Aurora Server is Not a Heavy RP Server

[Damarik]

One might argue that an HRP server should employ rules specifically designed to drive people away, to maintain an elite community. HRP is a very niche service.

 

I believe I mentioned something to this effect in one of my previous posts. Granted yes: you will drive a LOT of people away by becoming that niche area. However, those that stay are those that are almost always genuinely interested in the game aspect for its roleplay scenarios and are willing to abide by rules, work on their characters and add things to the story rather than simply say fuck-all to the rules and do whatever the Hell they want.

HRP servers of any game tend to become really close-knit communities the longer they run, because the players all know one another and agree to the ideal that they're not going to ever intentionally fuck with someone's day by blatantly disregarding the important things. Unlike Sir Greytide von Honkenstein, players in a real HRP game don't just play their characters: they ARE their characters, ideally. Each character you create is a representation of a part of yourself that you want to be able to express and grow into a fully formed aspect of who and/or what you are simply because you're often not allowed to do it by reality's standards.

[Carver]

I truly don't see it as possible to have HRP within SS13. This is a game that resets it's scenario every 2-3 hours, even less so on other servers, and can't stand under the weight of longer rounds. It's a whodunnit murder simulator based out of an atmospheric simulator that has been repurposed as a rather makeshift roleplaying platform and happens to be loaded to the brim with underage teens and overly dramatic furries.

Don't get me wrong, I would love to see HRP, but it would be exceptionally difficult to squeeze such out of this platform. As it stands I try to build characters to appeal to all groupings, with flavour texts and full records but still able to appreciate the good humour of a banana-slipping clown or the odd traitor named Ben Garrison, and just adjust based on what seems to be most suitable for the crowd. Though I have gotten lazy as of late, since full flavour texts take a good 20-40 minutes to do (And records with that damnable format of mine even longer).

Maybe I'm just jaded, maybe I have a point, I can't say I care too much as this game as a whole has been on a never-ending downward slide in quality for years.

[Bedshaped]

Maybe I'm just jaded, maybe I have a point, I can't say I care too much as this game as a whole has been on a never-ending downward slide in quality for years.

 

I think you are. I've been playing SS13 since 2009 and HRP on Bay12 since 2012 and the game has definitely been changing for the better; richer backstory being developed, better in-game mechanics for allowing roleplay. Any degrading in the quality of RP happens in a small subset (server), over a short period of time (months or a year) and has well defined causes.

[Carver]

Maybe I'm just jaded, maybe I have a point, I can't say I care too much as this game as a whole has been on a never-ending downward slide in quality for years.

 

I think you are. I've been playing SS13 since 2009 and HRP on Bay12 since 2012 and the game has definitely been changing for the better; richer backstory being developed, better in-game mechanics for allowing roleplay. Any degrading in the quality of RP happens in a small subset (server), over a short period of time (months or a year) and has well defined causes.

Meh. I just remember a good bunch of lads who had the best of times, didn't get salty over IC shenanigans, could both enjoy humour and completely serious RP as necessary. But everyone seems so sensitive now over the smallest shit and willing to tear each other's throats out the moment someone offends them.

[Skull132]

Meh. I just remember a good bunch of lads who had the best of times, didn't get salty over IC shenanigans, could both enjoy humour and completely serious RP as necessary. But everyone seems so sensitive now over the smallest shit and willing to tear each other's throats out the moment someone offends them.

 

Except, alongside those, were folks who got angry, yelled at, and ragequit over others interacting with their characters in manners that were reasonable and even realistic, but didn't fit their idea of what was supposed to happen. And you have people who wished for nothing more than to sit down in the medical bay lobby, and chat. For hours. On end. And were quite passive-aggressive whenever any other mode of play was talked about.

Speaking of the history. http://auroraserver.freeforums.net/thread/1616/problem-sorts?page=1&scrollTo=16799 Sound familiar?

Anyways, I'll continue with participating in a more meaningful manner after I get done forever with work on Sunday.

[Xelnagahunter]

this is a pain and in practise never seems to be enforced. Some people, especially security, have been cloned hundreds of times, they generally can't be bothered roleplaying out trauma for the nth time, and forcing them to doesn't seem like it'd go well

Imo, what's proper for a character, isn't always something you can expect a player to do. some rules, if seriously enforced, would just drive people away

This exact thing is the primary reason that most of my characters are DNC

 

Here's the thing though, ICly how many times have they really been cloned? Are you saying that if the antag gibs me a bajillion times I can treat cloning as nothing out of the ordinary when it happens again? Oh wait... Most character deaths which result in cloning are non-cannon. Nifty thing about that. If they can't be bothered, they deserve a warning/tempban.

