Player Complaint - Scheveningen

[melodramatize]

BYOND Key: Melodramatize

Game ID: b9p-axZi

Player Byond Key/Character name: Scheveningen / Vira Bolivar. And Edgar Dawnguard too I guess?

Staff involved: Witchbells

Reason for complaint: 

At round start, Bolivar wanted to take the crew on an expedition. The expedition was marked as “deemed safe for survey by NanoTrasen personnel,” yet Bolivar demanded research to create four modular firearms, a combat mech, and a combat hardsuit. We attempted to do so, but due to lack of resources were not able to complete this request, leading Bolivar to chew out the whole department and cancel the expedition after an hour and a half. This is despite the fact that none of the scientists present were weapons techs, instead consisting of a chemist, a telescientist, and another scientist whose specialty is unknown but was conducting teleportation experiments at the time.

 

After that, RD Edgar Dawnguard came into the round and wanted to continue the expedition, so we rushed to complete the demanded weaponry for the (marked safe) expedition, and then the shuttle proceeded to leave WITHOUT any of the firearms that R&D had spent the past hour and a half creating, leading to much frustration from the players.

 

After the expedition returned, Bolivar decided she wanted to lead a rescue mission to go BACK to the expedition site and exterminate giant spiders, so demanded more resources and repairs from the department. Dawnguard chewed out the scientists again for not creating weapons to his as-yet-unshared specifications, and then left without the firearms AGAIN -- the weapon had a TASER modulator, which he claimed would not be useful against spiders, which is either him being smug or metagaming. This could have easily been corrected, but he instead let all the work and materials be wasted.

 

After the round ended, Scheveningen continued to complain about the research department OOC, especially going after Ian White’s player, and did not stop after being told to by admin.

 

Did you attempt to adminhelp the issue at the time? If so, what was the known action taken by administration/moderation? No. I believe it was ahelped by Ian White and determined not to be metagaming/an issue.

Approximate Date/Time: September 30, 2020 - October 1, 2020. Round start I believe was around 11:00 pm and ended around 2:15ish?

 

Screenshots are included below as evidence.

 

Edited October 29, 2020 by melodramatize
fixed spelling of Scheveningen’s name as it was bothering me

[Scheveningen]

I just want to say I resent any accusations of metagaming - and likewise I take issue with the accusation of metagaming being thrown the way of HunterRS who played absolutely fantastically as the RD for that round. They pretty much salvaged any interest I had in that round due to their timely presence at the lowest point of that round, and they were hella constructive in putting the expedition stuff back on the fast track.

The "round start" declaration of the expedition intending was about 15-20 minutes into the round.  Let me ask how many people who might be reading this in a rhetorical fashion, at what point in the round do you think it's best to announce an expedition? 30 minutes? 1 hour? 2 hours before the vote is able to be ran on an extended round? Better yet, OP, have you tried to motivate the entire station into a productive frenzy and ensure everyone possible who is capable of supplying useful stuff for the expedition team to be able to succeed, once before? I probably don't need to know your opinion. It's hard. It is actually less worth it for me to try to make it work because I don't even get to participate in the same expedition that other people do. It's amazing how utterly not-worth-it it is for the organizer to try to whip up something fun like a space adventure but it's a blast for anyone who actually is the space adventurer. If this is the kind of reaction I or anyone else should expect for this sort of thing, no wonder why it doesn't happen on a regular basis.

The major thing making expedition set-up so tedious and difficult -- besides logistical screw-ups caused by personnel -- is the initial time limitation and the "metagame" surrounding the vote for transfer. As a player and a command whitelistee, in order to maximize the fun of other players who want to participate in an expedition besides research, I have to motivate preparations for it as soon as possible. It is a complete waste of time on my end and on the broad aspect of other people's time to announce the expeditionary process any later than minute one, effectively. They need that time to explore and have fun. I don't get any other choice but to announce early that an expedition is happening. Having plenty of time to prepare is a hell of a lot better than having to be ready to go to have to do stuff for a space game in like 5 minutes. An hour was given. The quotas from research - the #1 department that I was begging for results from - didn't get fulfilled.

