Player Complaint - RacheI/Titus Boromand

[Zulu0009]

BYOND Key: Zulu0009
Game ID: clU-c7LB and clU-dzf2
Player Byond Key & Character Name: RacheI (with a capital i, I think), Titus Boromand
Staff Involved: N/A
Reason for complaint:

I'm sorry for opening this complaint because this feels more of a misplacement issue than anything, but I was told by Peppermint to open this. Today (17th January) I made an IPC psychologist, a character I've been planning for about a week now, and during the first round (first ID) Titus Boromand, who usually joins as psych, decided to switch to Chaplain to let me play. The problem is that during the round, the player commented this in OOC:

I didn't think much of it, but it felt a little bad. They cryo'd shortly after and I continued with my round. The round later, I queued as psychologist again, and they did too. At that time, though, they commented the following in OOC, plus another comment I wasn't able to screenshot:

This is the first issue: it feels a lot like the player is trying to guilt trip me into not playing psychologist? I don't know, it didn't feel great to see the first message while trying to play. The second issue is that Titus Boromand doesn't seem like a psychologist at all. In the past few days, I am quite sure I heard them express that they didn't know the difference between a psychiatrist and a psychologist. In addition, I don't think they do much related to psychology, and instead host barbecues outside their office.

I mean no offense to this player, but I just think maybe their character should be employed as something else, like Chaplain, which has the Counselor alt title. Given that psychiatrist is a single role slot, one of very few on the ship, seeing them take the role after those messages and then do activities that anyone could do even as off-duty feels a little hypocritical. I did not want to open this player complaint, but as aforementioned, I've seen this pattern of them not playing very much like a psychologist over the past few days as I prepared my character, and truthfully I wasn't sure how it would go when I eventually queued to play it.

Note: the second round ID listed is ongoing as of the moment of writing this, but I omitted any IC information that could affect the round, and the complaint is primarily an OOC issue.

Did you attempt to adminhelp the issue at the time? If so, what was the known action taken by administration/moderation? Yes, I was told by Peppermint to open a player complaint.
Approximate Date/Time: 17/01/2023, between maybe 10 and 12 pm GMT+1

Edited January 16, 2023 by Zulu0009

[Zulu0009]

As an update, the player seems to have stopped playing as much since I started queuing as psychologist, which is something I had hoped to avoid. I did not want them to stop playing, but I had hoped that we could have come to a solution so they could continue playing. I hope a staff member can come into contact with them so that we can talk about this? I didn't mean to just bully them off the game, I just wanted to find a solution that everyone could like. I apologize if the player is reading this and hope they continue playing.

[Girdio]

I spoke to other players privately following this listed incident, to try and see if they felt the reaction others had during this time could have been seen as off-putting. Personally I was aware that there was a lot of discussion about new psych characters at the time, and I OOCly showed excitement towards creating my own psych character. I reached out to the player in question who plays Titus over Discord to try and gauge their feelings, to try and see if they were doing okay, so I'm hoping that they don't leave the server over this. 

I, like Zulu, haven't wanted to make a complaint against Titus. I've watched their character, and decided against really saying anything against them. Personally, I feel like silly(ish) characters have their space on HRP servers to an extent. If someone is doing no harm, and is just playing someone silly within reason? That's totally okay, because not everyone roleplays exactly the same. I don't expect every character to be ultra serious, and I feel like it would get dreary if it was.

I want to focus mainly on Zulu's second listed point, that of Titus not being a psychologist. 

Firstly, I don't want to pretend that you have to have certain experience when playing different roles. It's silly to assume that a doctor character is run by a doctor IRL. That said, from what I've seen, Titus rarely does much besides get up to shenanigans at the bar, or talk about grilling. This is totally okay! I just don't feel like it's okay for someone who is supposed to be working in the field of mental health to be like this. It doesn't seem like something that should be expected of a therapist. 

In the few cases I've watched Titus attempt a therapy session, it doesn't really seem...proper? It feels as if Titus will get bored halfway through the session, deem the time is up (even if the other character is in the middle of talking about something), and walk out of her office to go somewhere. It feels like the therapy aspect is boring to Rachel as a player, and it makes it uninviting to really engage with their character, besides snickering at their antics. 

I would love to engage with more therapist characters, since Veronica has IC reasons to speak with them. But, when the only character who is coming on a lot seems like she wouldn't take any problems seriously, then both ICly and OOCly, there's not really any interest in going to their office. 

