Security, Command, Antags. AKA the Burger Manifesto

[BurgerBB]

The Burger Manifesto

I think this is thread worthy because it contains all my thoughts on the matter in one thread, as well as possible solutions (that I will attempt to implement) to solve it. I believe that there is a problem when it comes to the dynamic of security, antags, and command. If you play any of these roles I bet you'll relate to one of the following things:

Quote

You're an antag. You're scared shitless of sec because security will blow your brains out if you so much as sneeze. You've tried peacefully roleplaying in the past, giving security a chance, but your trust of security has diminished over the months because you are hunted every round. In order to prevent this, you go all out and destroy security before they destroy you.

You're an officer or a head of staff. You're scared shitless of antags because an antag will blow your brains out if you do your job if you so much as sneeze.You've tried interacting with antags peacefully, trying to spark negotiations, using non-lethal weaponry, but your trust of antags has diminished over the months because you are hunted every round. In order to prevent this, you go all out and destroy antags before they destroy you.

Something has caused an never-ending cycle of fear of losing a round. It is absolutely rare to see an antag handicap themselves and focus on being entertaining instead of completing imaginary objectives. It's rare to see security act like anything but a private military with a background in the solarian navy. Because of these dynamics, command seems to have undertaken some sort of meta that involves leaving the crew out of everything as much as possible. Some argue it's because it's realism, and that's what a leader would do. Some argue it's because the crew can get in the way, and it's annoying to deal with them. Some argue it's because the people sheltering the crew want as much quality RP as possible. Tell me, how many times have you seen any of these announcements?

Quote

We're moving to code blue. The internal security department is currently dealing with a threat. Everything is under control.

We're moving to code blue. The internal security department is currently dealing with a situation in the bar. All non-security personnel are asked to stay away from the bar. Everything is under control.

We're moving to code red. The internal security department is dealing with confirmed hostiles. Please remain in your departments and report suspicious activity. Everything is under control.

We're moving to code red. There is an armed intruder on the station. Please remain in your departments and do not approach them. Everything is under control.

We're moving to code delta. A situation has occurred and we're nuking the station. Please remain in your departments. Everything is under control.

What usually ends up happening is that this is the only communication made to the crew and nothing else is established. There have been rounds were security/command have been so successful in containing what's been going on, people can't even guess the round type despite it being an hour and a half in. As AI, I've been encouraging Captains and Heads to let the crew what's going on so they could feel involved in some way instead of being left in the dark, but I'm usually told that "civilians" shouldn't know about it or that the situation is miniscule and not worth making an announcement over.

 

There have been a variety of attempts to fix one of these issues mentioned; which is antags feeling threatened. Currently, antags have a significant amount of powers and abilities at their disposal compared to other servers. It is argued that the beefening of antags is made to make rounds last 2 hours because security/the crew tend to be jumpy and valid the antags easily. Security standard loadout is a .45 to protect against these antags.

So we've established that security is scared of antags because antags act too tough. We've established that antags are scared of security because security acts too tough. We've established that command/security generally likes to keep things in the dark and treat everything security does as a dark-ops mission. We've established that antags and security have been given buffs to make each other stronger so they last 2 hours.

I think all of the above is actively damaging the server, and needs to change. Click on "Next page" for that.

