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The inconsistent enforcement of the rules regarding conflict is ridiculous.


Scheveningen

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Let me put it out there that I'm going to voice a few frustrations I've had lately trying to play more regularly again, and also some issues I've noticed hadn't changed since I became inactive up until now where I've started to play more frequently again. This is not a slam against staff because of them personally for non-staff related reasons, but because their methods of enforcing the rules is hardly satisfactory and not really keeping with any principles I've seen staff held to in the past. This is, for all intents and purposes, Delta's Manifesto. Brand me with a hammer and sickle if you dare.


https://forums.aurorastation.org/viewtopic.php?f=111&t=2193 Let also me put it out there that there is precedent with certain conditions pertaining to engaging in conflict with someone with a gun. Like, 'previous administration'-type precedent. The head admin that few today can even remember that wrote up this policy. The rules from that era that have basically not changed very substantially since 3 and a half years ago, but their enforcement has radically changed since then.


While I do not mind that an armed gunman in certain cases is getting plinked from a half screen to a full screen away either by a rifle or by a sniper being wielded by a trained professional character who was ordered to be in that position to neutralize the hostile gunman and has a gameplan to get that job done, but I absolutely mind when the administration staff apply an inconsistent, laissez-faire, "I'll enforce the rules when I feel like it"-type attitude in regards to situations where the gunman gets charged down by somebody making that kind of neutralization decision only in the heat of the moment, fearless of any consequences and without concern of their own loss of life until either they die or the gunman goes down. That kind of shit should be discouraged, but we all hear stories all the time of that crap happening and the staff doing very little about it.


And it is not even the fact that certain people do this that is so much the problem that it is the administration staff that outright choose to defend them and refuse to even to give them a brief warning on how to properly escalate and take reasonable in-character risks. That's all I personally ask for (Because hey, the first year I played here was a lot of rule-breaking, and these concepts are drilled into me through various kinds of reinforcement), because for some players they need to be reminded that they need an actual in-character motivation, and not whatever comes to them OOC as a good idea. You know, "Put your character's interests before yourself", "If your character has the capability to walk away right now, they should do that over putting their own life into serious harm's way"?


If you've ever seen the staff complaints board before you will see almost nothing comes of those discussions besides "the player is wrong, the admin was right", because that's all that matters, right? Issues about staff members and the enforcement of the rules 90% of the time get derailed into a moral grey quandary where people pretend the issues are more complex than they really are. Have any of you also seen how nebulous, time-consuming and tedious it is to file out a staff complaint, and how the resolution of any complaint is more heavily bent on having exact-precision proof of wrongdoing than the US federal court systems are? How about when a staff complaint boils down to a 4 page crap-shoot where the only thing that ends up mattering is personal character assassination. If you see a thread where a staff response to a player is formatted alongside the lines of "your tone seems very pointed right now so I'm not gonna pretend like you have good points here" as a 'rational' rebuttal, you're either on reddit or on the Aurora complaint subforums.


Basically, it's easier to be the staffmember being accused in that situation than it is to be the person who has to do all of the accusing, because the person making the complaint has to put forward more effort and arguing on the offensive than what a staff member really has to do in order to clear their name of wrongdoing.


It's genuinely really sad that I've been suggested by certain players and staff here that the only way I can deal with this culture the admins seem okay containing in our little community, is to either deal with it and never bring it up as an existing problem because they think that debate will never get anywhere, or to simply try another server. I am hoping to God on my knees that they were exaggerating, and this thread exists to hopefully prove those people wrong, that something can be done about this issue of apathy.


Should we just remove the rules regarding gank and et cetera and assume that if you have a gun, that nothing in roleplay tangibly matters in you holding it except for your own ability to use and survive with it? Because that seems to be the current impression regardless of the standing rules. All it takes is the use of disarm intent or the targeting of the hands to completely neutralize the risk of a gunman anyway, because melee combat is so hilariously overloaded with the ability to punish another character with much less inputs and skill than what someone with a gun has to contend with. The fact you can get away with powergaming on a roleplay server with supposedly 'higher standards' than other servers is pretty ridiculous.


This is pretty much how I see staff judge these cases:


Gunman gets charged by rambo, gunman kills rambo: "lol moron rambo, he got what was coming to him"

Gunman gets charged by rambo, rambo disarms and neutralizes/kills gunman: "Wow the gunman had a gun and he did nothing with it, SO BAD"


It is extremely rare that you ever see staff moderate cases like these when they're reported, in a fashion that isn't hands-off.


