Aurora and the Canonicity Boogeyman

[Susan]

Aurora, as it stands, does not value the time or investment of its players.

That is the statement I am going to preface this entire diatribe with; this conversation has happened multiple times in Discord and on the forums in some capacity - the most recent example in the memorial threat - but has never really been contained in its own topic. Thus it is perhaps we discuss this topic in proper fashion, and it is why I make this topic now, because I desire to affect a change in administrative policy and lore staff.

To those who are unaware or unsure of what I mean, let me specify by saying that current lore policy is that staff should not name or recognize player characters in canon events. There will be no names in articles, no mention of awards, no accolades, nothing to signify the character’s involvement in anything that has happened, to instead be replaced by vague and non-descript mentions of ‘corporate employees’ or the vessel as a whole.

I believe this policy is a net negative, and personally, the longer and more recently I have thought about it, I have found it to be somewhat offensive and perturbing.

Let me begin by saying that I am aware of how the optics of this topic’s subject appears; it’s no secret I’ve been on Aurora for an extended period of time, dating all the way back to when the server first took its steps in 2015. I have played the same character for pretty much the entire server’s lifespan and have been directly involved in many canon arcs, and have directly participated in and altered some of them. I have always been wary of voicing my concerns about this because it would not be a stretch to assume the worst of me and believe I wish to inflate my own importance or become the ‘protagonist’ of the server.

This is not the case.

Conversely, I believe this gives me a unique perspective on this issue. I have personally participated in many canon events that were exceedingly and frighteningly lethal, with body counts up in the double digits - the Bad Moon Arc, the Bayonet Hand Arc, and others, to name a few. I have risked my character multiple times to canon death and been attacked by event characters, and in some cases, other player characters. But every single thing that I participated in may as well have never happened - swept under the rug. There is no acknowledgment of what I did, or the other players who helped me, anywhere.

‘A private investigator’, ‘NanoTrasen corporate security’, ‘NanoTrasen crew’.

It is demotivating. It is disappointing. Aurora is afraid of canonicity.

We meme about people dying on events, both in deadchat as it happens and in the chat channel - we want blood, we want bodies, we gloat when people’s characters are ended. Characters that have had energy and effort put into them, a significant investment on part of their player. We grin with glee when Incident Reports come to permakill characters by way of termination or borging, such as the September Mutiny during the Elyran incident. We love watching negative consequences, and negative things happen, and people die and lose characters.

But we hate it when anything positive is acknowledged. So what is it, then, that people are getting in return for having an overzealous event volunteer potentially decapitate them and die, permanently? No acknowledgement from any part of the world. The Horizon may as well be in a time bubble, because nothing the crew do on it matters to anyone else beyond people being fired or dying. And I will admit, selfish as it may be, when the initial mystery of the Silicon Nightmares arc gave way to nothing, and it revealed itself to be more of a combat-centric event, I was not interested in involving myself on Ana, because I came to a very disappointing, sobering conclusion:

If I died, it would be like I never mattered.

I don’t consider my character more important than anyone else’s. I have been here for awhile. I have done a lot. I have contributed to this server, both IC and OOc - spent my personal time and energy in sprites and code and working with other players in arcs and generally sticking to playing a character over the course of a decade. And I suddenly realized that if I did get my head lopped off by an IPC, none of that would matter. It wouldn’t matter to the narrative, to the corporation, to any of the contributions I’ve made to events and the crises I have helped mitigate IC - everything I have ever done on this character would amount to a wet fart and it would fade into nothingness, and that is one of the most disheartening, demotivating, and borderline offensive consequences of staff opinion of player canonicity. I only want the respect a player should get.

It’s no secret Aurora has a significant problem with repeated character turnover. Characters are shoved into the meat grinder and milled repeatedly, with names disappearing after a few shifts, never to be seen again. And I think part of this is Aurora’s allergy to canonicity. Why should I invest in a character? Why should I bother to sink time and energy into playing a mainstay like Ana and risk myself in canon events and potentially see my character permanently killed or fired when the staff will simply pretend like my actions did not matter and I did not exist and it was the collective action of a nameless group of NPC corporate employees?

Any other roleplaying game - every single one I have ever played save Aurora - have had ways to incentivize character staying power. EXP to invest in stats, unique weapons or armor, ways to solidify yourself in the narrative; as an example, a MUD I played had a magical plague sweep through the city and I and some other players delved into treacherous, ancient magical ruins as a bunch of normie non-mages; they helped fight off monsters while my character broke the artifact causing the plague, cursing herself in the process. Me and the leader of the Knights who helped organize the expedition received a letter of recognition from the King and everyone was immortalized in a plaque in a public room that will always be there, long after the characters die.

But Aurora has no interest in any kind of canonicity like this. The Horizon exists as an amorphous blob, a non-corporeal entity. The actions of its crew do not really matter, because they are always written off to be nobody in particular. And the more I really think about it, the more I find that to be really disrespectful of the time and energy people involve in canon arcs and their characters in general. 

There are not legions of player characters lining up to suicide or kill people to get their name in the articles - it is not 2016 anymore. AIMMO is not around, and there is nobody like him on the server. Recognizing the accomplishments of players is not going to turn them into the ‘protagonist’ of the server, or turn off new people. We have gotten to the point where not only are we discouraging people from investing in their characters by refusing to acknowledge them, but we are actively attacking people sharing stories from previous arcs because they ‘are not relevant’ and ‘nobody cares’.

We may as well not exist outside of the 2 hour round mechanism at that point. In six months when we’re in another quadrant of the galaxy, are we going to respond with the same hostility when people want to talk about Konyang? That it’s ‘not relevant’ anymore and that ‘nobody cares’? This policy against player acknowledgment is inherently disrespectful to the time and energy that people put into this collaborative narrative experience - because that is what this is. A collaborative narrative experience, like tabletop, and I don’t know about you, but if my DM refused to give me any EXP, gold, skills, items, or even a way to impact the world - if we walked into a tavern and the NPCs were talking about how ‘the adventurers guild saved so and so’ instead of us by name, I wouldn’t want to stay in that campaign for long.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

 

tl;dr I think @DanseMacabre said it best in the memorial thread:

  

On 27/03/2024 at 06:19, DanseMacabre said:

I like this idea but I feel that the responses are proof enough that it's just one of those things that people are too skeptical of to completely accept, even if in practice I think the concerns being raised are extremely unlikely to ever come to pass. There are certain ideas on HRP servers that people seemingly can never stomach: canonicity where characters exist beyond just existing is one of them. The fact of the matter is that despite Aurora placing such a focus on canonicity, people are deeply concerned with the idea of characters ever being recognized in any way, and more than that people really do not like it if characters are given any form of treatment that isn't negative or the exact same form of attention being given to every other character.

