What's with whitelistees making the same mistakes as new players joining&getting used to the server for the first time?

[Scheveningen]

Initial clarification: "whitelistee" being heretoforth defined as anyone who was supposedly vetted and approved to gain access to certain privileges to play special roles on the server. Whether it be command or any of the xeno races. You know who you are.

I think new players can be excused sometimes for making certain mistakes or bad decisions, but unfamiliar individuals that are racking up their first few incidents of being unfamiliar with the server and the roleplay nuances accompanying it rightfully get watched more than the regular player, as the smarter troublemakers lay low and sow grief in more clever ways than just doing what would typically do little lasting damage and is instead an explosion of trouble that blows over quickly and gets resolved quickly. But, I digress. The regular player without whitelisting of any sort is typically watched more than the frequenters who have in some way achieved "veteran" status with the various conditions that the player would qualify for.

So basically the latter archetype that I've described has less reason than anyone to be making careless decisions in designing their character and their limitations, for one, and how they deal with situations ICly that they've otherwise dealt with dozens or even hundreds of times over. There's only really so much variance between rounds and the people participating in the game mode that would really change how interactions end up. And this is less about the whole, "why are people dying" thing because this isn't about that, considering how it can either be unlikely or guaranteed depending on the conditions of the round.

My concerns are levied in asking the question, "how come seasoned roleplayers struggle with creating balanced characters, roleplaying their character in an appropriate and believable fashion according to their character's priorities/personality, and dealing with sources of conflict in general?"

My assumption for the most part can be that at most seventy percent of anyone who constitutes as a regular has been part of a roleplaying shindig before this SS13 server, and in some manner would have to be accustomed to the nuances of actually roleplaying. Take tabletops for instance. OOCly, either you allocate stats to specialize your character to be really really good at specific things in their general categories (such as an acrobat being able to swim, jump, climb, etc) yet having glaring weaknesses in others because you don't feel it is a focus to worry about, as your other party members are liable to fill the gap with those sorts of checks. Whereas ICly in the same genre of tabletop games, it's easily explained as your character having practiced most of their life in becoming an adept acrobat, and that's their general occupation or niche that they're really good at. They find uses in-universe with their skills to accomplish their goals and complete adventures, so on.

I assume, that this being a similar premise aside from the goal not being to simply "adventure" and rather to "exist" in the game world while also not being a waste of space on the crew manifest and for a job slot. According to the rules on roleplaying, you merely need to motivate your character to do their job to an acceptable standard because assuming you're not an antagonist, your character cares enough about the job to continue working with the company, otherwise they would not be present in-game at all aside from being a visitor.

To tack onto that, I should remind any reader if they don't know already that the local setting is a corporate space station that may be a bit of a death-trap depending on certain conditions happening, but it's also still a place that employees of the company work at in order to get things done and get paid in doing it. Your character should generally be motivated to work, otherwise they wouldn't keep it. "My character is naturally X, though, and they slip through" is often what I hear as an excuse for the sort of behavior coming from people who often act in opposition to what would be the best interests of their character and I really feel the need to just write now, "No, they aren't. No, they don't slip through, if your character is like this they would not even be offered a job or they'd be fired if this trait developed mid-way into the job, they basically don't exist in the local setting."

Speaking of motivation. What motivates players to create alien characters that deviate far away from the accepted bounds of believability and the core cultural aspects of their race in general? If you're one of these people, do you feel you deserve points for not drawing any sort of reaction aside from an apathetic one because you designed a character that is contrarian to every expectation of the species you applied for? Did you actually intend on roleplaying them as the alien species they are or are you just making them human with a tail and a trill/hiss/lisp?

If you're someone with either one or a wide array of characters with a very flexible skillset, why do you think you're owed an ability to overload your characters with such a wide array of specialties with high competency in each or most of them, compared to other people who do go through the effort to stunt their characters in various aspects? What makes you so important in this roleplay environment that you feel the need to override roleplay expectations in order to give your character more power in any round that they're involved in?

If you're anyone who falls under one or more of these particularly levied cases, I'll ask one last question. What sort of entitlement do you crave so much that you think that everything else should have to change for you in order to fit for your own roleplay experience rather than doing the right thing and changing what you do for something more than just the self-indulgence of your own roleplay desires? Does the term "co-operation" mean anything to you, or do you just play on this server/participate in this community just for yourself?

