Losing interest.

[Jboy2000000]

As an example: Say we have two characters, Donald and Ronald, the only Engineers. Donald and Ronald decide that they are going to spend their round (E)RP'ing in a corner, as opposed to setting up the Engine. There is no Security, Command or otherwise any personnel available to reprimand these two for Neglect of Duty. Or let's assume that there is a single Officer; they do not have access to arrest these two. Or even in the event that they did, Donald and Ronald decide to weld the officer into a locker and take their new-found love to the station exterior, in a Romeo&Juliet-esque state of defiance. Perhaps too specific, but still. It could be said that these players are just trying to play the game. But at the same time, they are causing issues for the rest of the characters on-shift in a massive IC way, effectively halting their game OOC'ly. However, wouldn't you still say that these two people are playing, despite basically breaking the round for others?

In that point, they would be breaking one or more rules, don't be a dick, and we also have a pretty sure "No ERPing" rule. If they are breaking OOC rules, thats more than fair for admins to step in and say "No." What Tain is saying is, basically, if someone is not outright breaking a rule, like in your example, don't stop them. Tain wanted to take a hardsuit, absolutely no where was that a rule they she couldn't, it was a norm, it was something some people did religously, but then it was suddenly a problem, and it turned into a big problem here on the form. From Tain's standpoint, I think it may be viewed as the problem coming from an admin "not letting the player, play the game."

[Tainavaa]

Casper. No disrespect, but I choose not to heed your response if you will only pick what and what not to pay attention to in mine.

edit: Thank you, Jboy.

To Frances, you will not change the nature of people. People will bitch. People will whine. Look at any government. If people do not enjoy roleplay without being railroaded, that isn't your concern. Look at what the server is about. Yes, it's about the community. Does the community want to have an on-rails story? I don't think so. People don't know what's best for them. It's your duty as an administrator/mod to determine to allow something they dislike just so it allows other things that they DO like. When you disallow something because reason, you're forced to disallow other things for similar reason. And chances are, those things will be something that the original complainer liked. You can explain that to them. But they won't always listen.

And thus, here we are. People are afraid of the bwoink, people believe they are entitled to biased allowances and disallowances on the server, and people are pissed off that they can't just. Play. You will never make everyone happy. But that isn't your job. Your job is to facilitate a quality roleplaying environment. And I don't know about you, but I never was a fan of on-rails stories.

[Frances]

To Frances, you will not change the nature of people. People will bitch. People will whine.

Then are you ready to accept that? Because staff aren't responsible for some great evil. I see a lot more undue complaints/objections being risen by players than I see instances of staff preventing things they should not prevent.

 

Casper. No disrespect, but I choose not to heed your response if you will only pick what and what not to pay attention to in mine.

I myself am not sure what exactly "just playing" entails for you. I believe Casper was simply asking you to narrow down your problem so he can respond to it better, not dismiss you.

[Tainavaa]

I have always been ready to accept that. I have always been one for letting things happen as they happen. I don't want people to ask me for permission to kill me. I'm okay with Sue's behavior IC. I'm okay with Xander's behavior IC. I'm okay with literally everyone's behavior IC so long as there's a REASON for it. The one thing I have asked NOT to be allowed was The_Furry's telescience bullshit because there was literally NO reason to do it other than to annoy people, and it's evidenced in the thread by the Furry himself so you can not convince me otherwise. It didn't reinforce roleplay for me as the Warden, all it did was make me have to move a million and a half monkeys and to fruitlessly tell Travis "No." As HOP.

If there are more undue complaints/objections being risen out of players, then refer to what I said earlier. It is allowed because reason. Bitch all you want, I will refer you to my objective reasoning. If you can't provide much more reason beyond "I don't like THING" then sucks.

Just playing means legitimately playing the game as was intended. Like I said. Your job is to facilitate a quality roleplaying environment, essentially, as an administrator.

[Guest]

Can I ask, you keep saying let the players 'just play' (also note that staff ARE players too and usually get their game-time cut because of the issues that come up, I've had to cryo myself and other staff because we are dealing with too much to be able to 'just play') what do you define as just playing?

The way the game was designed to be played originally was with no real RP, everyone panicking, killing each other, trying to fix and stop problems, and seeing if you could survive till the end of the round. Would you be happier if we just let people play and ignore the consistent ahelps from the community saying 'I don't like this, why are you letting this happen, you are taking too long make them do what I want because I have reasons'. You get killed because someone let off a bomb, wait 30 minutes try again. Someone turns you into a monkey to see what happens, wrap your tail around them. Someone lets out a deadly virus, hope that someone knows how to stop it quick enough.