I'd like to clarify that personally, I have no problems with Titus as a character, but I don't think the role of therapist is right for the character, at least the way she's currently presented. Rachel made a statement in OOC, stating that they couldn't see Titus as any other role. To that, I would like to ask: why? 

Not to be accusatory, but what about Titus in particular makes her as a character only a therapist? As Zulu points out, I feel like they could be employed as a Counselor or something similar. 

Moving onto the first point, I'm not sure if Rachel was in particular trying to shame people into not playing psych, but more so venting their frustration about their character seemingly going underappreciated. I totally understand this, since obviously everyone in a HRP environment is attached to their character in some form or fashion. I get them being upset, but as mentioned this is a single-role slot. It's undeniable that in roles like this, that a psych character who isn't Titus would pop up anyways, blocking Rachel out from playing. 

You shouldn't feel required to play every single round, and single-slot roles are in particular fickle in the fact that if someone else wants to play, one of you will be losing out on the round. I think this mentality has to be accepted if you want to play any role that only has only slot (and, to be fair, I think besides heads this is only the Psych, Chaplain, Librarian, Reporter, and maybe Gardener?). Talking about quitting a character because someone took your slot for one round (or even multiple rounds) isn't a good look, to be honest. You should instead be happy that people are getting to play characters of their own.

I don't think any single-role slot being filled by a character that isn't the "regular character" is a bad thing, at all. It gives these roles more breath and more diversity than just seeing the same character constantly. So, I feel that while I understand Rachel's feelings of possibly having their character sidelined, I think it's also a good opportunity to open oneself up to other characters as well, so that they don't feel like they're losing out on a round by not playing Titus. 

TL;DR: Titus herself is okay as a character, but I don't think she fits in the role of psych. Unless the character gets changed up in the way she acts (which might seem kinda odd as a player running her), she may be better suited to a different role.

Edited January 18, 2023 by Girdio

[Zulu0009]

@Girdio thank you so much for expressing what I intended to say in a way more constructive and well-put way. I apologize if the original post came off a bit harsher than I would have liked, but I'd encourage readers to refer to what was just said for a comprehensive explanation of what I meant. I have nothing to add since Girdio explained everything so thoroughly, aside from apologizing to RacheI if I treated them harshly or poorly. There is plenty of space on the Horizon for them and their characters and I hope they won't quit playing due to this.

[Peppermint]

Reminder to only post if you have something actionable. Logs, screenshots, round IDs, ect. The point is to see if someone broke any rules, not how individual's feel about them per say.

[Flpfs]

I don't have any specific round ID, but the character in question has jobhopped from Psychologist to Psychiatrist several times, back and forth, which involves a very different set of qualifications.

[Zulu0009]

1 hour ago, Flpfs said:

I don't have any specific round ID, but the character in question has jobhopped from Psychologist to Psychiatrist several times, back and forth, which involves a very different set of qualifications.

To add to this, they have also joined as Chaplain and Medical Intern in two different occasions. I don't have the round IDs either, but it was between the 17th and the 18th.

[Scheveningen]

Not sure what round ID this is from, and I can't get the round ID for one of the rounds I played last night (the 19th, thereabout), but I'm fairly certain it was a changeling round where I played my RD for the following instances below:
 

Quote

[Common] Titus Boromand says, "Dropping off my buisness cards."
 [Common] Titus Boromand says, "Would apprechiate a peek at best."

I'll point out some obvious problems that give me a little grief;

1. The player's grasp on the English language, their grammar, and their spelling is so questionable that it really hurts immersion. It's difficult to take interacting with their character seriously when it feels like I am dealing with grade school level writing. This is not really a common issue in this community, even with the amount of English as Second Language speakers that exist in the community, as the rest of those here make a very avid attempt to be fluent. Generally speaking, as a result of Aurora, they tend to be better English speakers/writers over time. I haven't seen much improvement from this person since they've been here for several weeks.
2. The strange overlap between IC and OOC information in a business card is just absurd, for the most part. The content of the business card also kind of rambles and hints at rather disorganized thoughts, which doesn't make sense for a psychologist in their 40s.
3. While the very first image I posted showing a quote from this character was extremely funny, in seriousness it seems like the person doesn't have an IC or OOC understanding of what a culture is. You don't just convert to being French because you like baguettes, art, poetry and losing wars. It also doesn't make sense for characters to not at least be marginally politically aware of what's going on in the setting, especially not for an older character who at least ought to be informed even if they believe in incredibly bad opinions. I'm sure Biesellite citizens get an onslaught of media coverage of how wacky it is to live in the Empire, right?

