Player Complaint - RealSync

[CampinKiller]

BYOND Key: CampinKiller

Game ID: N/A

Player Byond Key/Character name: RealSync

Staff involved: Garnascus, Alberyk, and others, probably

Reason for complaint: Low RP antagging, playing to win, and powergaming.

Luke Conan (RealSync) engages in nothing but borderline LRP antaggery. He is always an antag, which is not a problem, but his RP ability while antagging is nonexistant. He plays to win, does almost the exact same thing every time, and it is incredibly annoying and frustrating. As an example: on cult rounds, he will always stealth cult until their reveal, where they have rifles and shotguns that they stole from the armory, because that's realistic for the cult, and just rush people. In the most recent instance of this, he openly admitted in AOOC to playing to win, and conspired with a vampire to try and become a vampire cultist, so he could have more power.

He will never be on comms the entire shift, before popping up and going loud out of nowhere as whatever antag he is this round. He usually will use traitor items to just empty the armory of any weaponry at some point before he actually does something. His entire idea of escalation is rushing you with a weapon after not doing anything for 1:59. As a ninja, he does the same thing, emptying the armory, because a ninja really needs even more advantages. His behavior is clearly playing to win the game, at all times, and he rarely stops to RP. After being rebuked by staff in one instance earlier this week, he tried to actually RP as an antag for a day before returning back to his 'I must win' mentality. There are many other examples, but listing them all would take hours.

Did you attempt to adminhelp the issue at the time? If so, what was the known action taken by administration/moderation? Yes, in the majority of cases. No idea of the various outcomes.

Approximate Date/Time: Over the last week or so, in several rounds. Most recently, 2PM Central Time, September 5th

[niennab]

To add to this with my own experiences, I can confirm that Luke Conan, merc/raider name Luke Sun, does not roleplay and outright murders players without an inkling of dialogue. It has gotten to the point that if the server votes secret and I see him on the security manifest, I do not join.

On the round b8W-cce8, RealSync was playing the mercenary Luke Sun and although some of the blame can be placed on the team of mercs for their behavior, I believe a lot of the fault for what I'm going to detail is on Luke Sun. I believe the round went on for about an hour until we, as Security, were alerted to a matter where the vault had been emptied of all it's contents. So we lightly armed up and took to walking the station in hopes of finding the missing items. While going from place to place, we eventually hear that there are visitors on the surface.

Myself, a diona warden and another officer make our way to the merchant dock from the garden only to happen upon the group. They have Luukanen as a hostage and take aim at us and I try to start a dialogue in order to get Luukanen back. They are however speaking Sol Common, something my character Z.I.Brandon doesn't have. A possibly neat gimmick but we try to run with it. At least we could have had, (and I could be wrong here but) Luke Sun not immediately fired upon our entire team, breaking off a nymph from the Diona and killing one of the officers. We flee.

I am damaged, riddled with shrapnel and I retreat to Robotics. While being tended to the mercenaries arrive again and I am taken hostage. Again with no dialogue uttered to my character, I am stripped of all my items, and down to my underwear by Luke Sun. I ask on occasion, seeing the mercenaries use Tau Ceti Basic if they understand me and I am eventually given my first word of dialogue from Luke: "Shut up".

I am then dragged around with the mercenaries for about 30 minutes and periodically being smashed in the chest with a rifle for no reason. I was not comfortable with the fact I am being paraded in my underwear before I eventually just ask them in looc to kill me, as I am sick of staring at a screen with no roleplay. One of the mercenaries decides to then release me and I go to cryogenic storage, sick of the round type and Luke's antics. I should also mention that not a single demand was ever given to security or the station.

I do not believe their style of play is appropriate for the server.

If screenshots are required, I regrettably have nothing more than this, which I took in the hope of helping report a vision cone bug. The square is where I was standing.

Spoiler

 

Edited September 6, 2020 by niennab
added info

[Faris]

Hello.

I will be taking this complaint under administrator supervision.

A few ground rules.

1- Only post when you have something relevant to this campaign. Leave detailed reports or events that have transpired. Posts that are “X person is bad.” without any form of proof or detailed reaccounting  will be ignored. 

2- Be courteous. No ad hominem. Standard things.

3- If you are ever in doubt whether your post is valid or not, you can contact me on discord privately to discuss its validity to avoid any issues. Aboshehab#0211

4- Include as many round ID's as you possible can.

I’ll let this sit for a bit before I post my thoughts or any questions for information gathering.

Edited September 6, 2020 by Aboshedab

[Peppermint]

The events I'm going to describe happened on 28/08. I may have the wrong game ID, but I'm fairly sure I do not. It was a traitor round here, and this was the only one that I could find. 

