Server Culture and its Effects on RP and Power Gaming

This will be a fairly long post, so as to get it out of the way immediately, This post is not criticizing any one particular character. This post is about the state of the server culture, in that creates the situations where powergaming attitudes become normal play.

There is a no hard and fast delineation from medium RP to high RP servers, but if I were to propose, The difference between the two is whether character progression trumps static job assignments or visa versa. Let me clarify what I mean by this.

In a high RP setting, a new player decides to create an assistant with medical knowledge, and develop that character. This character progression continues until they land in the medical department as a medical intern. They continue their character progression, and over the course of a month, have learned chemistry. Continue this further and the character progresses to also have learnt standard doctoring, which continues onto cloning, which continues ad nauseam until all departments in medical are learnt ICly from their character. They may further reinforce this knowledge with character information such as advanced surgical/chemistry/virology training/degrees/certifications. Keep in mind that by now, a year has past and this character is well known and well liked by many people. They have always had perfectly justifiable reasons for their knowledge, and it is believable icly. They have become a staple of the medical department.

At some point in the above example, by our rules as they are written, the player would begin to power game, even though it is icly acceptable that they have this knowledge. If they were to join as a doctor for a month, after having progressed as much as they have as a chemist, then players would expect them to know chemistry, players would expect them to fill a job outside of their job placement. This is powergaming. Static job roles indicate that you cannot have skills outside of the scope of your profession, regardless of history.

Because so many players have progressed to this point, it has colored the server culture to where new players see a medical doctor perform surgery/cloning/virology/chemistry. They see this, and they learn what is expected from normal play in the servers community. It becomes normal. Power gaming becomes normal gaming.

And it's not just medical. The station engineer has almost completely supplanted the atmospheric tech in every way, again because of a server culture based on character progression, that then teaches other players to act as progressed characters do. Security officers performing detective work, etc.

Now I know what you are thinking. This is a high RP server, we need character progression to facilitate this, and you are right, we do. But when does character progression lend itself to be power gaming? Power gaming rules when viewed in such a way are rarely enforced. You rarely see someone ahelp a medical doctor making chemicals when no chemist is available. You rarely see a roboticist being ahelped for breaking into RnD to perform research. You rarely see a Station engineer ahelped because they broke into atmospherics to optimize it. You rarely see a Security officer ahelped for breaking into the detective's office to perform forensic work. This is because of character progression, and its effecting the servers culture towards such activities to where they are no longer considered power gaming, they are considered normal.

I agree.

I know people want their characters to progress, but make it believable. I'm sorry but, "this doctor showed me how to do this super advanced brain surgery' is not a good enough reason for a paramedic to do brain surgery.

So let's say that someone uses an apprentice/intern character to learn an entire department; however, when the time comes for the character to fill an official position in that department the player chooses for that character to retain certain information. So for sake of argument let's say someone uses an engineering apprentice, they learn almost the entirety of engineering and even atmospherics, but when the time comes for them to be a full engineer the character only retains construction and engine setup skills. The player then uses the knowledge they gained from this single character to make other characters to fit the other roles they learned. Would this be better in your eyes?

Sorry it's a lot of words to say something I feel is quite simple, but I can't for the life of me just say it in a short few sentences. I also do hope what I said makes sense.

it has colored the server culture to where new players see a medical doctor perform surgery/cloning/virology/chemistry. They see this, and they learn what is expected from normal play in the servers community. It becomes normal. Power gaming becomes normal gaming.

This is definitely something i would take issue with. I have to know it exists first though. Generally staff only react to things instead of being proactive in looking for abuse of the rules. The latter is hard to do on a consistent basis. I guess i have never really thought about the problem though. It doesn't help that almost all of the jobs and mechanics in this game suffer from "you either know how to do it or you dont". Medical surgery essentially boils down to clicking tools on someone in the right order. Obviously we understand things are much more difficult than they appear but perhaps the batting line has shifted a little too far.

Telling just one person they need to expunge some character knowledge is usually a harrowing ordeal. occasionally it ends in a staff complaint. I can only imagine what it would be like if told a whole bunch at once that they need to forget a large portion of their skills. Maybe softer hands could provide a solution here though. thoughts?

Perhaps a way to remedy this would be to require a Skills page setup before you're able to save a character, so that new players can see that they are only able to do what that skill page allows and not whatever they are asked? Maybe even add in a disclaimer "Acting outside of these capabilities without a good reason may be considered powergaming"? Perhaps I am missing the point, I am tired, but I think some small steps could be taken to help remedy this in big ways.

I actually take a bit of issue with the idea that characters need to 'progress' mechanically. If you make a character who moves from an assistant to a medical intern, keep them a medical intern. Or, keep them a medical intern until they've been playing long enough to become a paramedic or such.

To become a, say, GP medical doctor, requires a doctorate. To become a surgeon requires another. To become a virologist requires another. To become a geneticist requires another. To become a chemist requires another. Nobody is going to acquire these skills across the course of playing on-station.

