Player Complaint- Kaedwuff

BYOND Key: Resilynn

Game ID: bW0-cKuD

Player Byond Key: Kaedwuff

Staff involved: tbear1, thedococt, queenofyugoslavia

Reason for complaint:

This round was honestly the most mechanical and metaknowledge abuse I think I've ever seen from a whitelisted player in 2 years on the Aurora. I don't say this lightly, I haven't made a player complaint before for good reason.

Kaewuff, as his HoP, spent the first 2 hours of the round quietly succing and thralling, using only security and one assistant. The crew was not at all involved in ANYTHING, and we were sure, for two hours, it was extended, as only ~3 people were involved. That's okay, technically, bad antaggery is not technically against the rules, even though Kaed has gone with this exact path multiple times.

My issue comes at the 2 hour mark, when Kaed stormed up to a captain, dominated them to sit still, thralled them, and immediately ordered them to make an announcement that we were moving to red and that there were intruders.

Resi having attachment issues? Whaaaaaaat.

Information not included here:

-The captain was speaking of me exceeding my authority for and implying they were going to punish me for several minutes before I approached their office. I also engaged them in a perfectly normal conversation so I could get close enough to dominate them. We had an AI, so telling them to hold still and silent so I could enthrall them was entirely reasonable.

-There was no intent to murderbone people for an hour, this is a salt-fueled exaggeration. In fact, we were going on a hunt for people to feed for blood drinking, stirring up fear, and take the crew either as thralls or prey. I understand some people were killed during the fighting, but it's frankly not my responsibility for my thralls deciding to kill people when I'm not there ordering them to. I told them to capture prey, not kill everyone. The single person I killed that round was a chemist who shot me with a chloral dart, then spat in my face when I asked them why I shouldn't kill them.

-The CMO, whom the OP here played, was lured into a trap and captured. They were not harmed other than being fed on, and after some time, they were enthralled, giving them a chance to participate in the round. Instead immediately went to cryo.

-My success in keeping the crew from calling for help and being trapped is not a reason for a ban. The crew are not obligated to win against an antagonist. A well executed plan that you failed to notice or stop does not mean I am a bad antag.

-The vote in question went off and people decided not to leave. I do not understand why this is 'illegal vote influencing' any more than people saying 'vote extended for event' in pre-game chat. People are allowed to make their own choices, they did.

All of these issues were also resolved in-game in ahelps.

Can you explain to me the point of saying, at the 2 hour mark, that were were intruders and calling for swiping red? You were calling to swipe at the 1:59 mark. What was the point of red alert in facilitating the round? Why mention intruders once, then, but never again?

And you're right, you didn't harm me AND you gave me opportunity to RP. (So I'm not sure why you're reducing my argument to salt.) But I am a member of command. A recurring issue here is that you only involve command and security until it is time to go on your rampage, which the playerbase has no choice but to sit through because you had full control over the red alert keeping them there and a thousand thralls. They don't get any RP, they just wait to die.

I don't have an issue with how Kaed converted me at this time anymore - as it was handled by staff as they saw fit and I am not filing a staff complaint to contest their decisions.

I can confirm, as seen in screenshots, I was ordered as a thrall to make an announcement about intruders and swipe for code red - I was never told why we were doing this from an IC standpoint if there was any IC reasoning for it.

Because only minutes later the AI and borgs were acting up, and I had to go relaw them. By that point, I pretty much figured the intruder plan had been scuppered due to AI squeals on channels I couldn't hear, and moved onto a new one, which was using the AI and borgs to herd people. And eventually even that had to be discarded and I went no-subtlety.

Plans change organically. And I prefer to arrange things to give me an advantage. When I don't exert as much control over the situation, and let people know what is going on early, I tend to be mobbed and murdered by a greytide assault. It's happened twice when I wasn't careful enough. So I won't apologize for that, and I do not think I am obligated to go loud before I am ready to take over.

Also, they had two hours to roleplay. Just because they are sitting in a corner and sobbing in terror at the end does not mean they got 'no roleplay' this round. You're acting like being hunted down by vampires and thralls no longer counts as 'roleplay' because it's not roleplay you personally like. They were told to bring the crew before me in the holodeck, not murderbone everyone. The crew being rendered helpless is not a bannable offense, and whether it is bad roleplay is very subjective.