This is not just an array of "well maybe you should adminhelp it" issues that I'm describing here, because I do, and yet not only do I see this happening often but some people succeed at flying just enough under the radar with their own mistakes/poor RP shotcalling that an administrator will rarely find cause to immediately administer discipline for. These aren't just isolated, individual nuances either. They're small issues but the problem with it all is how they stack up, create more small issues like themselves or end up creating larger problems that are actually just a symptom of the smaller ones. The moment that starts to happen, nobody seems to want to take responsibility for the amount of crap that's piling up. Maybe I can take some fault because I don't go around pointing fingers at bad shotcallers anymore as people saw it as harassing instead of looking inward to see where the actual issue lied. But, again, that really doesn't address the problems here.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

When I am out in the field helping officers as HoS people complain,

When I sit in my office and delegate while gazing at my beautiful face in my handheld mirror and communicating via holophone people complain,

When I order someone to do something and they refuse and I arrest them they complain,

When I allow someone to get away with something in an act of leniency someone else complains,

When I play as a xeno Command staff with a cultural quirk (like devouring monkeys and farwas whole) that would make humans uncomfortable people complain and make IR's,

When I play xenos culturally assimilated who are pretty human in mannerisms people complain,

When I take a gimmick seriously and fight for NT people complain,

When I disregard gimmicks and say NT sucks my weenie people complain.

How would you like me to roleplay a Command staff or xeno whitelister in a way that is consistent, realistic, reasonable, engaging, immersive, and fair to address all of the complaints you have above and the frequent roadblocks I cited above?

[Conspiir]

Jackboot kind of took the words out of my mouth and made poetry with them. You can't make everyone happy with how you roleplay something. So where is the line drawn? Do we go with your interpretation to make you happy? Do we slide a little further left or further right? How far to do we slide? There's no etching in the stone here on this; it's all a biiiiig gradient. We can see to the extremes we've deemed "Out of character" but what about moderates? Moderates make up... most of the world, actually. And they'll probably make up most of the server as well.

So what is it specifically you're questioning? The idea that all people must play their specific job and race a specific way? Or more on the powergaming side of things? Mary and Gary Sues? Or all of the above?

[Scheveningen]

When I am out in the field helping officers as HoS people complain,

When I sit in my office and delegate while gazing at my beautiful face in my handheld mirror and communicating via holophone people complain,

When I order someone to do something and they refuse and I arrest them they complain,

When I allow someone to get away with something in an act of leniency someone else complains,

When I play as a xeno Command staff with a cultural quirk (like devouring monkeys and farwas whole) that would make humans uncomfortable people complain and make IR's,

When I play xenos culturally assimilated who are pretty human in mannerisms people complain,

When I take a gimmick seriously and fight for NT people complain,

When I disregard gimmicks and say NT sucks my weenie people complain.

 

Sucks. The reality is people complain even when nothing is wrong, or rather, they complain if they get the short of the stick for a reason they cannot see. If a person experiences a disadvantage or an inconvenience in any form I guarantee you, most people would complain about it, even if it's poor form.

 

How would you like me to roleplay a Command staff or xeno whitelister in a way that is consistent, realistic, reasonable, engaging, immersive, and fair to address all of the complaints you have above and the frequent roadblocks I cited above?

 

Roleplay within the bounds of "consistent, realistic, reasonable, engaging, immersive and fair" and combine them with your different character's varying motivations and act according to those motivations, and I ultimately won't care. If it leads to a more interesting outcome because of that decision-making, I have no reason to be upset over it.

Conversely, when it employs selfish OOC decision-making to disrupt any of those characteristics that a good character falls under, then it becomes a problem. Because then you are not even roleplaying, you're taking advantage of factors your character either cannot know or would not reasonably do in their best interests, instead focusing on what the player's best interests are instead over the goal of the server: to roleplay in an interesting and engaging manner with other players that hopefully act with the same goals.

 

So where is the line drawn? Do we go with your interpretation to make you happy? Do we slide a little further left or further right? How far to do we slide? There's no etching in the stone here on this; it's all a biiiiig gradient.

 

The gradient is not that huge nor is there really that big of a variance in character creation in-game when we're talking actual background of a character and not their inherent personality. You can never be a terrorist as a non-antagonist, or an ex-criminal or an ex-king of a predominant former noble faction that somehow works for a megacorporation as a low/low-medium level employee. You cannot play the aforementioned special characters as regular crewmembers, because they have very little reason to exist among other characters that are just average people with varying skill levels whose lives encompass going to work, doing their job, going home and anything else is pretty much off the main server in terms of extra-curriculars.