As for the guns, the amount of guns, what color shoes the guns were wearing, whatever. Expeditions are not safe. Space adventurism, in general, is not safe. Would you rather the whole team get sent over to deal with the colossus spider with not even the laser shotguns? Those laser shotguns are pitiful as well, even. Their ammo consumption per shot, accuracy, damage, I would rather turn the safety on and use a maglite to kill spiders instead. That's why better guns were requested. They don't have to be 70 burn per shot death ray cannons the likes of which seasoned ~science powergamers~ or whatever the strawman label is now are capable of. They should just be good enough, why is that so hard to understand?

Vira spitballed "4" for the number of supplied guns because she is generally a person who is able to compromise and relent with slightly less ideal results, but "I'll give you 0" is absolutely not what she will accept hearing. It's what she heard anyway, so she wrote off RnD for the rest of the shift and relied upon robotics - because they were the only ones in the department who were the most eager to help out. I will point out robotics messed up and spread themselves too wide which meant they could deliver nothing, which led to the immediate (albeit temporary) cancellation of the expedition. An expeditionary team cannot go explore in a dangerous hostile environment if it is incapable of defending itself in a worst-case scenario. The folks who did come back from the first wave were really glad that they brought at least more than bare minimum.

Re; the briefing room scene. The initial intent of that was to rule out exactly who did what and who was contributing anything at all. The proverbial axe was above Ian's neck here, not anybody else in that room. Was it a bit of an unfunny, melodramatic spectacle? A bit, but it served its purpose. Another thing: Don't tell people "no" and then wait an eon to tell them why. By the time my character heard the reasons, they had already written off the people who told them "no" as if they weren't going to be of any help at all. And that was concluded at the end of the briefing room argument. Most assuredly had I or my character heard the reasons much earlier why an order could not be feasibly carried out in terms of subordinate capacity/competence then that entire round would've gone so much better.

As for round two of the expedition team: no, the expedition's second round was to try to rescue some survivors that were heard at the expedition site. No, I did not personally lead that team. The aim of the expedition team was not to kill spiders, contrary to what your belief is here. It was to dive in, establish radio comms with those derelict survivors and rescue them. Appreciate being characterized as some sort of conflict-seeking bad guy validhunter again. Least I know what the intent of this complaint is.

As for the OOC comments, do you expect me to apologize for voicing my opinion that Ian White, the character, was acting like a bad sport and not contributing anything positive to the team effort that was asked of him? If I believed he was breaking the rules I would've adminhelped. I did not. I do not really care for Ian White as a character but I'm not going to pretend like I give enough of a damn to go after their ability to play here. I'm adult enough to go, "I disagree with you, I think what you did was wrong" and I moved on. I will also note in those last few OOC screenshots that I was able to introspect what I could've done better and what I will do better in the future based off this pretty unpleasant-in-the-middle round. Not to mention that I was not stuck on Ian White after the first 2 warnings in OOC went out, I don't know what was with that mod in the chat there and I don't really care what they were trying to accomplish either. 

Edited October 1, 2020 by Scheveningen

[Estoytrucha]

As the player of someone in the first wave? No. The guns didn't help much because, and I'll say this several times- No one brought them. No one offered even a cursory rifle to Tabor. The better combat hardsuit was given to a medic while nearly everyone refused to leave the ship /at all/. Very little guidance was given. The medic was given an actual rifle and Tabor, pressured to leave the shuttle first with MartYr to open doors? He wasn't offered one. No amount of mercenary preparation can stop that kind of thing on site.

And that's just the problems that started with the expedition after it launched. Before launching? Expectations. It really did seem like Vira Bolivar demanded an entire armory instead of accepting that the first mission would be for scouting. Command staff were not forthcoming with the exact amount of materials they /needed/ from mining, instead expecting us (mostly just me) to man reports, make enough materials for four advanced guns and three mechs (while signing and faxing all yield reports, maintaining four drills, and getting ready for expedition with snap deadlines (altered twice even though I planned around them and would have failed only narrowly to meet), which I was psyched to finally go on) and, after a bunch of work but apparently not enough, CANCELLING the expedition initially in what felt like a curt temper tantrum while a bunch of us were already in the bridge.

Only to change their mind twenty minutes later.

We had money in cargo. Bolivar did not order materials via shuttle. No extra weapons that way, either.