Personally, I want to see LESS mechanical progression, full stop. It should take a long time to teach even basic skills in the medical, robotics, research, or other highly specialised departments. The idea of someone going from assistant to CMO across the course of a year is not feasible at all. Go from an assistant to an intern, maybe to paramedic after a while. Play it for the character, not for the abilities and status that character gains. At least that's what I think.

And even a CMO knowing how to do everything in a department is over the top, even if you're an ancient Skrell genius. Nobody could learn EVERYTHING there is about doctoring without being a supragenius. We ain't that.

But why does this happen? For example, with the job that is chemistry?

Because it looks like it's only a push of a button. Tap the oxygen button, swipe for hydrogen, and your whatever drug is ready. Same with genetics, even science, pretty much everything. This leaves the impression of jobs being extremely easy. "You're telling me you studied 5 years just to push these 5 buttons every shift?" or "friendly chemist told me how to make this coincidentally useful drug, look push this and this button..."

Solution? Add flavor text to all machines and consoles. Now, it's not just a push of a button. It's "x mixes y with z" or "a dilutes a solution of b with a moderately sized c sample" or "h user extracts i from the test tube". You know, this kind of flavor texts.

Quick edit:

Or whatever.

I think a really big problem with this is we see heads of staff doing this. Not to name names, but I feel this is especially prevalent with CMOs. They know chemistry when no chemists are there, virology when a virus is on station, and surgery when someone breaks a bone. When we see heads of staff powergaming, we begin to powergame too. I had not even realised the issue was so prevalent, but now that it is brought up, I can see that it really is.

But why does this happen? For example, with the job that is chemistry?

Because it looks like it's only a push of a button. Tap the oxygen button, swipe for hydrogen, and your whatever drug is ready. Same with genetics, even science, pretty much everything. This leaves the impression of jobs being extremely easy. "You're telling me you studied 5 years just to push these 5 buttons every shift?" or "friendly chemist told me how to make this coincidentally useful drug, look push this and this button..."

Solution? Add flavor text to all machines and consoles. Now, it's not just a push of a button. It's "x mixes y with z" or "a dilutes a solution of b with a moderately sized c sample" or "h user extracts i from the test tube". You know, this kind of flavor texts.

Or whatever.

This right here, I think, is an amazing solution. We could get the same for destructive analysers and robotics? I sorta pretend that my character is manually analysing the tech with the DA, and then creating a blueprint that is slightly better than the last. I'd like to see flavour text when something is destroyed that it looks like the scientist is working and concentrating very hard, or in robotics, that the roboticist is making lots of precise welds and cuts, and doing complex wiring. Maybe even for engineering too?

I agree with most of the points but here's the thing, this isn't really a "server culture" problem as you called it, this is a fundamental fault in the game itself. SS13 wasn't made for serious, heavy roleplay with long-lasting consequences, people like us simply took the genre and tried to do our best to fix it to our needs, yet it is still obvious it wasn't made to cater to this type of play.

"I got carried away" spoiler

tl;dr SS13 is a shitty platform for serious quality roleplay and so is daily gaming, the former because mechanics are in the way and latter because people burn out faster.

I think a really big problem with this is we see heads of staff doing this. Not to name names, but I feel this is especially prevalent with CMOs.

Except that heads of staff are kinda crucial to the progression of the round, especially the CMO. They are expected to know every department at least on moderate level (and one on expert). Wouldn't be fun for everyone to die because the CMO didn't know to cure space aids, or how to clone.

Also, to add to my original idea, this would also open up some great rp possibilities. Not everyone is a chemist irl (I'm not) , so they wouldn't know about dilution and whatever you do with chems. But now the less creative and knowledgeable people could mimic these flavor texts and use them in their rp.

Another issue here is that powergaming sometimes keeps a round from being shit. On lowpop, a CMO who can't clone or do surgery and who is the only person in medbay just results in a lot of injured people waiting for a doctor to come aboard. Most people would rather powergame than let 3 people sit in surgery waiting for something like fixing an arm, but who only have a CMO that specializes in chemistry.

It may also be worth noting that in the skill page, it's relatively trivial to get all the skills that you need. For a 30-year-old character, you can be 'professional' in medicine and still 'trained' in chemistry, virology, and anatomy, all while remaining 'average.'

I think as a general rule of thumb, one should say that nobody should use any machine or toolset in a room they don't have access to. The door clearance reflects competency. Exceptions can or should be made in lowpop rounds, because a certain amount of input is necessary to even start. (On that same note, you know what I might take as a good idea? Halting all roundstarts serverside unless at least one person is eligible to play a Station Engineer, because there's genuinely no progress without one.)

But the potential for decapitation has to be there, because that's the whole antag game. If nobody joins as a chemist - and chemistry is at least 80% of what we're talking about - then I can see looking the other way while a CMO fills up some basic meds. I can even see starting with some advanced medicine in limited quantities - maybe a 'mixed rare pills' bottle that has one tab of Ryetalyn, one of Hyronalin, one of Keloderm, etc. But if we have a chemist and the antag disables the chemist, then that's it - no chemistry for the rest of the round, unless another chemist joins.