Try and view things from my point of view here. There doesn't seem to be a win state for me. Once, I tried acting like a serial killer and succing all the tajarans on board the station to death, leaving their corpses for security to find. After all that work, and literally leaving evidence to find, they still called the shuttle at 2 hours. (not to mention all the salty tajaran players mad they died)

Now this time, I've took, steps to stop people from wanting to call the shuttle at two hours, and people are getting mad at me for stopping them from leaving before I get to have any fun. What is going to make you happy? Me leaping at people and biting their necks publically so I can be arrested and detained instantly? That's not how it works.

So it's damned if I do involve the whole crew early, damned if I don't. I'd rather try and get some fun when I can rather than cater to everyone's whims and saltiness. It's a game, I opted in to be a bad guy, and it was therefore my decision to be a bad guy in my own way. I broke no rules, even if you think I broke the spirit of what you consider fun or fair.

ftr I don't think CMOs have a loyalty implant

ftr I don't think CMOs have a loyalty implant

I’ll clarify. That first screen shot was from Xander, as captain.

I've reported more than a few in-game occasions through adminhelps where Kaedwuff chooses to 'stealth' as an antagonist for the majority of the round and then go all out at the 2 hour mark with little indication of escalation of conflict as they show themselves.

If it's still an issue where Kaed isn't escalating in an interesting way to give people a fair chance to actually roleplay while they are the antagonist then clearly it should be up to the staff to figure out a way to hammer that problem out.

All this appears to be is a lot of people telling me how they like to antag or be antagged and expecting me to play the same way or that I'm doing it 'wrong'. There is nothing inherently wrong with stealthy antagging or control tactics.

To be frank, antagging in a way that engages everyone is hard. New people and threats constantly appear, such as a captain or HoS or FT showing up halfway through the round, forcing you to make new plans. And if you're not good at the combat system (like me), being directly aggressive is all but suicidal. You're all quick to whine about not getting to roleplay and that you got 'ganked', or complain that I don't engage everyone until later in the round when I have a power base, but for the most part the only thing an admin can do is address problems with my behavior that violate rules. They don't exist to punish players for using a gameplay tactic that makes people some vocal people upset, or for not being interesting enough in the ways that everyone likes.

Mostly because there is no such thing, because everyone wants something else. I made an attempt to give everyone that round chances to stay alive and continue roleplaying. If they felt being thralled or captured and bitten ruined their roleplay that round, that is frankly on them, not me. They were free to leave immediately like the CMO did, but they managed to stick around and have fun.

The only ahelp that game was related to my capture of the captain and the code red, and that issue was already resolved. Everything else here is just people pointing fingers at me and claiming I have history of being a big stealthy meaniepants that they didn't enjoy.

All this appears to be is a lot of people telling me how they like to antag or be antagged and expecting me to play the same way or that I'm doing it 'wrong'. There is nothing inherently wrong with stealthy antagging or control tactics.

There's plenty wrong with playing selfishly and utilizing powergamey tactics that doesn't even lead to making the round fun for anybody but yourself. It's absolutely boring, and I can think of at least five other people who commonly play antagonist that will make the round fun just by their sheer presence and known competence with the game mechanics and simply being able to execute a good story to talk about.

Mostly because there is no such thing, because everyone wants something else. I made an attempt to give everyone that round chances to stay alive and continue roleplaying. If they felt being thralled or captured and bitten ruined their roleplay that round, that is frankly on them, not me. They were free to leave immediately like the CMO did, but they managed to stick around and have fun.

Yeah, I guess it's too much to ask for you to roleplay better. You recognize how you instantly sound like the bad guy when the only advice you can give is for other people to leave if they don't like how you play?

Everything else here is just people pointing fingers at me and claiming I have history of being a big stealthy meaniepants that they didn't enjoy.

You... do. That's the exact issue here.

If you want to offer me advice on what you would like to see, give me something to work with, I can maybe do something. If you have suggestions on how to improve your experience when I am an antagonist beyond vague goals like 'engage more people' and 'don't do stealth I hate stealth antags', I could run off that in the future.

But all you are doing is saying that you don't like the way I play. It's not enough to say 'don't do it that way' and then expect me to magically come up with a plan to satisfy you. From my standpoint, you are the bad guy here, attacking my playstyle without offering any actual critique or constructive input. It doesn't feel unreasonable for me to be rolling my eyes and telling you to leave the round if you don't like it.

