We need to have a serious discussion about admin run events

So what I'm noticing is a lot of players are super unhappy with a lot of the recent non-canon "murderbone" events. This has been reflected due the (somewhat) recent poll where a lot of players prefer canon events over non-canon events, the fact that every time someone asks for a vote on a non-canon event it only passes by a slim <~5% margin.

The most recent event wasn't great either. There was a lot of stuff that people complained about in deadchat, but of course there are the usuals who just meme their way out of it by dismissing it all as salt without acknowledging the genuine criticism to the event. It's just incredibly depressing when I see the community, sometimes even staff members, deflect the blame by blaming anyone but themselves for these events, usually by just screaming "you're salty bro" over and over again like that contributes anything.

I don't want t speak for everyone, but when I complain about these events it's because there is absolutely zero RP going around, it's just constant action; usually worse than a crossfire round. I saddens me when I see these types of events happen. I just want more RP on my HRP server.

I hope this doesn't make things worse, but I just want everyone to remind everyone about the forum rules and actually maintain proper etiquette when giving complaints.

If its not violent then its chair or command rp.... it is a very difficult line to tread between the two most common complaints uwu

We are constantly working to improve our events. How can we improve?

If its not violent then its chair or command rp.... it is a very difficult line to tread between the two most common complaints uwu

We are constantly working to improve our events. How can we improve?

I think Burger is mostly adressing the non-canon events which happen, those tend to be a lot more agressive nad gun-ho.

Although I would appreciate feedback on canon events, I got great feedback from ToasterRobo on discord about my previous event.

Noncanon is usually used to go loosey goosey in terms of character consequences

I'm commander Shepherd and I endorse this Burger thread.

I prefer canon events because I want my character's actions to actually matter and feel both fair and impactful within universe. If the round is an event but it's non-canon, I can be self-assured that anything I do will not matter because the objective of a canon event is different from that of a non-canon one-shot event. I like violent canon events more than I like violent non-canon events.

The majority of the time, a non-canon event is run, it's escalated to such a ridiculous and immersion-breaking degree that you're better off voting for transfer or immediately finding a way to call the shuttle.

It is not enjoyable to play a round where your actions are way too punishing because the event host running a non-canon round wants to see blood more than they want to see people enjoying themselves in a round centered around a different objective than just mindless violence.

Every once in awhile a violent non-canon event can be entertaining but it's largely based around the person running it and what the objective involved is, in terms of whether it'll be quality or not. If it's someone who's notorious for pitting unkillable threats against the station then only the combat-oriented players are going to have a good time. I don't play Aurora for a heavy combat focus. I play it for a heavy roleplay focus.

I'd rather event hosts make it more clear what they're going to be doing in an event in terms of theme. Forget the risk of metagaming, I'd rather know whether or not an event is going to be worth my time. I don't play Aurora to burn off steam, I play Aurora to have a good time. If I wanted to go burn off steam I'd play /tg/ for my spamclick fix instead.

Admin run events or alberyk's events?

You gotta understand that taking criticism for an event DURING the round is almost impossible. A vote at the end is really all the meaningful feedback you could get. Chat moves too quick and deadchat is and always has been salt chat. Its hard to sift through it all. Way easier to do after the fact in a format like this thread. There is ALMOST ZERO policy around doing an event. other than a vote the round before.

Whilst complaining in DCHAT isn't the most effective way to get a point across, disregarding any constructive criticism given as 'salt' whilst in game, is just a tad annoying if you ask me, what happened in that event was a complete mess to be frank, it lacked direction or any meaning apart from 'Give us the WMD, or we'll shoot you all' its an absurd request, and literally as demonstrated a city destroying WMD shouldn't just be given over to them.

I'll talk about a few of my personal issues with what happened, and hey ho we'll see where it goes from there.

Now to start off, I don't see whats enjoyable about giving 6 people military grade equipment, and sending them to a station to recover the weapon. The crew had zero chance of even combating that threat, and seriously it was 'give in or die' but giving in just seems stupid on so many levels, as i've already emphasized why handing over that weapon is the worst idea since unsliced bread, the crew seriously didn't have a choice considering the equipment they had. Alb tried to give a possible scenario saying 'The crew could of lied and ambushed them' just seems even more suicidal than the other ideas, they still have a fucking anti-material rifle, along with all their other equipment. It really seems like the scenario didn't have many open options as Alb suggested.

