We Can Add And Enforce Discrimination And Prejudice And Xenophobia If....

[Flamingo]

I think it can be incredibly damaging to players who are very very new. Personally I don’t mind being discriminated against because I enjoy the dynamic. I think a lot of our players who go through the trouble of applying for an alien whitelist either feel the same or see it as a necessary evil of playing an alien. 

 

However, a lot of people who we get coming to the server are very new to role playing, and I don’t think they enjoy the same masochistic experience I do. I don’t think it’s going to kill humans or anything. I just think it’s going to make playing less desirable for people who haven’t played on our server before, and I don’t want that to happen to new players. They’re already going to catch a lot of flak for not knowing exactly how everything works. I think it’d only add to the negative impression if every other alien is trying to oppress them. 

[Scheveningen]

nitpicking aside I don't think xenophobia and roleplaying that is an important cornerstone of properly roleplaying here. The funny thing is that you can choose not to discriminate but you could also do so at the same time. Totally your prerogative. Just ensure that you enjoy the potential consequences that comes from that. Otherwise you're literally not in a position where you're allowed to complain when something does happen to you ICly.

There are also, strangely, consequences to choosing not to be a xenophobe. People tend not to like fence sitters.  

I'm just gonna say that I prefer to be an advocate for the status quo, because I genuinely don't see what's wrong with current gameplay/roleplay styles at the moment besides what a couple loud minorities like to talk about over discord/the forums. Would someone on the side of "we need more speciesism" explain why we need to be even more discriminatory to individuals that barely earn as fair a wage, can't afford as decent living conditions and etc compared to that of humans?

Because uh, this seems like the awkward part 2 to the "BUFF HUMANS" meme thread, to which I already made my case that people who play human really do not give a shit about what people think is optimal, because this is a game about mistakes and whoever makes the least of them, survives. Having claws or whatever does not make you immortal.

[N8-Toe]

I get the point you are trying to make "if xenophobia is constructive to player RP why don't we put it on this group instead, if its so fun obviously they'd like it" 

to address the issue I see this is skirting and lambasting. Right now the "benefit" of being human is RP. issue me and others have is this benefit doesn't exist while all the while the other races have a power creep of abilities and mechanics, leaving humans kinda behind the curve. People sign up for a whitelist and essentially get a slew of boons and such for their characters, the boon of staying human is supposed to be institutional supremacy. While it is another topic I feel people would complain less about this if Humans where given more buffs or unique features so they didn't just feel diet everything to xenos as their advantages are wide sweeping in so many instances. 

 

and on the off chance this is an actual factual serious suggestion, no you'd hemorrhage players because it would off put new blood, and people when they whitelist take on the risk of IC discrimination. if the DEFAULT race is discriminated against it would essentially be the codification of meta superiority and the shitting on of new players

[Scheveningen]

The benefit of playing a human character is that you have far less restrictions on character and background creation compared to that of whitelisted species, who have far more restricted guidelines on how they're supposed to be designed, on how they're supposed to behave and otherwise socialize with others. The idea is to stay close enough to the culture and gravitate towards the values of a faction specific to their species that their character belongs to.

Humans don't have this restriction, they have far more freedom and may just as well make a character from the frontier whose occupation was a planetary ranger who scouted several worlds to help map out landmarks and important locations for their local government. Their reason on the station could be that they're a retiree from that profession and essentially whittle their remaining retirement money away as a visitor, telling stories about their supposed exploits to others.

That's just one of many examples. As a Tajaran (if I recall correctly) you can't have been born on Sol. Likewise for Unathi. Etc.

[Skull132]

One cannot help but wonder what the point of such a mock threat would be.

[ben10083]

I disagree with this idea due to the reasons outlined above by others and also due to the fact that it would make so sense for everyone to suddenly work for Jargon, (NT just packs its bags and leaves the richest Phoron deposits in the galaxy?), and also since this will screw over all of the synthetic players, which is a large portion of xenos. I understand how discrimination breeds RP, but this is not the way to go about it.

[MarauderW]

I agree with Ben. The idea itself would have been good if implemented from the very beginning of the server.