Tabor did the lion's share of damage to a giant spider with a diamond pick and a resonator. And it didn't actually RUN until the resonator came out. The combat mech was not robust, as they have been nerfed not to be, from my understanding, to stop powergaming antags?

We could have done better. Schev, if you hate expeditions so much, you don't have to do them. This was only my second one in eight months of play, and I'm sad that it was less fun than the same one done with almost no preparation by command seemingly enjoying itself and nearly everyone involved exploding into admeme cookies. Your captain is usually hypercompetent but that tendency to end chaos gamerounds (thank you) does not a fun expedition make. There are other players trying to enjoy the game, too. And it wasn't very respectful of our time or efforts to portray this as almost solely science's fault.

[CampinKiller]

As someone who was involved with this, albeit from the Command end of things, I don't think this is something that warrants a player complaint - needing weapons for an expedition doesn't seem like a terrible idea, and being upset that their character ICly gave your department an ass-chewing is, well, an IC issue. Just as Schev's Captain ignoring the advice and even demands of the rest of Command to return to rescue the two survivors was an IC issue.

I can also attest that Hunter was not involved in any accusations of metagaming by producing weapons, but simply following the orders of the Captain who wished to send the expedition, as the Research Director ought to be doing.

[Estoytrucha]

34 minutes ago, CampinKiller said:

As someone who was involved with this, albeit from the Command end of things, I don't think this is something that warrants a player complaint - needing weapons for an expedition doesn't seem like a terrible idea, and being upset that their character ICly gave your department an ass-chewing is, well, an IC issue. Just as Schev's Captain ignoring the advice and even demands of the rest of Command to return to rescue the two survivors was an IC issue.

I can also attest that Hunter was not involved in any accusations of metagaming by producing weapons, but simply following the orders of the Captain who wished to send the expedition, as the Research Director ought to be doing.

Simple reason-He wasn't there for 80% of that time. Also, as RD, they could actually probably have gotten a better read of what was needed as far as resources go.

[Shenaanigans]

I was also present for this round as one of the other expedition members (the engineer), but all I'll say is that I heavily disagree about this being a purely IC issue. The enjoyment of many players was tanked by dragging out the expedition preparations over weapons that weren't even brought along and no one should have known we would need in the first place. It would have been easy to just say "alright, go anyway and turn back if it's dangerous" when all of us were gathered, ready, and eager in the bridge, but instead we all get turned away with no explanation. It negatively impacted the experience of quite a few people OOCly, so I believe it is an OOC issue worth looking into.

[Scheveningen]

No, it was not 100% science's fault, but it was pretty much 50%. I was deliberately avoiding ordering stuff from cargo because I was expecting far worse looks if I handed medics, Tabor, or whoever else combat shotguns to be left in the expeditionary shuttle.

The expedition was cancelled because absolutely nothing was finished on the research side by the 3rd time that they were asked to push out something that could be used for self defense on the expedition. If the expectation is that I should send people with no means of defending themselves to explore any random derelict on their own then I will either not try to organize an expedition again or I will veto any expedition that doesn't have any means of preparation. It makes no IC or OOC sense to shove out an expedition with no self defense measures at all, and it probably made no sense to try to organize an expedition with a research team totally disinterested in the fact the expedition was happening. I should've gotten a read on that earlier and adjusted accordingly. The first wave wasn't ideal either, but the RD was wanting to get the first mission commenced to start with.

The round in question was not ideal. It was a ridiculous battle of ego between the captain and research that simply didn't need to happen, but it did anyway. As already displayed through the screenshots intended to incriminate me somehow, I'm already aware of the dozens of different ways I could've executed this better. I have already thought about how to do stuff better and it's not like I'm about to stop doing so, but that's not what this complaint is for. I am extremely doubtful this complaint was initially written with those good laced intentions in mind to helpfully highlight what could've been done better, those of you who think you need to seek OOC action for this are essentially trying to go after me because of the IC politics of the round delayed and otherwise deflated your perception of the round. I'm not going to pretend that was the outcome I wanted but it was the outcome we all got. I've already dealt with it and moved on. It's clear some other people haven't.

Edited October 2, 2020 by Scheveningen

[Garnascus]

@HunterRS You're named as an ancillary in this complaint. Can you give us your perspective here? 

