Staff Complaint - Arrow768, PratePresidenten(?)

[Kintsugi]

BYOND Key: DanseMacabre
Staff BYOND Key: Arrow768, PratePresidenten
Game ID: cdq-deWX
Reason for complaint: On 8/8, there was a scheduled CCIA animal adoption event. These happen fairly often and tend to follow a similar format: people will bring pets to the station, and those pets are adopted by the crew. It's generally a laid-back extended round that can allow for some nice slice of life RP. These events are always canon.

Apparently, somewhere along the line, someone decided this round would be different. Unfortunately I was busy and couldn't be present, but I ended up observing later. What I saw was genuinely a baffling sight to see on an HRP server, masquerading as a (semi)-canon event round. A group of event characters, mostly (if not all?) IPCs, equipped with sleepy-pens, went about penning and then ganking two members of security. After they were killed, admin powers were used to force the players into the bodies of animals. This is complaint-worthy enough - ganking is against the rules, and turning players into chickens with your admin powers is not, in my mind, an HRP-conducive event. What really made me decide to write this complaint was what came after: noticing that security has gone missing, the captain and the rest of security boarded the ship for an inspection. Immediately, with no prior buildup, the turrets aboard the merc ship were activated and the blast doors locked behind the inspection team.

The security team was up against event characters armed with assault rifles, plasma weapons, and mercenary armor, with no escape, along with ballistic turrets. None of them were wearing anything beyond basic security armor, and all were equipped with only their disruptors. It goes without saying that almost all of security died: the captain was lucky enough to make it. An ERT had to be called, and engineering had to use an emitter to blow up the blast doors.

This "event round", in essence, was a mercenary round. There was no event here - there was nothing about this that was event-worthy. This round combined LRP shenanigans using admin powers with both stealth ganking and then overt ganking. It generated no meaningful RP and there was nothing gained by making this "event" happen. Furthermore, with Aurora event culture also under some degree of scrutiny, I find it extremely questionable that we're running overtly violent events that see more people killed than 99% of other rounds, when the playerbase seems to indicate that they don't want that. What I want to know is why the people running this event and whomever the event volunteers were thought that this was, in any way, a good idea. My tone may come across as harsh- that's because I'm genuinely baffled. When so much effort is put into making high-quality events happen on Aurora, how does this get through?
Evidence/logs/etc: Logs available on request. Here's a screenshot of the aftermath:

Additional remarks: I am not sure of Prate's involvement, only Arrow's. I hate making complaints of any kind because they put a big target on you for being an evil fun police officer, but for once I felt that this was absolutely necessary. I am also hoping this is treated as a player complaint in regards to the volunteers.

[Arrow768]

Ill keep it short.

The following custom event info was set:

Indicating that it will not be completely canon and pretty much telling people to expect deaths.
(This was for the people that got moved into the animals tough; I didnt expect the shootout.)

The shootout in the shuttle was not planned and has been ahelped by someone else and handled.
At the start of the round the antags were advised that they should try to avoid killing unless it is required. (Given how events usually go)
You were also advised to ahelp in the round if you had any issues with the conduct of the antags, which you did not do.

Regarding non-canon LRP events (which the animal-transfer part was clearly intendet to be):
You have made a policy suggestion about that in the past which has been rejected.

 

[Alberyk]

I will look into it this. Only post if you have something new to add to the complaint.

[Scheveningen]

I was the captain.

The things I almost would've liked about this round was the gimmick concept of people being turned into animals as the twist rather than any animal being up for adoption. I assume that was supposed to be non-canon, yet the problem with this round is everyone went in with the expectation of stuff being canonical, instead we got surprised with the shutter-turrets situation, and this became a problem where I'm again reminded of the toxic frag culture ever-present on Aurora. Like, how is Kathira El-Hashem supposed to incorporate into her character that her brain was transferred into a cat (and apparently her body disappeared)? There's no way this can be canon.

Apparently, however, a few, massive, round-destroying mistakes occurred. One, the volunteers were told to be armed up like standard mercenaries. Big mistake, should not have happened. The mercenary assault rifle outperforms the laser rifle in close quarters. It is extremely deadly and standard sec armor isn't designed to survive against it. It has sufficient damage that the difference between wearing the sec stab vest and nothing is not appreciable at all.

Secondly, the turret and the shutters situation. I'm primarily referring to how this combines. Apparently the original plan was sleeping gas, to transform everyone into animals. Honestly, I still don't know if I would've liked that more than the turret situation. No matter how this went, the idea of trapping people into a no-win situation to force a specific, non-canon outcome on them that they would've otherwise expected was actually thought to be canon, I don't really like the idea of this.

Thirdly, I'm told the volunteers here were not meant to go killing people. So why were they given the means to kill a lot of people anyway (the merc assault rifles, again, are not a joke, just by themselves, they are extremely powerful)? The fact this occurred meant this possibility was likely going to happen, which should've been unacceptable anyway if "you're not meant to go killing people" was the honest intent of the mini-event here.

