necaladun

I highly encourage this if there is any problem or concern - but first of all it might be best to just chuck us a message. Often these things can be cleared up with just a quick, straightforward chat. This is especially easier if it's done when everything is fresh in memory. I'm really not interested however in showing someone all their notes for their curiosity so they can be nitpicked over. This is especially the case with notes that are incredibly subjective. Is player X "a bit too aggressive" in OOC? Were they not grieifing, but actually trolling? Does it really matter if they only hit the clown 22 times with a toolbox, rather than the 24 the note claims? We really have better things to do than have players argue all that with us. That's not however to say you can't dispute warnings, or discuss them with admins, to clarify situations or have the note rectified...but we're really not interesting in digging over things from potentially 6 years ago. I'm happy to discuss notes, bans, or just general concerns...or other video games etc...with anyone who PMs me - whether from the server or not. I can't guarantee we'll show you your notes, or show all of them, etc, but I can say I'll hear you out and try to address your concerns. I may be busy, IRL etc can be a bitch, but I'll at least try to direct you to someone who does have time to address your concerns. This will not ever happen, at all. We will not reveal sensitive information that players have trusted us with, nor will we make it known how we investigate or detect metagaming, ban evasion, etc. This is not worth discussing, because it won't happen. This is not the "end of the world", of course, but stopping ban evasion, metagaming, etc, is much more important than what is ultimately a few nitpicks over 0.1% of notes for 0.1% of players. PM an admin of your choice! Even our trialmins by now have a few dozen bans under their belt. If you have any problems with how they discuss it with you, or just want further clarification, feel free to drop me or another headmin a PM. I don't particularly mind if you come to me first either. Hell, we even have some lists around of what languages people know if you think it'd be clearer and more comfortable with another language than english - pm me or another admin to try to find someone of your language. We really don't like a peanut gallery chipping in or people getting a small snippet of it, and running wild with it. Also, ESPECIALLY if it's a recent ban, feelings may still be running a bit hot - it might be best to wait a day or two. There's a sweet spot between "too long ago to remember well" and "too recently to be objective". Yes...and no. Bwoinks and notes over accidents happen - if you welderbomb or release plasma or the singularity by accident, you might still get a note about it. This is more so we can note that you now know what not to do, and that if it repeats the next round (and another, and another...) then it's likely not an accident. This can be a very intimidating game to newcomers. How is a newbie to know that a toy lasertag gun is a toy when they just see red beams and white on their screen, or that a single hit with a hatchet isn't really that lethal? People shouldn't be afraid to be wrong sometimes, but they should learn from it (and not call the admins powertripping nazi-fags when pm'd about it.). We really do take into account the amount of time that has passed and how new you are at the time. If you ICd in OOCd and welderbombed and beat an SSD in your first 20ish hours of playing we really do not give a shit a few hundred hours of gameplay later.....assuming you have stopped. I'd like players to be able to do that for their own bans for sure. Not for other peoples however, as this I believe would lead to people being treated poorly. Warnings here really aren't anywhere near as "official" as Steam or the like, they very in severity heavily. It could be a "hey could you tone that down" to "seriously do not ever do that ever again". There really seems to be a lot of assumptions here that are incorrect, whether from misinformation, or bad-faith assumptions about the admins and how we operate. No admin app is denied simply "because of notes". Discussions are held about all candidates. For anyone to be banned rather than warned because of their notes, it's rarely one single note. There are plenty of cases of people with 10-20+ notes. If it is one single note, it's because of something directly relating to what you were just recently warned about, or it's a realllly bad offense. If you start to think of the admins in less of an "us vs them" mentality when it comes to players (of which admins also are), and more people who spend a lot of time PMing people to explain to them why you can't hit an SSD with a toolbox, that you're not to use racial abuse, ERP with Ian (yes, multiple times), etc, as well as trying to get a good RP atmosphere without a validhunting murderboning culture, then it will make a lot more sense why we do the things we do and the way we do. Yes, we make mistakes obviously, the appeals and admin complaints list many, many, of the mistakes over the years. We're human - if we're having a bad day we might be a bit harsher or grumpy or abrupt. But all in all, what bans come down to is - do we think this behavior will continue, and do we think this person makes the server a better place.