[HunterRS]

@Garnascus Just noticed I was actually in this entire ordeal. So I will explain what I saw

I will first mention that I really don't understand why the statement of "And Edgar Dawnguard too I guess?" when I was just following captains orders and continuing what they were needing to be done ICly

So I was ghosting just hanging around, watching science as I usual do when I saw Vira (Schev) talk about an expedition, I kept watching and then decided to join and assist with it. After, I will say this, forgetting that RnD made weapons because ICly I was focused on the mech for the expedition and the hardsuits, I then took a quick scouting trip, discovered some pests and came back to report the situation as the rest of the team was reprepping. Here was our full Loadout
3 Hazard Hardsuits
1 Combat Mech

2 Expeditation Shotguns

1 KA (no clue what was on it)

and misc mining gear

(And RnD weapons that I forgot)

after going through the to the site, we encountered the collosal spider, which almost destroyed the mech and forced us to retreat back to the ship and evac out before anyone was lost. While we were heading back home we had to cut off Tabors arm because a nurse bit her which causes mental trauma across the whole team. When I walked into the RnD lab to check the guns.

"Dawnguard chewed out the scientists again for not creating weapons to his as-yet-unshared specifications, and then left without the firearms AGAIN"

Edgar never chewed out anyone, he checked the weapons, and walked to his office defeated after what he saw on the shuttle, it was not an ideal round for him to witness and it was a chaos round after we returned.

"the weapon had a TASER modulator, which he claimed would not be useful against spiders, which is either him being smug or metagaming"

Counterpoint 1: Edgar Saw how the COMBAT MECH AND MULTIPLE LASERS could not destroy the beast, so he knew that a TASER MODULE would not work at all, that was not being smug or metagaming, that was simple expierence

Counterpoint 2: Edgar did say to Vira "I am not going back to the rescue mission, it is not a good idea, and I will be in my office"

I will agree with Schev on one thing though

1. Expeditions are not safe, but after talking to them OOCly after the case we talked about how a recon team is vital before you think on what you want to do with it.

Yet this entire thing, if I remember correct, was not all sciences fault, I heard mining was lacking, communication was bad and it was just a mess all around. I will not mention characters as this complaint is not about them, but some helped and some did not.

I basically joined to say "Hey. We are doing X Y and Z, right now, this order, no excuses, GO!" and what was done was done.

I will apologize for the entire Expedition team as there was little teamwork from me due to my dreaded fear of the Colossal spider and how it has given my IRL nightmares after seeing it. Once I knew it was this one It was hard for me to focus, (I have also had 4 of my past 5 sites been the spiders, so my luck is horrible)

 

I am going to say again, I have no idea what I am even in this complaint when ICly I was following orders, OOCly I knew this was a bit too much.

[melodramatize]

Bump

[ReadThisNamePlz]

Hello, 

@Lady Fowl and I will be handling this complaint. 

Please allow us some time to look over it. 

[melodramatize]

Hello,

I am following up to see if @ReadThisNamePlzand @Lady Fowl have had the chance to review this complaint yet, as it has now been over a week since they took the complaint. I would have contacted them over discord but I was unsure what their discord usernames were. Thank you. 

[Lady Fowl]

I have taken some time to look over this in detail and have come to a few conclusions. The actions taken by Schev and Hunters characters were highly questionable and in a way un-ethical, however its nothing character or lore breaking about it. The characters acted in a way thats realistic and while the actions they took were realistic, its definitely something you can make a IR about, however the only issue I'm seeing is the comments Schev made post round. At this point I think this can be resolved with applying a note towards Schev and ensuring he understands future incidents will result in harsher consequences.

[melodramatize]

On 01/11/2020 at 14:03, Lady Fowl said:

I have taken some time to look over this in detail and have come to a few conclusions. The actions taken by Schev and Hunters characters were highly questionable and in a way un-ethical, however its nothing character or lore breaking about it. The characters acted in a way thats realistic and while the actions they took were realistic, its definitely something you can make a IR about, however the only issue I'm seeing is the comments Schev made post round. At this point I think this can be resolved with applying a note towards Schev and ensuring he understands future incidents will result in harsher consequences.

I didn't think I could write an IR since the incident took place during an expedition, which was, to my understanding, not considered canon. In any case, thanks for getting back to me. I suppose that resolves everything and this complaint can be closed now.