The amount of roleplay I saw, was well lacking to say the least, I get alb events are supposed to be 'death, death..oh and death' but it was hardly story driven and felt out-right murderboney at points, for example, Me, the ERT medic, and the ERT engineer, was walking up to the position where the weapon was stored, to negotiate with the hostiles, before I know it the engineer next to me had lost their head in a shower of gore due to being one shotted by an anti-material rifle, without even interacting with the hostiles. If we had a previous interaction with the hostiles I wouldn't of had an issue, but it seriously just seems lacking of roleplay and more 'lets win the event'

Another point I'll quickly bring up is administrator responses, whilst yes Dchat can be filled with upset people, criticism was valid and was being said towards alb, he was even responding himself..However the responses felt far beyond arrogant, and was outright trying to put the blame on anyone expect himself. I don't hate alb, I don't have an issue with him, the majority of the time I enjoy his events, but jesus fuck..When people are giving you criticism please don't just respond with 'well they could of done x' 'i just make a scenario and see where it goes' type of comments and actually try address the issues at hand. Nevertheless I hope nothing personal comes of this

Rant over, I need a cup of fucking tea

Whilst complaining in DCHAT isn't the most effective way to get a point across, disregarding any constructive criticism given as 'salt' whilst in game, is just a tad annoying if you ask me

I get it. I mean im not trying to be a dickhole its just how the chat is viewed and its GENERALLY what goes down in that channel. you arent there unless you died or ghosted and picking between salt and legitimate criticism from dead chat is real difficult with the log spam of the rest of the round plus dealing with the event itself. Thats why i said its better done in a format like this thread. Was this topic prompted by a single event? You all seem to be referencing it. Do we know who ran it or who handled it? i can bring them here for a dialogue.

Its understandable that you have to deal with endless amounts of salt in dchat, its a way of life down here. Its likely that this debate was fueled by the recent alb event, events in general I usually have a lot of issues with them, whilst an input from alb isn't necessary it'd be nice to have some sort of clarification on what went down.

Whilst complaining in DCHAT isn't the most effective way to get a point across, disregarding any constructive criticism given as 'salt' whilst in game, is just a tad annoying if you ask me

 

I get it. I mean im not trying to be a dickhole its just how the chat is viewed and its GENERALLY what goes down in that channel. you arent there unless you died or ghosted and picking between salt and legitimate criticism from dead chat is real difficult with the log spam of the rest of the round plus dealing with the event itself. Thats why i said its better done in a format like this thread. Was this topic prompted by a single event? You all seem to be referencing it. Do we know who ran it or who handled it? i can bring them here for a dialogue.

It doesn't matter how the chat is generally viewed. It's dickish as fuck to belittle someone and put them on blast for their arguments without even addressing what's critically wrong with them. It's literally just a case of "u mad, bro"

.

.

It's gross when staff mock players who voice their discontent for how events are run.

>

This could be a staff complaint.

I want to elaborate on that specific event, because I was fairly unhappy with it as well.

Players should be rewarded for creativity. Engineering and the AI cut the power to this massive weapon. The supermatter was ejected. The station basically went “we would rather die without power in space than keep killing civilians.” There could have been good rp there!

But somehow this massive weapon that keeps draining the stations power could still operate without power.

My issue with this event, and the events like it, isn’t that the admins ignore dchat or say cocky things or that they’re combat oriented. It’s that they are linear and player agency doesn’t seem to matter.

If players pull some shit like cutting the power to the super weapon, play along with it. Work around it. Reward our creativity and effort. Because if you don’t, it just feels like we’re sitting there waiting to get killed and watching the announcements to see when the story is allowed to be over. I don’t mind losing, but RP is about agency.