In practice, I disagree since I just want to come home and have some fun RP chill time, if this change passes, well it won't be the same server. Truly.

[ToasterStrudel]

Just because another character is being racist to your character does not equal a negative experience. You shouldn't take those types of things at face value. Every case that I have seen of the overboard "fuck cats fuck lizards fuck toasters I'm gonna harass them every day" types of players were dealt with by staff. (I.E the guy in cargo during the IPC antag contest who would order guns every round just to hunt down and try their best to valid IPCs and IPC supporters for any slight thing they said or did out of line)

In addition, the culture for both IC and OOC have shunned super overboard racist characters, as well as the overboard "protect all species no racism whatsoever" characters.

I have not had a human character for the majority of years I have been here, and in that time I have not seen a person who has went over the line with racism not get punished/dealt with.

I support the status quo

Edited May 1, 2019 by ToasterStrudel

[Kira]

I think it would be fun for an event or a shot period just to feel what it’s like, might be fun. Just to test the waters.

[Coalf]

Kinda breaks the whole skrell mindset towards xenos T B H.

However, you are right that Unathi could pull it off as we've seen they can do anything they want without much opposition and the hierarchal system on-station would be interesting on the server. Although they'd most likely abandon the strict structure very soon as liberal-socialist ideas spread extremely fast in the Sol/Tau Ceti systems, it would be an interesting subversion.
I think it would be a great change short-term as we could dust-off Fowl's PR and reduce the pay of all women to 70% according to Unathi traditions, which would subvert our current equality of genders, as well as restricting them to service roles besides only a very few, for whom we could make a specific whitelist to apply for as Unathi do allow some women to subvert tradition if they can prove themselves.
Although the question of Aut'akh arises since they're heretics and removing them right after being added would be very subversive.

On the other end, removing CCIA's would be a bit unfair to that entire department since they're linked specifically to these issues. Having lore writers moderate all of the lore infractions would also require lore writers to play the game, again a bit unfair to the people on the team who play on different servers and don't engage with the community at all.
Also, we would have to let in a bit more Unathi players as right now they're nowhere near the level needed to actually oppress humans, which I speculate is why you also picked skrell to co-op this.

Overall very controversial, very not safe for work, very subversive, I like it as a temporary idea for maybe a month as an Antag event.

Edited May 3, 2019 by Coalf

[VTCobaltblood]

6 hours ago, Coalf said:

Kinda breaks the whole skrell mindset towards xenos T B H.

Skrell have all the reasons in the world to look upon other races as if they're beneath them, especially humans who stole their AI algorithms and continue to utilize them without realizing the obvious dangers of such. In fact, this kind of relationship is already shown in some lore, e.g. there is a racist Skrell university that really doesn't want to accept xenos in it. I think it would be interesting to explore, and I agree it would be cool as a temporary event.

Edited May 3, 2019 by VTCobaltblood

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

I think I have boiled down the primary arguments against this.

• The argument that facing xenophobia should be something that you opt in for.

This stance seems inconsistent to me, because it admits that facing xenophobia is a negative experience that is a push factor from playing a species, but at the same time there is this expectation that facing xenophobia is a big part of what makes particular species. It almost comes off like a desire to dish it out but not get any back. At worst there is a power fantasy here, but at the most charitable it seems like a "bad with the good" situation. We worry about turning off a new player who chooses to play a human, but at the same time there is this dismissal that a new player for an alien species will be turned off. There is a clear bias in what species is more important for players to have fun with.

• The argument that it doesn't make lore sense.

We can make anything happen. You see how normal giant ants that eat spaceship gasoline became? That's us. ?

• Humans have no significant mechanics and so their institutional supremacy is the main appeal.

This is the strongest (and most consistent) argument. It's pretty solid. Turning it on its head would be a narrative decision. There is strength to this narrative decision.

7 hours ago, Coalf said:

I think it would be a great change short-term as we could dust-off Fowl's PR and reduce the pay of all women to 70% according to Unathi traditions, which would subvert our current equality of genders, as well as restricting them to service roles besides only a very few, for whom we could make a specific whitelist to apply for as Unathi do allow some women to subvert tradition if they can prove themselves.