What Needs to Change

1. Disassociate the attitude that ISD = military trained soldiers by making them more like rent-a-cops. They should behave like dorky black mesa security and not combine soldiers. This can be done by adjusting policy as well as their equipment.
2. If security equipment is nerfed, so should antags. Uplink items that spawn very strong items like the anti-material rifle, the .357, EMP grenades, frag grenades, and manhack grenades should have a serious price increase. Powerful equipment should be earned, not given.
3. Make punishments more transparent. I've talked to frequent antag players and they complain that security mains don't get enough punishment while all the punishment goes to antags. I've talked to sec mains and they complain that antags don't get enough punishment while all the punishment goes to sec mains. I feel that letting users know that someone has been dealt with (for real) would cause them to relax and not assume that this would be a frequent occurrence.
4. More transparent Captains. I could imagine that legislation or an event took place that legally required Captains to disclose emergency situations on the situation, specifically. I could imagine a scenario where a Captain said that "There was a hostile situation that ISD is dealing with. That is all." but the hostile situation being an active shooter which ended up killing 1 person because the Captain refused to disclose who the hostile is, despite knowing, and what their intentions were.
5. A complete rework of security for NBT. I will be incredibly disappointed if security is the same thing as it is currently. The crew should have more of an active role, such as a militia, when it comes to antag interaction. It would be used for emergencies only, and it would be similar to faysal's militia that he has in dire situations. A dream idea of mine is there only being 4 members of security: A sheriff, a deputy, and 2 enforcers, who are trained to protect the colony from the wildlife and themselves.

 

 

Edited December 7, 2018 by BurgerBB

[ben10083]

I agree with this idea, however I feel we should also encourage antags to not go terminator-mode and kill everyone once/if security is unavailable. I have seen many merc rounds where they rushed the station due to low to no security, and feel this can also ruin a round for many people depending on the gimic of the mercs.

 

Onto security: I dislike the idea of a official militia, we should still have security, but to a less extent, any militas should be made by the players, not because that is your alt-role.

 

 

SIDE NOTE: I will be VERY disapointed if people try to derail this and turn this thread into X complaining about Y for 3 pages. So don't.

[Itanimulli]

NBT itself will change how sec behaves, because they will have to actively move around/provide security, especially if hostile mobs become a thing in NBT.

Increasing prices is a big "Meh" for me. It sounds good in practice, but it will only serve to limit people even further, and gimmicks tend to be what drive a round...irrespective of those gimmicks being good or not.

Remember, it's not always traitor/ninja/merc. Vampires, Wizards, Changelings, and Revs also exist. None of them use an uplink. If anything, they usually involve less people than even merc or traitor, especially wizard. Half the time, security just straight up says "go away" right at the beginning of the round. It's really annoying, because everyone knows that's not gonna help the rp, but they pass if off as "Oh well its the normal thing to do" but really it just leads to the antag getting stuck in one spot and then dying in like medical or research.

[Butterrobber202]

I’m heavily against taking away more TC from Antags, because for an effective utility loadout you need everything you can get. It will also reduce the amount of gimmicks Antags are able to pull off.

Edited December 8, 2018 by Butterrobber202

[sonicgotnuked]

I would like to point out.

 

The anti-material rifle is a full 25 TC (aka ALL of it)

 

Without teamwork, it only would have a couple shots. 

 

[CampinKiller]

I am very much against the idea of turning security into rent-a-cops, for several reasons.

 

1. It doesn’t fit the lore of the setting at all. NanoTrasen ISD is somewhere between rent-a-cops and a police force. They’re armed corporate security protecting a research and mining station, and they’re armed for good reason. Why would NT just change it for one outpost?

 

2. We used to have this debate a couple years ago every few days. Is security a paramilitary force or rent-a-cops? It was annoying, because the answer is neither. Yes, Security has a rich armament in the armory, but it (in theory) should be staying locked up until shit hits the fan or carp invade. On the other hand, security isn’t Paul Blart: Space Mall Cop. They are charged with ensuring smooth operations on a state of the art facility, so they have access to the resources to do that.

 

I generally disagree with the idea that these changes have to be done via a nerf of both sides. Instead, we should be encouraging a culture shift within security players and antags. Command whitelists/sec mains need to be leading this shift within Sec itself. If it has to be, then it can be done via administrative action or CCIA action. If security valids your ass for petty theft, ahelp it. If the antag steamrolls you, the warden, as you sit at your desk, unaware of the presence of an antag (and probably afk), ahelp it. Some time ago, I recall, CCIA did an investigation of security because of the prevalence of valids. I don’t think the situation is nearly as bad as it was then, but that’s an option to consider as well

[Hocka]

On the vein of limiting Security and their armaments, what's supposed to happen when/if antags do decide to go loud and openly lethal? Are ERTs supposed to become more of a common occurence during these rounds or is there a different solution in mind?