Also can someone define for me, the difference between, LightRP, MediumRP, and HeavyRP. Because what I am getting from what everyone is asking is no longer HeavyRP, but more MediumRP.

[Casperf1]

I myself am not sure what exactly "just playing" entails for you. I believe Casper was simply asking you to narrow down your problem so he can respond to it better, not dismiss you.

Indeed!

Casper. No disrespect, but I choose not to heed your response if you will only pick what and what not to pay attention to in mine.

edit: Thank you, Jboy.

 

Apologies, Tainavaa! I genuinely didn't see your other post at the top of the page.

But yes, as for your question. What is to stop us from not only adding to things, but from removing things as well? The answer is: nothing. And that's the beauty of it. What we have can be changed for the worse, but it can just as easily be changed for the better.

If possible, I just really want to avoid referencing actual community examples, if it can be helped. Even if they are possibly the best examples of what staff potentially shouldn't or should be doing, further acknowledging these examples will likely just swerve things off-topic and kinda draw in what I think would be unnecessary hostility, "Person X doing this, that and this." and I don't think specifics or name-calling would be best served to what we are talking about, and again, would just draw more hostility, which I personally don't think is constructive. (though it could be argued we are terribly off-topic already anyway)

But still, it would really help if you wouldn't mind acknowledging my original post, when you can.

 

In that point, they would be breaking one or more rules, don't be a dick, and we also have a pretty sure "No ERPing" rule. If they are breaking OOC rules, thats more than fair for admins to step in and say "No." What Tain is saying is, basically, if someone is not outright breaking a rule, like in your example, don't stop them. Tain wanted to take a hardsuit, absolutely no where was that a rule they she couldn't, it was a norm, it was something some people did religously, but then it was suddenly a problem, and it turned into a big problem here on the form. From Tain's standpoint, I think it may be viewed as the problem coming from an admin "not letting the player, play the game."

Yep. I placed ERP in brackets as uhm... an attempt at... funny.

AHEM!

But yeah, as a note, ERP is met with an instant ban so don't do it.

But! Onto your point. Again, this is just the best fiction-example I could come up with that I think we could look at subjectively, if anybody has any better ones we could use, that'd be great because uh. I'm not the best at examples.

So. Personally, I would not see two people deciding to RP (granted their situation should generally be good enough to realistically consider voiding their job over) as breaking Rule One. Even if they are treading the fine line between Corporate Regs and OOC Rules, these two would not explicitly be breaking any rules that they could be punished over. However, as a result of their actions, they are still hindering over characters and basically ruining the round for other players. May I ask, what would you prefer be done in such a situation? Leave them to their Roleplaying, or intervene and make sure the engine was set up, and submit to Security. Or instead, simply warn them that they should not be picking such an important role, if the do not wish to fulfil the role IC'ly, and leave the rest to be dealt with IC'ly?

[Jamini]

I'm not even sure what prompted the, "Get paperwork to rearrange some tables." requirements.

 

People who intentionally misread and misinterpret directives. At least in that specific case.

The whole directive was made with the intent to make it easier to change how rooms look, not harder.

[Tainavaa]

Can I ask, you keep saying let the players 'just play' (also note that staff ARE players too and usually get their game-time cut because of the issues that come up, I've had to cryo myself and other staff because we are dealing with too much to be able to 'just play') what do you define as just playing?

The way the game was designed to be played originally was with no real RP, everyone panicking, killing each other, trying to fix and stop problems, and seeing if you could survive till the end of the round. Would you be happier if we just let people play and ignore the consistent ahelps from the community saying 'I don't like this, why are you letting this happen, you are taking too long make them do what I want because I have reasons'. You get killed because someone let off a bomb, wait 30 minutes try again. Someone turns you into a monkey to see what happens, wrap your tail around them. Someone lets out a deadly virus, hope that someone knows how to stop it quick enough.

Also can someone define for me, the difference between, LightRP, MediumRP, and HeavyRP. Because what I am getting from what everyone is asking is no longer HeavyRP, but more MediumRP.

 

And so as I said for administrators to refer players to their logical reasoning, I will refer you to mine.

 

Your job as an administrator is to facilitate a quality roleplaying environment.

