Player Complaint: Alberyk?!?!

[Tequilajoe]

BYOND Key: Tequilajoe

Game ID: bPT-dm8g

Player Byond Key: Alberyk

Staff involved: Alberyk?

Reason for complaint:

Now, let me start off by saying I think Alberyk is a great guy and an integral part of Aurora. However, I feel that even he needs to be reminded, on occasion, to slow down for a second and think about what he's doing in game.

In this particular round, I recently joined to find that skeletons had mostly taken over the station. Some were shambling around, some were breaking in to things, there were quite a few corpses and even more people SSD ghosting to play as skeletons. Then I walk past this skeleton.

 

It attacks me, as you can see. Not too crazy, its a skeleton, after all. But it seemed a bit out of the blue seeing as how the others didn't pursue me. I was keeping a safe distance up until this point, now I was running like hell. Unfortunately, it eventually caught me when I tried to duck into maintenance.

I wonder what will happen next, I asked myself.

 

Alas, I was clicked on, over and over until I died. Despite any and all pleas, the skeleton clicked and clicked, with absolutely no interest in saying or doing anything else. I was pretty miffed, I ahelped it, wondering if skeletons get a free pass to just silently kill everyone. Nobody answered, then I find out from deadchat that it was not some random hippie reject but Alberyk!

Alberyk?!?!?! I thought that was a little surprising, I try and hold our regulars, especially our admins and staff, to a high standard. I get it, he was a skeleton, he was a bad guy. An antag, if you will. But as I recall, even antags should interact with people before they frag them. Especially when the victim is begging for said interaction in their final moments before that fatal LMB.

[Alberyk]

I was playing a skeleton minion that followed the wizard into medical and fought some people inside. I told some crew there to leave medical at once or they would join our undead ranks, which Monique was around, later she runs away. After breaking out of medical and fighting the rest of security, I roam towards engineering, I find no one and then Monique walks by me, I started typing something, she runs and I chase, since she did not slow down, I keep firing my KA towards her. She did not give up and keept running and welding airlocks on the way.

Then, after being hurt enough, I managed to get closer to her and jab her to death. Now, I did kill her without saying anything, mostly because she keept running away even when she saw me at engineering, and the round was already in a point that was clear that skeletons and the wizards were openly hostiles and turning the dead crew into bone slaves. So, interaction did happen at medical when I clear told the crew of my intentions while trying to break out of the AI's barriers.

Now, you were running as much you could and welding the airlocks on the way, which I could argue is much "interaction" as just attacking people, and then when I managed to hit you, you did expect me to give you quarter when you tried everything you could do not let me take you? I mean, I would surely not spear you to death if you did not run away at the engineering lobby or did surrender without me having to chase you from engineering to cargo. And crew being killed was not just because we were antags, but, to build forces because we were being assaulted heavily, and more reinforcement were on the way, and I did drag your body to medical where the wizard used raise dead on it.

[Tequilajoe]

I didn't see anything suggesting that you were typing to me, from what I saw, you just started shooting at me out of the blue. I understand that maybe you were under the command of the lich, and perhaps the rest of the crew was trying to fight you or something, but running away is very different than actively attacking someone from an RP standpoint. I dont think its fail RP to run away from a pursuing skeleton without saying anything. I would have talked to you but you kept approaching, and in turn, I don't think its unreasonable for Monique to feel obligated to gain some distance.

And I'll say again, I understand that you were a baddie and killing me was not exactly unexpected. But it was NOT clear to me at all what was going on, I'll remind you that I had just joined. Even still, my main issue is that you had me entirely at your mercy and you didn't even give me the luxury of a single word. Instead, you assumed that I didn't deserve any sort of antag RP so you just clicked until dead. All because I ran away? From a heavily armed skeleton coming after me? And that inconvenienced you? That's ridiculous. How do you think I feel when I'm wordlessly killed not ten minutes after joining?

[Alberyk]

I never said that running away was fail roleplay, I see why you did this, in the same way I believe that killing you when I managed to catch you was fine. Neither I had any idea that you joined ten minutes before, because I had no headset and I was fighting the crew in medical. I saw you in medical and I am sure this was enough to know that the skeletons were hostiles and planning on attacking the crew.

As the rules says:

 

No ganking. While antags will sometimes kill, it is expected for you to provide interesting roleplay to your targets first, if your goal is assassination. This does not mean that you need to monologue your opponent before killing them: roleplay leading up to a murder can take place over the course of the entire round, for example, leaving the murder scene itself to be “wordlessâ€.

 

I didn't kill you because I was an antag, we had a solid reason to bring the crew to the necromancer, I did try to interact with you at the lobby but you just turned your back and the chase started, probably because I was typing using the bar instead of the shortcut you were not aware of my initial intentions. Still, it would be surely differnet if the situation was not the same, since the crew already showed a lot of resistence, either by attacking us or running away.