[Hendricks]

To be honest, the most annoying gimmick I see a LOT, is antags rushing to Vault, almost once a day its some traitor or Spy immediately going to the Vault and looting up so they carry the biggest baddest weapons so no one in hells chance, at least civilian wise can take them down, it always seems to be about refusing to let anyone beat them at all, if they so much as step out of line, its Ion rifles or extremely powerful weapons, that are way to easily accessible, I guess it makes sense for Antags to loot the Vault, but it happens WAY too often, it drives me crazy. The amount of times I have heard this month of someone breaking into the Vault just sickens me to the point I just salt too ooc friends to blow some steam. A similar fashion seems to happen with MALFS, it always or at least in my experience seems to resort to "ALL HUMANS DIE! HAHA!" Personally there is only so many times I can hear these events before I internally scream, Antags feel so vulnerable and so meek with what they have they just loot the Vault to make sure the chance of losing is slim to none depending on pop. I'm not saying nothing good can come from the Vault, but personally that is a really big issue I would just love to not see anymore. Maybe it would change things, maybe not. 

 

As for Security, every high pop rounds of Spy seems to be very close along the lines of, "Stay in Department, all is well." Like I said if I had a penny everytime I heard this I would have been crushed. This is me ranting and for once I think I whole heartedly agree with some of the thing Burger has stated, some things really need to change. Without people being forced into rules without voting anymore, I have not seen Cult in what feels like weeks, maybe its my timezone, I stay up stupid hours to try get a glimpse of an event or just a decent high pop round, but its just so rare I'm not sure its worth the effort as a British based player. I just want things to be more involved, where in some Events, the whole Crew is scared and people band together and people conflict with views ic, their the best rounds and it seems to only happen on some events. As for regular Secret it seems to follow the same pattern and I hate it, I hate this pattern. More departments need interaction and it is based a lot on Department, what Spy would ever visit the Kitchen, we need to find a way around it because it can get so stale. I refer back to my first point I think the Vault is a huge problem, it requires almost no skill to get the best weapons and armours and it cucks Security, but Security is just as bad as everytime it is Spy and its a Robot, the Captain or someone tries to order a crap ton of guns and Ion rifles, suddenly all I hear all the time is Ion rifles and how OP they are.

 

I don't know the solution to these problems, I have my own life to deal with so I rarely argue. But this is how I feel about some current ordeals, as for lessening Sec to 4 slots I think is a bad idea, with how easy it is to get taken out of action by cracked ribs, that low pop sec department would get flattened by a decent Antag, but maybe it would take pressure off Antags, I rarely flip out at antags because they are trying to do something, even if it is cliche and shit and its unga bunga die all humans, at least some rp might come out of it. Another example was a Rev round last night ish where nukes had bomb sol through the form of announcements, it has been way to long and it felt weird seeing people actually react in shock for once and I had great rp being a scumbag and using that Gimmick to generate rp, I literally talked myself into getting shot it was that good. But anyway yeah I just needed to get things off my chest, as annoying as Burger can feel sometimes, I do admire him for always fighting to make it better, because I am lazy and I have more pressing matters in my life to deal with.

[Snakebittenn]

As Command, I tend to give as many details as are required for the crew to know what's going on, and what it looks like. Why? Because the more the crew knows, the more they can prevent themselves from getting fucked, and the better we can all discuss a solution or start forming defenses. Command needs to do this more often, 'THE CREW WILL PANIC!' almost never happens.

[Doxxmedearly]

I think we also need to consider the effect of community culture on antags and security.