 

How often do you see people bragging about IC accomplishments of their characters in OOC, or even IC for that matter? How often do you actually see people bragging about how their characters died in events? Because to be frank, most people I see who lose characters in events are upset or completely happy to move on. Player and especially character turnover on Aurora is huge: characters simply do not last more than a few months typically, which means that there's very few people developing a strong enough attachment to their character in the first place to treat them as this OOC achievement to be paraded around. And here's the fact of the matter: if this seems exclusionary and intimidating to new players, the whole server will seem that way. If people are being turned off of Aurora because there's a rock somewhere with some names on it because of event arcs, they're going to be turned off by the fact there's hundreds of thousands of words on the wiki that they have to read to know about these arcs and the lore as a whole and that we have these event arcs constantly. Is the expectation that we're going to hide Aurora's past arcs and things from new players in order to not scare them off? Because if that's what we have to resort to, we have a serious problem, lol. I'd actually like to make the argument that showing a new player that their character *could* matter and that things that happen to their character *could* matter would be a huge draw for people.

Anyway, it might seem like I'm trying to target a specific argument or someone's specific arguments, but at the end of the day I've been seeing this same sort of apprehension for as long as I've been playing HRP (It was so strong on Bay that they avoided canonicity completely in general for many many years). I think this is just how a lot of people naturally feel about this sort of thing, and too many people feel this way for it to ever be accepted on the server.

 

Let me close with this:
Not many people seem to remember this, but the Aurora had IC memorials to dead crew as a result of the serial killer arc. It included their names and how they were murdered by a serial killer. There were multiple memorials around the station. Do you know how often these memorials existing caused problems?

Well, I can't be sure they didn't cause issues at any point as I only started playing here in 2019, but I can say that I never saw anything, and I haven't heard of anything happening either.

And last Christmas we had an event where some characters were ICly given medals and high honors from the SCC, because of their actions during the Dreary Futures 2 finale event. This is supposedly the exact sort of situation everyone is worried about - characters getting recognized above other characters for their actions. And yet? I don't even think any of those characters still exist, a bit more than a year later, and when they did exist I sure never saw any problematic behavior like people worry about, IC or OOC.

 

[SilverSZ]

I can't really say much other than I agree. 

I've played lots of RP games in my time, and I've always found the ones that give their players the ability to impact the world, to become memorable (with appropriate risk) and a focus on that canonicity to be the best and as much as I love Aurora deeply, it's something I find lacking.

I'm glad this post was made, and I hope it gives people something to talk about.

[Girdio]

6 minutes ago, Susan said:

? No acknowledgement from any part of the world. The Horizon may as well be in a time bubble, because nothing the crew do on it matters to anyone else beyond people being fired or dying.

 

6 minutes ago, Susan said:

The actions of its crew do not really matter, because they are always written off to be nobody in particular.

I think these parts really hone in on what I've thought about recently.

Maybe I'm missing the mark here, but the fact that we have such intense, Spur defining actions on the one hand, and then fuck all happens with that after makes it kinda feel like "what's the point?"

These things happen in the moment, they're cool in the moment - and then it feels like it never mattered.

[CourierBravo]

Big agree with this. 
what comes to mind for me is how much work NM has put into The Dawn Program, and it has no canonical impact. 
 

I think players would deeply enjoy the ability to effect this world in a real, tangible way. Deaths getting mentioned in articles, heroic acts memorialized, past arcs feeding into new ones in any capacity. To this day, i have no idea what the effect and impact of the adhomai expeditions was, outside of the stories from a handful of characters. The only tangible proof i have that it even happened is sprites in the code and a map in the captains office. It doesn’t have to be itemized or something. Everyone getting mentioned. But some level of recognition would be nice. 

[Valentine]

I will preface by saying I am on the opposite end of the time spectrum from Susan: I joined this forum approximately a year ago, played a little last summer, and returned around November. I wouldn't even say I've been playing here for a year. But what Susan says is something I've thought about quite a bit in the few months I've been here. I've avoided high-intensity events for a few reasons, one is relevant here: If my character got killed (issues with limb metas, etc, etc, aside) it would be a meaningless story point and leave me feeling worse off because it wouldn't have any meaningful narrative impact. and if one can't have a narrative impact in a roleplaying game, why play? Like tabletop games that you've mentioned, player death is very possible. But in those instances, it has a narrative resolution. It's not nothing.

I understand that Aurora tends to have a pretty bleak tone: a lot of 'crapsack world' storytelling, corruption, injustice, etcetera. But I feel that same tone extends to how canonicity for players is treated. As Susan put it, it's like the player characters don't matter when it should be a cooperative narrative and they ought to matter a lot. 

I could see the biggest gripe someone has with what this topic proposes is that it would encourage or create 'narrative protagonist' player characters. But, I have to refute that. There are numerous narratives where a character has impacted the story but isn't the story. As a Heavy Roleplay Server, we should expect our roleplayers not to be fishing for the "I'm the hero" narratives as a given. I like Aurora a lot. It provides a roleplaying outlet you can't find on other SS13 servers, but I agree with this topic.

Edited April 3 by Valentine

[Tex-Mex]

25 minutes ago, Susan said:

if we walked into a tavern and the NPCs were talking about how ‘the adventurers guild saved so and so’ instead of us by name, I wouldn’t want to stay in that campaign for long.

I feel like this hits the nail on the head. The lack of recognition is the staff playing the corporation as soulless and viewing the employees, us, as replaceable cogs, not worthy of more than a "congratulations", which fits the universe but leads to where we are now.

[rrrrrr]

23 minutes ago, Susan said:

We have gotten to the point where not only are we discouraging people from investing in their characters by refusing to acknowledge them, but we are actively attacking people sharing stories from previous arcs because they ‘are not relevant’ and ‘nobody cares’.

Adding onto this specifically as someone who took a fairly long (5~ year) break from the server and have been "playing" for roughly as long as Sue: one major reason I kept playing was hearing about cool stuff that's happened in previous arcs. Not on Discord, but in the actual game, from other players. This was a major sign that Aurora was at least passingly similar to the MUD genre and that there were actual consequences to in-game actions. Around the time I quit playing, the most major event to have happened was sort of bare bones and had relatively little effect on the game's setting. I think it was the 2nd Antag Contest.

To yet again compare Aurora to MUDs: the best part about any MUD, or at least any good MUD, is understanding that you're in a world that's been around for a while. One specific game I played had a collection of in-game libraries with books written by other player characters. Some of these went back, going by the in-game dates listed, to the late 1990s. It was extremely gratifying to read in-universe texts that dated back several decades both in the game itself and in the real world. After a while, trawling through several libraries across several in-game churches and monasteries, I began to pick up on certain names and start to get a "feel" for who these characters were, what their interests were, and even drama going on between them --- in a random desk in a monastery, me and a friend found a (long since dead) priest's personal letters. It was a ton of fun to read. Differences in gameplay mean that that kind of thing can't really be recreated in Aurora, obviously, but  that kind of long-term canonicity is great. Any long-term canonicity is. Piecing together what went down on Adhomai both from the articles and what other player characters told mine was a lot of fun. Going from 'wait, thirty people died?' to understanding how they died and what they died for was, again, a lot of fun!