Besides, the round had a fair escalation, the killings were not really happening out of nowhere. It started with the wizard asking for shelter for the crew, then went from him getting an apprentice, using a body to create a skeleton, failling and then killing a cargo tech to create a skeleton minion. So, it ended being one of the those cases were a large fight happens between the antag forces and the crew. And people had a plently of options to join back into the round as skeletons, or a possible ert that command staff could have called. Anyway, like I said, if you did surrender or did not just run away at the sight, I would surely have done more than just stabbing you with a spear.

[Tequilajoe]

If you broke a rule, I would have brought it up with a mod. I just think what you did was in poor form, so thats why I'm going with the player complaint route. You didn't break the rules, but it feels like you didnt bother to interact with me even as I pleaded for some sort of interaction, just to spite me for running off. And you keep bringing up lots of stuff I had no way of knowing, I had only just joined. But I guess you didn't know that. There is definitely a disconnect in player information here, I understand that.

I'll restate that you killing me was not my grief, it was the fact that you refused to bother saying anything to me at all after a certain point. While that would make sense if I was fighting you, or still trying to escape, but at that point, I was entirely at your mercy, unarmed, broken. I think you ought to have spared a moment to at least say something before putting me down like a dog.

[Mappel6]

Hey there, neutral observer here. During the round that this happened I decided to observe--and am glad I did.

I understand that I missed some context, but what I did see is pretty inexcusable. However, I won't say that Alberyk was actually the cause of it. In the game itself, as the skeleton, Alberyk was basically just doing his job... although whether it's realistic that a skeleton minion would pick up a Kinetic Accelerator and start blasting away with it is arguable, I think some suspension of disbelief is in order because, let's face it, magical skeledudes.

I'd like to expand this to include the wizard in charge, which is who I suggested the player complaint be made on in dsay following what happened, who was the wizard Urist McWizard played by ckey Hackie Mhan. Alberyk's skeleton's actions can be excused as being orders from the wizard, although I think that should it be found that what essentially devolved into pointless murderbone was unnecessary, not escalated properly, not RPed properly, etc. etc. then Alberyk should have some fault as staff, but not as a player.

What I saw from the wizard was, when the whole thing began, an inability/unwillingness to RP properly in the situation. The wizard with his skeleton crew just went around wordlessly killing everybody present in medbay, even some people who were AFK through most or even all of the event as reported by some in dsay. For the longest time I saw nothing but just random murder and killing, and many people complained about it in-game. When the wizard did RP it was short, when they were talked to they didn't answer. Twice, the wizard said in the situation that they did not want to kill... and then proceeded to wordlessly kill and Raise Dead someone right after. Once, he said it directly to the person he killed and raised, and second he called the Emergency Shuttle (having killed most if not all of Sec and Medical, ruining the round for many and basically making it impossible for the survivors to recover), stating in the announcement that he was satisfied, and wouldn't be killing anybody. And then, what happens? He approaches somebody, neckgrabs, chokes, and tries to kill someone. Luckily he Raised Dead early and ended up raising a different nearby body (that of Monique Byrd) but they were actually, definitely still trying to kill despite clearly stating their intentions to stand down, and that, in my opinion, is a simple dick move.

Back to Alberyk--I still believe his 'crime' in this whole situation is that he was defending it, despite multiple people saying in dsay that this was inexcusable behavior for a high-RP server and that people have been bwoinked for much less. He stated that the conflict was 'properly escalated,' which to me sounded like what happened was the wizard initially was friendly, grabbed an apprentice who was incidentally played by Alberyk, and then basically had a single run-in with sec. I could understand this leading to a fight between the wizard(s) and sec, but this was the direct event that lead to the massacre in medbay. In my opinion this is not proper escalation. I believe this round ended up ending towards the 1 hour mark... whereas what happened in medbay would definitely be an end-game Hail Mary and a last resort instead of being the first resort on any signs of actual conflict.

Finally, Alberyk defended the wizard's indiscriminate Raise Dead usage, saying that nobody is being removed from the round. I'd like to insert a reality check here--and that is, YES, Raise Dead absolutely does remove people from the round and in what's basically an irreversible way, too. For one, if it's used right after the victim dies, they have no chance to Ghost before it's done, and if the person is still in-body when Raise Dead is used, even if they already have Skeleton Minion prefs turned on, they DO NOT get the option to take control of the skeleton. This, at best, is a temporary removal from the round--at worst, it's absolutely permanent. Let me remind you that this is exactly what the wizard was doing most of the time--other times, bodies would sit dead for 5-10 minutes before a Raise Dead attempt was even made near them. Secondly, I'd like to mention something I thought was obvious... and that's if you're randomly murderboned by a wizard without RP, and you are a regular on this server, then chances are you are NOT going to get in that skeleton, and instead will seek a talk with the admins. I do believe many victims did do this, but Alberyk still argued that 'they weren't being removed from the round since Raise Dead was being used.' Regardless... many, many people got removed from the round without RP beforehand and without any chance of being returned into the round.

Allow me to restate that I was a neutral, uninvolved observer. I did not take any part in the round. I was on a character that had every single pref turned off. Nobody who was involved in this event was an OOC friend, or anyone I'd consider to be biased towards. When I come to Aurora, I don't come for mechanics, I come for roleplay, as this is one of the few servers that actively promotes actual roleplay being had. I do not expect to come in to see murderbone happening with a bunch of people arguing and complaining and an involved and very likely biased staff member defending the whole thing.

