than very vague explanations about how "things used to be". It's hard to tackle a problem that has nothing concrete to it.

I've been given it a bit more thought this morning, and honestly - I see the "this place has changed" threads and the issues with people finding the server not fun to be linked as part of the same problem. When I was playing my most, few if any people were worrying about the state of the server. Now there seems to be a constant stream of people wanting to set specific rules, define roleplay, address issues (which for the most part are not really issues), and there used to be a certain laisser-faire about the server that is completely, well, gone. Everyone is being super serious. Part of it comes from the fact that we're bigger than we used to be, but I still want to think Aurora is a small community where you can get to know everyone - and the fact that it doesn't feel like you're simply chilling with a bunch of friends anymore sorta irks me. Even some of the staff seems to have lost a lot of interest in the server's "fun" factor. There's barely any events being run (I used to do tons, so did Covert, Pumpking, and other people who have left) and I feel like in general, there's less staff involvement in-game than before (remember when Skull used to rate bomb tests as CentCom? That was hilarious.) I'd like to see a return back to that. Stop worrying, stop being angry at things or thinking if a thing isn't fixed urgently the whole server will go to crap. There's only one kind of issues we should really worry about fixing, and these are the issues of people being mean to each other. Be nice, be friendly, and try to do your best to help others. I see some of the oldest regulars still try to live by these tenets. They're just chill people, who don't really mind anyone or anything and are simply looking for a good time and a bit of fun. And I honestly think if you adopt that attitude too, you'll have an easier time.

Not to be pushy, but it's been a week since I posted, and have gotten no reply from Valk :L Edit: nevermind that, two weeks.

Well, if people actually take time to tweak it in a nice update (along with newer sprites or whatever needs updating), it'd probably get voted a few times as a tryout. If people like it enough after that it could be added to the secret rotation. Of course, all of our devs are already hella busy, so that's unlikely to happen.

I'd like to see the gamemode more often too. I don't know much about it, but if people think it's due for a nerf, it would be great to give it a nerf and add it to the secret rotation.

Aurora has changed! For the better? For the worse? I don't know. I know I was happy with the way things were before (though some aspects of the server were horrible, and we improved a lot on several fronts), and now I don't know if I'm happy, but I'm certainly not dissatisfied or horrified. I miss the old players, but I've met new ones (and some really great ones are returning). As far as saying that Aurora is doomed (to go down a different path from the one its creators originally envisioned), I don't know about that. People change, constantly. Both staff and players come in and out. If the state of the server is something you're not happy with, either bring your own change, or wait it out. As I think I've said once, a long long time ago, the internet is a wonderful place, but nothing on it is perfect. And the best way to enjoy it is to take in the good with the bad, and not truly worry about the terrible things, because, y'know, they're gonna happen, but it doesn't mean more great things won't come to follow in the future.

don't make me draw that

it's just a man with glasses and a very big nose can we all calm down now