 

What does roleplaying mean to you? Because as I hear it, you're playing a regular working person on a space station hired by a mega-corporation. So that's the role we play. Do actual researchers just release deadly viruses to the station? You'd think a person like that wouldn't get hired. As someone who plays a closet sociopath, someone who HIDES their sociopathy, I don't think someone like that would get hired. The admins are giving me obvious examples of grief and that, to my understanding, does not reinforce roleplay. Right now, what's happening is often referred to as a Strawman.

The server is intended to be heavy roleplay. So behave like an administrator of a heavy roleplay server. "They can do thing because X and Y. Deal with it."

You are a player. But you have additional duties as an administrator. And just that. An administrator. Unless you're a dev too. Then that's also a duty.

 

What is to stop us from not only adding to things, but from removing things away as well? The answer is: nothing. And that's the beauty of it. What we have can be changed for the worse, but it can just as easily be changed for the better.

 

The thing is though, that nobody is seeking to take away but only to add more.

EDIT: Let me define 'player' so there's no ambiguity here. Player is defined in this particular instance as someone who joins the server to play in a manner that coincides with the server's philosophy. In my earlier posts I've outlined what to do with the people who do what you're describing to me so I'm honestly not certain why it's being brought up.

[Guest]

And so as I said for administrators to refer players to their logical reasoning, I will refer you to mine.

I am asking for your reasoning, not what you think admin's should do.

what do you define as just playing?

[Tainavaa]

Refer to my definition of a player, and my elaboration on roleplaying.

edit: And also what I believe the intent of the server is.

[Frances]

Refer to my definition of a player, and my elaboration on roleplaying.

edit: And also what I believe the intent of the server is.

This is going to be my attempt at reformulating and redirecting.

What Tainavaa is basically trying to say (if I understand well) is that players should start from the general idea that they're normal, sane-of-mind employees working on a space station, and develop from there in whichever way they want. Aside from obvious cases of grief, character-breaking, or other nefarious actions which obviously detract from the general user experience or break the game in some way (say, everybody acting like an antag at once), the administration should not intervene in telling a player how the game should be played.

For staff, two questions: Is this what you want to do? And, do you feel like you've done a good job at doing that, or not?

For Tainavaa/non-staff, two questions: Can you elaborate a bit on cases where you feel like you should have been allowed to play a certain way, but weren't? And why do you think staff makes the particular decisions which anger you in these cases, if you had to guess?

[Casperf1]

Your job as an administrator is to facilitate a quality roleplaying environment.

 

Yep! Correct. But! There are a myriad of ways of doing this, each unique to the individual member of staff, even with a general outline, things tend to be case-by-case, and have to be looked at subjectively. Which is why I think criticism, suggestions and feedback should probably be emphasised as such important tools for the community to utilise more often than we seem to do currently.

 

What does roleplaying mean to you? Because as I hear it, you're playing a regular working person on a space station hired by a mega-corporation. So that's the role we play. Do actual researchers just release deadly viruses to the station? You'd think a person like that wouldn't get hired. As someone who plays a closet sociopath, someone who HIDES their sociopathy, I don't think someone like that would get hired. The admins are giving me obvious examples of grief and that, to my understanding, does not reinforce roleplay. Right now, what's happening is often referred to as a Strawman.

The server is intended to be heavy roleplay. So behave like an administrator of a heavy roleplay server. "They can do thing because X and Y. Deal with it."

You are a player. But you have additional duties as an administrator. And just that. An administrator. Unless you're a dev too. Then that's also a duty.

 

Even though I think that this was a response to Sound, I'd like to interject, if you wouldn't mind.

I believe Roleplaying has a different meaning to everyone, much like Acting, or Happiness, or anything, really. But regardless, I'll give you mine.

I would say that Roleplaying is placing yourself in the shoes of another character in a fictitious or non-fictitious situation, one that, generally, you would not normally be in. This can be accomplished via various mediums, and it just so happens that our medium has the origins of a rather imbalanced video game, and still retains a lot of individuals and mechanics that adhere to its 'arcade' roots. This mentality and behaviour obviously clashes with the environment of our Heavy Role-play server, which, as an "Administrator of a Heavy Role-play server" we try our very best to uphold such an environment. Whether this is by seeing a situation as unjust, meta/powergamey, or generally unnecessary, we all do this with our own, subjective ideas and viewpoints with the intention of bettering the community and attempting to further Role-play and the environment we strive to uphold, not because we hold a personal vendetta against anybody.

