11/29/15 - Player Complaint - Ffrances & Halorocks

[Frances]

Don't know who you were with in this one, but no logs of another nuke op anywhere in sight leads me to believe you weren't talking with another nuke op.

So you're making an assumption because you don't actually know what happened

-The first of these logs was the dreaded runescape joke, pretty much in its entirety. You've omitted the exchange that led to the joke being made, though, and I think it would be worth sharing that too. I won't deny that casually asking about runescape over comms as a nuke op was mildly memetic, but I also won't deny that people regularly joke about 450 year old games and movies, antags or not. I also won't deny that during the entire round, that was the only interaction I've had with the crew that wasn't syndicate/antag-related.

-The second was actually said to our Diona teammate over the nuke channel - you didn't really have any way to guess that, though. For context, our third op had requested the Diona stay on the ship and I was trying to encourage him to come join us, as a two-op team is pretty lame.

 

Here I prove that it wasn't just as a joke with nuke ops.

I never said it was only a joke with the nuke ops. I said the word dank 2-3 times otherwise, and you did quote all of them.

 

You said "haha" exactly 33 times throughout the entire round; 5 of those in-a-row.

How is saying "haha" a meme?

Anyway, even though the word "dank" is just a variation of "cool", if the 'mins simply decide "don't say the word dank anymore", as I said, I'm pretty much cool with it (though I don't understand how it's going to help with the immersion when the very definition of joke characters is that they're absurd and not really a work of immersion, but if you want to make joke characters a bit more "serious", okay, that's fine.) The reason why I'm defending myself so much against this is that people are accusing me of tearing apart the fabric of roleplay by using the word "dank" (now people are starting to say that I was encouraging other people to chucklefuck) and are trying to claim that my character was memespouting for the whole round, which frankly, he wasn't.

[Guest]

Yeah, 3-4 people watching you roleplay like an inexperienced child and spouting memes is nothing like the time you rolled in lit welder fuel in front of 8 people in the holodeck. You also, uh, spouted memes that time, too. But nobody really cares about the memes by themselves, it's the behavior that comes with it.

Either you are really confused as to what gripes people (not just staff, mind) have with you, or you're intentionally pretending as though you're doing nothing wrong.

No, running around being a memester in-character is not the worst thing that could ever happen on the server. However, you've been doing this for awhile. I believe you've been told a few times to stop, yes?

If not, then perhaps you need to be told to stop, but this time with a little more firmness. Despite everything you say, despite all of the values you claim to uphold and this forum personality you seem to do very well in keeping up, your in-game persona seems to contradict every single little thing you've ever posted here.

I really can't tell if you're either a liar, a hypocrite, a troll, all of those at once, or even someone who is simply misunderstood.

You seem to be very good at having long discussions, but ultimately you're not very good at listening, are you?

[LetzShake]

It's not JUST memes or JUST being a stupid character that makes no sense and is incompetent or JUST completely ignoring any semblance of realistic pain RP. "MY LUNG IS RUPTURED HAHA THIS IS FUNNY". It is the total package.

You keep changing it to "I only said dank once! I only said runescape once! I only mentioned Call of Duty once!"

You 'only did' a lot of specific things a limited number of times. But in total, you did almost no roleplaying as an even sort of reasonable character and contributed very little to the round in general. The point of an antag is to create good RP and the crew did the best they could, but the whole round being an awful waste of time really fell squarely on you and Hackie's shoulders.

Edited December 1, 2015 by Guest

[Guest]

At no point did I imply that the last statement is true, I was simply saying when one draws the line, according to personal opinion. That said, the point is that this is a game, and we are suppose to be enjoying ourselves. No, it's not a matter of justice, it's not a matter of good, well thought out arguments, it's a matter of more or less people finding the round frustrating or enjoyable. No amount of arguing or debating will make people enjoy something that they do not.

With that in mind, I do not claim to have the exact count of people who dislike the 'dank memes', nor that you, as a player, have less right to enjoy yourself, nor that the majority even cares. I'm just stating that maybe, just maybe, people should look for better alternatives to roleplay as other than 'memetic shits'. As a good number of people do not find it enjoyable. Simply for the sake of peace and mutual fun.

If or not any moderation should be done, is not my concern and is left completely to our patient staff. I am not attempting to outshout anyone. Enjoy.

[Frances]

Yeah, 3-4 people watching you roleplay like an inexperienced child and spouting memes is nothing like the time you rolled in lit welder fuel in front of 8 people in the holodeck. You also, uh, spouted memes that time, too. But nobody really cares about the memes by themselves, it's the behavior that comes with it.

