[STAFF]: WARNING

[Seapanda]

Let's keep the memes and shitposting out of this thread.
Edit: Please try to be constructive and respectful.

[Stewgar]

There's no doubt that certain staff members have been unable to set ego and personal agendas aside for their own gain, but this is not the way to generate community support.

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It ain't about what you are capable of, it's about what you're willing to do.

[FOX]

I understand how players feels here but when you look on some point admins are right, you cant go against them i have been banned here, i was mad and everything but when i cooled down i saw they are right a made mistake and everything...

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User was banned for: https://discoverygc.com/forums/showthrea...pid2329965
Time left: (Permanent)

[Czechmate]

There's no doubt that certain staff members have been unable to set ego and personal agendas aside for their own gain, but this is not the way to generate community support.

I think it's valid - the system is deeply broken and maybe will change - for starters going to a less arbitrary sanction and warning system. There were very good reasons why rule 0.0. was removed all that time ago when disco had way bigger numbers, and current staff are proving time and time again that that was a good call in my opinion.

I've all but quit because of staff decisions and behavior, and I don't think I'm the only one.

Which is a big shame because for example Aingar and other staff members are working their magic on the actual details that matter, like PoB code, events with cool codes etc. That stuff is squeezing the most out of this ancient game.

[Czechmate]

Speaking from experience, the staff when it comes to quality of judgement and votes on sanction reports is only as competent as its most active/motivated member at the time. Someone who is capable of presenting their point of view on a vote or issue in a way that the others cannot (or do not care to) argue/oppose as long as the to-do list gets shorter.

So, yes, unironically go apply for the post yourself and don't fall into that particular trap yourself.

The system is very arbitrary now is the issue - it's very hard to put aside personal feelings and sympathies, and they haven't been doing that - and I'd find it impossible at the end of the day to be completely impartial also. Before the heavy decision system was brought back it was much more fair and easier for staff to not make decisions based on personal bias

[IahimD]

I might not add anything interesting to this discussion, but hey, it's a piece of internet and on internet everyone got an opinion, no?

This is a long one

Life story

I've started playing in the summer of 2023. I like to think I did not intentionally break any rules ... until recently, apparently.
My experience with the staff is the following: during my time here, I got several people to teach me the ropes. I noticed quite quickly that PvP is not something I am enjoying. I'm not good at it, I'm not having fun constantly turning a snub, my aim is pretty terrible even in caps. Therefore, my only satisfaction comes from trading. I did my fair share of silent trading, I've learned how to interact, how to provide a minimal RP interaction to fellow traders, law enforcement officers, even how to try and RolePlay when encountering pirates and such. Everybody has to start somewhere, so I've also learned a little bit (I don't claim that I'm a good RolePlayer now; even now I'm at most decent).

How my dissatisfaction began

All fine and dandy until I started noticing instances when I felt wronged (as trader / miner, when interacting with pirates). At first, I tried to ignore it and move on. After all the sector is big enough that when I'm PvP dead in a system there's plenty to do in other systems. When I felt that I got even more blatantly wronged, I've tried submitting a VR. Excuse me for not remembering the details of that first VR; all I know is that I never got any response from it. The second VR I've submitted was during the H-Fuel event between GMG and Liberty. There was a pirate cruiser camping the trade lanes in Galileo. He asked for 300k, I offered 200k so I can retain some profit when selling the H-Fuel. He didn't budge, I didn't budge either, so he exploded me. I submitted a VR and later I inquired a couple of times about the status of the VR to be told in the end that there was a vote, the vote "was close", but it was deemed acceptable. Nothing I can do. Life goes on.

Intermittence

Then there was an incident I was not involved in when people I play with got jumped by Ionic in Galileo when mining Platinum (my friend was flying Samura IFF). It's a RolePlay server so of course it is totally justifiable for House Corporations to actively destroy ships from other House Corporations "outside house space" (but if "the encounters spills into house space, who cares, it started outside house space"). As such, this Samura guy tried to fly to Impala, Impala got the shield triggered by the attackers (cuz also game mechanics, God forbit traders / miners get any help) and in the end it was destroyed before making it to Deshima / Tsukishima. Later, when I've learned about this, I got really triggered so I've started pestering the official Discord server about clarifications about what's acceptable and what not, only to receive answers from people that do vote on sanctions along the lines "it's your fault that your PoB is wrongly placed", "maybe hire escorts next time" (cuz ofc with 30 players online at that given time, finding escorts is the easiest thing), "learn to fight back". I admit, there are plenty of details I'm not including, but the discussion is still on the Discord server for people eager to get the whole discussion. Overall, I was trying to get a baseline of what is acceptable and what not and I got nothing but lowkey insults (not by the staff, but by the Ionic player that was involved in the "interaction"). Did I threw a tantrum for nothing? Most people would think so. I don't and here's why:

Another failed VR

My latest VR is also about Platinum mining interactions. Yet again, myself (flying a freighter) and 2 Heges were mining Plat. One Hege got a full cargo and was leaving. Shortly after he left, 2 indie Bristol snubs showed up. Their request was simple: leave the field at once. Fair enough. Even if the other Hege still had some space in his haul, we started making it towards Shikoku JG. Another indie snub appeared and also a B| tagged Gunboat. The guy that made the first request remembered that he wanted our Ore, so he made his request. I refused (ooRP thinking that pirating allows only 1 request: in this case the command: "leave"! , as this was also a previous interaction we had with Bristol) and both the Hege and I continued trying to at least get out of the Asteroid Field. We were constantly CDed and hailed, so in the end the Hege dropped his haul and destroyed it. This is when Bristol people opened fire, exploded both of us, then joyfully returned to their station and logged out. This would have been our first run of mining, so it's not like we were in the field for an hour. Were we targeted? I thought so, therefore, I reported the fact that the "pirates" made multiple demands (and not only one as Piracy is described in the rules) to also explode us in the end. Did anything happen? Of course not. Do I know why we were exploded? I cannot say I do, as nobody bothered to throw me a message at least saying "Hey, in this specific instance both demands counted as one and you were destroyed because.... which is acceptable by us." On top of that, it's not like the Bristol people than started a mining operation of their own, oh no, they just logged to destroy us and then switched to other things. Totally inRP and acceptable behavior, according to the staff that decided to not take any action.

Rule breaker?

Then I became the rule-breaker. How? Simple! I was flying a Barge. I filled it with 20k Azurite and 10k XRs to move them from Delta to Gamma. I was in Delta, approaching the Jump Hole from ... behind the Core solars. When I was 10k-12k away from the JH, Order|LV-Mammon, a 3.6k Border Worlds Transport, jumped in. He was carrying WG, started to cruise towards upper Omicrons, but noticed me and changed direction to scan my cargo. He then asked me to drop my cargo, which I refused. He then started attacking me. Before he got to opening fire, (another) friend showed up in a Murmillo to run interference. The Order| guy started shooting at me, but when he saw the Murmillo starting to fire back, he disengaged and started cruising away. I jumped to Omicron Kappa and disconnected there. Afterwards, I was told that Order Discords were pinged and not only the 3.6ker swiched ships to try and hunt me, but even some other Order ships logged (I was not presented any evidence that said ships logged in Delta. From what I know, they logged in Mu, so no matter what, it would have taken them some time either way to get to me). A while after, as soon as I logged back to move the Barge to Gamma, Order|Damien magically logged in 12k away from me in Kappa. By that time, I've heard that this guy is eager to destroy me, so before logging, I made sure escorts are around. Seeing that once again he cannot do anything to me, he retreated AGAIN and submitted a VR (counseled by a staff member who God knows how context had when giving this advice). Lo and behold, a sanction came in the the form of a 50mils (yes, the equivalent of tens of hours of powertrading... something I stopped doing when I got into the business of making equipment and supplying bases), being cited the 1.2 rule. I was therefore sanctioned for "disconnecting during player encounters". The reason I chose to disconnect in the first place was because I though the player encounter ended when the 3.6ker disengaged and flew away. But because I was flying a slow Barge, because (without me even knowing this) other people already logged Order ships to hunt me, I was punished. Ok, even accepting that a wrong doing you don't know is wrong still deserves it's own punishment, is 50mils a fitting punishment for this (aka destroying days, maybe even weeks worth of time spent in getting that money)? And I was one of the lucky ones. I was told by the admin guy handing in the punishment that there are precedents where barges were deleted because they F1ed as soon as they jumped to a system an enemy was in. Again, my "enemies" were not in the same system as I was, but multiple systems away, and even so, is deleting a 150mils ship a punishment worthy of the crime?
I was told by yet another guy that there is also a precedent where a snub F1ed during an interaction and the punishment was simply the confiscation of a weapon because the player "was too poor". So even accepting it is the same offence (which I still refuse to do), the punishment is different according to the time people invest in the game and their playstyles (you cannot tell me a person who invest 1 day in PvPing makes as much money as the person which uses that day to trade)? Is this fair and considerate by the staff?

The last straw for me

Well, my last straw was the Noth - Pheonix - DTR - PLF incident. Though I was not involved in the execution of the espionage going on there, I was involved in planning it and contributed to the idea of catching Noth dock on a Wild/Nomad base. The fact that the whole RP was invalidated on "unwritten laws" ground, the fact that the terms "metagaming" and "powergaming" were used, not having any relevance to their definition as described here, the fact that even now multiple people of the community have different meanings of "metagaming", some even confusing it with "powergaming" is just... too much. I honestly admire all the great work the devs are putting in. The innovations they bring to a 20yo game is simply astonishing. I also respect the admin team that tries to keep things in one piece in the community, but playing God, interpreting "unwritted laws" to invalidate otherwise perfectly right RP, not carrying one bit to give feedback on the decisions they made is too much for me. I don't want to invest my time in a game where admins showed (in my subjective interpretation, I fully admit it) multiple times they are willing to twist facts and impose completely disproportionate punishments, the PvP bias (see the punishment of what was deemed at that time as 4 OCs ganking a Corsair and losing 3M - compared to 50M or even 150M - each for it)... all these are reasons for me to at least take a break, consider whether this is something I want to continue doing. When players are the offending party, at least there is a Violation Report you can submit. When admins are the perceived offending party... what options are there?