Come up with something more helpful than 'you're bad at antag' and I'd be happy to listen. It's too easy to cast stones from the sidelines when you didn't have to do the actual work at antaggery.

I don’t care if you’re a bad antag, personally. Making OOC decisions IC like vote swaying with fake announcements and keeping the station on red indefinitely so you can, by your own admission, just have some fun. That’s a huge issue.

I don't agree that it's an issue at all, but like I said, it was already resolved with ahelps, so making a complaint thread after the fact demanding I get banned for it doesn't really accomplish much.

Fake announcement or not, it was initiated by an antagonist, and people saw something happening, so they wanted to stay. The fakeness of the announcement is utterly irrelevant. If a team of mercenaries had showed up at 1:58 and started shooting people, and there actually had been intruders and a legitimate code red, it would have largely been the same situation. People would have voted to leave if they wanted to. I followed up the announcement with crew-wide antagonistic behavior, instead of, say, calling code red and hiding in a tunnel for an hour, and that should frankly be enough.

There isn't a rule on 'vote swaying', last time I checked. If you're allowed to tell antagonist to go eat a dick and not recall a transfer shuttle, it's a bit of a double standard to demand antagonists stop trying to start anything within the 5-10 minutes leading up to the vote so that they leave the server's voting mentality pristine of interesting events.

There is a rule against OOC in IC.

Yeah, and there's no reason an antagonist wouldn't recall a transfer shuttle except OOC considerations. The pendulum swings both ways. If an antagonist is expected to not recall a shuttle when it is in their power to do so, then it shouldn't be held against them if they start doing things when the vote is getting close.

I never stopped the initial vote from happening, and I was warned against doing that in the future. Fine. But if I had initiated code red one minute after the vote ended rather than during it, would that have been acceptable? At what point is calling a fake code red allowed? Never? Why not? Code red is a valuable fulcrum for telling the entire crew something is happening. Are we just supposed to never do it as an antagonist to keep people's jimmies unrustled?

Me and [mention]ShameOnTurtles[/mention] Will be handling this

More effort should have been made to escalate with the wider crew prior to the bloodbath at the end. This could have been accomplished by [mention]Kaed[/mention] taking over command sooner, bloodsucking/developing the gimmick/story with specific crewmembers, or otherwise having better interaction with the crew.

The bloodbath at the end wasn't necessarily bad/no RP, as long as the conflict was escalated. There are very unique moments to be had when your character is helpless, for example. Some circumstances being out of their control is part of roleplaying a well balanced character.

The red alert, while iffy, was dealt with in round and I believe acceptable within the parameters. Also should clarify in the complaint that antagonists are allowed to recall voted crew transfer shuttles so long as they have a clear plan to escalate, with an end in mind, and get permission from admins.

For a resolution, [mention]Kaed[/mention] will be given a warning referencing the poor escalation to red alert towards the end of the round and the lack of interaction with crew towards this happening. What Kaed should have done and how he can improve this for next time will be verbally communicated to him to help him as a player understand how to avoid scenarios such as this. [mention]Azande[/mention] wont be punished as he wasn't an antag until he was dominated and ordered via dominate to send the red alert out

Remember, antagonists and crew aren't meant to aim to 'win' against each other. The goal of an antagonist is to drive a story, and the duty of the crew is to help develop that story. Some gimmicks are conductive to this, some aren't. You won't be punished for trying out a gimmick that ends up going badly, as long as if there is a next time the mistakes aren't repeated. We should all be open to feedback and the impression I get from this thread is that Kaed is. We all play the same game and nobody is perfect, but we can all try our best each round.

To add onto this and to avoid confusion aswell as set a more proper future precedent, lets discuss loyalty implants as this was brought up. While powerful and are used to keep certain command staff from influence of foreign company influences aswell as security reasons, its possible for a loyalty implanted crew member to be dominated/thralled, however this could only be done by a vampire who has unlocked there full potential/powers as while the implant is present, the influence of a more advanced vampire like this is reasonable enough to break this mental shield.

I will be leaving this open for 48 hours before locking it

This was open for a lot longer than intended and no further comment has been made. Resolution will be carried out as described above.