Game ID: b8R-bmYp

 

Over and over again, Luke Conan does the same gimmick - 'gimmick' being the kind word - and I believe this round showcased it. I want to point out that this was an early morning round by EU time, as to which there were something like 14 players, 4 of which were sec, 2 of which were traitors. A headache in the making, sure, but this turned into an absolute nightmare following Conan emptying the armory, stealing the spare ID, taking hostages and never giving any demands. This then condensed into murdering the other officer with me - an IPC - by instantly killing him with an ion rifle for no real reason or foresight. I'll ping @Valkrae given I'm fairly sure they'll remember this mess. They also stole the AI core - again, no demands - and hid it somewhere, then just went around killing security.

Had this been a one off, sure, it would have been frustrating but not all too awful. However, this is their constant midset especially during lowpop. They take every advantage they possibly can, then proceed to do very little with it. It's one thing to cripple security/command, it's quite another to mess them up and then never actually contribute to the round. Their RP is non-existent, and the way they treat female characters is also worrying. I do not have logs for the latter, but constantly chasing after anyone feminine is, I think, a known issue when it comes to his 'character' (self-insert) and should have been documented already. I know some people have mentioned such in DMs to you in particular, Abo.  I will not directly ping people involved here given I do not wish to force them to comment, but again, I'm fairly sure their identities are already known. 

Playing with them is straight up unenjoyable, and each time they get banned, they come back and behave for one or two rounds before regressing right back to their same old ways. If people are avoiding certain characters due to them tearing away the round's enjoyment, I think that's a problem.

[Spider]

Unfortunately when it comes to RealSync's behavior and merit as an antagonist, I only have negative things to say. Though there is absolutely nothing wrong with constantly playing an antagonist, I feel it may be providing a very dull and tedious cycle of repetitiveness where one feels pressured to have to come up with something unique every time. It's not easy to play one, the requirements for it are quite high as you are expected to create an enjoying and engaging experience for an entire server. It is for these reasons why I am coming into this complaint not with the intention of bashing RealSync or saying how much of a bad a player they are, but more as a suggestion to take time to know the server and its expectations better before trying to fill the shoes of what is arguably the most difficult role on station. This is a heavy roleplay server, and I myself took 6 years to adjust to it properly, so perhaps it's worth taking these words into consideration, RealSync.

As for the actual body of the complaint. The round ID I want to quote is: b8X-cykr. I'm not 100% about it being this one, it was a while ago.

 

This round was a visitors round, involving both a ninja (Luke Sun as RealSync) and a wizard. Early in the round it was found that the wizard had taken the spare ID and raided the captains office. The ninja on the other hand was nowhere to be found, the only way that we knew there was one at all was that the windows in the vault were mysteriously being broken, and its items stolen by an invisible entity. The greater part of the round in terms of antagonist interaction with the crew took place with the wizard, who had demonstrated their abilities to transmute borgs into humans with their staff. The ninja was nowhere to be seen, heard of only once over communications. The round went on, and we had ended up arresting the wizard and the borgs (who were loyal to him) as they moved on to transform regular crew. I confiscated a steel pike from one of the now human borgs, and was moving it to the evidence locker. It was during this time (around 1:40-1:50) that the ninja, RealSync, made their first appearance in the entire round. There was no verbal interaction or roleplay that took place, they simply appeared and threw grenades at me. I thought it was maybe them trying to spook me, so I ran. They appeared again, throwing more grenades at me, they didn't seem like they were going away so I used the pike that I was transporting to hit them twice. Immediately after doing this he drew his sword and started to chase me, almost like he was looking for an excuse to do so in the first place. I ran back to where most of the officers were at the medbay and regrouped with them. I think there were only two officers on-shift, a head of security, and a warden, versus one wizard, and three of its accomplices. It is because of this the HoS, Petra Volvalaad, asked my character to transport one of the prisoners to the brig. I was moving the prisoner to security when RealSync appeared once again, this time with an X-Ray laser gun, and wordlessly fired upon me. They were relentless in this attack, hitting both me and the prisoner. I eventually died to finish off the round, and I believe RealSync detonated when confronted with security, killing another good number of people at the very end of the round.

 

Takeaways that can be seen from this wall of text:

They do not make an effort to roleplay or push an engaging narrative, this is seen by the wordless attacks and constantly using the same character (Luke Sun) for every antagonist they play which comes off to me as a very one-dimensional character who has no real motive but be a hurdle for the security and command team while neglecting the rest of the crew.

They abuse the abilities of their antagonist role in order to 'win'. This is them using EMP grenades at round start to disable the vault turrets, stealing ONLY its weapons, and using a combination of cloaking and teleporting to orchestrate random lethal attacks without any escalation whatsoever.

They have little regard for creating meaningful interactions and only seem to want to win. More so in other rounds than this one, it's almost like the many characters that he play with are NPC's, and serve no purpose but to provide him with an enjoyable time.

