Player Complaint - Whole Merc Team from bWZ-dhwN

[BurgerBB]

BYOND Key: BurgerBB

Game ID: bWZ-dhwN

Player Byond Key: https://i.imgur.com/41ADnYI.png

Staff involved: QueenOfYugoslavia, said there was nothing wrong with the gimmick itself, however did not comment on the actions inside the gimmick nor seem to care.

Did you attempt to adminhelp the issue at the time? If so, what was the known action taken by administration/moderation? Yes, no action was taken on the faults of repeating the same, bad gimmick over and over again.

Approximate Date/Time: October 24th, 3:30PM PST

Reason for complaint:

Right. This was genuinely one of the worst rounds I've participated in and I don't think I'm alone in that. It was so bad that quite a few people actually cryoed, or expressed a sincere desire to cryo in looc. Lets break down what exactly this was.

A merc team of 4 raided the station. They magically (See: Adminbus) constructed a rage cage next to their ship. They somehow managed to kidnap the Head of Security without any injuries. I actually really want clarification on this because word was spreading among medical that they INTENTIONALLY let themselves get caught and CONVENIENTLY basically became the center of the gimmick. Mercs then demanded on radio that the Captain presents 5 crewmembers to fight the head of security to the death. They claim that the winner will receive 10,000 credits and have an opportunity to join their crew despite the station itself being a top of the line research station, with a very strict background check. I should mention again, that this is a research station, so all you're going to find is scientists and doctors. The Captain luckily had an IQ above negative 3 and realised how absolutely retarded this was, and refused to send anyone because of the logistics of it. Regardless of who wins, someone dies. However, despite being a Head of Security, they were saying on radio that this is all okay and this is entirely consensual. In a realistic scenario, regardless of whether or not they had a loyalty implant, would've told the mercs to go fuck themselves.

The mercs advertised the recruitment for about 10 minutes. Everyone else in the crew had an IQ above negative 3 and refused to participate in this. One crewmember however, found a moral excuse to help them, and did so. The battle itself took place in a secluded area with someone simply narrating comms. The only spectators to that match were: The mercs, a security officer, the head of security, and the volunteer to fight. No conflict was created to the rest of the crew except for the head of security, the officer, and the volunteer. Many people in LOOC at this point were expressing their boredom and annoyance to this shitty gimmick. No tangible RP was being created.

Before the rage cage match was created, the head of security was explosive implanted by the mercs. After the match where the head of security won, they were accidentally detonated by a merc. That merc (Chett) was then shot at by other mercs and then thrown to the security team for some reason. it seemed more like an OOC move than an IC move, honestly, because there was no realistic reason to do that. The other mercs then managed to escape, and then fuck off to their base. The admins then called a crew transfer vote at the 1 hour mark because the round was unsalvageable. The vote passed, however the shittery was not done. For some reason, one of the mercs had a change of heart and decided to return to the station and try and save the other merc. They proceeded to shoot down security after a quick interaction. There wasn't any RP generated for them or the crew around them. They went alone, against 2-3 armed security members, to rescue someone they gave up willingly before. I can say with absolute certainty that it was done because of boredom because this makes absolutely no sense logically, as explained earlier.

This gimmick is infamous on Aurorastation. It never works. 99% of the time it never works but I'm being informed that it worked before, but despite it rarely working it's still being done and it's still being a massive failure. No one is learning from this, and I think it's time to put the foot down on these sorts of gimmicks. More generally, we need to shut down unrealistic antags and antag actions. They're a blight on the server and probably one of the top 3 issues with Aurorastation. Everyone is so quick to complain about individual people unrealistically acting like shitters, but when antags have terrible, unrealistic, and unfeasible gimmicks that people don't seem to care too much about despite being a greater issues than the people they complain about in the first place. When an antag unironically asks the crew "Who wants to fight to the death?" and interact with no one else, you're rewarding psychotic behaviour because only psychos will be a part of their gimmick.

Note that I am not attacking the players involved, but their actions. I legitimately do not give a shit about the people who do this, but the fact that they're actually doing this. It needs to stop.

[Butterrobber202]

Looooooooooook, sometimes gimmicks don’t work out. A Rage cage on a Merc round is pretty bad. It’s more suitable for a traitor kidnapping people and forcing them to fight.

But the ideas usually /sound/ good in concept and I don’t think anyone should be punished for trying a gimmick.

Note: I’m only defending the gimmick, the unrealistic return of the body is something that should be looked at.