All that seems to tangibly matter in relation to how these decisions are enforced by the server staff is mechanical positioning of either party, not whether or not a character has reasonable enough justification to be sanely knocking over someone to grab their gun and turn it on them. What's the point to roleplay being the guy with the gun if virtually any character outright refuses to respect the kill pressure someone has with a gun in a roleplay sense? With the risk of literally anyone being a possible bulldozer to completely end your round because their character suddenly gets fearless, wouldn't it just be better to remove the rules regarding gank/rushing down someone with no personal regard for safety, since the staff don't seem to care enough to enforce those two rules more seriously anyway?


Here's another good question: Why do we have staff members if they don't want to enforce the rules that they volunteered to enforce to provide a better experience for everyone? If any of you staff members think I'm referring to you and feel insulted by that, I'm not saying that you should step down, but you should probably take a long look in the mirror if you feel like anything I said applies to you. I'm also not asking that staff need to be emotionless robots, I'm asking that administration hold themselves to a certain level of principle and motivate themselves to enforce the Rules-As-Written so that the players can be provided a fairer and more fun roleplay experience. This server is only fun when everyone plays along to the same tune of respecting the rules and RP conventions not only simultaneously but with such a synergistic rhythm that roleplay comes way more easily. But for that to happen the rules gotta be enforced to some tangible degree that even the players can see and appreciate the admin staff for.


I get it, no one joins staff to ban regulars from the server until they "get it." But the rules should be enforced seriously here, or else none of being a mod/admin even matters aside from the social status and the powers that the title gives you.


I would be perfectly happy with any resolution that comes out of this as long as it isn't upholding the current status quo of doing nothing about the biggest issues of this community. If the Rules-As-Written were also Rules-As-Enforced and we dropped to Medium RP all of a sudden, it would be a much more honest and productive resolution than staying in this joke of a 'Heavy RP' definition, where the conditions of when and where you can start conflict are so nebulous that you can maul someone for a verbal slight.

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What I think would be ideal, in order to resolve some issues;


1. Start taking complaints of cases of the following with a larger degree of seriousness, and evaluate them with more of an intensive lens: Situations including hostages, situations including lethal escalation against anyone, situations including common communications heckling of antagonists, situations including non-combat roles being in extended conflict for reasons other than self-defense, situations involving gank. Anything else not mentioned in the locus of conflict, should be focused on, because I see a lot of really bad decisions being made in the heat of conflict and despite that people report when somebody makes a really bad judgement call in conflict, the staff do not seem to even make an invested effort to correct any wrongdoing and instruct the person what they could've done better. Conflict is crucial to the server's longevity, and it needs to be in such a way that people are making reasonable decisions.


2. Heavier minimum penalties regarding powergaming and metagaming, as well as overescalating/breaking character when engaging in conflict. The first two are not acceptable on the other servers, yet it should be punished enough to the point where people actually think twice in-game before making a decision that needs more than just rolling over your keyboard to solve a problem. Escalating appropriately with the proper means of force is a major locus of how gameplay works here.


3. Regulars should not get special treatment because we've all been here longer. If there's a problem to their behavior, and it's damaging the quality of rounds in such a way that it's also going against the principles of heavier roleplay standards, then their behavior needs to be reigned in with warnings and timed bans. If they refuse to change it, taking additional steps to pressure them to actually follow the rules and roleplay properly will serve as more than an adequate wake-up call. In the inverse, though, neither regular nor new players don't need to be soullessly crushed, though. The level of enforcement of the rules is not even close to "Firm but fair", but it should aspire to be that.

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Yeah I can get behind that. Not sure about regulars getting better treatment and what not be anecdotally I often see people avoiding fear RP or suddenly become highly skilled CQC operators on the fly which is lame. I can appreciate it's difficult to roleplay fear and pain appropriately and it's really a case by case basis for each character but there comes a point where we really need to dial down the "my character would fight not flight" that seems to be the main staple. I mean I'm guilty of it, I've unga bunga charged a Merc as a sec officer with a baton and felt like an absolute weenie afterwards because it was a video game reaction by me and did not take into consideration the roleplay "would my character want to fukken die" aspect. In immediate hindsight my character would have dropped the baton and put his hands up.

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That's mostly due to the part where it's not enforced into most people's heads "do I fight or flight" because it seems like people are more comfortable making split-second decisions based on whimsy, which isn't really good in terms of decision-making. If it becomes the accepted standard that acting on whimsy can have negative consequences on the OOC side, people will be more motivated to think before they act, even in a bad situation.