I mean there are two real sides to this, and depending on how you look at things either side can be viewed as the better one.

Gameplay:

Sometimes we do things to make the round fun and to prevent it from stagnating. Myself as a warden have had times where I have 'accidentally' made a minor mistake that allowed the main round antag (that got captured in the first ten minutes or so) an opportunity to escape that they can take if they so wish. Realistically an experienced warden probably wouldn't make these mistakes, but realism can make things dull at times for the server. You could reasonably argue that if the position wasn't filled (such as surgeon in medical or forensics in security) then the relative head should be able to step in to sort things out. The round would be completely fucked if the CMO left a deadly virus unchecked because of realism.

Realism:

I think most of us play a HRP server because we enjoy having things seem more realistic. Nobody wants Aurora to degrade into lower RP servers where the janitor is helping chemistry make meds (generally people doing things that their character shouldn't be able to do realistically). It can be annoying if you are coming onto the server to fill a certain role, but the head (or other people that really shouldn't know) can suddenly do everything to an expert level in your department. An example of this (as previously used) would be the roboticist or phoron researcher suddenly coming to do a speed run of R&D because they have played the server for two years or something and know the mechanics inside-out.

I guess personally I think that intent is important (much like the regulations in that regard). If you step in to fix a problem that could potentially ruin the round and with knowledge that your character could feesably know that is alright, however if you do someone else's job for know justifiable reason other than to further your own character via the use of mechanics that isn't okay at all.

It's most certainly not a clear-cut issue.

THe problems cited are endemic of pretty much all online roleplaying games. You're talking about power creep. Aurora (and SS13 HRP) is an outlier because we don't have skill trees - all character knowledge and progression is enforced by admins and IC expectations and schooling. Going from a newbie intern to a master CMO is something rewarded by other games, but in ours it's really not.

People 'train' their character for a week in their departments because what they are doing is mechanically very easy, and we use our knowledge of mechanics to do it successfully. Anyone can mechanically do surgery, so an intern's ability to stop internal bleeding in the brain is limited only by our rules on character knowledge.

Game mechanics do not represent the actual difficulty level it takes in learning how to do it. A resident does not learn everything in a hospital within a week or even month of his residency.

These same characters also tend to gloss over the bulk of what eats up the training time - education. It takes many, many years to get all the certifications and degrees to become a doctor.

Of course this is a videogame so we need to compromise where it lets players actually progress and have fun while still being internally consistent. That is what the age restrictions tend to be - a 40 year old character can reasonably go from medical doctor to CMO, whereas a 28 year old can't. Your character has to be physically older to have it be reasonable that he has more and more knowledge. But even then his knowledge has to generally be restricted to 1 department (unless you are Skrell, who are given more leniency to hop departments)

This problem isn't going to leech energy out of aurora unless it feeds into itself with what can best be described as an upper caste of powergaming cliques. A chemist who boards and slams through all the medicine and sets up all medbay up in 10 minutes and gets snippy and hostile to less-gifted medical members feeds into that.

So it just relies on the admins, CCIA, and Heads of Staff to consistently try to foster the playing environment we want to have and enforce reasonable restrictions.

Right, I am going to put my hand up and say, I am guilty. Guilty as sin.

I started out single manning medical during dead hour for months, way back when this server started, and even before on Apollo, if you are the only med player on shift, there is a fairly heavy OOC and IC push for you to do something, IC screaming, LOOC ranting. So for new players I can see how they would easily slip into power gaming. Especially as it can be round ending for a player or even the entire station.

Shodan has a good point on the Gameplay/Realsim line.

The bit where I see it being an issue, and where I put a lot of effort into (And occasionally fail) limiting myself is, not working on another's role from what I have taken. If you have a surgeon, they are the surgeon, even if they are a complete fucking idiot. Unless the are ICly criminal, you should not be stepping in on them. In CMO terms, that is trying to make yourself do as little as possible, even if it grates on your nerves how slowly and inefficiently they do it. Let the realism of the roles play out, think of it like a real life job, you may have the skills but you are paid to stay in a lane. But sometimes for the sake of the round, it can be preferential to go with gameplay and power it a little.

Another thing that can help is giving yourself self-imposed limiters. At the very least it makes you question what you are doing. EMT for surgery, Look mate, I can splint or I can amputate. >Not sure if the mechanics are still valid on this< Virology, you can infect a monkey, and you can cure them in the course of killing them with radium. But I don't know how to isolate, so here is some toxic monkey blood with your antibodies hope that helps.

Similar things happen with engineering, where atmos and engi are kinda expected to do both in low pop/crisis areas, it becomes a real pain for those who are learning or take a role when someone from the other has broke in and done the role, especially if it is non critical, and even more so if they keep doing your role even after you arrive. So I think a point on having concern for the experience of others is important, on what you do and don't do.