I've done this multiple times for people in the past when people have requested them, and have no issue doing so in the future if needed. However, this requires us to look over them, decide how necessary each thing is, edit out details we don't want, etc etc. Then we also might need to explain context - different admins have very different styles. Kyet writes entire essays in notes. Other admins are a lot more blunt. If I say a guy is being a bit of an asshole, that's nowhere near as serious as if someone like dumbdumn says they're an asshole (in which case they'd likely be worse than hitler). Other parts of context are how long ago the note was, and how experienced a player they were at the time. A byond account created today with 20mins on the server will get a warning for toolboxing an SSD. A player with over 1000 hours toolboxing an SSD would be very unlikely to get the same treatment. Unless there's a good reason to do this (such as a person disputing a warning in an admin complaint), then this really isn't worth our time, nor is something we want to generally encourage because of the waste of time. Some actual 'need to know' is needed, and there's no reason to set up a whole request system for this when a simple PM on discord can suffice. A vast number of our notes are simply "new player, attacked SSD, warned to read the rules." - simply a statement of the direct facts. When a ban comes up saying someone has been warned of something in the past, I have never seen a case where they haven't been warned in the past. In the end, warnings really are a courtesy, not a right. You are not entitled to be warned X number of times before being banned for breaking the rules. When we say someone has notes showing they've been warned in the past, it's to point out that they should know it is against the rules because they've been told so in the past. If I warn you not to attack an SSD, and it turns out I PM'd the wrong person entirely, you've still been warned, and thus should know it's against the rules. Perhaps we shouldn't warn people quite so often. They shouldn't need to see their notes for "a chance to self correct" if we've had to warn them repeatedly. The warnings should suffice, and be taken seriously. If you're forgetting how often you've been warned about something then there really is a problem. If you're getting repeatedly bwoinked and warned not to do something by admins, then that's a downward spiral. Additionally, if people are really concerned, they can also just keep notes themselves of whenever they're PM'd, or keep the logs of every byond session. I've looked into methods where we could have a 'public notes' where warnings etc are put down that players can review, but I don't think it's really worth the time and effort for something that is only an issue to a fraction of 1% of players. @Dinarzad making exaggerated "jokes" that portray the admins in a poor light, in a serious post about an issue is quite disrespectful to the people who have attempted to discuss this seriously and maturely, and insulting to the admins. Of course it got jumped on - we need to jump on misinformation that makes us look incredibly unfair ASAP before people run wild with it. Your wording isn't being "picked apart and subject to semantics". I called it outright bullshit, which is what it is. I don't want to derail this discussion with a back-and-forth about how you were "misinterpreted", so I'll leave you with one courtesy, which is a review of all your notes as it's very easy to do in your case. You have 0.

Thank you for posting this, as there has been a lot of misinformation floating around here that needs to be cleared up. First of all, i have heard that asking for your notes will result in a permaban. This is utterly untrue. Notes may have information to do with suspected ban evasion, metagaming, antag fishing, etc. We require these to be secret to properly do our jobs. We will not be showing these. Other notes may not be written in a manner that we want the player to see, eg, "acted like a complete fuckwit as a captain.", or just "i have a bad feeling about this guy". I prefer admins leave blunt and honest notes about things rather than having to phrase it in a way that won't look bad when its posted on reddit. There are plenty of times we have shown notes to players. With at least 100k notes, determining whether or not to show players is done on a need to know basis. Even if we do show some, its entirerly our word that you're seeing them all. Same as for those other servers. We're also clearly not showing you everything said about you on the staff discord, host chat, or when we talked about you when ive met up irl with admins. I'm sure players won't dilvuge everything theyve ever said about admins to other players, friends, etc. Comparing this to the evidence in a criminal case or the like is insane. No one here is getting imprisoned. No one is on trial where notes are evidence to if they did or didn't commit a crime. Notes don't contain some smoking gun or evidence of a one armed man who actually committed the crime. If you get banned for breaking the rules then you either did it or not. If you didnt, post in an appeal that you didn't and we'll go log diving. Being warned or banned is purely at admin discretion. If you've ever been warned not to do something that's against the rules, you could have been banned. If you got a temp ban it could have been perma. If youve been pmd by an admin before and been told not to do (x) then its likely in a note. All the admin pms are also in the logs, as are all the attacks and says and mes etc. We don't like people discussing their bans because they lie, or leave out vital information (eg, people saying they were banned for powergaming, and leaving out thar they told the admin to fuck off and ban them already). Having to constantly correct people requires us to constantly monitor the discord. Thats a pretty big waste of time. We have better things to do, and discussion of bans has rarely been productive at all. If you want to discuss a ban, past or present, then you can message an admin. This is complete bullshit. That has never been said in any banning or warning. If im wrong, please let me know so i can tear the admin a new one. This is a perfect example of why we dont want people discussing bans. Because many people lack the maturity to discuss this properly without resorting to reductive reasoning, or in this case, absolute lies.