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Your points are interesting, and definitely give me something to think about. Right now there's a dichotomy between what I CAN get away with mechanically vs what I SHOULD be doing ICly. Maybe if we make it mechanically more difficult to just disarm someone with a gun (I was thinking things like misfiring, with a high chance of hitting the person trying to push them, an automatic defense toggle thing like aiming would be) we could see improvement from the playerbase side, too. Because it isn't just an admin thing, we could improve this with players as well, methinks.

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  • 1 month later...

I honestly think we need to completely rework the disarm intent to stand a chance at having a meaningful combat system. It is absolutely insane that literally any random bozo can just walk up to someone armed with a sword, knife, or gun and have a significant chance of either knocking it out of their hands or outright knocking them out.

Much like the majority of stun-combat, it's a relic of lowrp servers that just holds us down.

Personally, I think people should be able to disarm others or at least restrict their use of a weapon to a certain degree. It should be much less reliable and require much more effort, but still be possible. A half-baked idea of mine would make it so that you could wrestle something out of someone's hand if you get an aggressive grab on their hand, and whenever you have a grab on their hand they cannot use said item.

In terms of ganking rules, I have never been a fan. I think trying to inject "direct" rp into situations where there would normally not be any talking or emoting severely hurts the quality of our antags, to the point where I would not be against getting of the rule completely and simply punishing murderboneing or completely un-warranted attacks.

Edited by driecg36
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Guest Marlon Phoenix

"Im stressed" is the go-to reason used by people who escalate situations like crazy. That mixed with genuine adrenaline and a desire to win. I think half the situations are not in bad faith. Enforcement could be more consistent i think.

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Just now, Senpai Jackboot said:

"Im stressed" is the go-to reason used by people who escalate situations like crazy. That mixed with genuine adrenaline and a desire to win. I think half the situations are not in bad faith. Enforcement could be more consistent i think.

As someone who antags as much as possible, adrenaline is a serious factor while playing an antag. I've done things that have gotten me into trouble because I was feeling the rush.

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Driec, the problem isn't the combat system, it's the fact that players try to use the combat system in the situation at all. If someone has a gun aimed at you, there's almost zero chance you would try to rush them down without them taunting you to do so, when you don't even have a weapon yourself.

And jackboot, I personally don't believe a desire to win should be a good player mentality in a roleplay server. In fact, trying to win just makes everyone lose because you either mess up the round as an antag or mess up the antag's gimmick as regular player. Being stressed is believable, but being stressed should not really be an excuse to escalate poorly (I can't think of a situation where I've heard that excuse and ruled it as valid over that.)

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This game is barely even fast-paced enough for statements like "I'm stressed" to be an acceptable excuse for over-escalating in conflict. This isn't like Call of Duty where the majority of skills involved for playing well is knowing the maps, having twitch-reflex dexterity and the desire to 'win.'

This is SS13, there's a rare amount of situations where you're required to "twitch" as a reaction to instantly escalate a situation. There's more room for preparation and being able to pre-meditate how you're going to handle an upcoming encounter.

"I'm stressed" should not be the go-to accepted reason for a server like this. It's constantly used for malicious individuals to recuse themselves of any responsibility in escalating conflict inappropriately.

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There are several mods and admins on the administration team who have polarizing views of conflict and, for that matter, what HRP is. There are several situations where I've been in where an antag did something shit and was told it was fine by one group of admins, and another group of admins says it isn't fine. Not that I did any admin shopping but I tend to discuss things that happened in rounds, and sometimes those turn into arguments about whether or not that conflict was acceptable.

This doesn't help with how vague the rules are pretty vague and up to interpretation.

Quote
  • Conflict is acceptable, even if you are not an antag, but it needs to be believable, and meet roleplay standards. The average Joe will not simply decide to blow up their workplace one day. Keep in mind, the more drastic the action, the more motivated your character has to be to commit to it, and the consequences it brings. Unless you’re an antagonist, this motivation has to be developed through roleplay on the server: backstory cannot legitimize drastic things, such as trying to assault security staff because of a bad childhood, for example. It is also very much encouraged that you roleplay out the consequences to such conflict where possible.
  • Only escalate conflict in a realistic manner - some characters might overreact, but you would not realistically go berserk or attempt to kill someone if they stole your prized pen, for instance. Again, your character must be motivated enough to commit to more drastic action, as they undertake it.
  • Killing in self-defense in NOT preferred. If possible, always try to flee, or disable your opponent. If your character does commit a murder in a canon setting, please roleplay out the effects it would have on your character as well.