 

I cannot speak towards his actions as a non-antagonist, as there are very little of them, but I can say that he comes off as a fairly new player who hasn't read the rules properly, or at all. An antagonist ban is definitely in place, I feel.

[Sync]

I do try to create roleplay for the players, but it becomes quite hard when other players responses are mostly aggresive. Like yesterday four other antags and me had the gimmick that we are Syndicate Special Forces who's plan is to claim research equipment, we all agreed to this gimmick. We had two really new antags, so it took 1 hour already to just prepare, one of the new players disconnected and never showed up after we docked the station. We all moved in to the surface area of the station.  We asked a assistant to follow us which we found on the surface, since we needed a hostage so the security does not fire at us directly. We took the hostage and moved her down the robotics. When we arrived robotics there were three others already inside, which we all told to lay down in the back area on the floor, one of them was quite new to the server so we told him LOOC how to lay on the floor, he couldn't figure it out so we let him stay up, one of the mercs pushed him down, after the new player requested it. So we had four hostages, we welded two doors shut and then the security arrived, we told them that we have hostages. Me as the captain told one of the officers to "Shut it and get me the commander, so we can talk" after they told us to get down or something similiar, I think one of them asked shortly what we wanted, but not sure.

Officers all of a sudden started shooting out of nowhere, even though we had four hostages, I hold one by the neck and told them again to not try cause we have hostages, but they kept shooting and finally after the other antags escaped behind me with another hostage a officer  shot a ION at the door behind me which lead to me defending myself against four officers that stormed robotics. They killed one of the hostages which I had in neckgrab cause they try to shoot me down.
I finally got knocked down and they moved me out of robotics, I told them that I still have hostages, which were with the others, their respond was "Yeah yeah and I am the pope" which lead to me not even try to talk to them until I was moved in the medbay and I started complaining about the horrible pain.

I attempted to escape and ran off to my ship but was stopped by officers and dragged back into the medbay.

Three or two antags that have escaped try to rescue me from the medbay. One of the antags were pretty new and didn't know that he had a lethal grenade loaded in his grenade launcher and shot it next to my position, which lead to me suffer even more wounds. I was laying on the hospital bed the whole time and all I saw was how a officers were shooting my body while I was only laying on the bed multiple times with a 45 pistol.

At the end its a big sigh. I wish the other antags from that round would also tell what happened here.

The GAME ID was b8Z-dCqb

I do also play passive antags, even as a changeling, I have created RP for the crew without attacking anyone. I am playing mostly security, just cause I enjoy it and I always have antag on, which leads to people saying I become a officer antag so I have it easier, I still kinda agree with their point though, since I could simply just make another character for antag and if I don't become antag, I just could play that character for diversity. I also agree on that I use the name Luke a lot, I mean I can simply just stop doing that if that is so annoying.
 

[Sync]

And I should have went to cyro first before writing this. 

I might use this as a chance to even take a longer break, since I am not really welcome on the server currently.

 

Edited September 6, 2020 by Sync

[Guest]

I am afraid that I do agree with everything written under this post. I would also like to talk about a few specific rounds that I played with Luke Conan and give some details.

Unfortunately, I do not have the round ID; but it was on 28/08, around at CET 03.30 pm. Gamemode was Vampire. Luke Conan and my character were the only ISD members in that round. The round started, we proceeded to our lockers and without saying anything except "Good morning!" he bit me while I barely reached my locker. I RPd as I had to; no memory of this encounter. I geared up and proceeded to EVA to set the suits and he followed me, telling me that he feels lonely. Again, without saying not much, he flashed and fed on me. It all happened in the first ten minutes of the round. Also, later in that round, he turned me into his thrall by simply jumping onto me as I simply was joking/teasing about how he accidentally flashed me at EVA Storage Room and telling him that I will tell this story to the other ISD members. After being finished with his biting, he told me that I got too far by threatening him with such things. Later, as I was his thrall now, he did not give me any orders. It was my first round as an antag, so I did my best to follow him everywhere and ask for his orders and wishes. Well- he simply dismissed me by saying that I do not have to ask everything to him and I can go wherever I want to. I strongly think that this was not acceptable without a clear reason. 

Another example of the lack of communication and poor RP. 04/09, around at CET 09.00 pm. Gamemode was Autotraitor. Luke Conan did not talk on the comms despite being called and asked for. I found him around the Kitchen area and asked what is wrong, he said that he does not want to talk on the comms because he feels bullied by other ISD members. He then mentioned about two incidents where he got bullied, but those ISD members were not present in that round. I did a bit of counselling, encouraged him to talk instead of isolating himself. He said that he will try his best, but nope- he did not talk. I do not think that this simple excuse justifies his refusal to talk on the comms, and I think it really made his task as an antag way much easier because I was the only officer who had to deal with the issues. Apart from the issue regarding the comms, he did not show much face-to-face RP except from giving me 2500 CR for being a good person (additionally told me that his father is really rich so I should not worry about receiving 2500 CR) and claiming the suspicious briefcases laying around actually belong to him.