Oh, by the way, no downsides. Even the 'some people will view themselves as protagonists' critique doesn't hold up all that well; so? If someone starts thinking of themselves as the protagonist of a collaborative roleplaying game, they're, uh, an asshole. People would view them as an asshole. Have some trust in people, anyways.

[Rabid Animal]

I'm not sure how I feel about canonicity in the way you've presented. I think it would be cool to look back and see names and such associated with certain events, see who died, who had a huge impact, etc. But on the other hand it is somewhat alienating. 

 

I don't play cannon events, I think they're a good way to get killed and I'm too much of a salty mofo to experience enjoyment out of that. If I die I want it to be on my own terms; when I'm ready for the narrative I'm trying to express to end. That's my own preference, and given the amount of "throw away" characters you see pop up for events, I'm sure other people share the sentiment. The moment people start getting their name plastered all over the ship because they're robust enough not to die, and have had their characters for nearly 10 years, it begins to feel even more pointless to bring newer characters along, because you'll always be overshadowed by what x did 18 events ago. Now, is that a possible overanalysis of what could happen? Yeah, probably. We saw a lot of that in the memorial thread, and while I mostly disagreed with the points being made there: here I am making similar arguments. This is why I'm conflicted, I suppose. I dont think cannonicity is bad. I think the idea of the SCC refusing to acknowledge its own employees is a great point of conflict, in character. It makes sense in the dystopic system we're supposed to be a part of. The corporations aren't the good guys here, as much as we wanna pretend they are.

 

Now all that said, there's probably a happy medium somewhere. I think, from the perspective of someone who doesn't engage with these events, some wind down would go a long way. When the last rampancy event happened, it really felt as if every little changed - no one reacted beyond "we won! Back to work as usual ..." Seeing completely non-violent events to round out and wrap up the ending of an arc would solidify the impact we had. The SCC has a ceremony to award people involved. There's a celebration in point verdant, maybe multiple. We engage in the clean up process. This also goes a long way to catch people up who, like me, don't really feel the need to play these hyper violent rounds, or even people who feel they didn't have a place in those rounds. (Let's be real, there was almost no point in attending the last event if you weren't a combat character) Hell, even in the first example you get that recognition without the need to map it in somewhere or solidify it to the wiki. So I don't know, maybe that's a little too much rambling from me; but that's my two cents.

[Garnascus]

47 minutes ago, Susan said:

Why should I invest in a character? Why should I bother to sink time and energy into playing a mainstay like Ana and risk myself in canon events and potentially see my character permanently killed or fired when the staff will simply pretend like my actions did not matter and I did not exist and it was the collective action of a nameless group of NPC corporate employees?

There have been very heated arguments over this in the past from inside and outside of staff but I personally completely understand why an "event only character" exists.

The policy of characters that die during canon events being permanent is one I have strong opinions on. When I was still head admin I started and contributed to more than one discussion over it. I have always believed it was needlessly punishing to our players because no other aspect of the game asks you to risk your character. The majority opinion was generally that canon events have the capability to affect actual lore based on what characters live or die or how the horizon's crew responds to certain events or what "conditions" are fulfilled in pursuit of a "good" or "bad" ending. 

I believe that to be the steelmanned version of the argument. The strawmanned version is the powers that be on this server do not trust the player base to act appropriately when the stakes are as high as they are in a canon event. I don't think that's the case. I think the actual answer is there is a desire to protect the integrity of events by those that create them. Creating a canon event arc takes A LOT of work. I imagine it wouldn't feel great if from the perspective of an event coordinator their work was ruined by the crew acting a little silly. 

 

[Peppermint]

I would implore the people reacting to actually put their voices in. Given I was part of the conversation and encouraged a forum post, will throw my two cents in as well albeit I mostly just agree with what Sue has stated.

Negative interactions are often celebrated. People gloat about how many people were killed in events, get excited over how great it'll be when more die in the next big arc, and certain volunteers really seem to be out to get you as opposed to help whoever's running it tell a story. The third one less so these days, but the former still very present. Beyond the fact it's just so weird how badly people want characters killed off, the very same people often have a big push back against anything positive. The argument often going down to how people will start seeking attention or there'll be hellgigamega marines wandering around with 20 medals pinned to their chest, which is just such an absolute nonstarter. If people want to run into the meatgrinder they can already do it. Likewise nobody is advocating for these massive rewards being thrust upon you for participating, but a note in an article or a medal or something on your records isn't really that much?

The thing here is that we've had these things before. People are in articles. We had memorials. We used to have IC medals. None of these awful things really took place and I've found that Aurora is absolutely terrified of trying anything like this despite absolute worst case, it can be rolled back on. You can see it in the memorial thread. People being very vocal about how awful it might be so therefor shouldn't be included and we shouldn't even try.

This is a pretty lengthy post so I do apologize. But I've stepped away a good few times from Aurora and have always felt somewhat bitter about wasted potential, so I do hope it's at least an okay read. In general I feel that characters that stick around longer term are often directly discouraged. Event arcs (some of them) are wasted. And things like Sue's post around positive events directly lead to how there just doesn't feel to be any point at all in keeping a character going for more than a few days. Especially when the vast majority of rounds are the day to day, friendship/relationship driven RP with the odd conflict thrown in, feeling like you can't advance, have to make your own arc up, can't really interact with the setting all lead into....why is it I'm playing this character, in this RP enviroment, again? Sure we have some nice lore set pieces but I'm a witness to events, not someone actively partaking in them. I can view this universe sure, but I can't really interact directly with it.

Movement from the Aurora

Moving from the aurora to the horizon removed a level of static world building with a shared setting in favour of a more dynamic setting with more options for lore and events. My personal feelings on this aside, in doing so it has put greater emphasis on the Horizon's place in a living, breathing world that otherwise we just read about in wiki articles. 

Issue is, I feel more disconnected from it than ever. Nothing my character does is going to have any lasting impact. Nothing I do as a player is going to really matter a round after the event is concluded. Very little is reflected in game as to whatever the last saturday's frag fest was. I'm sure people who were around for the original warbling arcs, or the first tajara arcs, can remember how even just extended rounds during downtime had a lot of RP, had a lot of interest, and generally just atmosphere about whatever was going on as we were in a setting where the outcome was more directly impactul. Now it feels like the second the arc ends, it'll be gone next week and we'll be onto something else.

But bigger than that; nothing the Horizon as a group setting does matters. There'll be an article and that'll be it. There'll be a new arc next week and it'll all be forgotten and I think a big reason for this is due to how characters aren't encouraged to stick around. As others have said, there's this strange gap between these big, world altering events and how it just...never goes any where? I don't know if this is a lore thing, an admin thing , or just that people don't have time these days but I really miss things like the old Lance inspections, or visitors during KoTW, or the attacks on characters investigating the big bad cult on extended rounds. 

