Lore enforcement has gotten lax

[Butterrobber202]

Note: I am mostly referring to the certain races in the post, Vaurca, tree people, and Skrell are mostly excluded from this post.

Clarification: the word conflict, used in this post, refers to social clashes and minor incidents, not like you know, a war.

Clarification 2: please do not take this as “Well butter is trying to tell me how I should play my characters!” The goal of this post is to encourage more interesting role play between our diverse cast of Aliens.

so, one upon a time, the alienness of xenos was pretty seriously enforced. Unathi were proud and militaristic, and hated IPCs and Synths in general. Not to mention they tried to be honorable in combat, there were actually cases where Unathi would switch weapons based on what their enemy had, to face melee with melee. Nowadays most Unathi are just reskinned humans with scales and a slightly more aggressive attitude. Hell, some Unathi are even supportive of the Aut'akh which is a pretty serious thing when they arnt even hopefuls themselves. The lore paints this interesting picture of hate and workplace tension, but on-station the worst that happens is a glare, a huff, then a stomping away.

IPCs are almost always either these perfectly programmed friendbots with no issues with their programming whatsoever or workaholic bots with no concern for morality. We don’t encourage conflict with humans or other organics, it’d a boring perfectly seamless entry into human society. 

Humans are to xenophillic and trusting, like for god’s sake that’s a 6” 8’ bugman breathing phoron, show some discomfort. As weird as this sounds, they are too accepting and understanding. There’s no fuel for discomfort or conflict between these very different groups of people because no one roleplays unfamiliarity with the Xenos. People fresh out of Inner Sol don’t express any shock at all when they see a Vaurca or a tree walking around. 

 

end rant, let’s please encourage constructive opinions in the comments.

[Zundy]

Anecdotally I also think that there has been a shift in server/player/character culture in that everyone seems to be besties and every character is comes across as a subversion of their civilisations culture to enable everyone to be friends. 

I personally liked it when there was actual divides between characters based on culture. Discussions with other players leads me to believe most people like it this way (everyone is friends), is this the case? Voice your opinions here pls.

[Zundy]

Also,to anyone who personally wants to see conflict, regardless of what is said in here - be the change you want to see in [this fictional] world. Create characters that follow these cultural divisions.  Arrange group character concepts to roleplay out these together. It's all about the story after all and you are able to shape it by being present in it.

[MarauderW]

I have delved into the lore for Vaurca and I saw that there was a conflict between the Klax and Zora because of the Cthur. And I quote, C'thur - "The Weavers", "were often seen as calculative manipulators among both." TL;DR? It may be hard for people to act like they don't want to be assholes (with just cause) when you see them as assholes because you have no idea about the history/lore of the species.

Detailed explanation, please read if you have time, it is long:

I thought it would be fun to act towards the C'thur hive with my character Tyrane with a certain... suspicion, knowing about the history of the weavers from the Shapers of our queen. I met then, with a vaurca from this hive, recently, and I think he or she was confused (ICly) as to why I am being so... rude? Of course, my intention was not to be actually rude, but cautious and untrustly towards this one vaurca.

I have to say that it is hard. It is hard because one needs to understand the lore, which may be hidden in the tons of texts from our wiki (which is in good shape btw), and it is hard to form a bond with a character and act it in a way that it doesn't destroy the role play opportunities. Even if I was distrustful, I did not cause any issues to my fellow Vaurca, but others can. Other people can be violent, or manic, or anything else. I particularly do not like to be aggressive or dismissive when people talk to me BECAUSE it engages stories to be told.

I was privy yesterday to 2 Unathi that only, mostly, spoke in their tongue and ignored our tries to get them to talk in common or at least acknowledge us (the bartender and me) to promote role play, it did not work and I felt saddened by this. I did not know who they were, what their reason was for being here or anything really, they just got up and left. We were clueless. Now imagine if everyone is that... and more, aggressive, or particularly crazy without you understanding why? Why are they treating you badly?

Just food for thought.

[Butterrobber202]

23 minutes ago, Zundy said:

subversion of their civilisations culture to enable everyone to be friends. 

This is what I was looking for, thanks for putting it into words. 

 

Everyone is this loner or outcast or deviant from their race, and they use that deviant status to give themselves an excuse not to follow the lore.