Great conflict rp for humans who live under the hierarchy of the Hegemony.

20 minutes ago, VTCobaltblood said:

Skrell have all the reasons in the world to look upon other races as if they're beneath them, especially humans who stole their AI algorithms and continue to utilize them without realizing the obvious dangers of such.

Good casual dismissiveness that xenophobia fans encourage humans to give other aliens, is now given back to humanity.

7 hours ago, Coalf said:

Although the question of Aut'akh arises since they're heretics and removing them right after being added would be very subversive. 

The question of synths and aut'akh are a good open question, and their continued existence under our two most anti-synth and religiously conservative species is problematic. I find this the biggest hole in this prospective plan and I am surprised no one brought it up sooner.

 

7 hours ago, Coalf said:

On the other end, removing CCIA's would be a bit unfair to that entire department since they're linked specifically to these issues.

Make them all Skrell or "one of the good ones" and nothing needs to change. The infractions that the lore team would handle is inappropriate or obscene levels of xenophobia.

7 hours ago, Coalf said:

Also, we would have to let in a bit more Unathi players as right now they're nowhere near the level needed to actually oppress humans, which I speculate is why you also picked skrell to co-op this.

They were picked because they have the most clearly defined hierarchies that best suit what this goal would want to achieve, and because Skrell are the most plausible xeno factions that we could just buff (EGREGIOUSLY) twenty-hundred times over the course of a month to eventually supplant humanity, and Unathi have the most conservative culture that allows the sort of PR's such as Fowls to come into existence with a basis in our IC reality,

7 hours ago, Coalf said:

current equality of genders, as well as restricting them to service roles besides only a very few, for whom we could make a specific whitelist to apply for as Unathi do allow some women to subvert tradition if they can prove themselves.

Such as this.

[VTCobaltblood]

1 minute ago, Senpai Jackboot said:

This stance seems inconsistent to me, because it admits that facing xenophobia is a negative experience that is a push factor from playing a species, but at the same time there is this expectation that facing xenophobia is a big part of what makes particular species.

It can be a positive factor, but not for everyone. The people that enjoy it opt into it, the people that don't - don't. I don't see anything inconsistent about this argument. 

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

Just now, VTCobaltblood said:

It can be a positive factor, but not for everyone. The people that enjoy it opt into it, the people that don't - don't. I don't see anything inconsistent about this argument. 

If a human doesn't like facing xenophobia against them, they can delete their character.

If a Tajara doesn't like facing xenophobia against them, they can delete their character.

Which one of these is a fair thing to say to players?

[VTCobaltblood]

14 minutes ago, Senpai Jackboot said:

If a Tajara doesn't like facing xenophobia against them, they can delete their character.

Or not apply for a whitelist in the first place. I don't see the point you're making with this post.

[ben10083]

43 minutes ago, Senpai Jackboot said:

Make them all Skrell or "one of the good ones" and nothing needs to change. The infractions that the lore team would handle is inappropriate or obscene levels of xenophobia.

Shouldn't CCIA deal with xenophobia cases? We have prior experience with such matters and xenophobia is a IC issue. (And if OOC rules are broken by it, is for admins)

I feel that making the dominant species on the station be a race that very few players play would be a bad idea, as there will be few people who would actually be the superiors in the first place (unless this suggestion will have us force heads to go skrell and discard their old chars, which I disagree with). I also greatly disagree with the idea of hedgimony rule due to synthetics. We have a major synthetic population on the server, but if this is implemented most characters would either be deleted or turned into a janitor or something similar. 

Overall, skrell is not the race to do this with, there is too many problems that comes with a new species and rules being suddenly dominant. (no, a month period of transition is not sufficient, people have characters they like to play.)

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

39 minutes ago, VTCobaltblood said:

Or not apply for a whitelist in the first place. I don't see the point you're making with this post.

 

And so a player can not play a human in the first place.

[VTCobaltblood]

31 minutes ago, Senpai Jackboot said:

And so a player can not play a human in the first place

They can't, humans are the default race. Imagine being pushed and shoved around as a new player. Why would you go through the effort of applying for a whitelist if you can just leave and go to another server because you were mistreated? Is this how we want new people to view us? As elitists and assholes who don't like new players?