It doesn't matter how the chat is generally viewed. It's dickish as fuck to belittle someone and put them on blast for their arguments without even addressing what's critically wrong with them. It's literally just a case of "u mad, bro"

Hey

I wasn't there

I dont know what staff said and i dont necessarily condone it.

Okay, now what happened:

-station gets the weapon, they are told about it, it fires by accident

-Sol forces board the station, after telling the crew, with body armor and side arms, no hardsuit and no big scary guns, they were told to tell the station that they were there to order them to give access to the weapon, due to the reason of it being illegal and etc, I told the persons playing the marines at time to make clear there would be consequences if the crew refused it.

-the crew refuses, so I tell them to fall back and arm to invade

-they drop around science and research, with orders to move to the tesla bay

-security and combat borgs tries to fight them and they die

-rounds goes on until the cannon fires more three times and the marines are left behind due to a mutiny

Now, the issue of power, there was power at the bay when the marines were controlling it and the entire station as well, if the smes and apcs were fully drained, the weapon would not fire, because it was clear that it used the station as powersource due to the blackouts after it firing.

Now, I was never saying I was innocent and nothing was my fault, because not just agreeing with everything people say or trying to defend your case is not ignoring feedback or being prideful. I think that the person doing the negotation did not convey the proper message, of the crew going to be attacked if they ignored, and I am already taking this in consideration if I am ever thinking again of giving them a role as a cast in an event. I would not really bwoink or complain if the station did accept the terms during the meeting, or tried to play dirty, neither I did stop anyone from trying to bomb or destroy the cannon, which were also possible things, and that happened in the end of the round anyway. The marines did not board the station at first with heavy weapons, all they had was around with par with mercenary gear.

I guess that people seeing big guns and a declaration of war might just think they should fight, even if odds are clearly against them. I had other events were other alternatives, besides murdering the hostile force, were used with success by people with creativity, such as the case where a bartender stopped a hell invasion on station by defeating a demon in a drinking contest.

that wasn't really a creative event on par with your other ones, though, the recent one was really not good at all

whoever did the negotiations wasn't very specific in what the consequences would be at all. my character could only suspect betrayal and at which point it's not like I could've ICly assumed they would've basically teleported with extreme proximity to the engineering sub-level by excuse of ballistic drop-pods.

The security team was not attempting to outright hunt them down, they were ordered to defend the cannon.

Half of the marine squad was on-sight shooting security and non-combatants alike to get their murderbone on. I even reported this for one specific marine and apparently they didn't know what they were doing the whole time, they were just focusing on headpopping people.

You're responsible for the actions of the event characters because you always held the ability to communicate to them as to what they should be doing and how they should be conducting themselves.

The marines did not board the station at first with heavy weapons, all they had was around with par with mercenary gear.

I am not going to be culpable in ganking and shutting down the round of the event characters when they barely had just arrived. Stop suggesting that this was an option when they first arrived, it is OOCly against the rules to gank, it is also against my principles to remove characters from the round that just arrived. I had zero IC reason to do so.

You added a ton of artificial difficulty for command staff to handle this round and disallowed us to have any say or control over the weapon. Nobody could do anything because the marine squad had killed everyone in the sublevel 10 minutes after they arrived again with high-end godtier gear.

Nobody has reason to play dirty with Sol Marines. They poorly communicated by themselves and I couldn't even understand them because my character didn't fucking understand Sol Common. The execution was awful from start to finish. Only the 6 heavily armed/armored marines enjoyed themselves that round.

Okay, now what happened:

-station gets the weapon, they are told about it, it fires by accident

-Sol forces board the station, after telling the crew, with body armor and side arms, no hardsuit and no big scary guns, they were told to tell the station that they were there to order them to give access to the weapon, due to the reason of it being illegal and etc, I told the persons playing the marines at time to make clear there would be consequences if the crew refused it.

-the crew refuses, so I tell them to fall back and arm to invade

-they drop around science and research, with orders to move to the tesla bay

-security and combat borgs tries to fight them and they die

-rounds goes on until the cannon fires more three times and the marines are left behind due to a mutiny

Now, the issue of power, there was power at the bay when the marines were controlling it and the entire station as well, if the smes and apcs were fully drained, the weapon would not fire, because it was clear that it used the station as powersource due to the blackouts after it firing.