Edited April 25, 2019 by Butterrobber202

[Skull132]

Well. Lore enforcement is a tricky subject. With a lot of components. First, we have a lot of whitelisted people. While whitelisting serves as a basic litmus test, the system is gimped by the fact that there is minimal follow-up enforcement. Largely because there's no real reports coming through on the matter of lore breaking characters. But there might well be an underlying issue to that. Specifically, how many people actually know what to report in terms of a character breaking lore? How do you get that information to the players in a manner where they can quickly place all of this in their heads, and keep track of it? Lore itself is in a place where it's relatively complex, with political and economic issues taking the forefront. Perhaps we have slightly forgotten the basics on that count. There has also been push back towards certain ideas to making lore more easily accessible: people objecting to something as simple as putting up a concise list of characteristics (cultural largely) for a species, because it might somehow harm the player's attitude towards lore. These are largely things that the staff can do to better.

But there's also playerbase-sided issues. As written here, it is hard to be an asshole, and it is far more easier to play a character that is liked by all. And this is from both ends: it is draining to play a character that's hateful, and it is easier to hate (from the perspective of a third party) the one actively antagonizing, versus the character who you should actually be antagonizing. We have to find some way of making playing all characters reasonable and desirable. Somehow. No clue how, though.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

1 hour ago, Butterrobber202 said:

Aut'akh which is a pretty serious thing when they arnt even hopefuls themselves. The lore paints this interesting picture of hate and workplace tension, but on-station the worst that happens is a glare, a huff, then a stomping away

What else do you want to happen to see enforcement of standards done for this instance? What specific actions do you want to see from unathi?

Physical violence?

[Butterrobber202]

20 minutes ago, Senpai Jackboot said:

What else do you want to happen to see enforcement of standards done for this instance? What specific actions do you want to see from unathi?

Physical violence?

considering the lore around Unathi? Yes. To a certain degree. Mechanics in the game are apart of RP and can be considered emotes that actually carry numbers with them. A single harm intent click or an aggressive grab throw would be more than enough.

 

but there’s more to do than physical violence if we want to avoid that, Unathi have Command role opportunities, giving the Aut'akh shittier jobs and having harsher judgement when it comes to misdemeanors. Small stuff like that, that slowly builds into something bigger.

 

tactical edit: I just reread your post, and I believe I need to state this, violence is one thing that should be regulated over enforced. Due to the nature of it, we definitely should be more worried about someone doing to much over too little.

What I was asking to be enforced was obviously the cultural hate of Aut'akh.

Edited April 25, 2019 by Butterrobber202

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

How do you enforce cultural hate while also regulating it, outside physical violence?

Do you feel that making the game unenjoyable (terrible jobs and no advancement) for certain species deemed unacceptable by other species (unathi and aut'akh) is healthy game design, healthy for the species, and also good for players?

Is the dismissiveness and hostility you see already not adequate? Should there be a ban on sympathizing with autakh? Should we make it a hard rule to strike them openly in the hallways? Who should CCIA side with in the resulting IR? Should CCIA enforce lore standards and side with the unathi or remain IC regulators of conduct and side with the Aut'akh?

Edited April 25, 2019 by Marlon Phoenix

[GreenBoi]

I think this would be easier if we, you know, actually had racism in some parts of the regulations. Everyone's too afraid to be racist because they think it'll shut them off from rp opportunities when it doesn't even do that, and people have started to forget that xenophobia is common and sometimes whiteknight racists as if NT would give a shit.

[Skull132]

1 minute ago, Senpai Jackboot said:

Do you feel that making the game unenjoyable (terrible jobs and no advancement) for certain species deemed unacceptable by othet species (unathi and aut'akh) is healthy game design, healthy for the species, and also good for players?

On the one hand, this begs the question of why do we keep writing such things into our species (specially the new ones, like the akutha).

On the other hand. This is not necessarily an excuse to permit subversion of the lore. People are free to simply not play the species which are clearly written as being on the bottom of something. And let the free market sort it out.

[Scheveningen]

1 hour ago, Skull132 said:

We have to find some way of making playing all characters reasonable and desirable. Somehow. No clue how, though.

It is simple, you don't. If your character isn't agreeable, stoic, polite and/or un-controversial, the character doesn't survive the onslaught of criticism that a character is flawed in certain ways. Certainly not right now, anyway. Which is ironic because that's something we should be going for (allowing characters to have flaws, that is), but I can't tell you how many times I've been shut down by a lesbian pow-wow between a janitor and the captain whenever I try to be a little creative and perhaps a bit mean when dealing with other characters as another character completely different from my most well-known ones, and likewise I attempt to shoot for a unique approach that tries to break the mold people get too comfortable with. Yet this gets endless amounts of hate over it, that it is better off to skip trying to be interesting and just roleplay a completely munted snowflake like everyone else.

Either you resign yourself to not breaching the hugbox or you consign yourself to endless amounts of irritating criticism bordering on harassment from individuals who think they somehow know better than I do on how to roleplay my own characters.