My point being is that we've had positive stuff previously and leaning into this would help bridge the gap between the change to a dynamic setting and the relative lack of impact.

Fear of change

I feel that Aurora has these big worries over changes, especially any that may give another player a moment in the spotlight. Again, the memorial post is perfect to show how, many of which you can't really argue against due to being unable to disprove a negative. Do we really think if this memorial went ahead we'd have dozens of players throwing themselves in to die? Or that more weighty, emotional RP is somehow a bad thing? It feels so strange to have tragic events happen and nobody give a fuck two days later, though I suppose that's more of a player issue. That said, positive reinforcement would likely go a long way.

The other side is how new players will apparently be scared away? As if the (for SS13 any way) much more rulesy, RP requirements won't already? Or the hundreds of thousands of words on the wiki? It's a complete nothing-y thing and to be absolutely honest, if characters having impact on the world scares them away as they themselves haven't yet, I'm not really sure how much they'd be bringing to the table any way. 

There's also 'but it's not realistic!!!!' argument or the 'The SCC is too indifferent!!!' argument and these really don't mean anything imo. So much of the setting is massively inconsistent as playing employees of the soulless megacorp wouldn't actually be very enjoyable lol. Which, you know, is why this isn't really enforced any where else either. It's one of those 'gotcha' arguments and unless the server is going to start actually leaning into this part of the setting, I don't really thing it's relevant.

Suggestions

Outside of allowing people to get recognition through the lore (a name here or there, that's it) and the return of the captain's rewards, there's a lot of small things can be done. Sure, I know commendations exist, but since their inception, can anyone argue that they've been used with any regularity? The problem to me being that they're entirely OOC in a sense. You get told you got one. Cool? Instead they could be done in-game in a little ceremony, people  could be given flavor bonuses to their pay (which has happened I think), people could be  offered flavor promotions if they want to retire a character, ect. All things CCIA could get in on to help reduce the image of just wanting to murder a character. All would be canon, but also backed up by server staff which I think would add a lot of legitimacy.

 

[dessysalta]

I'm glad somebody said it, because I was afraid to. Part of what makes these narratives so enticing is the ability to be involved in them, to shape and commentate around them, to move and flow and make wholly new experiences; that's the whole point of involving a playerbase in events and narratives. If we didn't want that, we'd just make the server a Baystation clone and then have news articles written about things that are "happening" without ever really letting them shine. To a degree, this is already what occurs. Events often take time to plan, the writing for each of them taking even more, with so many moving parts that it's hopeless to confine it to a single, centralized meaning or message, so why can't one of them be "what you do has an impact"?

We have custom items; most are denied on account of being "unreasonable" or "not earned." We can't submit custom items that are awards short of them being entirely unrelated to the Horizon; we can't congratulate employees for doing a good job outside of the verbal standard, we're in such a limbo state of whether the Conglomerate actually cares about the people inside of it that paid time off is nebulous and being a prick to your coworkers is normal, almost encouraged on some fronts, rarely ever actionable unless it crosses the line into harassment or physical violence. Incident reports are a great start and amazing unifier to better give way to the idea that we're actually, really working for a megacorporation that cares—but most of them are either demotions or terminations, the most recently interesting case having been one Wu'll being yanked back to the Federation by the BSSB and an Enforcer. That was cool. Does anybody actually remember when that happened or who that character was? I don't, and I played the HOS that round. That's a bad thing. Why can't we have things outside of that? Why are bulletin posts frowned upon for celebration when reasonably a pat on the back is the least you should get for saving an entire planet? Moreover, why is nobody mentioned by name? Would the Konyanger government and the greater Coalition be allergic to knowing who exactly facilitated this, is the Conglomerate so comically and unquestionably evil that they just refuse to give anyone anything for doing something important?

It's like a huge pool of negativity that feeds into itself, that insults and betrays the idea that anything any character does matters. Sure, we have relations, but we were bound to have those regardless of who gets shot or killed tomorrow, that's just the bare minimum of RP. If you die during a canon event it's going to be an empty hole anyways, the same empty hole that, while I can't necessarily say I've seen a lot of (I recently passed my 1-year anniversary here, back in Feb, though I technically played a few rounds in Nov 2022) will remain faceless and general like everything else. Nobody is commended (without a crazy amount of effort and people on the Horizon actually saying "commend this person," which makes us think that CC never actually notices when something good is done unless somebody on the Horizon says so, and even then, only Command staff), nobody is paid, the Conglomerate gets ever closer to being a supervillain that has no redeeming qualities whatsoever and we punish people for being too unique or for not conforming to what the Conglomerate wants. This transcends the game and starts forcing the hands of players to either fit in or die, as Susan said it just results in character burnout, and I can't possibly agree more. I have twenty six characters, and I put an entire year's worth of development into Kira Vasquez. Nobody cares about her, and I've been operating off the idea that she just didn't get any PTO for literally losing a leg because the Conglomerate is so hellbent on working their employees to death and doing PR stunts that I can't reasonably conclude that my workaholic character would both be satisfied or allowed to have those benefits. If nobody is just named for, again, saving an entire planet, or dying while doing that, how can I expect that my character to be treated like anything less than a wrench or screwdriver?

I've seen this in more than just Aurora. /TG/ is also allergic to naming characters in the code or as a joke, even with letters switched around or half-epithets applied. It's crazy to me, because the first thing I ever noticed about SS13 was how nice and agreeable the staff teams are compared to literally anyplace else, the sense of community is so strong.

2 minutes ago, Rabid Animal said:

I think the idea of the SCC refusing to acknowledge its own employees is a great point of conflict, in character. It makes sense in the dystopic system we're supposed to be a part of. The corporations aren't the good guys here, as much as we wanna pretend they are.

That's the thing- this doesn't end up doing anything aside from breeding discontent from what I've seen. If you start speaking bad about the Conglomerate more than passing "I hate this job"s expect to be fired and don't let the door hit you on your way out, that's partially why the CCIAA exists. If anyone's upset by that, they'll get fired (or reprimanded, or have their pay docked, etc) too. Being anti-corporate is practically a crime on a megacorporate ship. Command is practically forced to be loyal by way of vetting and implants, so no go there without extremely good reason. Anti-corporate stuff is extremely moderated and things like being unable to play a former affiliate of the League (because...I dunno, something something, being anti-corporate means you can't have character development?) leads to the idea that everyone working on the Horizon has to love or at least tolerate megacorps rather than the more realistic answer of having little choice while still despising them. Which is strange, because you can play an ex-SRF IPC under the guise of having been controlled/forced by them (Gauze, if I recall correctly) but being a Leaguer isn't allowed despite the fact that practically every group in the Wildlands had a way of acquiring territory and hands to do their bidding, so the OOC enforcement only applies sometimes and- alright, I'm going on a tangent, better stop here.

There's this strange existence of double-standards and how they apply to the greater population of players that leaves people scratching their heads, and pushback on most of these policies ends up going nowhere, if we even see it in the first place.