Either you are really confused as to what gripes people (not just staff, mind) have with you, or you're intentionally pretending as though you're doing nothing wrong.

No, running around being a memester in-character is not the worst thing that could ever happen on the server. However, you've been doing this for awhile. I believe you've been told a few times to stop, yes?

If not, then perhaps you need to be told to stop, but this time with a little more firmness. Despite everything you say, despite all of the values you claim to uphold and this forum personality you seem to do very well in keeping up, your in-game persona seems to contradict every single little thing you've ever posted here.

I really can't tell if you're either a liar, a hypocrite, a troll, all of those at once, or even someone who is simply misunderstood.

You seem to be very good at having long discussions, but ultimately you're not very good at listening, are you?

You sorta missed the point if that is what you think lol.

I only really ran into two groups of staff in the past. There was one group (Viking, and I don't know who else wanted to permaban me from the server without ever taking the time to discuss their issues with me) who thought that all kinds of non-serious characters were bad. There was another group who didn't have issues with me and halo messing around, as much as the frequency of it. I ended up having a serious discussing with the latter group and we established that joke characters were okay, they just needed not to happen 24/7.

Since then (and that was months ago) I've played two joke characters, and I felt pretty justified both times I did (once was during a nations round where I was trying to create a nation based around 60s-70s funk, rather than a department. The other was in the round subjected to this complaint, where I realized that our nuke team would be unable to accomplish any traditional nuke objectives).

So I don't think I exactly went back on my promise, or anything we established. What we didn't establish was that making jokes about welder fires not hurting you was a "meme", or that, well, pretty much anything silly is a meme now. I thought memes were things like ">tfw no gf" or "REEEEEEEEEEE" or "ayy lmao", but feel free to disagree, I guess. I don't have a degree in memeology or anything to back this up lol.

[Frances]

It's not JUST memes or JUST being a stupid character that makes no sense and is incompetent or JUST completely ignoring any semblance of realistic pain RP. "MY LUNG IS RUPTURED HAHA THIS IS FUNNY". It is the total package.

You keep changing it to "I only said dank once! I only said runescape once! I only mentioned Call of Duty once!"

You 'only did' a lot of specific things a limited number of times. But in total, you did almost no roleplaying as an even sort of reasonable character and contributed very little to the round in general. The point of an antag is to create good RP and the crew did the best they could, but the whole round being an awful waste of time really fell squarely on you and Hackie's shoulders.

Aren't memes such as "dank" and a character just taking everything lightly (while still being aware of the situation) a different thing?

You keep mentioning the popped lung. Keep in mind I went to medbay first thing when I got on station, tried to get help, and was chased at gunpoint by the CMO before being taken into the brig, still passing out from bloodloss, with no medical help whatsoever. At this point I made light of my condition (which was being ignored despite my mob literally spamming everybody with automated coughing messages), and did all of this while still acutely expressing pain and calling attention to my physical state. Would you prefer that I roleplay 30 minutes of straight-faced misery because the CMO decided to be a dick to me? Because that sounds kinda lame and excessive, in comparison.

Anyway, you said that you didn't dislike "silly" characters, just that you found what I did "memetic", but at this point your posts seem to be leading more towards the idea that you did in fact have issues with my agent because he was silly.

Edit: I also haven't been trying to change the subject, contrary to what you might think. Since the beginning of the complaint, I've been trying to argue that:

1. I didn't constantly spout memes, and did engage in other roleplay which people are blatantly ignoring

2. I don't understand how mentioning an old videogame is terribly reprehensible or immersion breaking (and do understand that it's silly)

3. I have no issue cutting down on memetic stuff altogether if it's found to be too extreme even for silly characters, I just don't want people to keep misrepresenting what happened as memefest 2015

[LetzShake]

Would you prefer that I roleplay 30 minutes of straight-faced misery because the CMO decided to be a dick to me? Because that sounds kinda lame and excessive, in comparison.

"What do you expect me to do, ROLEPLAY? What kind of server do you think this is?'

[Frances]

Would you prefer that I roleplay 30 minutes of straight-faced misery because the CMO decided to be a dick to me? Because that sounds kinda lame and excessive, in comparison.

"What do you expect me to do, ROLEPLAY? What kind of server do you think this is?'

The whole point of my character that round is that he was absurd and nonchalant. He laughed about recruiting people for an anti-NT terrorist organization right on a NT station, he laughed about getting lost in space and meeting his likely and eventual doom, and he laughed about getting his lungs destroyed (while coughing a lot, and still trying to get help and complaining about the pain - heaven forbid someone try to inject a bit of humor in a tense situation, people never do that irl.)