[Girdio]

1 hour ago, Scheveningen said:

3. While the very first image I posted showing a quote from this character was extremely funny, in seriousness it seems like the person doesn't have an IC or OOC understanding of what a culture is. You don't just convert to being French because you like baguettes, art, poetry and losing wars. It also doesn't make sense for characters to not at least be marginally politically aware of what's going on in the setting, especially not for an older character who at least ought to be informed even if they believe in incredibly bad opinions. I'm sure Biesellite citizens get an onslaught of media coverage of how wacky it is to live in the Empire, right?

I'm in both agreement, and disagreement with this point. On one hand, I asked the character ICly where they were from (again, I don't have a round ID here, simply using it as an example and not a dig at the character/player), due to their accent "sounding familiar", only to get told that they didn't know where they were from. This was of course amusing just due to the idea of someone having no idea where they were from in real life, but it also painted a pretty solid picture of the player not knowing much about the lore, which is understandable.

But I don't know if that's a point against the player. The lore is hefty, and it's something that's hard to go through, especially for people new to SS13 (which I believe they are, going from other statement regarding SS13 itself). It (your screenshots) feels like a situation in which the player was genuinely trying to interact with the lore and universe of Aurora, but didn't have the best understanding and worked with what they could. 

To go off this, 

On 18/01/2023 at 16:46, Peppermint said:

Reminder to only post if you have something actionable. Logs, screenshots, round IDs, ect. The point is to see if someone broke any rules, not how individual's feel about them per say.

I completely understand, and don't want to appear to be simply trashing a certain character or a player. At the same time, due to the circumstances it's kinda hard to pin down particular rounds it's moreso a persistent character element. I think, personally the issue is that Titus just doesn't come off as a believable character.

On a positive note though and at the risk of going off topic, I've seen other people on the Discord speak to Rachel about Titus, and ways to possibly improve and it does seem like they've tried to take some of these elements to heart, so they're not actively trying to just goof off. I could be wrong, but it feels as if the player could be new to roleplay in general. I don't think the player would be adverse to constructive criticism.

[Scheveningen]

Round with the dominia stuff cited: clX-cOru

The changeling round with the business card thing: clX-dezJ

[Garnascus]

It is really difficult for me to figure out the specific issues in this complaint. I see some logs posted of the player being mildly passive aggressive in OOC and a couple strange things in their bio. All of these things could be handled with a very simple ahelp. I also see lots of opinions being posted with zero evidence backing them up which amounts to very little in the realm of actionable information. Do we have issues with their OOC conduct and their IC conduct then?

[Zulu0009]

2 hours ago, Garnascus said:

It is really difficult for me to figure out the specific issues in this complaint. I see some logs posted of the player being mildly passive aggressive in OOC and a couple strange things in their bio. All of these things could be handled with a very simple ahelp. I also see lots of opinions being posted with zero evidence backing them up which amounts to very little in the realm of actionable information. Do we have issues with their OOC conduct and their IC conduct then?

I did ahelp, as I stated in the original post, but was told to make a complaint here. I think we all agree that we have some issues with the player, as highlighted by the various posts made by other people. The problem is that the issues we noted are not that substantial but consistent, meaning that maybe one small thing happens every round so we can't get any cohesive evidence written down, which results in said opinions with zero evidence. I also think that we all collectively don't really want the player punished, since they don't seem to be doing the things we noted out of malice, but maybe it would be productive to have a staff member reach out to them and help them with understanding their character and how they should generally play?

[Peppermint]

I would like to specify I told you to make a complaint after you ahelped something that had happened in a different round, and your opening message was something about making said complaint. Pretty much everything here would have bee solved should you have ahelped it in the round as you saw it. 

I would also like to say that the tone here from a lot of people is incredibly patronising. The person has not defended themselves yet, so players discussing amongst themselves how they personally feel about another character and whether or not they are acceptable is not helpful. Please just stick to the facts in regards to what rules have been broken. Thank you.

Edited January 21, 2023 by Peppermint

[Scheveningen]

22 hours ago, Garnascus said:

It is really difficult for me to figure out the specific issues in this complaint. I see some logs posted of the player being mildly passive aggressive in OOC and a couple strange things in their bio. All of these things could be handled with a very simple ahelp. I also see lots of opinions being posted with zero evidence backing them up which amounts to very little in the realm of actionable information. Do we have issues with their OOC conduct and their IC conduct then?