Something more interesting could arise if we make a subspecies of non-Jargon Skrell, who have no psionics, and make them unwhitelisted.

Edited May 3, 2019 by VTCobaltblood

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

1 minute ago, VTCobaltblood said:

They can't, humans are the default race. Imagine being pushed and shoved around as a new player. Why would you go through the effort of applying for a whitelist if you can just leave and go to another server because you were mistreated? Is this how we want new people to view us? As elitists and assholes who don't like new players? 

Imagine being pushed and shoved around as a new alien player. Why would you go through the effort of applying for a whitelist if you can just leave and go to another server because you were mistreated? Is this how we want new people to view us? As elitists and assholes who don't like new alien players?

[VTCobaltblood]

1 minute ago, Senpai Jackboot said:

Imagine being pushed and shoved around as a new alien player.

This analogy is pretty false. When you apply for a whitelist, you know what you're getting into. New players who just logged onto the server don't know that the setting is discriminatory towards humans, but people applying to play an alien aren't first time players.

Not to mention, this is actually completely irrelevant to your proposal. If you don't like xenophobia so much, maybe just remove racism from the setting entirely? What would discriminated humans change? Wouldn't Skrell mistreat Vaurca or Tajara all the same?

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

4 hours ago, VTCobaltblood said:

This analogy is pretty false. When you apply for a whitelist, you know what you're getting into. New players who just logged onto the server don't know that the setting is discriminatory towards humans, but people applying to play an alien aren't first time players.

Not to mention, this is actually completely irrelevant to your proposal. If you don't like xenophobia so much, maybe just remove racism from the setting entirely? What would discriminated humans change? Wouldn't Skrell mistreat Vaurca or Tajara all the same?

I wouldnt make this thread if i hated it so much.... I'm telling you that your arguments are inconsistent.  You value human playing players more than xeno playing players. You'll gladly see characters strangled out of disatisfaction for harrassment against them but you claim doing the same to human characters will make aurora a pariah in the ss13 community.

There is a clear pecking order for who is worth keeping.

Edited May 3, 2019 by Marlon Phoenix

[Scheveningen]

New players don't necessarily get special treatment. We're supposed to treat everyone with a good standard of treatment on the OOC side of things. The arguments aren't inconsistent, they're just bad arguments. The discrimination we have is already enough. The onus is on the players to choose whether their character is a xeno-hater or not. That's the magic of a roleplaying server like this one, the ability to still have various choices to make despite some restrictions for the safe of making sanity checks for immersive and sensible gameplay.

[Zundy]

8 hours ago, Senpai Jackboot said:

I wouldnt make this thread if i hated it so much.... I'm telling you that your arguments are inconsistent.  You value human playing players more than xeno playing players. You'll gladly see characters strangled out of disatisfaction for harrassment against them but you claim doing the same to human characters will make aurora a pariah in the ss13 community.

There is a clear pecking order for who is worth keeping.

Not all alien character concepts are discriminated against. For example, all skrell are not. A Guwan is more discriminated against than a Moghes born. An Dominian edict breaker is more discriminated against than a Dominian Aristocrat. Why are people knowingly (since they passed their whitelist application/found the concepts on the wiki after reading through pages of lore) choosing character concepts they know full well suffer discrimination, since those concepts where designed that way for people who want to roleplay that out, and then saying things like "you value human playing players more than xeno playing players." Why are people even playing the concepts? A unathi isn't just a scale covered human, a Tajaran isn't just a human in a fur suit. They have roleplay expectations which the player knew about 100% before the chose those concepts. It's like buying a beef steak and complaining that it's beef and that you're a vegan and why should you a vegan be forced to eat meat and meat should be stripped from the menu when there was a whole vegan menu for you to choose from which you purposefully avoided. It's either that or people actually don't understand the lore of the species they're playing and at that point one questions why they were given a whitelist at all.

[ComradeCorbyn]

sounds like somebody doesn't like humans that much 

[nicemoreoften]

I think a lot of people arguing here are forgetting the fact that to not play a human you have to be whitelisted, so it's not really an option for a brand new player.