Now, I was never saying I was innocent and nothing was my fault, because not just agreeing with everything people say or trying to defend your case is not ignoring feedback or being prideful. I think that the person doing the negotation did not convey the proper message, of the crew going to be attacked if they ignored, and I am already taking this in consideration if I am ever thinking again of giving them a role as a cast in an event. I would not really bwoink or complain if the station did accept the terms during the meeting, or tried to play dirty, neither I did stop anyone from trying to bomb or destroy the cannon, which were also possible things, and that happened in the end of the round anyway. The marines did not board the station at first with heavy weapons, all they had was around with par with mercenary gear.

I guess that people seeing big guns and a declaration of war might just think they should fight, even if odds are clearly against them. I had other events were other alternatives, besides murdering the hostile force, were used with success by people with creativity, such as the case where a bartender stopped a hell invasion on station by defeating a demon in a drinking contest.

There is a lot of things that are wrong about these series of events.

The Sol Marines did not tell the station of any consequences of a refusal, let alone that a meeting existed at all. It was exclusively a meeting between the Captain and the sol marine leader. The Captain refused behind a closed door meeting that not even I, the station's AI, had access to listen to. The crew never refused or was even informed of stakes of this meeting. The Captain refused and the station had to suffer for it. You basically said that this was tough titties because "this was war" or something.

Now this whole issue of power is a meme because I disabled the APC multiple times as AI and there was nothing happening. Every single machine leeches off an APC. That's how every object gets its power source. However, I found out after the round in code, the bluespace cannon does not use power at all. It does not take or require any sort of power whatsoever. There is no charge rating on the bluespace canon so it couldn't drain power. There was no flag telling it to drain power so it couldn't literally drain power.

I remember where you tried this sol marine bluespace cannon event before and the AI blew up the supermatter successfully. There was 0 power to the station and the engineering area was damaged beyond repair. However, after less than 5 minutes, it was announced via central command that the Sol Marines constructed a tesla in under 3 minutes so they could fire more shots.

You keep saying that the crew wishes to do something creative, but every time they do something creative you find some excuse to shut the crew down and continue your event. There was 0 social possibility for the crew to interact with the sol marines because it would've been pants on head retarded to go up to a deathsquad wearing sol marine armed to the teeth asking for a drinking contest or something. I witnessed a security officer tried surrendering, and ended up getting shot multiple times before they accepted their surrender.

I was never saying that the crew had to murder them when they landed, agreeing with them and later trying something when they were in the sublevel of the station would be fine, they were always planning on using the cannon to attack civillian and NanoTrasen targets and I would not have armed them with hardsuits if they station did not refuse the case. And all ahelps about them ganking people were handled by the staff at time, if they were found doing something wrong, it was allowed to slide due to being an event.

The Sol Marines did not tell the station of any consequences of a refusal, let alone that a meeting existed at all. It was exclusively a meeting between the Captain and the sol marine leader. The Captain refused behind a closed door meeting that not even I, the station's AI, had access to listen to. The crew never refused or was even informed of stakes of this meeting. The Captain refused and the station had to suffer for it. You basically said that this was tough titties because "this was war" or something.

I let this for the people at time to decide on where and how they wanted to lead the negotiations, and I just did take in consideration that the person doing the negotation did a poor job in it. While giving more freedom in important roles can lead to interesting things, it can also lead to those cases. I could have just taken a more active paper in speaking to command staff, instead of just allowing the marines at time.

So, I wasn't there to experience the specific event that birthed this thread. I joined at the tail-end to see all the complaining. However, I'm seeing the main 2 points of the thread being canon, and RP vs action in events.

Firstly, canon. I was gonna type out a long, drawn out explanation about people wanting to effect a larger story that doesn't really exist, but that would infringe on some people's personal canons. All I'm gonna say is space station 13 is kinda like the show "Whose line is it anyways" where everything is made up and the canon doesn't matter.