[Scheveningen]

I think the fact the gimmick failed and got little attention by itself is punishment enough, really. It just doesn't need to be encouraged to repeat, since only on LRP servers do people really outright seek fantastical ways to die.

[ben10083]

From what I can tell, I see no problem with their attempted gimic, if we filed a complaint on every antag when they fail on their gimic no one will try anything new. Lets face it, they tried something and coordinated to do it, thats more than what I expect from antag teams from what I usually experience. However, shooting up the merc for killing the HoS and the return for the body They surrendered in the first place makes no sense whatsoever and I feel it should be looked at.

Last thing, if someone could notify the people of the merc team about this complaint that would be appreciated.

[BurgerBB]

The problem is that this gimmick has been tried so many times, and so many times, it has absolutely failed. I think out of the several times where it was attempted, it only worked 2 times because of how unbelievable it is. Bad gimmicks happen all the time but what makes this report worthy is the fact that it has been tried so many times and failed.

I wouldn't be complaining if the gimmick was actually fun, however. In this case, it isn't an barely anyone participates willingly.

[Bauser]

If that were the case, the basis of the complaint would take for granted the fact that a given player plays frequently enough that they should know the meta of which gimmicks have been tried and how successful each of them is... And that is just demanding too much of the playerbase. It already sucks to be an antagonist because everyone else expects you to create all the fun and bring it to them (often not realizing they can make their own fun); it would be pretty pathetic to start punishing people just for not being so good at it that they can recite what methods for fun-making everybody else in other rounds and other timezones have attempted.

[Scheveningen]

If that were the case, the basis of the complaint would take for granted the fact that a given player plays frequently enough that they should know the meta of which gimmicks have been tried and how successful each of them is... And that is just demanding too much of the playerbase. It already sucks to be an antagonist because everyone else expects you to create all the fun and bring it to them (often not realizing they can make their own fun); it would be pretty pathetic to start punishing people just for not being so good at it that they can recite what methods for fun-making everybody else in other rounds and other timezones have attempted.

 

Agree with this. I don't think the administration needs to step in to tell players what happens when you strategize poorly.

[Itanimulli]

I think the only complaint could have been directed at Janine or whatever her name was for detonating the HoS, but even then, it made the round a bit more interesting....for observers, but still interesting. I don't personally see that as something going wrong; the syndicate cause chaos and terror wherever they may go, and that's exactly what they did.

[Asheram]

Unless we want admin intervention on each and every gimmick then let's just hold our tongue on the ones occasionally going wrong.

Heck, if you feel this strongly about it then there's always the opportunity to bring back the old randomized mission list for antags.

[BurgerBB]

I think people are severely misunderstanding the complaint. Gimmicks can be bad and there is nothing we can do about that. That's understandable.

However given the fact that these are all regular heist players, that this happened during highpop, and that the same shitty gimmick happened to the letter, it's not unreasonable to ask for something to be done about this clearly bad gimmick. I'm not asking admins to babysit antags and for antags to understand the meta. Im' asking them to enforce the rules presented on the server and not turn this into a selective MRP server where snowflake psychopathy is rewarded.

Even if you pretend for a moment that none of the gimmicks happened before and existed, the very premise is a LRP gimmick that has no place on a server like this that's riddled with believable player problems. 4 raiders are asking a professional top-of-the-line research station for recruits by setting up a ragecage and asking them "Who wants to fight the head of security, who is also a unathi, bare handed, to the death?"

How is this believable? Why would anyone do this? How does this make any sense? How is this roleplay? How does this involve the station except for a handful of psychopaths, security, and command? What does this contribute? Should this contribute to an already existing problem where people jump at the opportunity to self antag or get involved in every antag action possible?

Or better yet, just answer these questions:

 

 

How is raiders going to a top-of-the-line corporate station and doing gladiators trials to recruit members realistic?

How is consensually volunteering to fight a hulking Head of Security Unathi to the death barehanded in a rage cage realistic character behavior and not the signs of a psychopath?

The real world equivalent would be like a gang going to Starbucks and asking the cashiers if they want to fight their hulking 250 lb 6'4 manager to death in an electrified cage.

[Itanimulli]

They. Are terrorists. The syndicate. Are terrorists. This. Was terrorism.

[Scheveningen]

Wizards are not realistic.

Blood-magical death cultists are not realistic.

Most of the alien species being heavily similar to that of Terran-based animals is not realistic.