Someone in here will tell me if I'm crazy.

[Alberyk]

If the issue is that people's names are not showing in the articles, that can be fixed.

But, before we just say we are somehow afraid of making stuff canon, I think we need to consider why this fear exists. And I would not call it fear of making it canon, but more of a fear of bad elements that might be too much lately from bad experiences.

When we had the Odin killer event, we had someone kinda derail the whole investigation and only that player showed up in the end. The lore writers were also at fault here. Then we had the incident in one of the warblings, that caused us to create the rule about canon deaths that put the decision in the hands of headmin and lore masters.

Now, what would you suggest we do to fix it?

We made a way to give people in character medals and awards when they do good stuff in events. Would it just be adding more recognition in the articles or the arc reports? I think this can be done, but would require a higher level of scrutinization of people's actions in these events.

We should also consider that we had an one year gap between cold dawn and the last arc, so we did not play with the canon expect too much lately.

[La Villa Strangiato]

I haven't played on Aurora nearly as long as some players have, certainly nowhere near as long as the rest of head staff. I am not as educated on the "before times", the more concerning lore elements of 2016-2019. I was not here for Skrell Homestuck reference hate-cuddles. I was not here for the Unathi Woman Pyramid. I was not here for Skintone Caste Dominia. You could argue that despite my relentless snarking in Discord, I am actually pretty optimistic as to How Much A Playerbase Can Be Trusted.

So let's get to the point. The main concern that seems to be held on rewarding specific players or namedropping specific characters are as follows:

A) A lack of equality in rewards. Staff characters and friends of staff characters get more opportunities and accolades because staff saw them or staff wants to reward their friends (IMHO this isn't something that I have seen happen too much, at least not excruciatingly obviously).

B) People constantly waving their dick around about how one time they went to Konyang and they totally blew up one morbillion hivebots.

C) You end up namedropping someone sussy in a canon article.

A is really the only thing I give much of a shit about, as a concern. I think everyone, if they put the work in, should get a chance to get something nice for offering to sacrifice their character on the altar of canonicity, or doing something significant. But this is something that can favour certain characters; characters who people have played for six fucking years, or characters who might be favoured just due to their proximity to the action, like security and medical.

B is something I usually end up ignoring if someone is really obnoxious about it. In my opinion the types of people who do B is the price we pay just for allowing other players to feel rewarded; someone will always go a mile when you give an inch. Nothin' to be done. C is a result of, well, people being dumb. Sometimes people who do weird/rule-breaking stuff end up on the staff team, too.

So what is The Point, La Villa Strangiato? The point is that I want to reward people or just make people feel nice for being on the server. I'm not asking to make John Marine a main character, I'd just like to have a reporter talk to Urist McStation and ask him his opinion about jumping in front of a missile to protect Crusher. Little things like that, IMO, really add to the feeling that these are events that players can effect. But that's personally what I want to do, purely related to Sue's original point.

Edited April 3 by La Villa Strangiato

[Ricky_the_banshee]

After some thinking, I will say that I am genuinely in favour of acknowledgement of character contributions in events, or rounds in general. Anything to push the narrative forward, and for that narrative to be rewarded would theoretically inspire more players to want to partake and contribute in rounds other than just for the sake of being there.  I too, an am oldie, and I see where alot of the sentiment, feedback and even frustrations that spark from this topic stems from.

It can be incredibly soul-sucking or tedious to feel as if the contribution you had in a round was largely unrecognized. You discovered the Secret Tomb of Nyarlatotep? "Archaeologists uncover the tomb!". Awesome, great, I guess you were a part of it -- "HORIZON MAKES BREAKTHROUGH COMMUNICATION WITH PURPOSE. WE DO NOT HAVE ANY PICTURES OF SOMEONE SPECIFICALLY SHAKING THE HAND OF A PURPOSE BOT, EVEN THOUGH THERE ARE REPORTEDLY IMAGES OF THIS." So that interaction may as well have never happened other than being a passerby memory that will unintentionally sound to others as bragging. I can't speak on how the staff or lore writers feel this part, I can imagine there are some elements from their side that might be grating or bothersome to write around.

I think the individual deaths of crew after times more prominently featured than their individual contributions, and I agree that its been deeply rooted in the server culture to cheer and guffaw and close encounters with death, than some of the meaningful interactions beyond just combat encounters.  

However, I will say that I do urge the consideration into the possiblity of "glory seekers" that has been attributed or argued as a potential fear. While it's easy to simply look past them and dismiss their attempts as fruitless, or regard them as asinine on the grander OOC part. I think not addressing it will just allow a polar opposite variation of the "the thrill for death" to swap into the "thrill for glory".

Where ones participation instead becomes one's attempt to be a main character. Simply dismissing them as some "loud minority" that are being silly with their characters and antics, ignoring as a festering problem is what led to a culture of anticipating who kicks the bucket at the next major event. And while it may not be everyone that partakes in it, the fact many recognize it as an existing phenomenon for it to be talked about even here should be telling of how much of an impact it can (sub)consciously have on people.

tl;dr just give people a model or a name reference pls. But yes, main character wannabes deserve their kneecaps broken even harder for it, and should be ignored as a "minor issue" were this shift to come.

[Rabid Animal]

1 hour ago, dessysalta said:

That's the thing- this doesn't end up doing anything aside from breeding discontent from what I've seen. If you start speaking bad about the Conglomerate more than passing "I hate this job"s expect to be fired and don't let the door hit you on your way out, that's partially why the CCIAA exists.... etc 

Nah I get all this, I made that as a devil's advocate point and pretty much set it completely aside further down in my post. I like conflict like that, its okay to feel discontent at work, but ehh that's less the point of this thread. You can still have awards and whatnot.Being acknowledged is cool, I think the best away to do that is maybe the lore articles and wrap up events that talk about everything that happened.

 

I also think the death policy is a net negative, so many get reconned anyways and I've seen some genuine vitriol appear because people were denied such retcons, if imagine that fucking sucks to be on the receiving end of that. I'm glad garn brought it up because it's also part of the issue here, me thinks. The blood lust that this policy generates is comical and just as derailing as "someone was kind of silly"

[Triogenix]

24 minutes ago, La Villa Strangiato said:

C) You end up namedropping someone sussy in a canon article.

I do not have the time to fully read, and give a coherent response to all of the above points made by people currently, though I will do so at a later date. However, I want to just point this out, because it's something in my skimming that I do not see addressed(I might have missed it however). You can go through the history of the wiki, and find that a specific character, AIMMO, who was incredibly problematic and whose player was banned, was mentioned in official lore. I'm not going to discuss exactly what they did, put simply this is something I'm not okay with repeating, and will likely never be okay with repeating. I don't see a way to ensure that this does not repeat, without something like the current policy we have in place, unless we create an artificial divide between characters/players that are "trusted" and those that aren't, which is something I really do not want to do.

