Character Complaint - Omari Un-Nerar

[keinto]

BYOND Key: Keinto

Game ID: bTu-aq2e

Player Byond Key: [unknown]

Staff involved: Garnascus

Reason for complaint: Completely dismantling the door leading into the vault (one of the most secure locations and doors in the station if not THE most secure besides the AI's) as a 24 year old tajaran security officer, instead of calling Engineering for assistance.

Behavior like this detracts from the spirit of the game, which is cooperation between different departments to accomplish a goal.

Did you attempt to adminhelp the issue at the time? If so, what was the known action taken by administration/moderation? Yes. Garnascus checked their skills and employment records and ruled that this was acceptable, hence why I made this thread.

Approximate Date/Time: 3/20/18 9:25 pm UTC-08:00

[Garnascus]

I said it was fine to make this thread.

I honestly do not even know what is and isn't a believable character anymore. These arguments have jaded me and the more i engage with them the more i want to drive a rusty nail through my skull. I do not really even have the beginning of a solution to it. There are serious and egregious patterns that are involved anytime these arguments crop up.

 

Characters must be believable, and well-rounded. No insane or psychotic characters. No Mary Sues. (Over the top characters, characters who know too much, have no weaknesses, etcetera.)

 

This is the rule in question. Ironically it is invoked by BOTH sides whenever it is convenient. a "believable character" is an incredibly nebulous term and depending on who you ask you will get a slightly different answer. The game of role play creates an enormous amount of edge cases. It is entirely possible for your character to be a little different and thus know this specific skill or that skill while working in a totally unrelated. In reality we all can be a little extraordinary so it doesn't seem unreasonable to allow players some freedom right?

Wrong

Three years of doing this job have absolutely jaded me on this. No matter what terms you describe, no matter the lines you set and no matter the precedents you enforce players WILL PUSH THE ENVELOPE. they will go extraordinary lengths to create as unrealistic and as unbelievable a character as they can get away with. Attacking these issues specifically end in "in real life people CAN do X Y Z" or "uhhhh but joe schmoe is allowed to play a librarian john cena on station! WHAT THE FUCK GARN!?". All nuance is lost and all parties leave frustrated. Allowing one character to be had that is "almost too much" opens the door for five more to be "a little too much". We cannot simply wash our hands of it else we would be consistent and we cannot take serious action without deciding WHERE exactly we all unanimously draw the line in over 1000 edge case scenarios (not gonna happen). You the player do not see this frustrating charade as its always in staff channels. You do however see being told "yes" by one staff member and then "no" by another one. This is as frustrating to you as it is to me. Nobody wants to slam the hammer down on you. We want to enable you to have fun as shocking as they may be to believe.

It is an endless tug of war that i do not have a realistic solution for. All we can reasonably do is get better at hammering the nails as they agree and keep talking about it. As it stands [mention]Ezuo[/mention] 's character felt realistic enough given their records and skills set up. As i said i am so jaded on this subject i have trouble approaching it rationally. I do not think its unreasonable to ask "what are my character's weaknesses". if you come up short or have to make really edge case answers then i think your character is probably against the rules. I am sorry for the rant but this topic is the single most frustrating thing to deal with as head admin.

[keinto]

I am sorry if I misinterpreted your stance on this issue in our ahelp conversation and I understand the frustration.

I would like the player in question to talk about how this type of security character with incredible interdepartmental skills is good for the server, specially during a merc round that involved mostly just Security and the antags, as it happens most of the time. Not only are most other players inherently left out of the conflict, but this character stole what should have been something for another player to do to be integral to the round.

This also goes to cargo/mining/research characters who think they can fix space-proof windows and walls that in real life would require taking into account dozens if not hundreds of other factors that are not represented in the game in order to properly reconstruct or deconstruct the station's hull; all just because they have access to metal sheets and tools in their departments on a regular basis.

[Ezuo]

I think that you're making a mountain out of a molehill, Keinto. Your grievances about how many skills a single character has doesn't need to be about the good of the entire server, this isn't a class action lawsuit. Even with that being said, I won't deny you an explanation or justification for why Omari can do what she can.

First of all, you seem to have misinterpreted what exactly she did, since you were looking through the cameras at the time and didn't see any of the visible action messages. You seem to think that she carefully opened up the panel, cut all the wires, and removed the door from play that way. If she did do that, then that would mean she has a station engineer's worth of training, but she didn't do that. In fact, she did something a lot more fitting of an officer used to using brute force methods. The panel was bashed open using brute force, the bolts clumsily cut through with a welder, and the chunk of metal that used to be a door was pried open.

So already you should be able to see that you have overestimated the skills she possesses, but let me go further ahead and justify the skills that she does have. I'd like to preface this by saying that I ran the skillset past another member of staff, which they okayed after some discussion and reworkings, so it's not like I came to this conclusion autonomously. Omari, as stated in her fleshed out records, enlisted in the PRA military when she was 17. During her five years of service she was specialized as a combat engineer, giving her a basic understanding of tools and how to use them to deconstruct simple structures such as basic walls (Which is a thick sheet metal supported by an internal strut system) and brute forcing open airlocks by clumsily smashing them open and tearing out the innards. Such things do not seem so out of reach for someone with training as a sapper.

[Evandorf]

I was playing as Tokash this round and I have to agree with Keinto.

If the character is an edge case you can usually provide enough records/rp fluff to justify your actions, but IMO the rule should be as much about protecting the jobs/agency of other crew members as it is about making sure your particular character makes lore-sense.

[keinto]

You are right that I thought the door was dismantled through more careful means, but you were still able to break into the second most secure room in the station by yourself as a non-antag Security officer. This character is basically a tamer version of an Engineering ERT that can potentially break into and out of any place as long as they have a tool belt on them and I just think that is unacceptable from a character in Security.

You might have been cleared to have these skills by a certain staff member, but as Garnascus admitted, this doesn't objectively make it acceptable because another member of staff might think otherwise.

Edit: I know Omari didn't have to fight the turrets because the HoS was there with them so I am only referring to the secure door. But I am willing to bet that Omari would have fought the turrets as well (which is what a Sec officer would focus on and Engineering on the door), allowing you to potentially break into the vault by yourself.

[Garnascus]

yeah, i mean keinto does make a good point to be fair [mention]Ezuo[/mention] . This lets your character get into basically every area of the ship by himself whenever it is convenient. I need to think on this a little more though.

[Garnascus]

Talked this over with aboshdab. [mention]Ezuo[/mention] If you want to build or deconstruct metal barricades due to your characters backstory that is fine. Deconstructing doors is unfortunately going to fall outside of your skill set. I am not really interested in assigning fault here since i get how this could sound reasonable due to how breaking the door down is communicated to you with game logs. It just has to end up being a more difficult skill than your character could reasonably have.

[Garnascus]

locking and archiving.