As for the action vs RP thing. This is a complex issue. There's been a rising trend recently that RP is good (which nobody is arguing) while combat/action is bad, considered the opposite of RP. This is seen in things such as removal of antag objectives, the changeling nerf, and more recently in the disarming of security. The server as a whole has been shifting towards non-combative play. Which, in a normal round is fine, it's what most of us love about Aurora (if I may be so bold as to assume). However, it does tend to limit the main contributing factor to what makes an event: conflict.

A story without conflict is no real story at all. And that's the point of running events, isn't it? Creating a story. "But Trazz," I hear you type "conflict doesn't necessarily mean muderbone!" which is true. However people are still people, unfortunately. As we all know, might makes right. When an objective is important/valuable enough, those with the power will inevitably use it to obtain the objective. The quote "Talk softly and carry a big stick" comes with the prerequisite that if the talking is ignored, you *use* the stick.

I feel if you wanted an event with no violent outcome should the conflict objective be denied, it would have to be something of low importance that the parties involved wouldn't be willing to fight for. Like if NanoTrasen tried imposing a mandatory penis inspection day and the crew banded together and sent a petition to reconsider. And even then, with a loyalty implanted HoS and captain, which a security team meant to enforce NT rules...eh. It's iffy.

Thanks for coming to my TEDtalk. Tip your waitress.

My biggest issue was the Sol Marines playing exclusively to win, rather than create an interesting event. This was proven when they almost immediately bypassed the sublevel defences that security and engineering had worked in tandem to organize in order to breach from space and vent and kill everyone inside, regardless of whether they were unarmed or not. I had briefly contemplated getting EVA gear, but I dared to think for a moment that Alberyk cared about the quality of the people he was putting in charge of roles integral to the round. But no, they instantly breached from EVA, killed the defenders that had begun to surrender and wordlessly began killing the unarmed engineer and cadet, one of whom was in paincrit. I ahelped about that, of course, and was told it was "handled" but in reality nothing happened.

The general response to deadchat's complaints was, of course, the always classy "lol salty" and Alberyk bemoaned the station's lack of creativity while simultaneously allowing the marines to go about their business unmolested as they brute forced every situation they came across, even when the station made attempts to disable the power to stop them from firing the gun and killing civilians (Sol Marines complained about the bluespace arty being a "WMD" and then proceeded to hijack it and used it to kill millions on Biesel and the Odin??????). Take note of the fact that everytime the bluespace arty fired, it drained the station's powernet for a few minutes. If the lower deck still had power, but the supermatter ejected, it would have had enough juice to maybe fire once before draining the station and then that's it, but that clearly wasn't the case.

My issue with Alb's events in general, is that they either go one of two ways:

1: There is an interesting way to solve a problem, or a way to brute force through the problem. Multiple avenues are given and creativity is rewarded. It is challenging but not impossible. The goalposts remain where they are.

2: There is one way to solve the problem. It is impossible unless you do it the way he wants you to. The goalposts are moved when a way around this is made.

The biggest example of this is his Sarlacc event. These are run quite often, and begin with the Worm (God, more on that in a bit) Brain being placed in the Bridge. It is a fleshy bulb surrounded by regenerating mass. The only way in is to breach in through the front, surrounded by regenerating walls, floor tentacles, and they have the ability to despawn the floor underneath to the asteroid layer, spawn a tentacle there nigh instantly, while it does damage to every person on a tile around it. On top of this, the Worm knows everything of what is going on around it, and places its mouths underneath doors specifically because the sprite is overlayed by the doors just accurately enough to disguise its existence.

The reason it's such a pain in the ass, and not challenging, is that you can only complete the event the way he wants you to. If you don't enter and kill the brain via the hole he plants in the upstairs z-level, you cannot kill them. On one occasion, an IPC walked up with an assault shotgun and dumped a mag of slug rounds into the small fleshy bulb, then was EMP'd into the ground with the excuse of the Worm being an eldritch God.

I really, really like Alb as an admin, and think he's one of my favorite admemes. However, he's also one of the few to pull this kinda shit. Is this a major issue? Personally, I don't think so. I didn't stick up my hand about it prior (I was waiting for the next time the event was run) and did not believe it to be such a problem. It's only 2 hours.