[Dreamix]

(...)

Here's the thing though, ICly how many times have they really been cloned? Are you saying that if the antag gibs me a bajillion times I can treat cloning as nothing out of the ordinary when it happens again? Oh wait... Most character deaths which result in cloning are non-cannon. Nifty thing about that. If they can't be bothered, they deserve a warning/tempban.

What the fuck. You want people to roleplay shit on this heavy roleplay server? You sick fuck.

You can still have some good RP on Aurora. And some of these ideas sound really good, but are impossible to implement.

Whitelist every new character-thing? There would be no snowflakes that are dealt with for ages. Every little character needs flavor text, backstory, records to be accepted. Buuuut, that's impossible and 'unappealing'. Imagine having your perfect character denied, because one admin is stricter than the other.

No round resets? That would be nice to try sometimes, for a day or so. Buuuut, that's also impossible. If people want to evacuate/transfer, they just want it and will be upset if someone forces them to stay. Plus, things being canon, as someone mentioned earlier.

I mean, I'm also upset about some things (shitcurity, snowflakes, greyshirts, etc.), but that's still the heaviest HRP by the SS13 standards I know.

[Guest Menown]

My idea of heavy rp is people acting like they're playing characters there to do their jobs.

From an OOC stand-point, it'd mean an enforcement of rules.

Neither of these are happening, so at the most, my stance is that Aurora is medium RP.

[Lipsi]

IMO the main problem is the server's ambiguous relationship with conflict/antagonists. Without antagonists people get bored out of their wits. After all, any good story has a conflict.

But with antagonists the conflict usually isn't all that narratively interesting because it's not pre-written, it's all improvised off the cuff and usually the antagonist is trying to 'win'.

I think in a heavy roleplay server, rather than having the current game-style antagonists, we should have GMs who design pre-written conflicts for the station. Spawning in interesting threats to deal with, etc.

[Alberyk]

IMO the main problem is the server's ambiguous relationship with conflict/antagonists. Without antagonists people get bored out of their wits. After all, any good story has a conflict.

 

Non antagonist conflict is allowed and possible.

Besides, several of those issues requires people to ahelp. I can't explain how silly is for people to endless complain while they do not even ahelp the issues in game or even make player complaints.

[Guest Menown]

Besides, several of those issues requires people to ahelp. I can't explain how silly is for people to endless complain while they do not even ahelp the issues in game or even make player complaints.

 

I don't enjoy ahelping somebody to learn they've been bwoinked two or three times for the same shit in the same round already. If it takes me complaining over ahelp to get something done, why do we expect the administration staff to have autonomy?

[Guest]

"Now, none of this is the fault of a 3-6 month year old player, but you, nonetheless, are, without a doubt, a member of the worst period generation period ever period, so when you ask what makes us the greatest server on the BYOND, I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about! Auroraserver.freeforums.net?!

It sure used to be… We stood up for what was right. We fought for moral reason. We passed rules, struck down rules, for moral reasons. We waged wars on bad players, not on mean characters. We sacrificed, we cared about our players, we put our money where our mouths were and we never beat our chest. We developed great, big things, made ungodly server advances, explored the universe, set standards and we cultivated BYOND's greatest roleplayers AND the greatest community. We reached for the stars, acted like adults. We aspired to be kind, polite, passionate, we didn’t belittle it. It didn’t make us feel inferior. We didn’t identify ourselves by who we played in the last round and we didn’t get upset so easy. We were able to be all these things and do all these things because we were informed… by great Admins, Admins who were revered. First step in solving any problem is recognizing there is one. Aurora is not the greatest server in the SS13 anymore."

- Xander using The News Room Speech in Aurora Style to attack the server's current state.

[Guest]

Have you ever memed so hard that you took a discussion of the state of a video game community based off of "heavy RP" and "immersive" shenanigans as if it had any political/moral ramifications or any level of importance to it?

because that just happened and the shitty memers will continue to exist as living memes

[Skull132]

I'm not even sure wtf Xander's talking about, and whether he's being sarcastic or not.