Were it not for the fact that this has already happened in the past, I would not care, or have any policy about namedropping people in canon articles or official lore. This is a policy in place due to something that has already happened which I believe should not be repeated, not due to something that might happen.

Edited April 3 by Triogenix

[Peppermint]

1 minute ago, Triogenix said:

I do not have the time to fully read, and give a coherent response to all of the above points made by people currently, though I will do so at a later date. However, I want to just point this out, because it's something in my skimming that I do not see addressed(I might have missed it however). You can go through the history of the wiki, and find that a specific character, AIMMO, who was incredibly problematic and whose player was banned, was mentioned in official lore. I'm not going to discuss exactly what they did, put simply this is something I'm not okay with repeating, and will likely never be okay with repeating. I don't see a way to ensure that this does not repeat, without something like the current policy we have in place, unless we create an artificial divide between characters/players that are "trusted" and those that aren't, which is something I really do not want to do.

I was one of the people involved in this. Really, if you were 'out' as a woman at the time, chances are you dealt with it. Them being in an article really couldn't bother me less and whilst it's not my place to talk for the other people they did the weird, horrible shit to, completely cutting this out as an option for lore arcs because of one piece of shit seems to me a very big shame. Someone being in an article does not reflect the server, nor the lore staff, nor anyone else involved if that person decides to do bad things. Though they likely should be removed, sure, a complete blanket ban on an entire community for something someone did....4....years(? 3? Idk) or so ago just seems wrong. We'd have a whole lot of lore and policies to remove and never enact again if shitty people contributing to them meant they should be gone. That said, I can appreciate wanting absolutely nothing to do with anything these people touch.

 

1 hour ago, Alberyk said:

If the issue is that people's names are not showing in the articles, that can be fixed.

But, before we just say we are somehow afraid of making stuff canon, I think we need to consider why this fear exists. And I would not call it fear of making it canon, but more of a fear of bad elements that might be too much lately from bad experiences.

When we had the Odin killer event, we had someone kinda derail the whole investigation and only that player showed up in the end. The lore writers were also at fault here. Then we had the incident in one of the warblings, that caused us to create the rule about canon deaths that put the decision in the hands of headmin and lore masters.

Now, what would you suggest we do to fix it?

We made a way to give people in character medals and awards when they do good stuff in events. Would it just be adding more recognition in the articles or the arc reports? I think this can be done, but would require a higher level of scrutinization of people's actions in these events.

We should also consider that we had an one year gap between cold dawn and the last arc, so we did not play with the canon expect too much lately.

I can't comment on the Odin stuff; I wasn't around for it when it started. That said, the community is generally better these days (I think? I hope? I doubt much has changed that much lately?) so I'd hope they could be trusted. Personally I'd suggest CCIA getting more involved in this stuff alongside the lore team, should they be willing to/interested. Would help erase the big bad guy image, would get them some more positive stuff to do in the sense I doubt they enjoy constantly handing out punishment as their main role, ect. I had some very basic ideas in my post above - even just making the IC CCIA medals be a short, public thing for big arcs might be nice. Which has happened a little previously...in...the last tajara arc...maybe? I can't remember exactly when it was.

For increasing the staying power of events, Rusting suggested a section in the library be used to show off bits and pierces from past arcs. If that's something lore was interested in, small stuff like that could really help imo. As could someone else's suggestion here of smaller things happening here and there at the conclusion but, again, this stuff has happened before so it may just be it's been less possible lately given the work and time involved.

[OolongCow]

If Kuhn had died in the warehouse assault, caused by enormous, preventable problems with the map, RNG on RNG, and other players just not doing what they should have, only for maybe three people to care and then move on like it never happened, I would probably have left the server due to how demoralizing the whole situation was. Not that he died. There are plenty of scenarios I've thought up in my head where he could die and I'd be happy, but none of them will ever happen, because that would require his death to mean something, accomplish anything, and actually be remembered.

 

Nobody remembers that Kuhn was handed a shitty situation and did the best he could with a nonfunctional lighting system, every department refusing to organize or do their job, and the SCC handing them metal sticks and telling them to save a planet. Nobody cares whether he was a good or bad boss that round. All they will ever remember is that he almost died, and if I don't go out of my way to lop his arm off so he can point at it and say "this is why I have a robot arm" people might not even remember that much a month from now. The only record he was even there comes down to me saying it and anyone who was there actually caring enough to remember who the command team was. So what did I even get out of the event? A story I have to beg everyone to listen to if they weren't there on the same character and bothered to remember me? At the cost of nearly losing months of roleplay and buildup to pure RNG and a map that broke in several places? It just makes me want to not participate in future events except to throw a noname I don't care about at them, especially if that character has an obligation to approach combat in any way. And then I get even less out of the event besides the mechanics of it.

Events as they are are asking me to play Russian Roulette for the grand prize of living to play more Russian Roulette. If I say I don't like Russian Roulette and would rather play Chess for a gold sticker, I get told that I'm wrong and Russian Roulette is how I'm supposed to prove how intelligent and brave I am. That people who don't like Russian Roulette just hate fun.

[Evandorf]

1 hour ago, Peppermint said:

Negative interactions are often celebrated. People gloat about how many people were killed in events, get excited over how great it'll be when more die in the next big arc, and certain volunteers really seem to be out to get you as opposed to help whoever's running it tell a story.

To be fair to most players, I think people get excited over the negative interactions because of the canonicity issue. The negative consequences are usually the only ones that are observable, i.e. character death. Change in the game universe and especially agency over that change is the dopamine we're all looking for.

I made a stupid mistake in Cold Dawn and luckily my character survived it. I didn't do it to seek "fame" but when the IC rumors began to spiral I didn't stop them either and I'll admit the ability to watch my reputation ( good or bad ) make waves among the crew has been one of the most satisfying experiences I've had playing on the server. I think others should have the same opportunity.

I would say that we should have character acknowledgement in our lore but ultimately it should be the Lore team's call on whether or not they want to canonize character actions on a cases by case basis.

[Shimmer]

Hi. Hello. Greetings. I need to write in a few words at least even if their nonsense to get my brain going forward.

 

I'll start by just throwing out my thoughts in regards to character recognition, especially in event articles, especially especially ESPECIALLY as it pertains to character retention. Do I agree that characters should be getting recognized for what they do in really important tasks? Yeah! Those are significant events, they have a lot of eyes on them, and there are close to zero named anything on them most of the time. It's rare to see named individuals in event articles that aren't big shots like politicians and military leaders and just people who are at the top of the chain in general. Letting the little everywoman get her recognition here and there is fine, and to add to this, I disagree with Sue that this shouldn't be an ego thing. Fuck this, this is an ego thing, people should feel pride over this, everyone has an ego, everyone will feel pride over their character being mentioned on an article. And its fine, it's normal, its human to feel pride over your fictional little spaceperson baby with their smug little sprite being mentioned in a fictional newspaper.