Hmm. It would really depend on how it looked - it might be a bit annoying to see that every time you're examining someone. If it's details about every limb, upper/lower body and head, thats 7 extra lines or so per examine. It would be nice to have a advanced healthhud for the CMO and as a generic upgrade, as NV MedHuds aren't really that useful for medbay.

Would be more than happy to run tests of this live to tweak it and get feedback from players etc when it's ready for it too. Hell, be excited too. New antag types are always fun - and more tests of it means people can evolve a meta around it faster.

Back in the bodybag David, you have a rubber ducky to keep company

Over the past few years, we've asked in some appeals for people to get a "vouch" from another server. This isn't official policy and how it works may be different from appeal to appeal. Any information in this post is a general guide, and may vary with your appeal or situation. The intent of this post is just to give some clarity to how it "usually" works and cover some FAQs. Which server(s)? We generally prefer a servers where the rules and environment are closer to ours, but this depends on the ban in question. A HRP server might be good for LRP style play and bans, for instance. In general it doesn't matter a huge amount, although it should be a relatively long-term and decent playercount server - not one your friend hosted, obviously. English-Language servers are also generally needed for ease of communication with the admins there. Lifeweb is absolutely, however, not one. How do I get a vouch? The admins on the server in question may be willing to message one of ours, or we can contact them ourselves to ask. This is generally pretty simple - we ask them if you have been a good boy or not while over there. The response is generally pretty straightforward and obvious - if you haven't been banned or run into issues there, you'll be fine. Remember being insistent or rude about it is a very bad idea. What should a vouch include? Generally all we care about is you were able to follow the rules for whatever time, without getting a bad reputation. If you played on another server in that time and have 0 notes, bans, and the admins don't even recognize your name, that's pretty much perfect (Assuming you played a decent amount of hours.). How do I get a vouch from Paradise for another server that asked me to? Just throw an ahelp in round, or a discord message. Contacting a headmin is usually best as we have easy access to directly message the station you're asking about. This whole system is stupid and you're stupid for doing it! We've found it works pretty well, and is a good solution for when we're on the fence about whether or not you'll be able to follow the rules again once unbanned. It also gives us a bit of a break from you. It's seen decent success rates, so we're likely to continue using it....but IMO some admins might overuse it a bit, and might want to tone that down. Discord message me with other questions if you have them, and I might get around to adding them here.

We've tried all kinds of changes and nerfs for telescience over the years. Although it's better than when it was round-start setup and just using the normal station co-ords....it's never gotten to a place where I'm ok with it. I'd love some form of star-trek-style beam-me-up-scotty system. But I've never been happy with how it is in any incarnation we've made. I'd support removal.

A new office seems overkill - they should be out in the field. A cool beret to make them look cooler for sure. One issue I have (and this has come up with various ideas for things like "senior doctor" etc) - is eliteness. What could we do to make sure people using this role don't have an elitist attitude about it, and aren't going to wave their authority around?

3 calls for gamma for a blob getting ignored.

This is kinda my worry. A newbie sec player worth their salt will listen to experienced officers anyway. A crappy one won't even listen to chat and just focus on harmbatoning.

Good in theory. In practice it means changing them from "simple mobs" to "carbon mobs" which is actually a hell of a lot of work for coding and all kinds of issues. It'd mean we'd need to make a unique type of race (like humans, vox, slimes, etc) for each thing. Xenos actually already have that - but the xenobio ones are specifically simple mobs, to stop a huge amount of really powerful things that can be done with them by xenobio (organ harvesting, etc).

1: - 5 buckshot hits really should drop someone. Otoh, I dont' want people being stuck in perma-crit unable to live or die, so that seems a value that should really be tweaked to get a happier medium. 2: - Walking away from a mortal injury shouldn't be easy, but possibly depending on circumstances. Reducing screaming for help I think is kinda good - if one person is repeatedly shooting you with a shotgun escape should be near impossible. 3: - More complex medbay good. Vendors being able to replace chemistry bad. Less stuff in vendors but make stuff easier on chem? 4- A few extra antag items like the bone repair stuff, but for shock, might be nice for that? Really, antags shouldn't be able to walk away from too many "lethal" hits, but still have some room for error. Random death I think helps a bit, to make things less...reliable. I dont' want peopel to think "i just got shot once by a shotgun i'll be fine."....but I don't want it to be a death sentence either. You're pretty good at the coding sides of the farie, so I'd like your opinion on how to tweak all those values and by how much.