One thing is. The amount of rules we introduce won't matter much, unless we go full nazimode. Why? Because people either can't be bothered to, or simply will not report issues. And I can now say this with quite good accuracy, as I only miss some 8 hours of server life. People either complain over Dsay, LOOC, or don't at all. I have slowly started picking up complaints over dsay, but I do not assign them the priority I would when compared to the ones over adminhelps, so my response to them is delayed. Some admins or mods don't even notice them, because of visual filtering or flat out filtering and turning off dsay.

I can promise the Moon and Star with regards to the rules, but none of that will matter if no one ever reports shit.

I will be nudging a few things from our side as well. Primarily, at this point, I want to look at hostage situations and the application of weaponry. But that gets discussed with staff first. And again, any of that won't even matter if people get salty and simply bitch and moan.

[Mofo1995]

I'm not even sure wtf Xander's talking about, and whether he's being sarcastic or not.

 

He's re-appropriated this famous speech from film:

I don't think he's being sarcastic.

Again though, from people who abide by the rules, I'm still having the same incredible HRP experiences which I've been having for ten months now. Like I said in my post earlier in this thread, use your F1 key, file your complaints, don't be afraid of confrontation. So long as we don't get super overzealous and instaban people fro the smallest lapses in RP, it'll buff out.

[Guest]

I will be nudging a few things from our side as well. Primarily, at this point, I want to look at hostage situations and the application of weaponry. But that gets discussed with staff first. And again, any of that won't even matter if people get salty and simply bitch and moan.

 

Easiest thing you can do is establish the word-for-word expectation we've had for armed conflict and hostage scenarios. We expect people to value their own lives first, and have a very good justification for why they took certain risky actions such as self-sacrifice, suicide or any other extraneous circumstance.

And if anyone fails to adhere to those requirements, job-ban them from every role that can directly receive a weapon as result of their job title. Security, science, heads of staff, all antagonists, et cetera, until they prove that they've learned how to act in such situations. Weapons bans have proven to be effective, while unorthodox.

Easy! Nobody wants to be job-banned immediately for a single bad decision! Now nobody will want to do that and get banned for it! You've now set roleplay expectations and the staff will deal with offenders accordingly after an investigation.

[Skull132]

I will be nudging a few things from our side as well. Primarily, at this point, I want to look at hostage situations and the application of weaponry. But that gets discussed with staff first. And again, any of that won't even matter if people get salty and simply bitch and moan.

 

Easiest thing you can do is establish the word-for-word expectation we've had for armed conflict and hostage scenarios. We expect people to value their own lives first, and have a very good justification for why they took certain risky actions such as self-sacrifice, suicide or any other extraneous circumstance.

And if anyone fails to adhere to those requirements, job-ban them from every role that can directly receive a weapon as result of their job title. Security, science, heads of staff, all antagonists, et cetera, until they prove that they've learned how to act in such situations. Weapons bans have proven to be effective, while unorthodox.

Easy! Nobody wants to be job-banned immediately for a single bad decision! Now nobody will want to do that and get banned for it! You've now set roleplay expectations and the staff will deal with offenders accordingly after an investigation.

 

Doesn't actually hit the mark on what is needed. The primary issue is that a good deal of hostage situations are resolved by sec (or command staff) in a very blunt manner, which foregoes RP.

"Oh, just charge'em and it'll be fine." It's butts. Obviously there are situations where the hostage takers are bad enough to where this is fine, but there are also situations where the hostage takers have done a stellar job, and still lose to a wave of memes saying, "Git gud," without those memes actually considering RP: the potential for hostages to get shot in the altercation, or alternate, more peaceful solutions.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

"I'll just be cloned. We have medbay for a reason." Is used by crew to go apeshit bananas during a hostage crisis. Crew don't value themselves or the lives of others in most circumstances. The only successful hostage situations I've had (even the ones that we got raided) were the ones where we had to physically take the hostages off-station and out of the reach of the crew, or I'm holding them behind cult walls. And I've still had officers and even HoS' try to laser my cult wall down as I'm warning them to back off or I'll kill the hostages who I'd really rather convert. One time the HoS did this, emptying his clip into my unaffected wall, then had the audacity to go "No! How could you!" when I slit his officer's throat in response. Like, come on fam.

It's pretty crazy that antags have to care about the lives of the hostages more than the crew.

As I've argued before in the staffchat (I'm probably pretty popular with my constant opinions) it would probably be a good foundation to start with if we start BWOINKing crew that get hostages killed because of over-eagerness to be the hero. A regulation on it won't really do much because regulations are thrown out the window during code red situations where "im stressed" is used to break them.