Edited April 25, 2019 by Scheveningen

[Scheveningen]

Furthermore, the whole 'lore enforcement' thing? Good luck with it, as there is genuinely 0 way to incentivize to regular human players who have 0 whitelists to speak of to start discriminating against the species who are viewed as not remotely equivalent enough to humans/Skrell. The disproportionate amount at which Sinta/Tajaran/etc are paid should clue folks in that this sort of xeno-discrimination doesn't only go that far, because the economic aspect of "species-ism" is one of those massive cornerstones that proves there's a systemic attempt to disenfranchise the rights of said species by the richest elements of  NT and probably the entire galaxy, if we consider that it is likely that certain xenos would likely earn 70-85% of the human's galactic credit in various places for the same job, ranging from Sol to Tau Ceti, respectively. Ergo, just off that basis, it's incredibly likely that discrimination extends to greater lengths such as social discrimination and legal discrimination in certain areas because they would be symptoms of the greater problem.

Of course, OOCly people would rather avoid addressing that because that conversation has real life ramifications and implications, upon which very few people want to have that discussion because opinions are a little like butts; everyone has one.

Edited April 25, 2019 by Scheveningen

[Butterrobber202]

52 minutes ago, Senpai Jackboot said:

Do you feel that making the game unenjoyable (terrible jobs and no advancement) for certain species deemed unacceptable by other species (unathi and aut'akh) is healthy game design, healthy for the species, and also good for players?

Yes, I do think it’s healthy. It encourages conflict and strife, through these negative encounters interesting and complex role play can emerge, the Aut’akh could unionize, NT could stamp them out. 

The players read the lore pages, they knew what they were signing up for when they choose to give up some time and effort to obtain the right to play that race. You apped for the right to play the race that is discriminated against and is on the bottom rung of society? Congrats, you get to do just that.

 

Do I want the CCIA to be biased? Yes. I absolutely do. To a certain degree. The current argument is “well we don’t want people to lose their characters.” Which is a valid point, and acceptable. We can be biased without deleting characters. It’s actually quite simple if we keep an eye on it OOCly. When the CCIA make a verdict they can keep track of which were considered with bias with a tag or a small dot or however they want to do it. And if we ever reach a point when the character is facing deletion/firing you lower the value of those incidents that were considered with bias. You hit the character with “anger management” or “500 credit fine”. I mean, why fire them when we can milk them for all they're worth? Not like they can go anywhere with their contracts.

and to your final point with the Unathi versus Aut'akh comment. I believe you're looking at it wrong, it’s Nanotrasen versus Dissentients.

Edited April 25, 2019 by Butterrobber202

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

33 minutes ago, Butterrobber202 said:

and to your final point with the Unathi versus Aut'akh comment. I believe you're looking at it wrong, it’s Nanotrasen versus Dissentients.

What investment do you feel Nanotrasen and by extension humans should have in inner affairs of foreign alien societies? Is nanotrasen pitting them against each other intentionally? What are they gaining in your ideal situation where employees are openly attacking each other in the workplace?

 

On a player side, to make sure  i understand you:

You want to see an autakh attacked semiregularly when they board, verbally abused, and when they file an IR they get tossed out and when the autakh retaliated by insulting the harrasser and get IR'd, they get excessively punished?

 

For how i handle it,

Other posters are setting a false choice. You don't need to "deal with" racism. The primary mechanics of a species are the primary appeal. You make an autakh to play with their mechanics and playstyle. Racism from unathi (which exists and is fine) is a part of it. Other unathi getting huffy and walking away is a form of prejudice.

The primary purpose of vanilla unathi is putting an unapologetic space fantasy and integrating it into a corporate setting. Unathi, being individuals, integrate into human society in a variety of ways. A unathi becoming a roboticist is usually fine. My unathi playerbase pretty unanimously plays in good faith. 

The hardest enforcement i do is for guwan. There is a standing rule that guwans cant file IRs for verbal abuse from other unathi because at that point youre being malacious in playing an untouchable caste but going after people who are trying to subscribe to their requirement to call you names or ignore you.

Autakh dont have this because i havent seen it as an issue yet. If autakh start filing frivilous irs it may change. 

In the end, there is a scale of racist intensity. I keep the dial at a 6 where you want it at an 11.

 

[Doxxmedearly]

Quote

Discussions with other players leads me to believe most people like it this way (everyone is friends), is this the case?

That could be the shift we're seeing, and if that's how people enjoy their free time on spacegame, then power to them. 

