Staff Complaint - abigbear

[Donaldo_TH]

BYOND Key: Donaldo_TH
Staff BYOND key: abigbear / a_big_bear (?)
Game ID: cr5-dqCe
Reason for complaint: I completely disagree with this persons judgement
Evidence/logs/etc: Our half an hour long argument:

Spoiler

Additional remarks:

I didn't really want to make this post, since I don't want to take other peoples time for no good reason and considering this person is a CCIA leader, I do not expect to get anything out of this complain. Why am I still making it then? I've slept it off, thought a bit about it and decided that I'm still pretty upset about this situation, so here I am. And also, sorry if this post will be long, I don't want to do that and I hope I won't.

I'll also provide some context so that people would not necessarily have to go trough our half an hour long debate to figure out what I'm compaining about and what's my point:

• I've made an unbelievable announcement as SCC thanks to a traitor tool I am provided with. It WAS intended to be as unbeliavable as possible and was intended to cause anxiety among the crew It went something like this:
  Spoiler

  ATTENTION! ATTENTION! ATTENTION!
  
  We have confirmed reports that <blah blah blah> the Federation has been working on restoring the Glorsh <blah blah blah>, please eliminate all Skrell and Zeng-Hu crew members because the may posses an implant, completely changing their behaviour <blah blah blah>

• Moments later, I was messaged by a CCIA leader. The debate took me half an hour and here I'll take a look at their arguments and will provide a counter-argument for them
  Spoiler

  Format: Argument(A), Counterargument(C)
  
  A: "Your job as an antag is to create social interaction, tension and action. A 'fake' announcement you create does not do that."
  C: No, it does. I've heared people still discussing the announcement half an hour after I've made it, which is pretty long. The journalist was provoking the crew, everyone was discussing whether it's real or not. Exactly what I was aiming for.
  
  A: "You are expected to create a certain level of tension and use your other tools, not just the announcement"
  C: No, I am not. This is not stated anywhere. I can use any tools I want. And there are no rules for "passive" antaging.
  
  A: "You have stated that skrell and Zeng-hu personall are to be terminated which is a mass-grief and completely out-of-character for SCC"
  C: No one got hurt from this announcement. There were no skrells and only one Zeng-Hu employee who had to argue with other command members about this, which created social interaction. And as I've already mentioned, this whole thing IS intended to feel fake and out-of-character for SCC to create conflict and interactions between the crew.

• The ticket was ultimately closed and I was prohibited from continuing my gimmick. I wasn't given time to response and it almost felt like the person I was talking to just didn't manage to come up with what to say to me, but whatever, I'm sure it's not the case.

Either way, I am sure that this post is already quiet long as it is. All necessary information can be found in the logs and I've provided you with a round ID, so you can easily access them. Don't expect this to get anywhere, but I wanted to show my discontent.

[ReadThisNamePlz]

Hello, @Owen and I will be handling this complaint. 

It is important to note that Bear in this case is a trial moderator. His position as CCIA Leader has nothing to do with his moderation/moderator presence as a whole. 

[Bear]

Hi there,

I stand by my decision by the utilization of an announcement tool to order command to kill a skrell and zeng-hu employees was not acceptable antagonist play. This kind of gimmick is both LRP and falls under improper escalation. Even if your intent was for it to be obviously fake, it still has to follow these guidelines. The rules may not comprehensively cover every single scenario, they are kept brief with the spirit of the gameplay in mind.

From the rules:

Quote

Only resort to killing if it makes sense or drives a story. Randomly killing someone because you’re a traitor will get you removed right quick. This also means that murder for the sake of murder is punishable. However, in certain situations, murder can serve as a tool, if none other applicable. If you’re uncertain, ask for guidance via adminhelps.

From the discord announcements per Readthisname:

 

Quote

This is a reminder to all command WL holders. Announcements that come from Central Command/A sector post or whatever are to be taken as FACT and should not be questioned. 
If the announcement is too outlandish, open a ticket and we will go from there

 

Quote

If the announcement is something like "John Doe is no longer the Captain, but Shelly Cook is!"? Then ahelp it because it should not be used like this. Announcements are tools used to kick start/drive a gimmick. 

Announcements need to follow general escalation guidelines. Locking people in the brig for two hours is not good, however an announcement ordering the investigation of a group to kick start a gimmick is tolerable.

I'm sorry the interaction over our last few tickets have not gone as you hoped. I did explain in the first three minutes of the ticket that gimmicks need to be believable, drive a story, and follow proper escalation, and then again within the first 12. I left the ticket open to provide a line of dialogue if you had more questions or needed clarification on the rules in good faith.

[Donaldo_TH]

Hello. As I've stated multiple times, ahelp included, the purpose of my gimmick was never about killing people. The quote you have provided about announcements from CC is not even related to the case. It does not restrict traitors from outlandish orders, but rather provides instructions for Command players on how to act if they think the order is outlandish. The purpose of my gimmick was to create arguments between the crew members who thought the orders were legitimate and people who thought otherwise. Additionaly, it was intended to seed panic among people and give them more themes to discuss because the return of an AI that is basically this universes equivalent of SkyNet is, indeed, pretty scary. Further announcements were intended to amplify that, but the gimmick was halted by your request very early on and ultimately, I was told to "choose a different gimmick" an hour and a half into the round as an antag.

[Bear]

22 hours ago, Bear said:

Even if your intent was for it to be obviously fake, it still has to follow these guidelines. 

I understand that, however, it doesn't absolve the need of the announcements to conform to the expectations of standards for antagonist play and the rules.

That is all the input I have for now, until the complaint is addressed.

Edited February 7, 2024 by Bear

[Owen]

Right, apologies for the delay. @ReadThisNamePlz and I have discussed this complaint at length and ultimately have found that @Bear acted entirely reasonably in this instance. There were no actual punishments given out, you were not given a warning, you were not given a ban, etc… You were informed, very politely, that this is not something that we want to see done here. In fact, Bear seems to have gone above and beyond here by keeping the ticket open and trying to answer your questions/give you explanations of why you were being told this, which he had no obligation to do after you started being rude. 

The bits that Bear cited in his most recent post here are entirely correct, and you should be attempting to maintain a reasonable/believable gimmick. Seeing something like “kill all of X, burn all Y,” etc. is low-effort, even if you are approaching it from a different angle. I will reiterate that you have received zero punishment here and there is nothing to even be reversed.

However, to get ahead of a pattern that we are noticing developing here--it is strongly encouraged that you take a long look at how you approach your interactions here with other players. There is no need to be combative and rude, especially to someone when they are being entirely polite to you. We aren’t going to take any action here, but a serious attitude check and self-reflection are needed. No one is out to ruin your time here or make things unenjoyable for you specifically. 

We will be locking and archiving this within the next day or so.