 

What I also think, however, is that people are talking like this will help or improve player retention in some way or another. I think this is a red herring, characters should be recognized because we play a video game and those characters exist in that video game, and it's cute when those same smug little spacepeople get named every once in a while, or are seen at the helm of an award ceremony. The issue is, I doubt this will affect retention in any way but possibly the most minimal one, in either direction really. Think about it, setting aside the sheer amount of effort required to do something remarkable enough that it can be picked up and outed as special and reward worthy, all of this requires stupid amounts of luck. To be one out of a hundred to receive recognition requires not just skill, but timing, right place, right people around you, and the right environment, and the right job. How is this meant to encourage character retention?

 

What I think really causes problems with character retention is the fact that... Well- There isn't all that much to do on the Horizon. It's hard to interact with people in a meaningful way sometimes, how are you supposed to sit down and have a chat with your doctor colleague when the GTR is full of dying and bleeding people. It's not like you can even discuss this after the fact, you can't bond over this, because none of what just happened was canon. Sure, you may have gotten to know the other person, but now what?

It can be really hard for new characters to find conversation topics, and there really aren't that many social spaces on the Horizon that don't just get repetitive, or are structured in a way that it's horrendously hard to follow a conversation or talk to most other people. When the bar is full, how are you really supposed to talk to someone on the other end of it? You can try to strike up a chat with the bartender- and should!- but it's likely someone else has done so before you.

It takes a certain kind of person to break out of this, we call them extroverts, and I'm sorry but the vast majority of people that play are not that. If you want character retention, you need to find reasons to give for those characters to stay. And above fucking all, you need to stop pushing some of those characters to leave. I can't overstate how many times I've seen characters be called 'relay only' 'neverplayers', and I can't put to words how utterly fucking infuriating it is to see some players both ICly and OOCly go 'lmao lol lmfao haha i've never seen you above deck'.

I'm unemployed, I have so much spare time to spend, and I try my best to play as my characters and interact with others in spite of antag shenanigans. Yet even still this stupid insult was applied several times to me and my characters, it's incredibly easy to have one of your characters catch that title and for people to passively-aggressively hold it over your head.

Now imagine if I wasn't employed. Imagine if I could afford only one two game per week. Four hours. Four hours where roleplay, intercharacter connection, all of that, isn't guaranteed. Four hours where the possibility of you being pushed to AFK in a bar are more than they should be. Now imagine if you tried to develop your character on the relay, try to test out their personality, try to see names you can watch out for on the manifest for interaction, and you get hit with I've never seen you sis, lmao, who are you? Who tf are you?

Is that supposed to be motivating? Does that not push people away? Would you keep playing a character that is invisible according to others?

 

If we are talking about character recognition, a lot of people, players, should stop doing this shit. More opportunities for characters to connect with one other should be given. More social spaces. More reasons for people to interact that don't get forgotten the next round because it's antag related. Give characters a reason to stay. And maybe some of them will even get recognized on that fancy fictional newspaper, too.

[limette]

My frank response to the idea that AIMMO being mentioned means that we can never mention characters again is; if we want to pave over the contributions made by any shithead jackass to the server, particularly the egregious ones (such as the aforementioned) we'll be reverting a lot of PRs and wiping a faction or two off the wiki. I mean, one of the most impactful things in the server history - ATLAS - was made by a neonazi to push his neonazi ideals ingame. This was so egregious that we have mentions in an article by a Canadian anti-hatred organization partially funded by the government. If that's not a damning situation, I don't know what is - but the response wasn't to shut down all lore applications so that we never have such a thing happen again, nor did we even go back and retcon it, or anything of that sort. In fact, we still trust the playerbase to make substantial additions to the lore and game, in spite of no ability to do a full background check on them.

My point? We can scrub the mentions in the articles worst-case, but we've stuck with things of comparable awfulness in the past and, to be honest, I'm sure we'll find someone who contributed something to the codebase or something was an awful person in the future - and we won't suddenly revert all their code. It's if anything one of the easiest-to-fix examples of this possible, a name in an article or an ingame memorial; it takes almost no time at all and doesn't have those sticky other connections that lore and code tend to. Ban the user, scrub the name, call it a day.

Edited April 3 by limette

[Triogenix]

1 hour ago, Peppermint said:

I was one of the people involved in this. Really, if you were 'out' as a woman at the time, chances are you dealt with it. Them being in an article really couldn't bother me less and whilst it's not my place to talk for the other people they did the weird, horrible shit to, completely cutting this out as an option for lore arcs because of one piece of shit seems to me a very big shame. Someone being in an article does not reflect the server, nor the lore staff, nor anyone else involved if that person decides to do bad things. Though they likely should be removed, sure, a complete blanket ban on an entire community for something someone did....4....years(? 3? Idk) or so ago just seems wrong. We'd have a whole lot of lore and policies to remove and never enact again if shitty people contributing to them meant they should be gone. That said, I can appreciate wanting absolutely nothing to do with anything these people touch.

39 minutes ago, limette said:

My frank response to the idea that AIMMO being mentioned means that we can never mention characters again is; if we want to pave over the contributions made by any shithead jackass to the server, particularly the egregious ones (such as the aforementioned) we'll be reverting a lot of PRs and wiping a faction or two off the wiki. I mean, one of the most impactful things in the server history - ATLAS - was made by a neonazi to push his neonazi ideals ingame. This was so egregious that we have mentions in an article by a Canadian anti-hatred organization partially funded by the government. If that's not a damning situation, I don't know what is - but the response wasn't to shut down all lore applications so that we never have such a thing happen again, nor did we even go back and retcon it, or anything of that sort. In fact, we still trust the playerbase to make substantial additions to the lore and game, in spite of no ability to do a full background check on them.

My point? We can scrub the mentions in the articles worst-case, but we've stuck with things of comparable awfulness in the past and, to be honest, I'm sure we'll find someone who contributed something to the codebase or something was an awful person in the future - and we won't suddenly revert all their code. It's if anything one of the easiest-to-fix examples of this possible, a name in an article or an ingame memorial; it takes almost no time at all and doesn't have those sticky other connections that lore and code tend to. Ban the user, scrub the name, call it a day.

In regards to the argument that this should also apply to other parts of lore written by problematic people, there are a couple of things I want to quickly mention.

Firstly, in regards to things like ATLAS or other lore, other steps have already been taken to ensure that they are never repeated - the largest of which being these two lines from the lore team rules and regulations.

Quote

6. Lore Team Management reserves the right to curate lore in news articles. This means if you post an article which contradicts one of the above points, or otherwise is deemed unacceptable to the direction of the server’s lore, the loremasters reserve the right to edit, modify, retcon, or even delete any violating articles. All relevant writers will be notified and in the case of deletion or retcon, an announcement will be made to the community. If the writer displays malicious intent in violating the rules when posting such an article, disciplinary action may be taken. However, if it is the result of an unintentional creative difference, no disciplinary action will be taken.