There's a problem with enforcing this, IMO. You cannot stop me from making unique characters who want to play in the "hugbox" or whatever term we're using on the internet these days. I can get a whitelist, prove I know the lore, and make a unique character within the confines of that lore who has their own personal reasons for not being xenophobic, or spitting on guwan, or w/e, and still be playing a character who is realistic within the lore. And because you can't stop this on an individual level, there's not much to be done if a majority of players ALSO want to play that way and make such characters. It's just how the community shifts as old guard leave and fresh new faces log in.

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Either you resign yourself to not breaching the hugbox or you consign yourself to endless amounts of irritating criticism bordering on harassment from individuals who think they somehow know better than I do on how to roleplay my own characters.

I agree that this is a problem, but it's nothing that you can enforce as lore staff. On the other hand, I've been on the receiving end of nonstop irritating criticism for playing "hugbox" characters, like a guwan who wasn't a total asshole, as one example, It got to the point where I had to stop playing them. I'm with you in that the community can be an extremely irritating mob of "critiques" that aren't much more than personal gripes and insults, and I would love to see that stop. I enjoy seeing rude characters, and I enjoy seeing kind characters. It's pretty upsetting that people can't experiment or have freedom to play certain characters due to this.

Should people be free to make discriminatory/inflammatory/xenophobic characters without backlash? Yes, absolutely! But I also think it's not a problem that people want to play friendly characters. Being friendly and accepting does not make a character bad any more than being xenophobic makes a character interesting. The problem is when that spills into OOC, or when metacliques start mobbing a person, for making the choice to play someone less than totally friendly. 

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Everyone is this loner or outcast or deviant from their race, and they use that deviant status to give themselves an excuse not to follow the lore.

I think this is a bit of an overexaggeration? Mostly the use of "everyone" and saying that they're not following lore. My human not hating vaurca isn't me not following lore. My unathi who keeps his distaste for synthetics inside to keep up appearances at his job as a command member isn't ignoring lore. I'm sorry if you want to play a character who experiences discrimination (like vaurca) and aren't getting it (I empathize), but people are free to make xenophiles. 

 

edit

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Other unathi getting huffy and walking away is a form of prejudice.

I like this. There's a lot of subtle xenophobic plays that I've seen people do.

Edited April 25, 2019 by Doxxmedearly

[Butterrobber202]

1 minute ago, Senpai Jackboot said:

What investment do you feel Nanotrasen and by extension humans should have in inner affairs of foreign alien societies? Is nanotrasen pitting them against each other intentionally? What are they gaining in your ideal situation where employees are openly attacking each other in the workplace?

Alright so, when I said that Aut'akh should be discriminated against, I was mostly referring to UNATHI being the people doing the discrimination. Like you said, Humans are already exploiting them for good labor.

Ill hit the attack thing in the next quote.

Quote

You want to see an autakh attacked semiregulary when they board...

no, you misunderstood what I wanted. I want the option to be there and for it to be valid without players jumping on the IC-racist on all our server-platforms. 

I obviously do not want autakh to just be walking around and get clapped in the ass. My desire was for escalation to happen quicker and with more hostile results, when it was valid escalation to do so and there is a solid cause for conflict. 

again, I do not want Aut'akh to get their limbs torn off when they show up to work, just minor things.

Quote

For how i handle it...

I don’t really have any issues on how you handle Unathi or Guwan, I actually really like how you have chosen to handle Guwan issues. A Unathi roboticist makes sense for a lot of reasons, know (and do maintenance) your enemy. Or other reasons.

 

and if we're slapping numbers on this, I’d actually prefer an 7.5

 

[Butterrobber202]

3 minutes ago, Doxxmedearly said:

I think this is a bit of an overexaggeration? Mostly the use of "everyone" and saying that they're not following lore. My human not hating vaurca...

It was definitely a hyperbole, and I don’t demand you hate all aliens, if you have good background with aliens for that character, more power to you. All I was asking for was a crumb of discomfort or apsome kind of expressed wariness.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

7 minutes ago, Doxxmedearly said:

Either you resign yourself to not breaching the hugbox or you consign yourself to endless amounts of irritating criticism bordering on harassment from individuals who think they somehow know better than I do on how to roleplay my own characters.

This is so annoying i hate it so much i wish i had the power to let you space these players whenever they start going off

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

10 minutes ago, Butterrobber202 said:

no, you misunderstood what I wanted. I want the option to be there and for it to be valid without players jumping on the IC-racist on all our server-platforms. 

So you want autakh to be attacked when they board. If its an option, you want it to happen.

 

Which you do. Its completely allowed to strike someone across the face. But you accept the consequences when you so. I will not allow a power fantasy to be entertained by allowing it without consequences.

