Staff Complaint - MattAtlas

BYOND Key: CampinKiller

Staff BYOND Key: MattAtlas

Game ID: bVJ-crtZ

Reason for complaint: My head whitelist was stripped for "evading CCIA actions" despite having made a new character who had a similar name.

Evidence/logs/etc: I joined mid-mutiny in this round, and so never really had a chance to act "different" than Price. It's fairly hard to when you have 30 minutes of playing in an emergency and get immediately locked down by the AI after boarding. I made a character called Marc Pryce, who has quite a different background than my suspended character.

This is Marc Price:

Age: 39

Medical Records:

Has suffered from post-concussion syndrome from ages 22-24. Check for symptoms after serious head injuries.

Loyalty implantation has caused headaches and some mild resurfacing of post-concussion syndrome. Medication needed.

Employment Records:

Employed as: Head of Security

Employment History:

January 23, 2458 - Present: Head of Security

August 14, 2554 - January 22, 2458: Security Officer

August 14, 2544 - August 13, 2554: Security Officer

August 14, 2543 - August 13, 2544: Security Cadet

June 16, 2539 - February 3, 2541: Forward, New York Rangers

This is Marc Pryce:

Age: 44

Medical Records:

Has very minor asthma

Employment Records:

Graduated from New Seoul Combat Training Center, May 2438

Former Military Service: Sol Alliance Marine Corps, 139th Military Police Brigade (2438-2450)

-Former Executive Officer, 139th Military Police Brigade

-Ended Active Service at the rank of Lieutenant Colonel (O-5)

Hired by NanoTrasen: December 2450

-Prior Assignments: Head of Security, NSS Apus (2450-2455)//Head of Security, NSS Ara (2455-2460)

-Current Assignment: NSS Aurora II (Since August 2460)

I was told during the ahelp that Pryce's behavior was too similar to Price's, despite the fact that it was only viewed over the 20-30 minutes of a mutiny, and you can't really define behavior in that time, nor that situation. I messaged Matt on discord asking for further clarification, and summed it up like this:

It should be noted that the hairstyle (Cut Hair) is a default hairstyle.

Additionally, I would like to point out that there is a Mark Price, played by someone else, that looks almost the same as Marc Price. There is precedent for the server allowing people that look the same. I doubt it is far-fetched to find a Marc Pryce who is working for NanoTrasen, and who looks similar to someone. If this character were to actually be observed over a normal period of time, it would be clear that he behaves quite differently from Price. Additionally, even if it were to be someone who acted the exact same, when I was DM'ing Synnono, they made it sound as if it was acceptable, but frowned upon:

Overall, I don't find it far-fetched to have someone with a similar name, and looks similar to the person. Were I actually good with flavor text, Pryce was going to be described as being about 5'9", lean, and have a sleeve hidden under his jumpsuit. Far from Price's 6'2", nearly 200 lbs, former hockey player.

Additional remarks: I would like my whitelist back

As I've said several times during your DMs with me, the behaviour is not the main issue and is just an additive to the main issue. I do not see why you keep bringing it up as your only point.

I will also add that similiarity does not equal to carbon copy. If something is the same as something else, it's not similiarity, it's being the same thing.

Now, onto the main point.

Additionally, I would like to point out that there is a Mark Price, played by someone else, that looks almost the same as Marc Price. There is precedent for the server allowing people that look the same. I doubt it is far-fetched to find a Marc Pryce who is working for NanoTrasen, and who looks similar to someone.

The issue isn't that they were similiar. It's not a case of being similiar here. It's a case of being a carbon copy, as I've already told you on our quite long discord DMs. As I've also already said in DMs, you have to understand our point of view as well. Someone by the name of Marc Price gets suspended. A week passes, and someone by the name of Marc Pryce joins, played by the same person, in the same role, with the same look.

What do you honestly believe we should've thought? The names are the same. The look is the same. You absolutely cannot justify joining as essentially the same person with "the records and the age are different". It's very very farfetched. You can't bring up the person playing Mark Price here either - not only is it not played by the same person who plays the original Marc Price, thus completely different in context and not applicable here, they were also handled by a staff member.

It should be noted that the hairstyle (Cut Hair) is a default hairstyle.

This doesn't help your point. Had you put effort into making the two characters different, I'm 100% sure you would've altered the hair style.

Furthermore, let's take a look at the image you used, Synnono's quite.

"It's discouraged to just roll up as Parc Mrice and join as a HoS slot."

This is the same person that is in charge of the same department that handed you your punishment, and you did essentially the same exact thing that they told you is DISCOURAGED to do. If you wished to tempt fate by directly going against what they discouraged, I'm not sure what to tell you, other than you should've definitely expected this.