Anyway, you say you don't have a problem with silly stuff (you did say you want to bring clowns back to HRP), but you have a problem with memes. Memes like using the word dank or mentioning runescape (which I'm still iffy to concede on given the number of times people discussed old games just like that on extended rounds). But how was my character's reaction memetic? He tried to get medical help, which he was denied. He repeatedly called attention to his condition, even after people refused to help him. And then he made a joke about it. Oh.

It was silly, and somewhat absurd, yes. But what's your actual argument at this point? Did you change your mind, and do you have an issue with joke characters existing altogether, then? If not, what is the issue with a joke character making a joke about the fact that they're wounded? (While still fully acknowledging that they are, mind you.)

[LetzShake]

Silly is a clown. Clowns exist. Clowns can exist. Clowns are not nonsense. We have a damn bar on our station, they sure make more sense than that. Hell, I've done silly. myself. One of my routine Cyborg/AI Personalities is a party bot named Jervis who plays Twenty Questions with the crew. Silly, not implausible. The syndicate holding a recruiting drive is silly, not implausible.

A guy laughing as he slowly dies, in probably the worst pain he's ever experienced in his life? That's not silly. That's stupid. And even then that would slide if it wasn't for the whole package of the character.

[Frances]

Silly is a clown. Clowns exist. Clowns can exist. Clowns are not nonsense. We have a damn bar on our station, they sure make more sense than that. Hell, I've done silly. myself. One of my routine Cyborg/AI Personalities is a party bot named Jervis who plays Twenty Questions with the crew. Silly, not implausible.

we have w i z a r d s

[Susan]

Two wrongs don't make a right.

The development team refuses to remove modes like Nuke and Wizard; it's not justification to act like a twit.

Edited December 5, 2015 by Guest

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

Two wrongs don't make a right.

Your development team refuses to remove retarded modes like Nuke and Wizard; it's not justification to act like a twit.

 

Reminder that during a serious event you played a giant space worm that screamed song lyrics and ate people, so on the basis of this argument you yourself are violating your argument's basis.

[Frances]

Reminder that during a serious event you played a giant space worm that screamed song lyrics and ate people, so on the basis of this argument you yourself are violating your argument's basis.

I actually talked to Sue about that and can kinda understand her explanation (even though I don't agree with how she's handling things).

When we did most of our silly events last year Aurora was apparently a much more serious place (I did not notice this myself and don't know if I want to say that's true). I actually think that fun, lighthearted events are still needed from time to time to make HRP interesting (it's a pacing thing), but Sue seems to be complaining there's too much non-serious stuff and that we should thus taking steps to discourage it at the moment (if there really is that would kinda make sense, but it's hard to say if we started goofing off more or if we've just gotten more people who dislike silly altogether and would prefer Aurora to be Hypatia).

 

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I was hoping Skull would've posted at some point to sum up this thread's issues but he hasn't yet, so I'm gonna try my best to write a summary of what I understand with where we've gotten.

I see this complaint as two separate issues (ignoring the stuff with Halo who got permabanned). One of them is that I played a character who engaged in some memetic variations (such as saying the word "dank" and asking people about videogames once, which yes, is out-of-left-field silly). The other issue is that I played a syndicate op who was absurdly cheerful and easygoing, and tried to merrily recruit people to the syndicate cause.

I believe and fully accept that the combination of these two concepts, together, created something that turned out to be too silly and lacking substance for people to really accept. I had my justifications for being "Halo the dank agent" (I wanted to mess with the nuke ops who already thought I was Halo, and it only played a small part of my character), but I underestimated the effect it'd have on people's initial reaction to me and that's honestly my bad.

I still don't think there's anything inherently wrong with a syndicate op being cheerful, cracking jokes about everything and trying to recruit others to the syndicate cause in a very lighthearted and non-serious manner, especially if the other operatives of the round are on-board with the act. This is an opinion I'm holding on to considering we have other roundtypes such as Wizard, which are based around the same kind of sillyness, and that a majority of players have engaged or organized such events themselves (hint: Thunderdome) and still seem to be happy to have them from time to time.

The addition of memes proved to be too much and I have no problem recognizing that. If I ever do end up playing joke characters again under any circumstances, I'll just refrain from using memes as they don't seem to be getting a very good reception at the moment

Do note that I didn't deny using memes at any point during this complaint - rather, I tried to argue against the accusations that my character was solely based around memes, which he was not. But people have argued that he said stuff like "dank lmao fam" all round long (he did not), that he kept mentioning videogames (I still disagree on the seriousness of the mention of one videogame as "immersion-breaking", but if it really gives you that bad of an impression then alright), and that him saying "haha" or laughing a lot is a meme (okay, I plain don't understand that one.) Anyway, this is a bunch of stuff I would have liked to establish for sure before getting to the meat of the argument (as it's difficult to make progress when working on a flawed base) but we just never really managed to head there.

