Maximum Qualification Ceiling - A Very Important Policy Discussion

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

Hello!

One of the longstanding frustrations within administration is managing the phenomenon of "job-hopping", where a character has qualifications in multiple departments. The gray area is 80% of the playing board and there has been a recent flare up in frustration about this. A recent ruling on policing job-hopping came into affect.

I've talked with Skull, Garn, and Abosh about setting a standardized guideline and ceiling to draw from in regards to character qualifications. There were a few previous iterations before we settled on this version. This conversation was had between a handful of people, so we can only bugtest it so thoroughly. It is very important that we get as much of a response as possible. Please let us know in this thread how this would affect your characters, any openings you see for abuse, and whether or not it is too complicated. Ideally it's intuitive enough that it does not disrupt current meta or create overbearing administration - this policy's intended purposes is to create a standard, united framework for administration.

MAXIMUM Qualification Ceiling For All Crew

Non-Command characters have a maximum ceiling of one M.D. or a PhD with the required Masters and/or Bachelors Degree in their department. They may also have a vocational degree in another department. A character without a PhD can only have one Masters in their department, and the optional vocational.

Command characters have a maximum ceiling of either an M.D. or a PhD with the required Masters and/or Bachelors degree in their department. They may also have a vocational degree in another department. A character without a PhD/M.D. may have two masters in their department and the vocational diploma.

Basically, your department is your lane. You can't swerve out of your lane unless its in a field that just needs a vocational.

There are no exceptions for humans.

Rules for non-human characters still apply. Skrell, for example, have no ceiling on the number of degrees given they follow the rule of being exponentially older and less robust the more degrees they get

The Big Five Degrees of Auroraverse

A PhD or "Doctor of Philosophy". This degree is for research or science-focused fields. It is different from a Medical Degree in that it does not cover APPLIED science. This means that a man with a PhD in Medicine would be a wonder in a biology lab but clueless in an operating theater.

M.D. or "Medical Degree" is for applied work in the medical fields. It is not a research degree. M.D.'s are found in the medical department for [related jobs].

A Master's degree is an advanced degree completed after the person has completed their bachelor's degree. It is a prerequisite to get a Masters degree before you can work on a PhD or MD.

Bachelors are an undergraduate academic degree awarded by colleges and universities upon completion of a course. It is a requirement for [related jobs].

Vocational degrees are career or trade-specific degrees. They are relatively easy to get than a bachelors or higher degrees. A Vocational degree does not open up any specialized jobs and its wielders are found in low intensity civilian work.

 

Reference: Minimum Education For Each Job

Captain: any department-related degree

HoP: Masters OR Bachelors

HoS: Masers OR Bachelors

CE: Doctorate of Engineering

RD: PhD

CMO: M.D. + Bachelors

-

Sec Officer: OPTIONAL degree

Warden: Not Specified (Bachelors?)

Detective: Not Specified (Bachelors??)

Forensic Tech: Not Specified (Masters??)

IAA: Bachelors

-

Engineer: Bachelors

Atmos Tech: Bachelors

Janitor: None

QM: Vocational??

Cargo Tech: None

Shaft Miner: None

Botanist: Bachelors

-

Medical Doctor: MD

Paramedic: None

Psychologist: PhD

Chemist: PhD

Roboticist: Any Degree?? (Masters??)

Scientist: PhD

-

Assistant: None

Bartender: None

Chaplain: None (Bachelors encouraged)

Librarian: None (Bachelors encouraged)

 

Time To Get Each Degree

Vocational Diploma (2 - 3 years) (basically an Associates)

(You do NOT need an Vocational Diploma when getting a bachelors, so it not counted for minimum age)

Bachelors (3 - 4 years)

Masters (2 - 3 years)

Doctors (4 - 6 years)

PhD (4 -5 years)

Edited March 24, 2018 by Marlon Phoenix

[Butterrobber202]

Sounds good to me, how will you regulate Command Players in Non-Command roles?

Example, CMO in a MD slot.

[Guest Menown]

Chef confirmed no degrees or training needed. Time to start cooking nothing but rat burgers.