Again, Tainaava, simple terms of "Behave like an Administrator of a Heavy-roleplay Server" (a point I would debate that we are currently doing to the best of our ability) and "Just let us play." serve very, very little purpose in assisting staff to make things generally better for the community, at best. Please elaborate on these points, as I think they are very important, but their current state does very little to assist us.

 

What is to stop us from not only adding to things, but from removing things away as well? The answer is: nothing. And that's the beauty of it. What we have can be changed for the worse, but it can just as easily be changed for the better.

 

The thing is though, that nobody is seeking to take away but only to add more.

 

 

Indeed, and this is something that we, as a community, are more than capable of changing. Staff are but one aspect of the community, however, and cannot do this alone.

[Doomberg]

Okay. This is - or is supposed to be - a heavy roleplay server. This implies that some things that might be allowed on other types of servers are forbidden, and some things forbidden on other types of servers are allowed (For example: You can't play a batshit insane character, but you aren't necessarily going to get boinked for fucking someone over as security provided that it's within reason).

There will always be OOC limits on IC actions, no matter what. We cannot create some sort of anarchist utopia where staff intervention over IC actions is unnecessary. And, yes, there will be policies not contained within the rules that we will need to enforce regardless - the rules cannot be an all-encompassing document and they cannot possibly cover every potential situation (merely the foreseeable ones).

As for the hardsuit issue, it's not really something I would have minded as staff, but this is about more than that.

[Tainavaa]

In this particular server Frances, yes.

To put it in a generic form:

A player is someone who plays to coincide with the server's philosophy. So you look at the server's philosophy. Ours contains the words "Heavy roleplay". So what does heavy roleplay mean? To my understanding of the definition, to play a role in an immersive/realistic manner.

Definitions, reasons, and other things of the sort need to be concise. I shouldn't have to elaborate any further. If you think there's still some ambiguity, I'm honestly hard-pressed to find it.

I've elaborated on the bits that pissed me off before. Particularly the hardsuit and Tina being a shitty HOP. Since the hardsuit issue I haven't played nearly as much. And when I have, I've tried my hardest to avoid another bwoink. Before those two instances, I've never had an issue with the administration and I fully trusted I could do things in legitimate roleplay and not be bothered. Even AFTER my traitor ban because it was a busy night and I understand where he could think I was just murderboning. It's an honest mistake and it was okay. After the two instances I described earlier though, I started to lose trust in the administration. I'm honestly surprised anything even came of my complaint against the Furry. So I can't give you any more instances but those two were enough to come to two conclusions.

1) The administrators are shoehorning gameplay to fit what they like, altering the definition of "roleplay" and "powergaming" to their whim to fit their agenda.

2) Administrators are going to look out for themselves first as team, and the normal players second.

So I avoided any sort of deviation from a "model employee" as possible while TRYING to maintain my character. Which hasn't been all that successful.

Doomberg, I'm not trying to advocate some sort of "anarchy". In fact, the opposite.

[Frances]

1) The administrators are shoehorning gameplay to fit what they like, altering the definition of "roleplay" and "powergaming" to their whim to fit their agenda.

2) Administrators are going to look out for themselves first as team, and the normal players second.

I would like to hear you explain why exactly you think that is, and the exact train of thought that lets you reach this conclusion from the observations you've made.

What is the staff's "agenda", in your opinion?

[Tainavaa]

The agenda in my first conclusion is actually directly tied with the second.

The one who complained about the hardsuit was PumpkingSlice originally, the malfunctioning AI who tried to space me. I have a log of PumpkingSlice saying something later on in OOC. Sound Scopes bwoinked me in place of PumpkingSlice, almost assuredly, so PumpkingSlice didn't look biased because he was the malfunctioning AI.

And all the participating staff in the round that responded to my complaint supported that it was most definitely powergaming. No ifs, ands, or buts. We've been taking this hardsuit for a quarter of a year. Almost every round. And most definitely, every round I was Tina. I find it extremely difficult to believe that went under your nose for four months. Why decide all of a sudden to stop it now? And why stop this when people are allowed to do other things that so many other people bitch about things that affect other players much more than that? Because PumpkingSlice, a moderator, didn't like what I was doing. One out of a hundred times, having the hardsuit was a blessing rather than a curse. And that was enough for the administration to say "Yeah. Powergaming." Why? Why, when so many people complain about other things that affect players more?

Because a moderator made the complaint. And there was no listening to me at all. Despite describing the cons associated with taking the hardsuit, I was dismissed as having an unfair advantage.