Edited April 25, 2019 by Marlon Phoenix

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

11 minutes ago, Butterrobber202 said:

again, I do not want Aut'akh to get their limbs torn off when they show up to work, just minor things

Thst happens already. 

[Conspiir]

For every character that has a firm stance on something, I usually have another character who is the opposite. I don't always play both sides simultaneously. It would be terrible to do so in my case; switching POV so fast can mess with my character flow.

 

Take Vedai. Vedai hates synths. Most of my Skrell do. That's just what Jargon does. But then I also have a Skrell who does not hate synths. I do not play him as much. But I acknowledge he is there and his view is valid. It comes from a reason. These viewpoints can come about based on home, too. A Human from Sol is different from a Human from Eridani. But is this greatly enforceable? … Who enforces it?

 

The biggest issue I face playing a character like Vedai is the confusion. Like an IPC (or stationbound) that doesn't understand why it isn't liked when it hasn't done anything. Or gets upset about it. Or its friends get upset about it. I like the conflict, else I wouldn't be playing a character that stirs it so easily. But when the conflict is more about the IPC as a character and less about the IPC as a general race, it feels like it stops being an IC thing to pass the time and more like I'm worried I'm going get IR'd for calling an IPC a bot and telling it to stop talking.

 

Getting mobbed for having believable character stances isn't okay. If there is a reason behind the choice and it is a valid one (but how do we determine validity?) then what follows is just... roleplay. Xenophobe, xenophile, doesn't matter. Would I like to see a bit more grrr thrown around? Yeah. I have an Unathi cook that refuses to serve Aut'akh. Have I been punished for it? Not yet. I worry I might be, at some point. And he will have to stand up for himself by saying "That'sss an Aut'akh" and get the dreaded "So what?" in response. Or worse, "Don't be racist." Yes! Be racist! It's fun on both sides of the coin! I have to crank up the creepiness of my Vaurcae by about 10x in order to get some odd looks. It works, but it's also draining. If only had to crank it up 2x to get the same result, I'd be much happier. Some kind of beacon I can put up saying "be mean to me".

[Butterrobber202]

24 minutes ago, Senpai Jackboot said:

So you want autakh to be attacked when they board. If its an option, you want it to happen.

 

Which you do. Its completely allowed to strike someone across the face. But you accept the consequences when you so. I will not allow a power fantasy to be entertained by allowing it without consequences.

aaaaaaaaaaah. I’m struggling to put this into words. I want it to be IC consequences, many a time I’ve gotten rough with people to get hit with ahelps instead of Security. This post isn’t completely directed at the lore team, I’m hoping some of the Administrators/Moderators see it as well. 

Yes there should 100% be consequences, but they shouldn’t be overblown by a zealous mod or a white knight ready to baton any racists in sight. Which is what I hope is a popular opinion, I just wanted to get it out there in a post.

[VTCobaltblood]

I don't know, I'm playing a hateful xenophobic etc etc character and it's pretty fun for me. It's also fun for me when people looc "oh no" upon seeing my character, or tell me they're scared of my character. Or tell me their fantasies of murdering my character in a horrible way. Or, say, tell me that their interactions with my character only remind them of why they don't like going on the relay, OOCly. I've experienced all of these things, and it's not a bad thing, really. It's something I've built my entire character around, and something I've completely embraced as I fleshed him out more and more. It's the playstyle I have chosen, and a character I have created.

However, as someone who plays this kind of character, I understand that it may be not enjoyable for everyone - for both the player themselves and for other players. Things you do may actively make others' experience less fun. You may shut down potentially fun interactions with them, you may deny them the tools they need to do their job (I'm saying this mostly as a Research main). From just fueling the fires ICly, you may shift into making someone's experience OOCly infuriating; and being standoffish and dismissive ICly may cause you to miss out on roleplay and get bored (you say "fuck off" and they actually fuck off for 2 hours instead of having a conversation with you). This are some more reasons why people don't play assholes much, I feel - people are interested in others' characters and interacting with them, and people don't really want to go out of their way to be rude to other people. 

I don't feel there needs to be more enforcement of racism than there is now.

Edited April 25, 2019 by VTCobaltblood

[Alberyk]

3 hours ago, Butterrobber202 said:

aaaaaaaaaaah. I’m struggling to put this into words. I want it to be IC consequences, many a time I’ve gotten rough with people to get hit with ahelps instead of Security. This post isn’t completely directed at the lore team, I’m hoping some of the Administrators/Moderators see it as well. 

Yes there should 100% be consequences, but they shouldn’t be overblown by a zealous mod or a white knight ready to baton any racists in sight. Which is what I hope is a popular opinion, I just wanted to get it out there in a post.

 

And what do you want the moderation team to do?