While i like the intent of this, by far the biggest problem ive seen as an admin from sec is the old harmbaton, not lasers. Quite literally at least 10x more problems with harmbatons over lasers. Shotguns are also super deadly and cause ff issues with buckshot. For actually deadlyness a tazer followe by harmbaton is generally much more effective against the clown. Lasers themselves are generally best against blobs, xenos, etc.

Sergeant kinda implies authority over other officers. Training Officer I like.

I've often just left the bodybag in the armoury or the like, but an actual morgue tray would be great for that. Very good point, if you see a green morgue tray you might just rush to clone them without noticing it. Really can't blame them there, they're trying to help!

@TullyBBurnalot thoughts, Mr SoP/Spacelaw etc? Seems pretty easy to throw in. This is too accurate.

On slower rounds, Warden can very easily do a lot of this IMO. Hell, even as an officer, just...speaking clearly and with confidence can do a lot. I find (from admin perspective heavily mind you), newbie officers run into a couple of different kinds: 1) People not experienced with the game in general who want to get access to weapons and beat people up. These types won't likely listen at all. 2) People who don't have sec experience yet, and might know other systems, but not combat/sec stuff. They'll likely listen, but may make mistakes like harmbatoning or getting charges wrong. If you're new, I highly advise just...asking questions and telling everyone it's your first shift as sec! A cadet and formal trainer role would be interesting, all depends on exactly how it's implemented.

A yes/no poll does not give feedback beyond "I like it". The counter argument to that is "i don't like it". That's not a discussion.

We're not interested in peoples general feelings or votes over a few days of a system that's a work in progress. We want feedback and discussion about the specifics of the changes. Not a poll that indicates how people feel.

Yes. That is exactly what I'm asking for. Genuine discussion is not possible if people aren't able to control their emotions and discuss things in a reasonable, and adult way. Hyperbole is not useful. Neither is passive aggressive comments, snark, and sarcasm. What "the community" wants seems to generally ignore all of "the community" members who disagree with whoever is talking about it at the time. These discussions seem dominated by a very few people, with very loud voices. Very rarely have I ever seen a poll get anywhere near the number of admins we have, let alone players in one round. To act like you have some form of "majority" is ridiculous. If someone gets so emotional about a videogame, that they're not going to have the decency to show courtesy and be reasonable when discussing things, then I have no interest in them being part of the community. Their opinion is irrelevant. We are not going to make decisions based on how people feel, or how strongly people feel about something. Even if it was somehow shown to be a majority of however you choose to define "the community", the decision in the end will be what the maintainers and admins think is best for the server. These are the people who have guided the server over 5 years to be the place that people are this invested in. Have some faith. If people wish to give feedback, criticism, alternative proposals, etc, then I gladly welcome that. It's incredibly helpful. @Norwest @Dinarzad and @Regular Joe are a few names I can think of who have made some excellent posts about these topics. These are great examples to look at some of the posts of, and the kind of feedback we're looking for. We won't lower ourselves to matching sarcasm with sarcasm. If you're going to scream and shout in an emotional rage, you'll be met with silence. We won't indulge salt.

This is going to be my last request to knock off this kind of sarcasm and passive aggression.

The main issue here is the power increase to blueshields. The validhunting is a secondary thing Between the death alarms, weapons, and incredible trust they have (usually resulting in all access very early, and additional weapons from science, etc), they're already easily able to do their jobs. It's hard enough for a lone traitor to take out a head of staff without being caught - giving the blueshield something powerful like CQC, which can't be disarmed, is giving a large buff to a role that doesn't need it.

"The devs" are also part of the community. This server has never had the intentions of democracy for the codebase, especially with a group as nebulous as the "community". While this would certainly be cool, CQC feels to powerful for the role. Validhunting from blueshields has been a common complaint, and this would just encourage this behavior and make it easier. I think Krav, if anything, would be more suited. More non lethal, and able to take down clowns breaking into the bridge much more easily. However, in general I don't think the blueshield really needs any buffs. They are able to fulfill their job already quite well, and are generally first in line to receive any better equipment/buffs/etc made from R&D and genetics.