What could've been a genuine attempt at a decent round idea that had a pretty funny reason behind it due to what happened during the Tajara spy incident last year, was demonstrably undermined by the above factors. Again, that the heavy armaments thing happened, that the turret and shutters situation even happened at all, and that the impression of this mini-event was supposed to be a canonical occurrence when it operated upon the logic of a non-canon event, all of this contributed to destroying a round with a potentially good premise. There really should've been far better foresight and judgement on setting up this round to commence in the way it was intended.

I don't care about punishment nor believe that is the way to sort this out. There simply needs to be more rigid guidelines for running events that both the staff and players can see and cite in order to produce excellent event rounds. I don't consider this to be a freak occurrence either, because lore events run across the same problems of not conveying proper expectations of round balance and caring about what direction the round could possibly go. I like chaos when it's actually controlled, intended chaos. I don't like when events completely go out of their intended scope and turn the round into an unenjoyable madhouse.

Edited August 8, 2021 by Scheveningen
Edited to add something, my post felt incomplete

[BunkyB]

I'd like to add that Arrow has already punished me for turning on the turrets w/o escalation.

Might not be necessary to the complaint. 

[Pratepresidenten]

15 minutes ago, DanseMacabre said:

I am not sure of Prate's involvement

My involvement here was null. I caught the end of the shootout before leaving, so you can strike me as a participant.

[Kaizr]

11 minutes ago, DanseMacabre said:

An ERT had to be called, and engineering had to use an emitter to blow up the blast doors.

To add to this, the situation was at a point where the only personnel capable of enforcing basic station regulations was people with prior experience ICly or volunteers alongside the TCFL. By the looks of it there was little to no effort put into RP by the merchants and more specifically the shell (Thaine was their surname if I remember correctly) as they, without warning, immediately activated the turrets on a lightly armed and peaceful security team. I myself had to even volunteer to help search, move, and guard the prisoners as a visiting merchant character (Rocket), I genuinely question whether a mini-event of this type should ever require non-security crew to take up arms and form a militia simply to ensure station security.

Lastly, in relation to what Scheveningen said, I think we all can agree that the mercenary assault rifle (7.62) is a ludicrous weapon to equip them with as against standard security armor it only takes a short burst in full-auto to crit the target into a dying state.

[Kintsugi]

32 minutes ago, Arrow768 said:

Regarding non-canon LRP events (which the animal-transfer part was clearly intendet to be):
You have made a policy suggestion about that in the past which has been rejected.

 

It was not rejected, I retracted it (as you can see in the thread) as a suggestion because I did not want to run the risk of stepping on any toes. Regardless, LRP things are against the rules no matter what.

 

I did not ahelp in round regarding the conduct of the "antagonists", because they were not antagonists in the sense of the word - this was an extended round. They were event volunteers with an antagonist role. I am making a complaint regarding the event, not the conduct of the "antagonists". This would not have happened without the involvement of the event runner(s).

Edited August 8, 2021 by DanseMacabre

[MccRrib]

Just now, DanseMacabre said:

I am also hoping this is treated as a player complaint in regards to the volunteers.

Unsure how much of this is relevant to the overall complaint, but, going to continue anyway for the sake of clearing the air and defending myself. Hello, I, for reference, played the Eridani suit of the 4 volunteers that round. I volunteered for the event after the round began, under the impression that I would be passing out animals to people, nothing more. When I spawned in, I was given the  instructions seen in the screenshots. Things seemed mismanaged from the get-go: lack of universal uniform, no IDs, no access to the windoors in our own ship, being given farm animals to offer megacorporate employees. In hindsight, I should have backed out then. Things went very bad very quickly, there is no denying that. However, I retain that throughout the round, I did my best to mitigate some of that aforementioned bad-ness as best I could while sticking to the provided instructions. During the mentioned firefight, and as can be seen in the screenshots provided, I did not attack anybody, I hid in the back of the shuttle, once the ERT arrived, I surrendered non-violently. It was a bad situation from the start that got a lot worse as time went on, however, I wouldn't say that it was made any worse by my involvement, or that my behavior warrants inclusion in this complaint.

[Kaizr]

3 minutes ago, MccRrib said:

It was a bad situation from the start that got a lot worse as time went on, however, I wouldn't say that it was made any worse by my involvement, or that my behavior warrants inclusion in this complaint.

You alongside the Baseline were for the most part innocent if the information that I've collected from those killed is correct, which evidence points towards that being the case.

[Arrow768]

I am only going to address a few more things here and then wait for Alberyk.
(Two parts because the forum doesnt like it in one part)

First of all. I do not have direct control over the actions the players take.
I can only indirectly influence the players by making recommendations or providing guidelines that they should follow.
If they follow these guidelines is up to the individual players.
Once they do not follow them, I can take action again.
Quite similar to how the rules enforcement works; (What that action is depends on what they did.)
In this case a player activated the turrets on the shuttle and the player has been dealt with as a result of that action.
I should also mention that everyone except the captain decided to try and fight out that situation instead of ahelping it as the gank that it was.
If security had not responded to the fight, informed the entire station of it and instead ahelped it, I could have rejuved the people involved and we could have "reverted" that situation.
When the entire station is aware of a fight and the fight has escalated to the degree it has,, a "rejuv and revert" is pretty much out of the question.
Therefore my only option left was to deal with the player who activated the turrets.
So much for the players activating a "killbox" on the shuttle.