[Coalf]

While it's not enforced anywhere, I would recommend forcing a Bachelor's on chaplain as every crazy dumbass can claim to be a chaplain while in reality you require atleast something in theology.

Also I can bash 17 year old chaplains with a dwarf beard over the head with this in that case.

[witchbells]

I am not interested in a qualification ceiling in the slightest.

Skull calls it "the pinnacle of pedantry" which describes this absolute rubbish to a T.

We have minimum qualifications. Adding maximum qualifications forces players to write characters within a tiny aisle of qualification. I am not willing to restrict players like this. I am not willing to restrict creative freedom for something that is little more than boldfaced pedantry.

[Synnono]

I don't think we need a ceiling. We have a rule in place for believability already. Someone breaking that rule with an absurd or unbelievable backstory and education already needs enforcement. Breaking two rules doesn't change the outcome.

If someone has a reasonable path to two or more advanced degrees (possible), they should be allowed to write for that. Arbitrarily limiting people just creates more cases of unacceptable backgrounds, while not changing player behavior in the least.

[Catnip]

I definitely agree that we need a more set in stone way of regulating job-hopping, but, I would really like for the ingame skills system to be integrated (and perhaps reworked to fit) in some way, as a more organic way of limiting how far a person can go.

Having a ceiling like this based on your job and wether or not you're a head seems overly restrictive to me. Wouldn't it make more sense to base it off of age, as the skill system already is?

 

I don't think we need a ceiling. We have a rule in place for believability already. Someone breaking that rule with an absurd or unbelievable backstory and education already needs enforcement. Breaking two rules doesn't change the outcome.

The issue with having the rule as it is now with no backing guidelines is that it relies on any of our 28 modmins to, in some cases, decide on the spot whether certain niche setups of qualifications are too much. Judgement here can, and has proven to vary somewhat. The intention is to make judging how much is too much easier from both the players and staff's perspective.

[T1GWS]

In this wonderful, innovative, and well-crafted proposition you have outlined, the difference between a new and completely in-experienced researcher and a maxed-out Research Director on a very pivotal and important research station would just be five years experience. If it is your intent to make sure that all command (except for skrell and IPCs because they are special) are un-educated, you should make that more clear. Why in the goddamn hell would we want to set maximum caps on education when the biggest fucking problem is people creating snowflakes that manage to JUST get the minimum requirements. By limiting command crew to one Phd and one Master's, you are essentially saying that many heads of staff, RD and CMO included, would not know how to perform many of the necessary tasks in their departments. If you want to add changes to the current qualification system, this is the last thing you should be doing. For example, being a CE requires you have both a PhD AND 10 years experience, the 30 year age cap for that role is invalidated because you CANNOT get a PhD and 10 years experience before you are 30. There is NO reason to do any of this beside trying to rope command and experienced professions into your idea of a ideal crew member. Command are already white-listed, and held to a higher standard than other players. Instead of trying to restrict the kind of character you can play, I think instead we should be looking at those who abuse the system first. Also, Paramedic needs a vocational.

[A.I.M.M.O.]

I have mixed feelings about this. First of all, it needs a bit more information here and there, so all jobs which need a Ph.D. have their own class of Ph.D. from what I see, but then all scientist professions but roboticist are counted to be one job (As the thing like xenobotanist xenobiologist and xenoarcheologist are not listed). Same for Medical doctor and Surgeon/virologist.

The diffraction between M.D. and Ph.D. makes sense but where does a Roboticist stand then? On the one hand, they are seen as the fixer and builder of robots mechs etc, Of course they don't make the parts (just as a scientist doesn't build a nanomanipulator, they both print it), on the other hand is a Roboticist assumed a full member of science, a proper scientist, not a machine maintainer, but more . So will they get a Ph.D. plus masters in engineering? That would them give the opportunity to also sidewalk into engineering (which I personally would like in some cases but see why it would be insanity to have a human know how to work with robots and do all of engineering). In the end, a Roboticist either is a thinker, or a doer by this system or is an exception. Or does a Robotics Ph.D. just also mean applied science by its nature?