If you’ve spent any time in discord, OOC, or deadchat, you know that peacetagging is considered to be the gravest sin by a vocal portion of our community. Let’s put this out there: How many times have you seen (or even SAID) these messages:

Quote

 

“Peacetagging should be punishable by death.”

“Shit antags this round.”

“Did the antags even DO anything?”

“Whoever is the antag should never ready up for it again tbh”

“Shit gimmick.”

 

(I’m not going trying to derail this thread into a discussion on peacetagging. Not creating SOME SORT of conflict is obviously not acceptable, and totally peaceful gimmicks rarely, if ever, pan out well, though it has been done [Most recent example is the one with frontier people trying to get supplies from the station, which involved the entire crew and was generally praised]. Murder isn’t the only way to create conflict tho)

 

While no doubt this is sometimes applicable in rounds (We’ve all seen vamps and lings do literally nothing), these things are said far too often. It’s indirectly pushing the idea that antags have to be very loud and very violent to be considered “good.” It’s my opinion that these constant thoughts and complaints contribute to nervousness of antags. I know it does for me: I’m worried I’ll get salted on, or even a bwoink, for not doing “enough” for the round. It doesn’t matter if me going around stealing things from offices creates announcements and makes command/isd/those departments to scramble for 90 minutes. It doesn’t matter if I try to play the subtle game of making sure people die in medical, so I can off people without being a suspect. Someone is bound to tell me I’m not doing enough. And after a long time, even ignoring most of it, it wears on you. So then as an antag, you're going to stop picking chameleon and forgery kits and start picking up .357s and eswords because vocal people crave violent conflict and complain about anything else.

 

On the flip side, if I do kill someone without doing some moustache-twirling monologue, I fear a bwoink. I think the community has gone a little sensitive with what’s considered a “gank” in this game. If an antag announces on common “Stop trying to intervene. I’m going to kill the next person to walk into the bar” and I walk into the bar 5 minutes later, it’s not a gank if they decide to AMR or Esword me without further talking. Same with “I’ve set a bomb in this area. It will go off if X does/doesn’t happen, or in X seconds;” if someone’s in that area, well, they shouldn’t call gank if they get gibbed. The key here is that it needs to be established that these stakes exist (This is why radio silence or vague “Situation, we’re handling it” calls make players frustrated when an antag appears, and makes a seemingly sudden escalation. Doesn’t matter if they’ve been built up for an hour with ISD; if command/ISD don’t tell anyone, the uninformed characters feel ganked. This isn’t fair to them OR the antag.)

 

My point here is that antags not only feel pressured by aggressive security, but also by the community at large. There’s a reason we only see a few select faces consistently selecting antag; people just don’t want to deal with the pressure and backlash. Nobody wants a complaint or to receive salt. And we’ve seen a lot of these threads lately.

 

However, the community culture also affects security.

 

People are also very vocal about hating security being unrobust, and many act like it’s a requirement to take the job. There’s pressure there to BE that paramilitary force. People want sec to show up and solve problems. People want sec to respond flawlessly to a hostage situation. You can’t play a bumbling mall-cop who doesn’t have perfect discipline, who goes “nope fuck this” when told they’re going to have a shootout with mercs, choosing to hide instead. People get MAD about that. You don’t think I want to try that character concept out? I get threatened by my HoS/ISD coworkers when heisters make off with items (but no people) and I say “No I don’t want to hunt them down; people are safe, and that’s my job.” I’ve been ridiculed in LOOC for being robusted while trying to arrest an antag. I witness people in dchat mocking others. It needs to stop.

 

Add on to this that people seem incapable of holding back their OOC robustness depending on their character (How many times have we seen teenaged service workers disarm a merc’s rifle, or someone rush a person who has a gun pointed at them?), it’s no wonder why antags AND sec operate on a nervous hair-trigger.

 

We cannot ignore the effect this culture has on how antag rounds play out. There is a person behind the character who wants to have fun and has the responsibility to help others do so. I wish people would be more forgiving.