Adding my thoughts here as the person who applied the original suspension, and the person who supervises the one who applied the second.

During our own DMs concerning the CCIA action where you pulled that quote from, you expressed to me that Price is "the only character you play" and that you didn't want to make a "throwaway character" for a month. After Ben applied the extension to the suspension concerning the second incident, you told him that you "have half a mind to ignore [the IC action] considering how many levels of bullshit it is." You'd even brought up logging Price in as HoS despite our actions in that conversation. With these things in mind, are we supposed to believe that you rolled up this character with any intention of observing the original action, because one letter in his name and his employment records had changed?

When I say that what you did is "discouraged," it means that if someone's going to toe the line and show us they don't want the IC treatment, we end up referring them to admins to see if something OOC should be done instead. In this case, they decided that something should, and CCIA has no further say in that. By doing something like this instead of making a truly unrelated character, you're asking to test the limits of what evading an action means. I feel like you can't be surprised when it becomes an OOC issue as a result.

The problem I have with this is that you boil down the character to being a carbon copy because of how they look. A character is more than just their name and how they look. If you want to talk carbon copies, is my Paramedic Matt Price a carbon copy of Marc because he looks the same, and is the same age? They're identical twins. Yes, the name was intentional, but I would have assumed that staff would see a character as more than just their name and their hair looks the same, so that's that.

The other issue is that I fail to see how this rises to an immediate strip of my whitelist. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the only note/action I have against me is one for being a dick to Queen a couple of weeks ago. I don't think I've ever, in my extended amount of time playing here, done anything that warranted a note on my whitelist. If this were a simple warning to either fix the character to not have the same name/look, I would understand your POV much easier. Instead, you have immediately stripped my whitelist on my first offense, while there are plenty of people with multiple warnings for bad behavior in a whitelisted role that still hold theirs.

Just a post saying I'm going to handle this.

This might come off as blunt, but I feel this is the best way to really describe my thoughts.

It my belief after hearing of this, the way you've mentioned wanting to quit the server, and the way you've spoken to others about how you didn't care about the suspension of Marc Price, that you're just doing this to push the boundaries and by extension really egging us on here. If we're going to touch on what is possible, then every character concept thought of is possible, but that doesn't make it permissible.

Not really sure how to phrase is in a more cordial way, but you're just intentionally pushing the boundaries here and got your whitelist stripped as a result. Perhaps you thought you'd get a slap on the wrist for this instead of a whitelist strip, so maybe you're shocked at it.

You could argue how they're technically different people, but your intent here seems fairly clear to me and other people I've spoken to. It's gotten to the point where I've had to tell people to stop pinging you on discord because they think this whole ordeal is a joke and that you're just wasting our time.

I did give this some thought and decided to sleep on it, don't even think there's much more to be said. My verdict is that the strip remains, and considering this is an early verdict, I'll let the complaint sit for 48 hours instead of the normal 24 before archiving it as resolved, unless something new is added.

That is fair. If we're being honest, I told people I expected a ban for doing this. This complaint was really a formality, because I doubted there was much chance of anything being overturned, but I figured it couldn't hurt to try.

Not that anyone will be surprised, but yes, joining as Pryce was done as a "fuck you" to CCIA. Considering I rarely play anyone other than Marc, getting him suspended for a month for reasons that I still consider to be absolute bullshit sucked all of the fun out of playing from me. I then figured I'd just sit it out and come back, never to play another canon round. Then the suspension got lengthened as a result of Jackboot's weaponized IR with a throwaway character, and that was the straw that broke the camel's back, if you will. Imposing over a months worth of suspensions against a character is just asinine. That's 5x the length of bans people get for violating server rules after multiple warnings. As someone who used to be CCIA, it has clearly changed, and not in a good way. CCIA shouldn't be doling out massive punishments like that, because it just absolutely sucks the fun out of playing. If they continue to do that, they'll start driving people away. In the end, I made my decision, and that's that. My actions are my own responsibility, 100%, though I really do hope Jackboot and LordPwner (to a lesser extent) feel good about themselves for contributing to driving me away.

Considering this was a "fuck you", so by extension an intentional and malicious act. I'm disappointed that you felt it necessary to stick to formality and waste our time. Regardless of what first impressions I got from this, I still reviewed everything you had to say, the other posts and relevant material to the decision of the strip. Along with this, even though this seemed like an easy case, I still put in that extra effort of sleeping and considering it again the day after, double checking some of the material.

So honestly at this point this feels like my time was intentionally wasted along side everyone else involved, and for that I'm disappointed.

Locking and archiving.