I honestly don't see an issue with their OOC comments on-server, I think it's pretty fair to be a bit dismayed regarding what they commented on because it obviously sucks to be in that situation. But as I've posted, I think they need to work on putting more effort to showing English fluency (it's in the rules), having better lore comprehension (critically important to making a character and interacting with your immediate surroundings and counterparts), and avoiding using Out of Game/Character indicators when using the in-game formats whenever possible. I think it's a fair mention to not want to see someone's Discord handle in-character, or any OOC bracketing on a business card either. 

I do not endorse or condone any other statements besides my own in this thread. I do not support any alleged patronizing statements and do not "feel" one way or another about the individual OOCly, but rules-as-written, there are indeed a minor assortment of issues with the player's roleplay that could easily be addressed with some coaching.

[Zulu0009]

50 minutes ago, Peppermint said:

I would like to specify I told you to make a complaint after you ahelped something that had happened in a different round, and your opening message was something about making said complaint. Pretty much everything here would have bee solved should you have ahelped it in the round as you saw it. 

I would also like to say that the tone here from a lot of people is incredibly patronising. The person has not defended themselves yet, so players discussing amongst themselves how they personally feel about another character and whether or not they are acceptable is not helpful. Please just stick to the facts in regards to what rules have been broken. Thank you.

As I already said, the issues I noticed with the character did not happen in one specific round; there was one instance that happened in the round before the one in which I ahelped, but I did not feel it was worth ahelping. It was the round during which the player stated that they were sad that someone else was playing a psych, which made me a bit uncomfortable so I ignored it and kept playing. I ahelped the following round, it's in the original post.

I've said it multiple times and I'll say it again, but I do not intend to be patronizing or mean. I also don't know how I could alert the player that a complaint was made regarding them, and assumed a staff member would do so. Regarding the rules broken, I could point to several rules that the player broke, but I don't have much evidence, since, as already stated, all of those instances of rule-breaking behavior were not substantial enough to note in every round they occurred in. Is there a way to tell the player that there is a complaint and that we would like their input?

[Fluffy]

I would like to add my .2c

 

In the round at/before cl1-axIj, Titus Boromand (Psychologist), proceeded in the ~1h I played to:

 

• Give us, or at least me, but I suspect the other player too (Both surgeon), instructions on how to do surgeries or treat patients, even after having remind him that he is (playing a) Psychologist, and that I/we am/are (playing) Surgeons, thus that (our characters) are qualified on the field more than him (his character)
• Treat patients, by giving injections of medications, I do not know which medications for sure, but they were administered via an Hypospray
• Read scans and diagnosing patients
• Dismiss patients

 

I do not have everything, as I forgot to save the chat until the round was over, but I have acquired this during the round, if it's of any help, otherwise the logs should show a greater picture:

 

I would like to note that, considering the round type and events, it's indeed perfectly possible that the CMO somehow assigned him (his character) to perform such duties and his (character) backstory can give a plausible explanation on how he (his character) knows how to practice medicine, but it would be bizzarre to have even one of said two things, and even more for both to align, at least in my opinion.

 

I hope this can help sort out the issue that other players highlighted, in a constructive way if possible.

[RacheI]

With response to zulu, as titus i’d like to apologize for my behaviour, and i’d speak about the issue aswell. My side of the story is that the stuff i said on the chaplain round were complete jealousy on my end for a more advanced job, i know titus does not fit the role at all but i was worried about job hopping because i love the medical wing, my buisness cards are always being updated and the ICU one is still extremely low quality, i know my behaviour on the server is erratic and another word that is out of my range, and i’d like to apologize to my best extent. I have started on 2022 and am still trying to merge myself within the lore peacefully. I will again do whatever is necessary to fix this problem.

[Garnascus]

6 hours ago, RacheI said:

With response to zulu, as titus i’d like to apologize for my behaviour, and i’d speak about the issue aswell. My side of the story is that the stuff i said on the chaplain round were complete jealousy on my end for a more advanced job, i know titus does not fit the role at all but i was worried about job hopping because i love the medical wing, my buisness cards are always being updated and the ICU one is still extremely low quality, i know my behaviour on the server is erratic and another word that is out of my range, and i’d like to apologize to my best extent. I have started on 2022 and am still trying to merge myself within the lore peacefully. I will again do whatever is necessary to fix this problem.

Ehh, not really a big deal all things considered. All of the things posted in this thread are very minor issues. Try to ahelp and ask for help on lore stuff before you add them to your backstory and its probably a good idea to remove the OOC messages in them.