One of the only important sweeping standards to abide by in character creation is ensuring your character exists within the range of the gradient of individuals that would reasonably exist working on the space station with their background, skills and less importantly but still a determining factor; their inherent personality. You can reasonably roleplay an asshole but they should make up for other things.

 

We can see to the extremes we've deemed "Out of character" but what about moderates? Moderates make up... most of the world, actually. And they'll probably make up most of the server as well.

 

Did you see me address moderates or grey area cases, or are you both assuming I believe in X without myself even quoted having said it? Moderates aren't a problem because they follow the rules and don't take extreme measures unless the situation calls for it. Moderates can still thrive in normalcy with standard character concepts and generally have less risk for failure with their avenues of interaction with other characters in-game. It's not even a "safe bet", either, it is simply playing characters as the rules expect people to be doing.

 

So what is it specifically you're questioning?

 

I'm questioning why people gravitate so closely to character concepts that are either;

A.) Incompatible with the local setting, not necessarily incompatible in the Aurora universe

B.) Unreasonably executed in roleplay believability

C.) Happen to possess character traits or background details that deviate so far away from the established lore of xenos that you wonder why they don't just play a human instead.

I don't mind if some characters are "a little weird." I don't mind if Tajarans refer to themselves as "I". I mind if a diona references having "Shagged someone's mum" unironically in IC. I mind if a dionaea gestalt refers itself as "I" because not only does it completely undermine and erase character expectations of an entire species with this particular deviation being legitimate, but it's also not believable or an interesting character quirk. It is downright unthinkable that a gestalt consciousness refers to itself, a conglomeration of many minds into a shared thinking process, as "I". I mind characters that chuck what makes them unique as a xeno straight out the window just so they might have brownie points for being unlike all the other "Y", despite the unfortunate fact that when referring to a roleplay server, all snowflakes may not look alike but they are still fundamentally the same no matter how you look at them.

These are the issues I am questioning. I do not like belittling issues down to "snowflake", "Mary/Gary Stu" or "powergamer" as I prefer to go in-depth as to explaining why these concepts are wrong rather than flinging labels around. Those who can actually be defined by those broad labels, and those who do the things I've mentioned without consideration for how they negatively affect the roleplay quality in general, are genuinely bad for the roleplay environment and the individuals at fault for this sort of behavior should hold themselves accountable, because ideally the admins shouldn't have to step in except when situations in-game get hectic or confusing and they need to sort out the chaos and explain what happened.

[Coalf]

When I play as a xeno Command staff with a cultural quirk (like devouring monkeys and farwas whole) that would make humans uncomfortable people complain and make IR's,

 

Just a sidenote on this, isn't this the point of IR's? Characters expressing their in-game dislike of something? Doesn't mean the players hate it.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

IR's are IC player complaints. If you make an IR about a behavior you want that behavior to be punished and stopped.

[Coalf]

IR's are IC player complaints. If you make an IR about a behavior you want that behavior to be punished and stopped.

 

Wait hold on, I and a lot of people i talk to agree that it's an in-character complaint from said character to another character, not an in-game player complaint.

If my character wants behaviour to stop doesn't mean I as a player want that behaviour stopped. Like if someone is surfing around using fireextinguishers I'll find that un-acceptable in-character but as a player I'll just laugh that off.

[Zundy]

What coalf said. Are these not for in game character issues i.e my character not liking a thing another character is doing?

Hell, have we not had IRs where some one essentially lied in character to get at another character?

[Azande]

Considering I've had IRs filed against me for really petty things, I'd say a lot of players make them because OOCly they have an issue.

[Synnono]

I got asked to clarify this, so I am here:

IRs mainly exist to help gently correct player behavior when it is not meeting IC expectations, but not severely breaking OOC believability or conduct rules. Some people have also used them as purely RP tools between two characters in the past, and that's fine too. Which sort of way it's treated usually comes down to whether the involved players should know better, their dispositions, and what we can perceive in terms of their intentions.

If a player has severe or recurring OOC issues with another player's IC behavior, they are better served by using player or character complaints. Those are publicly discussed and the results of those discussions are often posted in those threads. People who try to use IRs like a bludgeon to get at someone after a bad round are probably going to be disappointed in the results, and it's something I'm going to continue to discourage.