(also I've literally never seen another admin do this, probably should handle it in a staff complaint instead)

Bumping this because this is still a problem. People volunteered to be borers and what happened is that there were a lot of borers who were locked in xenobiology because they made the mistake of infesting players who were pants on head retarded and would rather kill themselves or subject themselves to torture than to have a borer that gives them positive chems. I personally spent 2 whole hours in a 3 hour round in xenobiology containment because of this, expecting something interesting to actually happen, but nothing ever happened.

The person who ran the event just spawned borers on a shuttle and sent it to central, and not much else. I probably should've SSD'd at the 2 hour mark like my host did, but I stayed because I thought something would actually happen. There was absoultely 0 RP involved for most people, and everyone was just depressingly bored. I'm pretty sure the only people who had fun were the borgs and HAPT validing all the people regardless of infestation.

Events needs to rely less on mechanics not in normal gameplay and more on the person running the event to be doing more in the round. It needs to be treated like a dungeon master. Most admin run events have admins involved in the setup and then the ending when what is needed most is control of the middle.

There was absoultely 0 RP involved for most people,

speak for yourself. the event was fantastic, we hadn't done borers for awhile and it was the best executed borer event i've ever experienced.

While I was hosting as one of the original scientist ((Who ended up living till the end, good on ya)), I rp'd with the other guy we started with, all of Security, all of Medical and the xenobiologst. I ended up leaving him and then went to go try to spread at the Captain's office, but cap was taken ;-;. So then I went to the HoP and got inside them, Rping with them, discussing with 'em. Then had them beat Jayda ((I'm still sorry <3 <3 <3)) close to death, then hopped out of them into Jayda but got caught. Rp'd down in xeno with Ryli and one of the borgs, then killed Jayda off and lastly was executed by a trooper for being infected. I think tbh A lot of RP was made. Yeah it sucks getting caught as a borer and thrown into a cage. Hell it sucks like that for any antag. And I normally try if I have antags thrown into cells I try to keep interacting with them and have others do it too, so I'm sorry you also were trapped into a cell. Though we did have the options to have our host actually kill themselves and ya know, die. they almost pulled me out, which made me sad they didn't. Sadly I also shivered while playing dead. But I mean, as antag if we make the round fun for one guy ya know, we've done pretty well in my opinion

Bumping this because this is still a problem. People volunteered to be borers and what happened is that there were a lot of borers who were locked in xenobiology because they made the mistake of infesting players who were pants on head retarded and would rather kill themselves or subject themselves to torture than to have a borer that gives them positive chems. I personally spent 2 whole hours in a 3 hour round in xenobiology containment because of this, expecting something interesting to actually happen, but nothing ever happened.

The person who ran the event just spawned borers on a shuttle and sent it to central, and not much else. I probably should've SSD'd at the 2 hour mark like my host did, but I stayed because I thought something would actually happen. There was absoultely 0 RP involved for most people, and everyone was just depressingly bored. I'm pretty sure the only people who had fun were the borgs and HAPT validing all the people regardless of infestation.

Events needs to rely less on mechanics not in normal gameplay and more on the person running the event to be doing more in the round. It needs to be treated like a dungeon master. Most admin run events have admins involved in the setup and then the ending when what is needed most is control of the middle.

Trying to run an event everyone likes is near impossible. Not only that, but those hosting can only lay out the ground work. The crew and antags make the rest of the round interesting. A person running the event cannot tell the crew to "Act like this", "Oh by the way, they take over the brains of your friends but ayylmao it's fine we allow it"

I'm sorry your hosts weren't as you liked them, but at the end of the day that isn't our problem. Having events that are set on railroads leads to them being stale, the crew cannot shape the future and so it all ends up rather pointless if it all just leads to one ending. Blaming this on the event hosts is pointless if the event hosts are not where most of the problem lies.

People complain that they don't see enough of the action, then when they get the action they complain it's too much action? Finding a middle-ground when you're catering for over 50 people is just not going to happen. The event is only as good as you make it.

The event was, overall, received positively. To me that is a success.