Poor situation handling by Xilia

[PrincessWilly]

 

Admin Key: Xilia

 

Complaint: It was a syndicate round, a couple of people I know and I were mining. It was a pretty epic round for us, we got a lot of swag from science for pulling in so many materials, and finally the shuttle was called. Worried about these syndicates, Full of Skittles threw up a wall and table to the space pods, so we had time to react to syndies coming.

 

Now, I can understand if this is considered shuttle griefing, though it wasn't apparent to us at the time. And apparently Full of Skittles was messaged asking why she put it up, and hadn't noticed (we realized after combing through our logs) But I personally wasn't messaged at all (I put a wall in front of the door to the pod we were in, the other one was completely untouched) and Bucketlamp didn't have anything to do with it at all. He was just following us to the shuttle.

 

Apparently a minute or so after receiving the message from Xilia, a chameleon suit (we assumed syndie) dude appeared, and started shooting Bucketlamp and me to death, followed by Full of Skittles. Killed all three of us. Two of which hadn't been messaged, one of which wasn't even involved. Only Full of Skittles was messaged afterwards. At first we had no idea what happened. We thought it was a syndie. What a horrible way to end a round where you contributed 11k of the 14k score. Full of Skittles got messaged after saying to 'to never do it again'.

 

So, I feel like this is a complete mishandling of this issue. Only one warning was sent, during a flood of Bucketlamp and I throwing cards at eachother, and the radio, and when it wasn't responded to in a pretty short amount of time, we were killed (again, one of us not even involved) and only Full of Skittles was ultimately messaged. I feel like Bucketlamp, at least, if not me as well for not being messaged, was completely unfairly treated.

 

[Rivers]

 

I'll simply reply here rather than make another thread as to save on clutter. This is Bucketlamp beyond username or L.A.M.P in that round. This all happened around I think 3:20 EST on OP's post date.

 

 

 

I apologize if I sound overly negative - this is not meant to be a direct attack against anyone. Unfortunately, there's really nothing nice to say about this particular incident, hopefully this will be a learning experience for everyone involved. I feel the handling of this was in complete and utter excess.

 

Additional Complaint: While on the pod, like OP, I had expected some sort of syndicate attack, or any other antag attack (like the blob that manifested), what I didn't expect was to assaulted by server administration for breaking no rules that I know of. I feel that the murdering EVERYONE in the pod is a completely disproportionate punishment especially when admin have the ability to gib/kill/warn the offender directly.

 

I feel that in this situation at best tactfulness slipped the admin's mind, at worst looking for a reason to flex some admin muscle. What's worse is that what had happened during the incident was essentially clear-cut pod/ shuttle grief in response to what was potentially grief of the same nature. I do not believe that you should break your own server's rules in order to preserve them, it's contradictory and hypocritical. A double standard like this just shouldn't exist.

 

In summary, yes, you could say finishing objectives and surviving the round has no consequence. However, I play SS13 expecting a relatively positive experience, this did not leave any semblance of that; I was punished for something I did not do. Even if it could be mentioned that I did nothing to stop the rule breach in question, there was very little I could have done. I did nothing to aid or abet the breach unless you consider mining materials that went into the wall. I really don't know what else to call this but admin abuse.

 

Thank you for your time, and I apologize any inconvenience this might cause you.

 

http://gyazo.com/75e47ece0f965069e131640939036094 Gif of the aftermath.

 

[Xilia]

 

First of all, thank you for taking your time on making this post.

 

 

Admin Key: Xilia

 

Complaint: It was a syndicate round, a couple of people I know and I were mining. It was a pretty epic round for us, we got a lot of swag from science for pulling in so many materials, and finally the shuttle was called. Worried about these syndicates, Full of Skittles threw up a wall and table to the space pods, so we had time to react to syndies coming.

 

Now, I can understand if this is considered shuttle griefing, though it wasn't apparent to us at the time. And apparently Full of Skittles was messaged asking why she put it up, and hadn't noticed (we realized after combing through our logs) But I personally wasn't messaged at all (I put a wall in front of the door to the pod we were in, the other one was completely untouched) and Bucketlamp didn't have anything to do with it at all. He was just following us to the shuttle.