Quote

6. Lore Team Management reserves the right to curate lore in wiki content. If pages are sufficiently unnecessary, underused, or do not contribute to player engagement to lore they may be subject to moderation such as edits, additions, changes, and deletions. None of these actions will occur without prior notice and discussion of alternatives with the relevant lore writers.

Essentially what this means is, the Loremaster and their deputy have the final say in any official lore that gets added. If anything like ATLAS is attempted to be added again, the LTA can just say "no." and shut it down. Any additions, substantial or not to lore, are done at the discretion of the LTA(most of the time this just means not outright denying something).

Secondly, the point of this policy is not to change the past, but to learn from it going forward. You can point out many different areas where it's easy to say "That shouldn't have happened, that person was problematic and we need to remove x, y, z" but that doesn't stop the same thing from happening again in the future. You both mention just scrubbing the name of anyone problematic, but that isn't an actual solution; an actual solution needs to be able to reasonably prevent something problematic from re-occurring, not just fix it once it's happened. If that was a solution, malf would still be in the secret rotation as any bad malf's could just be ahelped, or in other words "fixed/banned if it occurs."

Edited April 3 by Triogenix

[Susan]

Except this argument still falls apart with the realization that anyone could submit wiki revisions or arguably mundane lore and then later get outed as some reprehensible individual. What do you do about mundane lore submitted by someone who later turns out to have engaged in morally repugnant or disgusting activities? You did not know they were any of this at the time, of course - but their contributions are already there. So is the solution to just prevent player submitted lore in general, then? No, I am sure the same curation can be applied to any sort of acknowledgment, and to be very, very blunt--

--any suggestion of an AIMMO equivalent is partially the reason why I put the 'canonicity boogeyman' in the subject line. If anyone on Aurora staff can substantiate these concerns with an example of an active fetish character on the server, I invite them to, otherwise it's really the same sort of stance against a boogeyman. A threat that doesn't exist. A problem that doesn't exist.

[Dreamix]

On the memorial thread:

I feel the discourse here is not very respectful of the people who commented on that thread, who were not liking the idea, as if they were the source of all of aurora's problems. Personally, I don't like the idea of a crew memorial with names of dead characters, I do not think it fits thematically and would not encourage a lot of fun roleplay. I do not think people's characters should be recognized for dying to event characters that appear once and never again. I do not think the memorial would help with character retention either, cause it's recognition only after death, and we should be encouraging the opposite, and give reasons to continue playing a character that is alive, and not the one that is dead. But, this is how I feel specifically about the memorial thing.

 

On medals and recognition:

I would be fine with other forms of recognition, like mentions in articles. I think these are harmless enough, and would make people feel like they've done something. But these should only be given to characters who have actually done something exceptional, and involved themselves in the event. I played the last synthetic nightmares arc event, I was ordered to guard the base, and then attacked the hivebot beacon thingy, but had to retreat due to injuries, so I would never really be considered to be given a medal or be mentioned in an article. I do not think medals or recognition should be given to characters for being robust or for simply doing their job, or characters who were in the right place and in the right time, assigned to the right team and job. I think recognition should be given for exceptional roleplay and affecting the arc, and not just for clicking good or random chance.

I have not played any arc beyond the cold dawn so I don't know about what happened then. I don't like it when people mention these events as examples of bad/good things or behaviors, or situations we don't want repeating again, cause a lot of players simply just did not experience that. We have a ton of lore, and had a ton of events in the past, so it is simply just infeasible to expect the average player to know or care about all of them. Not that learning about those is easy anyways, with the event arcs just being dumped onto their wiki page with a huge word soup, and no simple explanation of what did actually happen that would be relevant to new characters.

And actually, yes, I do think it is intimidating to see characters who have saved the whole spur 5 times in their life, killed 100 pirates or solarian marines or whoever else, etc and etc. Why would I create a new and fresh character, and spend weeks or months establishing them, if they're never going to be as important as these veteran 10 year old characters, and anything I do in or out of events would only pale in comparison? These are my thoughts on this topic, one can read them and say it's overanalysis, or a problem that does not exist, or a boogeyman, but this is how I feel regardless.

 

On arcs and events:

My opinion is that huge event arcs are simply just, not healthy for the server going forward. They take a long time to prepare, and require a ton of work, and depend on just a few people to work on them, leading to burn out. There is crunch, a lot of things are done days or hours before the event, which means mapping or balance issues because things are not tested well. There is an expectation that they are going to be huge spur-changing events that change the whole galaxy and affect everyone.

People are excited about event deaths, or borgings, or the september mutiny, cause these are the only canon and lasting consequences to events. It is the symptom of the problem of most events being violent and where deaths are both expected and planned for by event staff.

 

I've been saying this for a while now:

I wish we had events that are more mundane and calm, and affect some local space, and not the whole spur, or even a nation, faction, planet.
I wish we had smaller events, that require less work and preparation, but also were more frequent and common.
I wish we had more canon presence on Horizon, in and out of arcs, more visitors and other mini-events.

Every time I mention the things above, I am being told by staff that it is unwanted.
I genuinely think the above would help with character retention, and would be more healthy for the server.

If events were to be more mundane, that would help to change the perception about events being deadly, and deaths being the only lasting impact on anything.
If events were to be smaller and more frequent, that means more people have a greater chance to do something meaningful.
If we were to have more canon presence on horizon, it would let people outside of command and security jobs to interact with the arc.

And like about any potential problem or issue of characters changing or affecting the world simply just completely disappears.
We don't want people doing stupid things and affecting stuff, or bad actors derailing, with negative consequences for the whole event arc and spur.
But if the events are smaller and less grand, all these risks are just gone.
If we are helping just one ship or city or outpost, and we fail, we just move on and continue as before, or if we succeed, it's some locals being grateful.

Edited April 4 by Dreamix

[Kintsugi]

1 hour ago, Triogenix said:

Secondly, the point of this policy is not to change the past, but to learn from it going forward. You can point out many different areas where it's easy to say "That shouldn't have happened, that person was problematic and we need to remove x, y, z" but that doesn't stop the same thing from happening again in the future. You both mention just scrubbing the name of anyone problematic, but that isn't an actual solution; an actual solution needs to be able to reasonably prevent something problematic from re-occurring, not just fix it once it's happened. If that was a solution, malf would still be in the secret rotation as any bad malf's could just be ahelped, or in other words "fixed/banned if it occurs."

I'm sorry, but this is a hopelessly pessimistic and self-defeating attitude to have over such a niche and essentially non-existent issue. The idea that we need to prevent the players from ever receiving any form of recognition at all because, potentially, a bad character could be recognized, is both at once completely overkill and completely inconsistent with how we treat things made by sketchy people (ie: half of our lore). I won't go into why I feel that's the case, because I feel Limette makes the argument very soundly above, but I wanted to point this out. It's not at all a reasonable ruling on the issue - at the end of the day, it's an excessively restrictive response to an extremely niche scenario.