Moving Forward. April Update

[Spacemanspark]

Hi yes I nominate Spacemanspark for community manager.

Together we will rule the galaxy

[LordBalkara]

There's always the fade premise in which the initial build up is done by the players until they hit a point where they "fade to black".

I'd be fine with this, as long as you smack anyone who takes it further.

Like, leave the rules on actual sexual RP exactly the same, with the only difference being people can have sex, however they cannot describe it and can only "fade to black" and pick up after the act.

No cringy ERP me says. Just a "AND THEN THEY ALL FUCKED" and they're done.

[Bath Salts Addict]

I'm banking on the idea of allowing ERP to be an elaborate April Fool's joke, but on the off-chance it isn't...

I say let people do what they want. In private. I fear allowing ERP would risk creating an atmosphere similar to Citadel, where they claim it's not about the pixel sex but in reality the only reason anyone ever plays Citadel over any other run of the mill /tg/code server is because of the ERP, and Citadel has a pretty toxic environment. I don't think those types of players are the ones Aurora wants or needs to sustain a healthy development. Nor can you really hope to expect players will be mature enough to handle that subject matter and implement it in a way that's supposed to enrich the stories they weave rather than just do it as a way to get their rocks off.

Take the engineering department and it's players for example. Every single CE, atmos tech, or engineer that could be considered a "regular" character have probably ERPed each and every single one of each other over DMs, like some big fraternity of horny teenagers in orange. And yes. I will defend that statement to the death. As a result, playing engineeringas a relative newcomer or interacting with an engineering character in comparison to any other department just puts a weird feeling in the air (pun intended) knowing that this is the likely case. They don't explicitly say it, but knowing that they have just puts a huge damper on interacting with anyone from that department, and you start to notice things.

Now, I'm not saying we absolutely should not ever implement ERP. If people reaaaally want to do that instead of discord DMs, more power to them I suppose. I just elect to remain extremely cautious about the prospect unless staff remain vigilant. A big huge one would be to not allow important roles like heads of staff or the warden or anyone in a department that's lacking people to go off and ERP, and expect people to abruptly stop ERPing if something happens that requires them.

[Faris]

Should be exactly 24 hours since my first post. Tl;dr at the bottom as well but I do advise reading this all.

Yes, this was a ruse. Yes it was an April fools.

I'm a little surprised people didn't really touch on some major and apparent flaws I kept visible, flaws I'd generally not let go through a first draft of anything, especially since staff work is reviewed by other staffers for such issues. More on that later.

 

 

Yes, I waited for the exact minute to tick at my own timezone. GMT +4 for reference. So yes, it is an April Fools thing. The moderators and administrators were in on it too, we engaged in forum, discord and server debates, arguing different points all under the pretense this was serious. We were also very quick on deleting anything that resembled a joke or a legitimate call out just to give it that "this is real" edge to it, which worked wonderfully. A lot of people thought this was real as a result, yes I know who you are, yes you're going to go "I never believed it." and no, I'm not going to release names. It was a joke, we found it funny, so did others.

So, why did I do this? To put it bluntly. I've put a lot of hours for this server and so has every member of the Aurora team, a lot of effort. I've been promoted to secondary admin exactly a year ago. So for 364 days I've been at least in some shape or form around to help the staff and the community. I get a day to blow off steam and honestly I feel it helped a lot.

Also did this. Credit goes to [mention]SirCatnip[/mention] for the idea.

 

Now moving on to the serious side of things.

I'd like to note I never clarified what the role of Community Manager would be other than stating the title. The reason this was not serious is because by extension, Moderators and Administrators are already "Community Managers", our presence is not limited to the server, it is present in every aspect of Aurora. Yes, not the whole team is present at every aspect, we are still spread out. Creating this role would mean cutting down on the responsibilities of other staff which right now isn't so overbearing to justify it. I would also like to note almost all staff positions are subject to community feedback. A straight up vote would become a popularity contest. It's far different to have people posting legitimate feedback, positive or negative to a person that just clicks a name and never speaks again. With that being said, I am still open to community suggestion on this mater.

Moving on. Erotic RolePlay is most likely never going to ever be implemented. I cannot find any merit that outweighs the alienation of a sizable portion of the community. As far as I'm aware, a minimum age is required to be able to legally provide the service "this server" with the introduction of strong erotic elements. We'd need to deny this service to a portion of staff and the community which we already know are underage from before be it in chit chat or posts on the forums. Bottom line, unless we're willing to remove a portion of the community, ERP is never going to be added. As for mature themes, I honestly have very little with them, it's taboo to some, not taboo to others. We can properly discuss this another time.

Vox. I'm unsure why this was also assumed as serious. There has been very little requests to have Vox added as crew. They're mechanically suited as an antagonist race and the lore in its present state doesn't really qualify them as a crew race.

Reshuffle probabilities. I guess this does have its merit in a sense, but not in the form I presented it ever. What I presented is a method to chance round type chance at the players whims, anytime. I'm not sure how this would work out properly. The reality of this is, it's impossible to satisfy everyone with the voting mechanics. It's possible we'll find some method in the future, hopefully in the near future as I do want a system that is universally liked. Yet with that being said, this system is not it.

Not sure why I'm posting it at this time? Check the spoiler out.

 

 

Oh also, no one was punished or banned as a result of this.

Here's a tl;dr version of this all.

 

[Garnascus]

damnit you even had me fooled.

[Coalf]

 

Fuck you I'm not doing this again I had to keep serious to so many fucking people holy shit.