That said, I think this should be obvious but I'd definitely like an admin other than Alberyk to be the one taking care of this. This is all I personally have to say about the whole thing. If it comes to it I am willing to open a separate player complaint on Hackie Mhan (although I don't have any screenshots myself--but someone else may have taken some), who was the reason most of this actually happened, but since all of it is intertwined I think what happened with them should be made well known too. My closing statement here is, no matter what decision is made, on multiple counts and multiple occasions, from multiple sources, multiple things could have been done better with this round. This server is and has always had high standards for itself, and ALL of us should be not only willing, but striving to uphold them. In the immortal words of the band Silverstein: "I may not always be perfect, but I'll always try." I'm not saying we can't have some quirky, SS13-style fun, but it should be either brought to that point in a proper way and usually saved until the end, or cleared beforehand through announcements and/or polls. But if people want their regular rounds to be like what happened here, they'll go to Hippie instead.

[Superiorform]

When you are about to kill someone, and you have full control over them, like they are on the floor and you have a spear poised ready to gore them to death, and the player you are about to kill has shown a willingness for RP and there is no rush to kill them... why not RP? Even just a few sentences would suffice. Get him into a neckgrab so he can't resist, and just RP a bit. The second the player presses resist, kill them. Of course, if sec was hunting you down, don't bother RPing. If he is trying to fight or get away, don't bother RPing. If you don't have a guaranteed win, don't bother RPing.

In my opinion, Alberyk had no reason to not RP, and seeing as this is an RP server, we should all take every opportunity we can to RP. No, as he says, he did not break rules, but he still could have played it a lot better. Just a few say commands would have done. Gloating. Anything. Even a "me merciessly gores Monique, saying nothing." would have added flavour.

That being said, I don't know if it is worth any punishment at all. It is a very minor transgression.

[Alberyk]

Attacking security was due to them pretty much finding out that Faysal and the wizard killed a cargo technician, because they found his blood on the clothing and the AI guided them to the location of the remains, so, we attacked security, since it seems that them and the AI were doing all they could to screw over us, and pretty much we would be arrested for murder. So, yes, using lethal force against security was fine because they had more than enough reason to throw us into communal for the rest of the round. And from then, security chased us all around with lasers and shotguns, then Faysal was killed and the wizard fought security at medical, where the skeleton army was created. The wizard did not teleported on the station and started to kill the crew, there was a plot and a development behind before any short of mass murder happened.

There is little concern if people are being removed out of the round, dying is part of the this game, and as long it is in the rules, there is no issue with it. Characters will die and maybe they won't be able to return, no one is granted cloning, death is part of the history. Sometimes you "lose", sometimes you survive. Your character is not the main focus or the protagonist, death will happen and if it is part of the story that is part of the round, that is fine.

Also, I am not dealing with this complaint and there is no indication of so, some other staff will investigate this. I am just defending my actions here. And in game, I did not reply to any ahelp related to the entire situation, I just asked for the rest of the staff on msay, that were mostly afk, if they could deal with the situation, so, at no point I did any administrative action related to the whole situation I was involved, and I clearly told Tequilla to ahelp once more because we had staff at the time. And the fact I did not handle any ahelp, just tought it would be better to explain myself on deadchat, because a duty officer told someone it was me playing the skeleton, instead of handling any ahelp, because I was clearly biased from being involved in the entire situation.

 

When you are about to kill someone, and you have full control over them, like they are on the floor and you have a spear poised ready to gore them to death, and the player you are about to kill has shown a willingness for RP and there is no rush to kill them... why not RP? Even just a few sentences would suffice. Get him into a neckgrab so he can't resist, and just RP a bit. The second the player presses resist, kill them. Of course, if sec was hunting you down, don't bother RPing. If he is trying to fight or get away, don't bother RPing. If you don't have a guaranteed win, don't bother RPing.

 

As I said, the situation was a chase around the station, and the spears hits happened in a tight maintenance tunnel with little light and both character bumping against each other. I recall several times when "wordless" murders were allowed when people's reaction were similar, such as running/telling your location at the first sight of an openly hostile antag.

[Superiorform]

As I said, the situation was a chase around the station, and the spears hits happened in a tight maintenance tunnel with little light and both character bumping against each other. I recall several times when "wordless" murders were allowed when people's reaction were similar, such as running/telling your location at the first sight of an openly hostile antag.

 

Oh, alright then. I'll withdraw what I said then. Killing in that situation sounds reasonable to me.

[Garnascus]

So...

A wizard went ham making bone servants causing all hell to break loose and alb chased down and killed some people? I am not really seeing the issue if the station was in a FUBAR state.

[Garnascus]

[mention]Tequilajoe[/mention] Do you still care about this? Can you post your thoughts in regards to what i have said?

[Garnascus]

Very well i shall now lock and archive this as i think the incident is pretty much a non-issue.