 

Apparently a minute or so after receiving the message from Xilia, a chameleon suit (we assumed syndie) dude appeared, and started shooting Bucketlamp and me to death, followed by Full of Skittles. Killed all three of us. Two of which hadn't been messaged, one of which wasn't even involved. Only Full of Skittles was messaged afterwards. At first we had no idea what happened. We thought it was a syndie. What a horrible way to end a round where you contributed 11k of the 14k score. Full of Skittles got messaged after saying to 'to never do it again'.

 

So, I feel like this is a complete mishandling of this issue. Only one warning was sent, during a flood of Bucketlamp and I throwing cards at eachother, and the radio, and when it wasn't responded to in a pretty short amount of time, we were killed (again, one of us not even involved) and only Full of Skittles was ultimately messaged. I feel like Bucketlamp, at least, if not me as well for not being messaged, was completely unfairly treated.

 

Now on my side of the coin. I was dazing around, trying to straight up an already bad going auto-traitor round. With alot of just of barely border-crossing rule breaking and micro-grief. Which is extremely difficult to handle on its own already. When it was 4AM and the only admin online at the time. I saw some guys running from the arrivals to the escape hallway at minus 3 minutes of the departure of the shuttle. When I came looking. I saw the pods being locked off (with the exception of the table, what to me loses the point of closing it anyway but only to keep out people who aren't that informed about the game mechanics) and another pod locked off with three people in it.

 

With some more ongoing ahelps I messaged Skittles. Since to me you looked like a group interacting with each other, I didn't message all to save time and keeping my logs a bit doable. After a minute and a bit I didn't expect you to answer at all anymore, with the admin-message sound being the most obvious sound in the game, while still seeing interaction from you guys in between. At that moment ahelps still came in. At that point I grew tired since we get this situation 50 times a day and brought the message harder. . It is true I could have being more tactful. And that was wrong on my side. But I guess the hours, griefing and being alone to handle it all took the toll at that moment.

 

Nevertheless, after that I messaged Skittles again to get an answer almost immediately. Telling again about the locking off pods, after he replied where he showed he wasn't fully aware of it being gamebreaking for some players who missed that shuttle because of that, I told him to never do that again. But since I saw the action as hard enough, No names were noted which has on longer term a greater impact for the players noted. But again my course of action was harsh, and taken too fast, since I had one guy who apparently was a bystander, Bucketlamp. Who I am going to give a personal apology when I see him online again.

 

Best regards

 

Xilia

 

Edited September 26, 2014 by Guest

[Xilia]

 

Bucketlamp

 

First of all; Welcome to the server

Secondly; Thank you for posting your story here.

 

 

Additional Complaint: While on the pod, like OP, I had expected some sort of syndicate attack, or any other antag attack (like the blob that manifested), what I didn't expect was to assaulted by server administration for breaking no rules that I know of. I feel that the murdering EVERYONE in the pod is a completely disproportionate punishment especially when admin have the ability to gib/kill/warn the offender directly.

 

I feel that in this situation at best tactfulness slipped the admin's mind, at worst looking for a reason to flex some admin muscle. What's worse is that what had happened during the incident was essentially clear-cut pod/ shuttle grief in response to what was potentially grief of the same nature. I do not believe that you should break your own server's rules in order to preserve them, it's contradictory and hypocritical. A double standard like this just shouldn't exist.

 

Outside of what I explained above. I want to say I understand your concern. And it is true the tactfulness was not the best. It can become extremely difficult to handle a server. And at times literally unmanageable. But I want to apologies to you that you got involved as bystander. Which was the only thing that I didn't meant to happen.

 

Best regards

 

Xilia

 

[DeletedUser]

 

Well, in short, overwatching alone a bunch of "mature adults" makes you feel like a kindergarten teacher, and Xilia is not a kindergarten teacher. Adminship can be very stressful at times, and when stressed is easy to lose tact, specially when late at night. This is one of those cases, children scream and spam capslock ahelps to the only admin online at the time, admin tries to handle all what he can, gets frustrated, gets stressed, and well, you know the rest.