 

Regarding your points, I agree with several. Command is notoriously bad at keeping the crew informed. Some are better than others. I encourage people to drop the “this doesn’t involve civilians” schtick. It’s tired, and contributes very little. If you’re too busy to deal with it as HoS, see if another head will inform the crew. Tell a cadet to run over to each department and inform people in person. Give peoples’ characters a chance to REACT, at least. Not everyone needs to personally interact with an antag, but they should have a chance to go “Ah, there’s a shooter on the loose. I should prepare in X way, make sure my friends are safe, find a good locker to hide in, etc.” Nothing is more annoying than a silent raise to blue or red, or any of the various announcement quotes Burger posted.

 

I agree with point four. Command, be more transparent. Seriously. It’s getting old seeing these same vague announcements. As P-dox said, “the crew will panic” is just… not a reality. Let people know there’s shit going down. You don’t have to let the antags visit with departments and chairRP with them, but being open about situations that are happening gets the station involved indirectly.

 

I disagree with raising the cost on the uplink items. Maybe a couple points higher for the “go-to” .357, and the box of frags. Honestly, I want to see MORE TC for traitors, to allow more flexibility in gimmicks. IF we reduce ISD’s equipment, sure, we can discuss raising the cost of those more. I don’t know that I like this as an idea, though. I feel that with Lii’dra threats and sensitive research, the current armory is in a good place.  If anything, switch a rifle to a carbine.

 

I agree with the sentiment of point one. We need to stop treating ISD like a paramilitary force. However, reducing their equipment is not going to go far with this. There’s not much more to be done regarding Policy, either. I think the chunk of this change is going to have to come from a shift in community attitude towards security and antags.

 

Or maybe this is just me being disappointed in the community as a whole. I don’t know. It would be nice if people could take a step back and focus on the story more often. It’d be doubly nice if people could be patient with people trying to get used to antagging (for instance, there’s a lot to ninja/wizard mechanics that take time to learn. We shouldn’t tear into these players for getting killed/forgetting powers/taking extra time to set up/having a shaky first few rounds). And it’d be triply nice (and impossible) for people to stop pressuring others to call out anyone who is trying to peacefully set up a gimmick (without waiting to see how the conflict happens) a bad antag, or from poking holes in someone’s announcement when they try to do something unique as an off-station antag (I’m not saying intentionally be stupid or don’t be skeptical, but too often gimmicks just get tossed to the side because the crew tears apart every little detail on common radio).

 

I think Ben makes a good point, too. Gimmicks need to shift based on the manifest. Mercs shouldn’t go on a rootin’ tootin’ point ‘n shootin’ rampage on a manifest with a detective and two cadets.

 

Hendricks makes a good point about the vault, too. In fact, their whole post really hits the nail on the head.

 

I hope this doesn’t come off as an off-topic rant. I agree with your OP about things needing to change, about this tension and endless cycle of fear that antags and security share. However, I think there’s more to it than just security and antags, their policies, and their equipment affecting this. I believe it’s something that the players will have to change with themselves, and encourage with their fellow players. Sec mains have to be more forgiving and less aggressive, and encourage others to do so, and hold their fellow officers accountable for overreacting/excessive force. Antags need to try out gimmicks that don’t involve a .357 or a vault raid (And we need to let them experiment. If it ends in a boring round, oh well, they’ll learn for next time). Staff needs to continue to do a good job taking ahelps and being transparent with when things are handled. Command players need to keep people informed, PLEASE. People need to relax on their salty criticisms of people not living up to their personal expectations of robustness. Everyone needs to be a little nicer, and less afraid to “lose.”

 

Fuck up and lose as an antag. Fuck up and lose as ISD. Play along with a gimmick and get owned. Fuck up and lose as a station. Cripple yourself for the sake of making an interesting story. Try a gimmick, fail, and note how to improve for next time. Have fun doing it. Let people do this.