Another point I have to think about, where are the assistant roles in this? I don't mean the basic assistant but the Cadet, the lab assistant, the medical resident and the engineering apprentice? Technically these don't have finished their training fully. Will they just need Bachelor? (in areas where normally higher degrees are needed) Also, will they be restricted to chars which don't have a bachelor/degree in another field? As they are in training to get a proper degree in their field it would make sense. Or this kind of jobs will now be seen as both possible for a "blank" char to gain their degrees or for one which has it in another field to tap into this department, just with less clearance and responsibility, but by that also giving him access to work there in the first place.

I know I wrote a lot here and as I am often bad at gathering my thoughts or getting to the point here my core questions to discuss are :

-The distinguishing of multiple different PhDs, especially in more similar work types (Xenoarch/Xenobio/Xenobot) (Med/Surgeon/Viro)

-The place of the Roboticist as Semi Scientist/Thinker and Semi Fixer/Doer

-Requirements for the Department specific Assistants and their future roles (Training for the needed Degree or/and Not so skilled subordinates)

I Hope what I wrote above will help to fuel some ideas on those topics.

[Scheveningen]

My head of security character, my oldest played character on this server, has military combat training, EVA training, corporate and Biesel law training, advanced leadership training in addition to first aid training from their first tour with the Eridani Private Force. She's 43.

Is this proposed policy a threat to one of my character's current skillset? My comprehension of what I've read in the OP won't matter if the OP himself thinks my character's skillset is a problem.

[Itanimulli]

There is a point in HRP where things need to stop. I'd like to say this is that point. The issue with all this is that we're trying to be a heavy role-play server but people on the station would have learned a thing or two from interaction with each-other. If you've watched a surgeon fix up someone for 600 rounds, you're going to know how to do it, and it's going to be easy.

Besides the point, the medical fields seem to be the....er...biggest issue. I've seen to many things about who does what where and how, and then someone pops in and either says "IRL this is what happens, be realistic" while in the same post saying "kek we aren't IRL." I really don't understand the issue with it, either.

In a game like this, I think the best thing to do would be to revamp the skills page, and then have a "reasonable" rating. Unreasonable is if you have too much knowledge in too many fields. If someone has a backstory as a surgeon, but has a robotics hobby on the side, and that's not unreasonable, the skills they possess should reflect that.

What does this mean? Well, it means that any doodad that steps out of his backstory-lane can get slammed for not having his rp reflect his skillset.

Here's what might be a better example:

Lets say Rob Oster has security protocol marked off as "Proficient" or "professional" or something. Now, since they have such a heavy focus on that, they don't have enough....er.....balance, to spend on much else. So they pick something related to medical, like 'novice' in emergency treatment. Thus, if they are caught in the dang-on robotics room fixing El Beep-Boop, they can get dinged, and they can't say shit about it, because they aren't rp-ing to what THEY THEMSELVES marked out Mr. Oster's skills to be. There could be a template we make, that characters just copy-paste into bios or something, or we could just rework the skills list.

Thusly I propose we instead have a different skill-set, with the ratings, instead of average, above average, and all that, being replaced with "Untrained," "Average," "Reasonable," "Unreasonable," and, because you'd have to be a legitimate idiot to go beyond unreasonable, "Banned."

The skills would be as follows (List will be edited and finalized according to what is missing/what could be simplified):

Corporate Know-How

Security Protocol

Weapon's Expertise

Forensics

Medical Protocol

Neurosurgery

Theology

Electronics Proficiency

Cargo Protocol

Mining Regulations

Heavy Machinery Operation

EVA Expertise

[Asheram]

In a game like this, I think the best thing to do would be to revamp the skills page, and then have a "reasonable" rating. Unreasonable is if you have too much knowledge in too many fields. If someone has a backstory as a surgeon, but has a robotics hobby on the side, and that's not unreasonable, the skills they possess should reflect that.

Oh this. Please. Pretty please.

We have four (!) preconfigured skillsets out of 20+ jobs and the skill levels are all listed as "Terrifying", suggesting that you pad them but no real directions how.

You can throw titles like PHD, Doctorate and Bachelors all over the place, but unless you back it up with actual skillset examples then we'll be here all day arguing semantics.