There's so much glaringly wrong with the game and the state of roleplay consistency to this server, but only if and when you attempt to apply it through the lens of realism.

The only way anything as apart of this server makes any sense is when you understand the Aurora universe operates by its own (albeit not remotely ideal) continuity where everything is made up and the points don't matter.

This, in a way, ends up extending the field of whether an antagonist being able to escalate by any small rationale to extreme lengths of force, is at all valid.

This is the flaw of Aurora, ultimately, we try too hard for a balance to be struck to preserve immersion and roleplay quality while also upholding vague preconceived notions of what 'fun' is despite that, for the sake of example, only furries enjoy roleplaying with furry OC characters, rage-cages are better suited to lower RP servers because no fathomable character has in-character motivation to participate in a death-match on a higher RP one, and there's a surprising lack of corporate discrimination against the lesser species that are only just industrialized, but have to contend with societal internal problems that should normally make them underneath the notice of the space-age races.

And because we try too hard for a balance for all of this to fit like trying to wedge a triangle block in a circle-slot, it is impossible to apply any proper precedent because there is no consistent one that exists to make this a better niche server that it is supposed to be.

The rules are more

in this encompassing context, meaning the rules are ultimately only as much of a standard to be enforced that the administration at-large wishes to enforce them as.

In an hypothetical world where I overthrew Abo and Garn and became the head admin, hypothetically, I'd hypothetically agree with the notion that the rules are actually principles meant to be applied fairly but firmly to everyone, not just based on a "I feel like it" or social power-exertion basis, Hypothetically. Also hypothetically, I'd lobby for changes throughout the server culture to more heavily enforce development targeted in a direction that facilitates the idea of roleplay and the conflicts pertaining to the roleplay environment ICly, so that everything that happens is at least, hypothetically, simulated to such a degree that anyone who tries hard enough to be invested in the roleplay environment could hypothetically feel the changes in the environment as time goes on. Hypothetically. Alas, I blew it.

This is a lot of text to emphasize how apathy rules over everything and that it is often easier to do nothing than risk doing something and getting bad consequences for it, but yeah, that's how you do it.

[Goret]

Hello, [mention]Flamingo[/mention] and I will be taking this complaint. Give us some time to gather infos and review it asap.

[BurgerBB]

In the established universe as well as gameplay mechanics, a wizard going onto the station and recruiting a pupil is more believable than what occured in that round.

Only icly wizards are unbelievable. OOCly they're tolerable and believable.

[Bauser]

A good case can be made for attempting a bad gimmick: If it didn't work before, maybe they can use their experience to try and make it work next time.

Regarding the gimmick not being believable enough, remember that believability is a two-way street. If there is a case to be made that the gimmick was not realistic enough to be believable, then there is a case to be made that you're just not believing enough for it to seem real. Not everyone has the same threshold for their suspension of disbelief. You say that the mercenaries hosting a fighting game is unrealistic, even though they already had what they needed (the kidnapped HoS) and could very well have been doing it to send a message or terrorize. You say that the mercenaries shooting at & giving up one of their own was unrealistic, even though that mercenary just betrayed his whole team by killing an extremely valuable hostage. You say that one of the mercs having a change of heart and coming back for him was unrealistic, even though the mercenaries are all supposed to be actual characters with their own actual motivations, too.

So for every case where you determined an IC behavior to be completely wrong and nonsensical, there's a theory that explains how it makes perfect sense... if you just look at it a way that isn't the way you look at things. Not every character behaves or should behave with your motivations or priorities. I'm not sure I could count on both hands the number of times I've heard you call a round "one of the worst rounds you've ever been in."

tl;dr The purpose of disciplinary action should always be to facilitate fun and should never attempt to enforce fun. Your approach is an attempt to enforce fun... It's fundamentally ridiculous.

[Goret]

Hello, sorry for the delay of the answer. We took a look over the logs and spoke to some players in the round and decided the outcome.

Some of the issues we had were already been handled directly in the round, so the last issue we have is the roboticist that willingly accepted to give themselves to a combat to death with the Unathi head of security. We spoke with the player, and the problem has been resolved.

About the gimmick, even if it was badly executed, we don't want to punish people for attempting something out of the ordinary. They tried, they failed, and I'm pretty sure they will learn from that, and do better next time.

This complaint will be locked and archieved in 24 hours if nothing else is said.

[Goret]

Locking and archiving.