 

This is my take on the problem. Could be misguided, could be ridiculous. In any case, this is an important conversation to have as a community, because it’s a pretty common topic shared in OOC and Dchat.

[GreenBoi]

A slightly unrelated, but still very related topic. I've noticed a small trend occassionally pop up where people will justify blatant validhunting or powergaming with the baseline of this phrase: "I didn't valid them on sight!"/ "I didn't metagame the cult rune on sight, I don't deserve this" and it's just....dumb. Doing what you are meant to do and roleplay within the mind of your character and provide reasonable chances for antagonists to do their thing should never be an excuse for vh/pg. This is a detrimental way of thinking and can sometimes lead to Security feeling slightly entitled for simply allowing a good round to exist to then use it to justify some ridiculous thing they'll do for a reason I still have no idea why they sometimes do. If this continues, soon enough, Security doing basic things like not accepting the first person's claim/testimony as fact and arresting the person because they OOCly know the characters would never lie if they saw the bartender sneak something into their drink, will eventually be seen as, yet again, a level of entitlement because "Hey, I could've valided them once I heard the scream on radio, but I didn't! So it's okay that I flashbanged, peppersprayed, and headgibbed them for Attempted Murder even though they gave no resistance and had no lethal weaponry!"

Alright, that's all.

[Scheveningen]

22 hours ago, BurgerBB said:

Disassociate the attitude that ISD = military trained soldiers by making them more like rent-a-cops. They should behave like dorky black mesa security and not combine soldiers. This can be done by adjusting policy as well as their equipment.

It actually doesn't. Security culture didn't change when I tried to one of the community pillars for what security was supposed to represent when I reformed as a security main, and it also didn't change with the myriad of development changes to security. A person content with powergaming and ruining the game for antags will not care if you try and nerf their bad habits without dealing with them in an administrative capacity, they will continue to powergame with whatever methods they have left. People like this do not care what you do to the balance of the game, in fact they welcome it because they make it so that antagonists have to keep using the same predictable methods, and it also makes the game worse for everyone else that tries to take the RP aspect of it seriously.

 

22 hours ago, BurgerBB said:

•  
• If security equipment is nerfed, so should antags. Uplink items that spawn very strong items like the anti-material rifle, the .357, EMP grenades, frag grenades, and manhack grenades should have a serious price increase. Powerful equipment should be earned, not given.

I do not agree with this. Antagonists must be able to have the ability to hold their own and be a threat to the station (I wanted to give antags 50 TC at one point but there were balance concerns about it, case in point). It is an unsaid requirement for playing antagonist if you ever want to succeed in your IC goals. Balance-wise: A single antagonist should be able, assuming with an average amount of skill and decent equipment, to 1v2 without taking too much damage. Security does not need to be nerfed, but all antag classes should be buffed so that it is scary to take on an antagonist by yourself, and will often require teamwork from multiple individuals to take them out, so as to solidify that an antagonist is ideally very good at 1v1ing and should almost always come out on top in those conflict scenarios.

 

22 hours ago, BurgerBB said:

Make punishments more transparent. I've talked to frequent antag players and they complain that security mains don't get enough punishment while all the punishment goes to antags. I've talked to sec mains and they complain that antags don't get enough punishment while all the punishment goes to sec mains. I feel that letting users know that someone has been dealt with (for real) would cause them to relax and not assume that this would be a frequent occurrence.

Of course someone who gets punished for breaking the rules feels like they're being persecuted. Those feelings are misguided, ultimately, to the real context and truth case-by-case as to why those players continuously get punished by the administration.