[Guest]

Doesn't actually hit the mark on what is needed. The primary issue is that a good deal of hostage situations are resolved by sec (or command staff) in a very blunt manner, which foregoes RP.

 

Strike with the hammer on those that resolve these hostage situations for shitty reasons, then.

 

"Oh, just charge'em and it'll be fine."

 

This is not acceptable.

 

"Git gud,"

 

This is not acceptable.

 

"I'll just be cloned. We have medbay for a reason."

 

This is not acceptable.

 

And I've still had officers and even HoS' try to laser my cult wall down as I'm warning them to back off or I'll kill the hostages who I'd really rather convert. One time the HoS did this, emptying his clip into my unaffected wall, then had the audacity to go "No! How could you!"

 

This is not acceptable.

 

A regulation on it won't really do much because regulations are thrown out the window during code red situations where "im stressed" is used to break them.

 

This situation isn't acceptable either.

Am I not getting through to anyone? I challenge anyone to effectively sum up what I think should be done to people that do not act within the lines of acceptable behavior during hostage situations and risky combat scenarios. I will literally ask Skull to delete my forum account and I will not make another for a month if someone can successfully sum up what I think should be done as a plan of action, and I will 100% go through with this, no bullshit. Because literally no one else can read and think unless they have a very good reason to do so. So here we go. Let's go, community, post something good for a change. Your sacrifice won't be in vain, neither will mine.

[NebulaFlare]

Taking down a hostage with lasers and bullets is viable, but it needs to be done with tact. This is what most people miss. Instead of a proper planning phase to go in victorious, they just go in with guns loaded.

However, I think now that we got a week age limit for security and 2 week age limit for difficult antags, it'll go a lot more smoothly - those are the job slots that are directly involved in hostage taking. Most good hostage scenarios I've witnessed, comes from seasoned players. The newer ones are from servers with more lax rules than ours, and a mindset of 'GUNS BLAZING FOR GLORIOUS HEROES'. That just doesn't work here.

Second point is that most people do not believe the hostage takers to hold up their end of the bargain. So if they're going to lose the hostage as well, might as well take down the antag, with the hostage as 'collateral damage'. I get the idea that is what most hostage situations end up as. And Jackboot's right - people want to play hero.

[Bokaza]

I'm a pretty shit heavy RPer by under the standards posted by the OP. It's mostly due to my lack of attachment to my characters. What's more, when I do make an effort to care, I am met by deafening quiet of characters whose personalities and responses make my boring real 8 hour job seem like a funfair. Then I ask myself why I play at all. Suddenly, everyone's character, including mine takes a bland gray color, which usually results in me quietly going to cryo and logging off.

We really one need of two things. Either new bloods who will inspire new ideas and overturn the stale conventions, or get the old fags back, who a good deal of us have been playing with for more than two years and are sure to get the RP kicking again.

Edited June 30, 2016 by Guest

[hivefleetchicken]

I don't like a lot of the new players, to be honest. Most of them have no grammar or punctuation, take Heavy RP as some kind of asylum for snowflakes and cliquey powergamers, and then have the gall to say I'm a shit who should go back to goon because I whisper "meme" to someone in the halls and instantly try to void it.

However, I've witnessed a lot of shittery between old player sec who think they're invincible and antags that makes me want to agree with OP and say we're barely medium.

I have never seen security negotiate a hostage crisis without the HOS running in and throwing a flashbang in between everyone. The old players that have gotten tired of engaging with antags and instead just want to win can eat my fucking ass sometimes.

[vtipoman]

So If you guys don't consider Aurora to be heavyRP, do you consider any ss13 server to be heavyRP? (just wondering)

EDIT: Can you give me an example of a heavyRP server/game? Any game.

[Mofo1995]

HRP is about standards rather than game. Any group of people can get together, hop into a chat room, and have some HRP. You can HRP-ize any game. Polaris is HRP, but from what I can tell there's no antags at all and everything is canon. The thing about HRP servers is that they attract snowflakes which are, paradoxically, usually poorly roleplayed. As far as my experiences on SS13 have gone, this server is the best I've found for roleplay.

[Tenenza]

So If you guys don't consider Aurora to be heavyRP, do you consider any ss13 server to be heavyRP? (just wondering)

EDIT: Can you give me an example of a heavyRP server/game? Any game.

 

Alium Deathtrap, duh.

Anything less is preposterous.

that's sarcasm, for those unaware of my opinion of alium deathtrap