[LanceLynxx]

at this point I really just want mechanics-enforced skill system

have a set number of skill points to spend

give an action timer and RNG chance of failure for doing things you have little or no skill in

stuff like that

[Skull132]

Regarding this proposition. As I told you and later Nursie, this is the pinnacle of pedantry. And forced pedantry at that: an attempt to condense a large quantity of information into something that a 15 year old should be able to digest and navigate for no better reason than to hope that this will, in some way, raise adherence to a set of rules that have been in place for ages. This limits players all to heck for no real reward: I do not foresee this helping administrators nab onto players who're being stupid with their character skills.

This page would perhaps be helpful in a manner where it simply describes the various options a character has in terms of choosing their educational route. Their requirements, the time it takes, what it would allow you to do, etcetera. With the goal of informing players and staff alike on the compounds of designing a character's educational route.

Now, regarding skills. While Jackboot was slaving away at this, I did start toying with the idea of having skills influence job selection a little bit. First off, lemme just say that a full on skills system, one with ingame effects, is not in the plans at present. Such a task would be an absoloutely immense undertaking, due to the amount of interactions you have available ingame. But there are ways to make skills matter a bit more. Something I thought of was making skills influence the RNG which assigns people to their jobs. For example, a character that's followed a shallow-but-wide specialization route would be prioritized lower for certain jobs (like scientist) when compared to a character whose skills are set up specifically for science. Stuff like that. Obviously there'd be a clear indication of how the weights would pan out for the player as well, so they could make an informed choice.

The only issue that would bring with it is potential powergaming of the skills. But as we look towards more guiding systems, making it impossible to game them is, well, impossible in and of itself.

[Synnono]

The issue with having the rule as it is now with no backing guidelines is that it relies on any of our 28 modmins to, in some cases, decide on the spot whether certain niche setups of qualifications are too much. Judgement here can, and has proven to vary somewhat. The intention is to make judging how much is too much easier from both the players and staff's perspective.

 

If staff has previously disagreed on what is an acceptable threshold, then there's nothing stopping them from creating some internal guidance for themselves on how to enforce character believability. But I think any sort of limits should left at guidance for staff and information for players, not enforced as hard rules that can be broken. Creating a hard ceiling is punishing to players who think through their characters and could otherwise defend them, for the sake of convenience.

And in the end, I don't even think it will prove to be that convenient - you're still going to have just as many people showing up who haven't read the wiki or the rules, making characters who will all still need to be manually checked or reported by others. You just might be enforcing the believable character rule more than you did previously, since there are going to be more people breaking it thanks to the arbitrary limit we've set.

[Scheveningen]

You know, if you really wanted to enforce skill-based pedantry, you'd enforce it through game mechanics and skill checks, not arbitrary guidelines that new and old players aren't even necessarily following currently.

[DatBerry]

I do not like this. It's overly restrictive with literally no benefit as far as I enforce the believable character rule.

There is no reason why an xenobiologist would decide to take a degree in electrical engineering, while an xenobiologist may take a biochemistry/biowhatever/medical crap course to aid in his specialized and niche career.

This rule may stop people from job hopping, but that doesn't mean we can't already stop them from making ridiculous career choices out of in-game convenience.

what it does though is needlessly restrict people, should a HoP with a double bachelor in business management and history be disallowed just because of the rule?

Strongly against this, so far there hasn't been any actual argument other than 'this helps the staff moderate'. this is vague and never actually explained, what does it help me curb exactly? job hopping? already can be bashed. powergaming? this rule doesn't stop a doctor with an vocational degree in electrical engineering from hacking an airlock, as skull once put it, airlocks are just really simple robots, anyone with a well grounded background (as a vocational degree can set you up with a job in such a field) can hack through it.

this new rule brings about no new positives but just more restrictions, hell it encourages people to get a wider skillset, "IT SAYS RIGHT HERE I CAN GET A VOCATIONAL DEGREE REEEE"

[Snakebittenn]

I'd rather have skills have mechanics behind them than this.

[Sytic]

Instead of having a hard cap for people, why not implement a mechanically supported skills system, and limit the amount of points you have and how much points things cost to get based on species/age?

[Itanimulli]

Instead of having a hard cap for people, why not implement a mechanically supported skills system, and limit the amount of points you have and how much points things cost to get based on species/age?