We have certain members of the community who pride themselves in pressing the observe button and reporting morally grey situations to the administrators while adopting a very black-and-white tone in how they view the situation, and I've had to defend my case to an administrator against a fair deal of lying and misleading statements said about me from an observer, rather than a person I might've wronged directly. I would very much prefer we not enable those prideful individuals who think they know how a situation went down better than the people involved in a round. It's a very fucked up situation to be in, that you're more likely to be adminhelped about by someone who likely only joined the round to watch your character do something without any context as to what's going on in the overarching round. Imagine that, being reported by somebody for a roleplay issue, and the guy/gal doing it is not even in the round? It's not that unlikely, it happens fairly often.

"It's been dealt with" may be unsatisfying to hear, but I'd rather not entertain the implication of giving habitual ghost-whiners more power to behave as they do if the system is ever to change.

 

22 hours ago, BurgerBB said:

More transparent Captains. I could imagine that legislation or an event took place that legally required Captains to disclose emergency situations on the situation, specifically. I could imagine a scenario where a Captain said that "There was a hostile situation that ISD is dealing with. That is all." but the hostile situation being an active shooter which ended up killing 1 person because the Captain refused to disclose who the hostile is, despite knowing, and what their intentions were.

You cannot know if a person died purely because the captain didn't let the entire crew on a need-to-know basis. It is extremely easy to look at a situation start to finish like that and make those assumptions, but it is not the right way to go about it because it ignores the 'time and place' factors of the individual who died and the other people involved in the situation.
 

22 hours ago, BurgerBB said:

A complete rework of security for NBT. I will be incredibly disappointed if security is the same thing as it is currently. The crew should have more of an active role, such as a militia, when it comes to antag interaction. It would be used for emergencies only, and it would be similar to faysal's militia that he has in dire situations. A dream idea of mine is there only being 4 members of security: A sheriff, a deputy, and 2 enforcers, who are trained to protect the colony from the wildlife and themselves.

I'm indifferent about this one, because it's a far in the future suggestion given the lack of an ETA on NBT at the moment. I won't go so far as to say it's not relevant, but it's best to address NBT suggestions when we see evidence that it's close to being underway.

[Carver]

13 hours ago, Doxxmedearly said:

...

My point here is that antags not only feel pressured by aggressive security, but also by the community at large. There’s a reason we only see a few select faces consistently selecting antag; people just don’t want to deal with the pressure and backlash. Nobody wants a complaint or to receive salt. And we’ve seen a lot of these threads lately.

 

However, the community culture also affects security.

 

People are also very vocal about hating security being unrobust, and many act like it’s a requirement to take the job. There’s pressure there to BE that paramilitary force. People want sec to show up and solve problems. People want sec to respond flawlessly to a hostage situation. You can’t play a bumbling mall-cop who doesn’t have perfect discipline, who goes “nope fuck this” when told they’re going to have a shootout with mercs, choosing to hide instead. People get MAD about that. You don’t think I want to try that character concept out? I get threatened by my HoS/ISD coworkers when heisters make off with items (but no people) and I say “No I don’t want to hunt them down; people are safe, and that’s my job.” I’ve been ridiculed in LOOC for being robusted while trying to arrest an antag. I witness people in dchat mocking others. It needs to stop.

...

...

Or maybe this is just me being disappointed in the community as a whole. I don’t know. It would be nice if people could take a step back and focus on the story more often. It’d be doubly nice if people could be patient with people trying to get used to antagging (for instance, there’s a lot to ninja/wizard mechanics that take time to learn. We shouldn’t tear into these players for getting killed/forgetting powers/taking extra time to set up/having a shaky first few rounds). And it’d be triply nice (and impossible) for people to stop pressuring others to call out anyone who is trying to peacefully set up a gimmick (without waiting to see how the conflict happens) a bad antag, or from poking holes in someone’s announcement when they try to do something unique as an off-station antag (I’m not saying intentionally be stupid or don’t be skeptical, but too often gimmicks just get tossed to the side because the crew tears apart every little detail on common radio).

...

Agreed on all your points, but especially these. People are generally far too harsh and expectant in regards to the chosen playstyle of other people's characters.