There are two huge things up to interpretation of the admin:

"What is considered believable conflict?"

"What are the roleplay standards of this server?"

These change daily depending on the current players playing and the current staff moderating. Something a player does might be considered fine on a tuesday but banworthy on a thursday. It's inconsistent and may have players feeling like there is bias at play or that there is no sense of order when it comes to moderation.

 

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1 hour ago, Scheveningen said:

This game is barely even fast-paced enough for statements like "I'm stressed" to be an acceptable excuse for over-escalating in conflict. This isn't like Call of Duty where the majority of skills involved for playing well is knowing the maps, having twitch-reflex dexterity and the desire to 'win.'

This is SS13, there's a rare amount of situations where you're required to "twitch" as a reaction to instantly escalate a situation. There's more room for preparation and being able to pre-meditate how you're going to handle an upcoming encounter.

"I'm stressed" should not be the go-to accepted reason for a server like this. It's constantly used for malicious individuals to recuse themselves of any responsibility in escalating conflict inappropriately.

Fixing this meme of blaming stress on your actions as antag can be solved by removing the association that you "win" as an antag if you complete your made up objectives. The only time someone should win as an antag is that if they made the round interesting.

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21 hours ago, TrickingTrapster said:

Driec, the problem isn't the combat system, it's the fact that players try to use the combat system in the situation at all. If someone has a gun aimed at you, there's almost zero chance you would try to rush them down without them taunting you to do so, when you don't even have a weapon yourself.

And jackboot, I personally don't believe a desire to win should be a good player mentality in a roleplay server. In fact, trying to win just makes everyone lose because you either mess up the round as an antag or mess up the antag's gimmick as regular player. Being stressed is believable, but being stressed should not really be an excuse to escalate poorly (I can't think of a situation where I've heard that excuse and ruled it as valid over that.)

But I do think that the combat system is absolutely a problem. The very fact that the option is there to be able to disarm someone so easily and with a decent degree of success inevitably affects the decision making of players. Personally, my quarrel with it is more so in the fact that it's tied to such a core mechanic of the game (disarm intent), so everyone will naturally turn to it when combat does happen. This ends up with having your meek 17 year old mute medical interns being able to disarm a fully trained and experienced mercenary. Of course, this doesn't happen particularly often, but it should't be possible at all.

Having the actual disarming process be a struggle would make it a lot more usable in terms of RP, and allow for some more tense situations where two people fight for possession of a gun, rather than just having one backpedal and fire while the other spams shoves until they are horizontal. Having more meaningful, thoughtful, and realistic non-verbal interactions is an extremely important part of proper roleplay, and whether you like it or not combat is a part of it. There are situations in which combat is the most believable form of RP, and we need to have a solid system in place to ensure combat is a continuation of RP rather than a break from it.

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@Scheveningen Correct me if I am wrong, but I feel that the problem and why people began talking about the combat system is how security and antags usually are the culprits when it comes to improper escalation due to a mixture of both minor metagaming with knowing usual antag patterns and properties, and the desire to "win" in terms of succeeding in their objectives.

I feel a good start to solve this is encouraging antags and security alike to interact more with the rest of the crew, and have security stop having antag stuck in brig for extended periods of time (unless with good reason of course.)

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I think the rules should be made clearer and have concise points that are easy to read and easy to understand and reinforce that fact that you need to follow them, I've been guilty of risking my life and when I joined this server, I had no clue what the standard of the server is at all, I could barely play the game. I did read the rules when I joined but I skim read them, they were all similar to things I've seen on other servers and I just brushed it up as use common sense, but everyone is prone to accidents, and to people that don't know the game or are looking to join the community shouldn't' be scared because they didn't know the exact meaning of rules, I don't know how often it happens but I've seen a few cases myself where newbies do things we experienced players would never do, this is a public server is also a big eyebrow raiser for me since I'm used to white listing servers where you'd need to read the rules understand them, answer a quiz and then create a believable character and maintain a standard. Anyway all I'm saying is when I was new I had no idea of the millions of tiny rules there are, and expectations people have. I think I have improved drastically over time as I have stuck with the server itself to learn what is acceptable vs what isn't. If the rules were clearer, more punishment could be provided for breaking them. I think they should be enforced fairly and to everyone. But I think instead of a ban hammer, there should be some steps to help new players what is and what isn't good. I do think some things can always be improved but it is largely different case to case.

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