So these are my full explanations regarding what I've been able to understand from this complaint. I hope you find them reasonable and mostly agree with me.

[Skull132]

I'm honestly not even going to touch what you said and not, mainly because it'll turn into quote battles and not go anywhere.

Anyways. Here's the deal. There's nothing wrong with being occasionally silly and otherwise rambunctious. But as I also said, there is a line. Once that line is crossed, the moderation takes action. And these actions went over that line in the great desert dunes. Because of this, and because you, FFrances, have a history which almost escalated to you being permabanned for it, we're going to issue a warning and see where you take us. If we end in the same situation as we did whenever Tenenza was handling your case, then it'll be closed. Otherwise, if it's a singular incident, then you'll be fine. There is a line, you are aware of it, and you know quite well where it runs.

Regarding Halorocks, he was banned for similar offences, but this complaint did not factor into it, as actions to take were not decided yet.

[Frances]

I'm honestly surprised. I didn't know I was this close to being permabanned.

[Skull132]

In the span of a month, even less, you received one jobban, one note, one warning, one 3-day ban. All relating to similar offences and stacking ontop of one-another. The next step up would have literally been a permanent ban, as per the escalation of punishments.

[Frances]

And this is where I (personally) feel like the current system is failing. During the solid 1-2 months that I spent playing joke characters, I wasn't as much as stopped once (save for that incident where we played criminal chemists and OD'd on extended - and given how much of a dick Viking ended up being during the whole conversation I don't feel really guilty about getting jobbanned.)

Anything besides that? I was never informed of. The note, the warning? No idea how I got them or what they were about. Staff got in touch with me a few times, but it was always for ridiculous stuff, like telling someone a joke in LOOC, or trying to actually break my leg to roleplay it having been caught in a bear trap.

Then the discussion with Tenenza happened, we had a talk about my chucklefuck characters being excessive, and that was the end of that. That's also the point at which I learned that my head whitelist had been stripped, because nobody had actually told me when it happened. If anybody, and I do mean literally anybody from the staff had come down at any point during those two months and held the conversation that Tenenza held with me, the problem could've been solved weeks before.

This isn't because I was trying to "test you guys" or "wanted a good answer", I genuinely had no idea there even was a problem. I just saw staff act like assholes over petty things, and that was pretty much the end of it on my end. And that's something I've seen happen pretty regularly. Techno's been banned for his aggressive conduct, yet nobody ever confronted him about it or tried to have a genuine talk with him to tell him he was being a dick to people. Cassie was supposedly banned (or almost-banned) for her abrasive conduct, yet you guys didn't make any effort to engage in dialogue with her before the big incident that led to her being banned. Halo played chucklefuck characters for months on a daily basis, and hilariously enough, was never banned (or really even punished) for it until yesterday, for no special reason, when you could've pulled him aside pretty much anytime months ago and asked him to stop doing that.

Issues are left to fester for God-knows-how-long, and honest communication with users is pretty much non-existent. Heck, I've seen several mods/admins claim that they don't even have to inform users when they've been warned or given notes. How do you expect users to change their behavior to meet your standards when you can't even communicate what these standards are?

And this is a real problem. Some of the staff are treating this like some kind of game, where instead of trying to solve issues, the objective is to accumulate a record against rulebreaking/disliked users to remove them from the server. The staff don't seem genuinely concerned with solving issues, they seem concerned with giving X person X amount of notes so they can apply a ban.

I know this, because it's the game we were playing when I was on staff. It wasn't any different then, it isn't any different now, and from what I've been able to see of how the current round of trials is being handled, it won't be any different in the future.

[Skull132]

Da system, it is failzors. No, actually I've got very little to say about what you posted up. Why? Well, mainly because it's in the past, and going back to alter it is a bitch of a task that I am not yet capable of. Maybe if I ascend to godhood, we can try.

But, anyways. I'm going to make sure that these issues simply are not repeated. And, since we have quite successfully communicated the issue to you here, I'd say that I'm on track. Unless there still exists something you fail to understand with this complaint here?

[Frances]

No, just keep doing your best if you actually believe in what I said.

[Skull132]

Also, have fun statistics: if our objective was to pile notes onto people we'd want banned, then one could expect people with the most amount of notes to be all permabanned by now. Only 7 out of 25 of the people with the most notes are banned.

Anyways, complaint resolved, at this point, and an understanding of "Please be understanding with your silliness" bestowed. Hopefully.