I have started to lose my interest in secret rounds because when I see Luke Conan on the manifest, I immediately know that he is the antag. Being the antag is not a simple task, as it affects roughly everyone on the station so it has to be played in a way that aims to entertain every person involved. This is where Luke Conan fails, as he plays it only to win. The lack of a constructed and well-developed character and demonstration of roleplay started to disturb me, as this character is present at almost every round, with the same role. 
 

Edited September 6, 2020 by Guest

[Sync]

During your another example I simply gave you a excuse why I was not responding to the communication, because I was a antag during that round and I was doing antag stuff when I was called over communication, the money came from the operation funding that you can buy for two teleport crystals. Also that suspicious briefcase is simply a codelock briefcase. I do agree with the rest though. Thats why I should take a break from the server, I am clearly out of good ideas. Also that someone don't want to join the round simply because they see a character of mine is already extreme and I should really just leave.
I don't know if this complaint at the end is to get me banned or not, but I will take a break myself and come back better hopefully.
 

Edited September 6, 2020 by Sync

[ThelonTV]

3 hours ago, Neude said:

After being finished with his biting, he told me that I got too far by threatening him with such things. Later, as I was his thrall now, he did not give me any orders. It was my first round as an antag, so I did my best to follow him everywhere and ask for his orders and wishes. Well- he simply dismissed me by saying that I do not have to ask everything to him and I can go wherever I want to. I strongly think that this was not acceptable without a clear reason. 

 

Just to play devils advocate here, it's pretty okay to thrall in order to stop people from snitching. 
To contribute to the discussion: Every encounter I had so far with Officer Conan has had some sort of RP to it, even if it was just commenting on his shoes and them asking for advice. The one cult round where he they converted me was pretty whackey, with no instructions and ultimately got me bwoinked due to a bug with the flavour text. The RP leading up to the conversion was pretty okay- good though...

 

3 hours ago, Sync said:

I don't know if this complaint at the end is to get me banned or not, but I will take a break myself and come back better hopefully

I would hate to see one of the few antags get banned. A break from antagging would really suffice IMO

Edited September 6, 2020 by ThelonTV

[Faris]

I’ll let this post stay this time but in the future I don’t want anyone to be playing devils advocate in this thread. Future ones will have their post hidden and likely incur penalties in the thread.

 

Furthermore, there has to be some verifiable information in the form of dates, round ID’s or anything that can be used to verify anything said. While we will go through every report, we cannot do anything if we have no evidence to work with. 

[Flpfs]

I was in many rounds where Luke Sun did poor RP as an antag, but two stand out a lot, the first one was the round NiennaB was talking about. I was the warden, when Luke Sun wordlessly shot first and then proceeded to mow us down, forcing me to split as a dionae, killing the officer and injuring the shell IPC, this made zero sense as they had a hostage and could just very easily have negotiated.

The second one is when I was playing as a surgeon and saw Luke Conan enter the medical lobby, unbuckle the SSD chef, grab him and drain him of blood in like ten seconds, without saying a single word. I ahelp and he gets frozen by staff, a few minutes later he gets unwinded and returns to play. This is massive metagaming and lowrp fuckery, the guy literally ganked the SSD chef like it was some kind of League of Legends match. He also lied to staff, saying he didn't know the guy was AFK but the moment he grabbed the chef, the message "maybe they are SSD' appeared and yet they ignored that, proceeding to suck the guy dry anyway. Conan ALREADY KNEW the chef was SSD but did it anyways because he knew the chef would not fight back and that nobody would notice.

Note : I think either Tbear13 or TG_Griffin handled my ahelp on that round.

Edited September 7, 2020 by Flpfs
grammar

[Faris]

For reasons belonging to antagonist play that are clear violation of the rules, the player in question has received a indefinite ban from the server. This was independent of this complaint.

I had made some progress with this complaint by breaking down the incidents here and breaking it up so I can seek out specific round ID's. Since the matter is essentially solved in the form that nothing can be upgraded beyond such a server ban, I'll be deeming it as resolved. I will however add a note entry stating that this was under investigation when the ban was applied.

My initial thoughts on the complaint was that there seemed to be behavior that was not acceptable, not everything reported here qualified as unacceptable, so only with the former cases, some corrective measure would have been taken. Could have ranged from a warning or a ban followed up with a talk on how to improve and avoid these issues. 

I will be considering this for the most part resolved and will close it in 24 hours if nothing extra needs to be done.