In the future, if you think something is gank, ahelp immediately and dont inform the entire station of it. (That just limits the options)

 

Regarding the claims of OP gear.
Given my experience with the past events and antag-rounds it is pretty clear that antags require somewhat decent gear to deal with security once they come running with proper gear.
(Especially if its 4 antags vs 1 full security department)
If the antags are not geared properly security will steamroll them at the first escalation.
Given that a merc-team also has 4 people, I did not see an issue with allowing them access to the standard-gear of a merc team.
Again, these things rely on the players escalating properly.

[Arrow768]

Quote

Apparently, somewhere along the line, someone decided this round would be different.
Unfortunately I was busy and couldn't be present, but I ended up observing later.
What I saw was genuinely a baffling sight to see on an HRP server, masquerading as a (semi)-canon event round.
A group of event characters, mostly (if not all?) IPCs, equipped with sleepy-pens, went about penning and then ganking two members of security.
After they were killed, admin powers were used to force the players into the bodies of animals.
This is complaint-worthy enough - ganking is against the rules, and turning players into chickens with your admin powers is not, in my mind, an HRP-conducive event.

Given that each player was talked to for quite a while before being turned into one of these "pets", I do not see how it is gank given that there was roleplay involved.
In any case, this was not ahelped by the players in question.

I´ll leave the log-diving to alberyk, but I want to point out a few things:

• I have asked multiple times if there are any questions and advised them to ahelp or use aooc if there are any issues or questions.
• I specifically mentioned: "Your primary goal however is not to kill "everyone" you come across."
• I gave instructions that they should roleplay with the people before they knock them out and move them to the "back room".
• The players that have been "turned" have been offered to get TCB after 15min.
• I advised them to relocate the shuttle once a large amount of security arrives. (To avoid a firefight situation)

Quote

What really made me decide to write this complaint was what came after: noticing that security has gone missing, the captain and the rest of security boarded the ship for an inspection. Immediately, with no prior buildup, the turrets aboard the merc ship were activated and the blast doors locked behind the inspection team.

This has been dealt with in the round, so I do not see how it is relevant for the complaint.
Unless you are dissatisfied with the outcome of the ahelp someone else made, I again do not see how this is relevant for a staff complaint.

Quote

I did not ahelp in round regarding the conduct of the "antagonists", because they were not antagonists in the sense of the word - this was an extended round. They were event volunteers with an antagonist role. I am making a complaint regarding the event, not the conduct of the "antagonists". This would not have happened without the involvement of the event runner(s).

I am a bit confused about that response, because above you said that "what really made you [make]" the complaint was the shuttle gank and the "ganking" that occured when people were turned.
I want to re-iterate again that we do not have a accepted policy that limits the types of events that can be run.

 

[Alberyk]

Sorry for the delay. After reading this topic and checking logs, I reached the conclusion that the biggest issues here in this event, that were not handled in round, was the expectations about what the event was about. So, can't really do much when there is nothing set on events besides: do a vote before it. I will work on some guidelines to make sure that this kind of thing does not happens again. Likely by having admins explain how much violence and what is expected from events.

[Alberyk]

Sorry for the delay, here are the non-canon event guidelines to make sure we don't have these issues anymore:

Quote

1. Always make a vote on the round before asking if people want a non-canon event. The vote should preferably be done after the transfer/emergency shuttle left the station. Do not run a vote during the lobby before the game starts, this will break the gamemode vote.
2. Explain what the event is about, if it is going to be violent, and etc. It is not necessary to explain everything that is going to happen.
3. Always set the custom event text with the basic information about your event. This can be done by using the Change Custom Event verb.
4. Take into consideration the rules and atmosphere of the server. While some lighthearted shenanigans are fine, don't just run events that are just jokes or memes.
5. Take into consideration who you are picking to be a volunteer/event role. You should always check someone's notes before selecting them. While an admin might not be held accountable for something that an event character did, they can be responsible for ignoring someone's note and overall behavior.
6. t is recommended that admins mute ooc. However, this is not mandatory.
7. Don't run non-canon events consecutively. If someone ran an event today, wait some days to try to run another. No more than two events a weekend.
8. These guidelines do not apply to minor adminbus stuff in the round, like helping antags with gimmicks or doing a vote to add something else to the round. This kind of thing is mostly based on common sense and if they will improve the round somehow.
9. Always include a way for the crew to be able to deal with the opposing force, if such a force exists. It does not have to be brute force, but an intelligent way that you have hinted about throughout the round.

Feel free to post some feedback. I will leave the complaint open for a while.

Edited September 8, 2021 by Alberyk

[Kintsugi]

On 07/09/2021 at 23:59, Alberyk said:

Sorry for the delay, here are the non-canon event guidelines to make sure we don't have these issues anymore:

Feel free to post some feedback. I will leave the complaint open for a while.

Looks good to me.

[Alberyk]

This is solved then. Admins were made aware of the guidelines and I will see about adding them to the wiki or somewhere peopple can check.