So what was the staff's agenda at the time? To protect a member of their team's interest.

Edited May 7, 2015 by Guest

[Casperf1]

This is kinda why I asked to avoid referencing this exact situation like eight times. It's in the past, occurred with a member of staff who is no longer active, and is very likely going to foster unnecessary hostility.

But as a note, I'll say that I disagree with that, and had I been here, I would've argued against whoever was saying that taking a hard suit was power gaming.

My original thingy still stands though. It would be really helpful if you could elaborate on what you mean by:

"Just let us play." and "Act like an Administrator of a Heavy-roleplay Server.", since these are very valid points that staff can learn a lot from, should they be worded into constructive feedback.

[Frances]

So what was the staff's agenda at the time? To protect a member of their team's interest.

I honestly just can't support that. I've seen people come to these conclusions a lot (people told me the same thing when I was defending Sue), but the fact is, simply because somebody is disagreeing with you to support another person's viewpoint does not imply they are engaging in favoritism unless there is clear evidence of it. You can say "oh, you're taking that other person's side, so you must be in cahoots with them", but that does not necessarily make it true. I feel like the main thing you find staff did wrong was agree with each other - are we supposed to crucify staffmembers every time a staff complaint is made, simply because of possible accusations of bias or favoritism?

Anyway, I can actually explain my stance on this, as one of the involved parties.

At the time, I believed it was powergaming, mostly due to the kneejerk reaction of "medbay wants to make their suits easier to access". (Which, looking at it now, well... so, what...?) Anyway, I fell behind several arguments to support my reasoning, from it being unfair for other departments, to it confusing antagonists (but I doubt anyone has ever had their antag plan foiled simply because a department decided to move their hardsuits around). I was looking mostly at the OOC rationale behind contesting your actions, and reconsidering things now, it seems rather weak, which is why I'm willing to admit I was pretty much in the wrong on that debate (and really, I'm sorry. That was all kinda silly.) But never, at any point, did I even notice the names of the other players involved in the complaint, and I can assure you I wasn't thinking "hmm, I must protect Pumpking" or some other kind of insanity. Sometimes, people are simply wrong because they're wrong. There's not always a malevolent intent behind it.

This isn't the biggest issue we wanted to discuss, and I'm sorry we're delving slightly OT, but I believe a lot of the complaints you brought up are valid, and I'd like to do my best to clear the air so we can understand decisively which issues need to be addressed or not.

[Jamini]

Regarding that uh... debate. I was on the "Let us move hardsuits around" side.

Since then, as a regular EMT player who pretty routinely takes a suit, I'm actually agreeing that keeping them in EVA is better. As long as I can continue to configure one (for species) and put it together for use, I've really stopped caring about moving them out of EVA. If anything, I've found that the admin IC arguments make more sense rather than less. Especially skull's comment of "Sometimes you are supposed to have a challenge in getting to equipment you might need."

[Frances]

Regarding that uh... debate. I was on the "Let us move hardsuits around" side.

Since then, as a regular EMT player who pretty routinely takes a suit, I'm actually agreeing that keeping them in EVA is better. As long as I can continue to configure one (for species) and put it together for use, I've really stopped caring about moving them out of EVA. If anything, I've found that the admin IC arguments make more sense rather than less. Especially skull's comment of "Sometimes you are supposed to have a challenge in getting to equipment you might need."

Well, I don't think this is something that should really be discussed in this thread. The core of the matter isn't about the issue, but how it was handled.

[Rusty Shackleford]

Wow. Seven pages of people being depressed, being existential, and for lack of a better phrase, bitching and moaning.

I think the issue is that people are considering the game to be the main thing everyone's here for. Maybe they are, but as for me, I spend much, much more time on the forums than I do in spess steshun. Because I come here for the community. Spess may be a core aspect of this community, but I'd like to think that it's more than that, and that even if everyone lost interest in playing 2D space mans, that the community of Aurora itself could still find life in another medium or game.

I like talking to you people, seeing what you think about things, weighing in on issues brought up, etc etc. The game changes, the players change, but there's still a community here.

[Guest]

You are all completely detracting as to the reason I even made this topic and, funnily enough, all of you squabbling is the exact reason as to why I'm considering leaving.

I do not wish to play nor interact with people who argue semantics on ridiculously stupid shit for days on end.

This thread is literal autism and it's absolutely mindfucking to even read over.

Requesting a lock.

[Valkrae]

Locked at the request of Delta.