 

As I have posted.

[Jennalele]

I really feel like we're starting to focus too hard on railroading skillsets on a narrow path of "what's acceptable". We're going too far down a road of "Heavy, realistic RP" and losing sight of what actually made the game fun, made it engaging, made it creative. It's becoming Job Simulator 13, because a few extreme job hops have screwed things over for everyone else who was, until very recently, perfectly fine, reasonable and believable.

I'm with most of the others on this. There is no reason to do this other than to further clamp down on a frankly arbitrary and pedantic facet of the game.

We're becoming what, two years ago, we made fun of Bay for relentlessly.

[Coalf]

I support this policy because it already exists.

It exists in the form of staff, what do I mean by that?

The fact is that no matter how long and grandeur your backstory is, I have the last word, well not me specifically but also Alberyk, Prate, Flimango, TrickingTrapster, Shameonturtles, Ezuo, NursieKitty, Exia, DatBerry, Aboshehab, Garnascus and others equally important people but with names I won't bother typing.

I live in the Czech Republic.

Berry lives in Egypt,

Catnip is an Australian,.

Garn is from America

Alberyk is Brazillian.

2-3 years ago Aurora had 30-45 people on peak hours, this is the norm now with peak hours reaching 60-80 people.

We are the number 1 HRP server on the hub :confetti_ball: .

Server mentallity has COMPLETELY shifted atleast 3 times, with people liking IPCs, hating IPCs, wanting cloning, hating cloning, wanting brainmed, hating brainmed etc etc.

But do you see what I mean?

It is impossible for us to see and manage people by case to case basis, I've come to a disagreement with Nursie on Jenn's IPC previously which had to be adressed in a complaint. Which was resolved by? Alberyk, a staff member.

Another example, I can say yes to someone and Flim says no. Who is more right? Who is less right? We have absolutely NOTHING to lean on regarding this, outside of begging Garn or Aboshehab to resolve it between us, neither of which considers that to be the height of their day.

This is why I not only WANT but I think we NEED something for us to lean on, because in the end this is a voluntary job and I don't want to receive a staff complaint for every case of me saying "No" to someone.

Yes, it is pedantic but because we NEED to be pedantic now. We are no longer a small family server with friendship circles. Our players are most often complete strangers. Each one with radically different opinions and ideas.

Also I find the "Too realistic and Too hardcore" a bit ironic, mainly when during the last two complaints that were raised about this people started showing up with IRL examples and IRL comparisons instead of using gameplay or in-game lore as a reference.

tl;dr, yes I think we need something, perhaps not something THIS restrictive but something me, other staff and players can lean on when deciding "What is too much/little"

EDIT: The whole thing was fucked up regarding sentence structure, re-did that.

[Faris]

I do support standardizing a form of education to be universal for all players without forcing characters to undergo major changes in their backstory.

That being said, I don't think I'll be approving the max ceiling aspect of this reform.

[Flamingo]

Coalf has pretty much said exactly what I wanted to say. I would like a set of guidelines to follow as a member of staff, when approving people's jobhopping/backstories/whatever. This is both because I find it unfair that two members of staff can come to a different conclusion, and as Coalf said, I don't want to have to deal with complaints about not approving/approving whatever backstory. I don't think that players should have to shop around for the right staffmember to approve their character's jobs, and I don't think that staffmembers should have to argue about it amongst themselves. We have better things to be doing with our time than arguing if a security officer can also work in the garden or not. That said, I am not sure a "qualifications ceiling" is the right way to go about things. I unfortunately cannot offer another in-character alternative, because I simply don't know at this time.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

Hello again everyone,

Thank you to everyone that contributed to this discussion. It has been very enlightening and has informed us a lot.

Aboshebashabebash and Garn have decided against a qualification ceiling. I've also been swayed by the arguments in this thread made by several people. The qualification ceiling is effectively dead in the water, and I will not mourn its loss because this conversation has, as I said, brought us a lot of good information about how we should try to tackle these issues.

As suggested in this thread, a more intuitive use of our skill system, and a standardized guide on education in our universe, are both options that we can pursue to better tackle these issues.