I give you my apologies in the name of the server's staff for this incident, but it's a very rare case, and hopefully will not happen again. Thank you for your understanding.

 

Regards,

supposedly a seniormin.

 

[PrincessWilly]

 

I understand the plight of the administrator, having been one on Second Life for a number of years. People are loud, people are demanding, and people want it now. But being an administrator puts you a cut above everybody else, and therefore you need to act like you are. A good first reaction could have been destroying the walls Full of Skittles put up. This would solve the cries of adminhelp immediately. Gibbing Full of Skittles would have been an appropriate course, if you thought she was being malicious.

 

As I've learned time and again, you should never punish somebody without having all the facts. You have a log; yes everything was hectic, but you could have waited, looked through the log after round's end, and doled out punishment at that point. Full of Skittles certainly wasn't going to stop playing, after mining was crowned the kings of the round.

 

I would also like to point out a number of things: The first, is that some people play without sounds on. If you have an older computer (like Full of Skittles) running Windows XP, you don't have the fancy volume mixer, and can't quiet one program. Byond doesn't have volume controls beyond 'on' and 'off'. Secondly, real life applies. People might have to run to the bathroom. A lot of people (myself included) use the shuttle as a perfect excuse for this. In this case, I'm told, that's what Full of Skittles did. People play music, people are in voice conversations, there are many things that can keep somebody from hearing that sound. Basically, I'm saying that you shouldn't take one missed admin message as an affront.

 

What I'm still personally offended by, though, is you not messaging all of us. "Guilt by association" also known as "Association Fallacy" is a thought process that is inherently flawed. You should never punish somebody for another person's actions, and you really ruined the round for both Bucketlamp and I, a round that we were very much enjoying, and pretty much turned us off of your server, at least in the immediate future.

 

I understand that this is a rare situation, but as Bucketlamp said, I feel this can be a great learning experience for all involved.

 

 

P.S. Thank you, ADR, for your thoughtful explanation and apology.

 

[Rivers]

 

Well, in short, overwatching alone a bunch of "mature adults" makes you feel like a kindergarten teacher, and Xilia is not a kindergarten teacher. Adminship can be very stressful at times, and when stressed is easy to lose tact, specially when late at night. This is one of those cases, children scream and spam capslock ahelps to the only admin online at the time, admin tries to handle all what he can, gets frustrated, gets stressed, and well, you know the rest.

I give you my apologies in the name of the server's staff for this incident, but it's a very rare case, and hopefully will not happen again. Thank you for your understanding.

 

Regards,

supposedly a seniormin.

 

 

That is understood, and the apology from both of you are very appreciated. However, my worry is, even though it was a high pressure situation, the administrative decision to murder the rule violators and screw all the rest is simply put unacceptable on a server that's advertised as "light roleplay". Additionally, I feel that the more tactful response of simply gibbing the party in question or crabbing them (I mean at least I get a crab dinner right?) would have been easier, quicker, and far less stressful than to have geared up for a pod wide exterminatus. Which brings me to the point.. Having to gear up takes a bit of thought, there was intent there: to be as overpowered, unkillable, and look as flashy as possible.

 

The underlining fact is, there should never be innocent bystanders caught in the wake of administrative fire. Some amount of patience and consideration should have been exhibited. If there was time to gear up, there was time to plan a less hostile course of action. The time it took to kill myself (a hard to kill machine person), a person in power-armor, and I'm guessing the perpetrator, less stressful actions could have been taken. I know what happened has happened, but there always time for hindsight and recovering from our mistakes. All this could have been EASILY prevented. The most offensive part of it was the EFFORT required to create this extremely negative experience.

 

That being said:

Again, thank you both for the apologies. Though I will not dream of leaving the station; I adore your rather "colorful" regular crew members (well the not-so-griefy ones at least), and the usual admin hijinks in OOC are worth a laugh. This incident,unfortunately , has put me off SS13 as a whole, and I may need to find another form of entertainment for a while. Maybe it was just time for a break?