TL;DR: the rules are intentionally vague, up to the interpretation of the staff. When no sanction is given, no explanation is given to the "wronged" party as to why their reason for reporting is not justified or not good enough. There is an explicit PvP bias in how rules are made (see the Competitors system) and enforced. When sanctions ARE given, the "offender" has no way to try and defend himself or at least present his own point of view. When Barges are the "offenders", punishments are exaggerated and do not fit the crime under any circumstance.
My completely subjective feeling out of this is that staff simply likes to play God with other people's investments and not budge even when they might be wrong or when the truth is not even that straight forward (see the Pennsylvania Zoner debacle of which I wasn't even involved and how that played out).

[Gaduka]

We will stay with you Gatito

[Blackflame]

I don't want to invest my time in a game where admins showed (in my subjective interpretation, I fully admit it) multiple times they are willing to twist facts and impose completely disproportionate punishments, the PvP bias (see the punishment of what was deemed at that time as 4 OCs ganking a Corsair and losing 3M - compared to 50M or even 150M - each for it).

The only ones twisting facts here are the ones that filed that VR. A fight that started fairly yet ended in the winning side getting punished for it was the exact reason why today this was clarified. Nevertheless the damage has been done and I lost good and reliable friends cuz of it.

I don't want to get involved in this pointless drama but the fact that you guys seem to basically live in an echo chamber and not see how that
poor excuse of RP is metagaming and instead get into semantics plus blame it on an admin boogeyman is quite astounding. I had to say it.

PS. All the oh so "toxic" ppl ya'll complain about are all former DTR members, maybe your faction should so some self reflection on that.

[EisenSeele]

We are definitely limited by the amount of people we have, what reports we get, and the perspectives/whatever baggage we bring to the table - and it's an eternal juggle to try a balanced approach of allowing people the freedom to do what they want while limiting the amount of damage a given player can do to the enjoyment of another. There's a hard limit of human throughput and perspective that can only be overcome through the addition of new staff members - which we sorely need.

We genuinely want to make sure as many people are enjoying the game as possible, and that necessarily means there needs to be a trust in the system that you will not be screwed over by things outside of your control - things like meta/powergaming erode that trust and make people feel that much less agency in the game.
If you play in a way where you have gone out of your way to have a certain undercover identity, and you have done EVERYTHING right (all the right equipment, all of the correct ways of interacting with other players) except that you're limited by the game engine to dock in a certain secret base that nobody else should know about and you do so when you don't think anybody is around - it is absolutely unfair and powergaming for that to be used against them to ruin their roleplay. Having consequences forced on you because someone else acted on information that they shouldn't have had (the location of the base) while cloaked - and due to a limitation of game mechanics that don't let them dock anywhere else (we frown upon F1ing in space) is unfair, unfun, and if done deliberately, toxic. It erodes the trust that the game will respect everyone's ability to roleplay and to face consequences that they have earned - and be free from being forced into consequences that they have no way of avoiding.

Conversely, we also want to ensure that people can exercise agency in affecting their environment and other characters based on interactions that are very much within everyone's control, and to facilitate as close to a persistent universe as we can - if you want to intercept a barge, for instance, and you have it in such a way that it is too far from any other base where it could safely retreat - but then the barge F1's, that's someone using a limitation of the game mechanics to force an outcome that otherwise would be impossible on to the player that's doing the chase. It's unfair, and gives reason for people not to bother with playing in response to other people and discourages interaction. It erodes trust.

In a perfectly designed game, there would be built in and hard mechanisms to stop people from being able to doing what they're not supposed to - but we're running off a very old and imperfect game that runs off of Aingar's sweat and tears. We also have staff to serve as 'Dungeon Masters' to allow for a degree of flexibility that most other online games just don't - you can work towards making an exception to almost any rule or game mechanic, as long as you work with the DMs and play in a way that people agree improves the game experience rather than ruins it.

Having a system that is moderated by humans rather than hard mechanics can definitely feel unfair and sometimes it absolutely is - but the constructive way to working for a solution is to try to understand if a move that you feel is unfair to you might actually be for the betterment of the community, or if it actually is unfair, to try to explain to the DMs about why a certain call is detrimental to the gameplay experience for everyone. We listen, and I can tell you that I have personally changed my stance on many of my initial calls after speaking to people about it.

Conversely, sometimes people will never understand why something they did was a problem - and while we prefer that everyone agrees that rules and how they are enforced are for the betterment of the community - that's not always possible. Part of being an adult is accepting that sometimes there will be a difference in opinion that can't be resolved and making a judgement call of how to move on. If that involves understanding where the line is but not why - but continuing to play the game while avoiding the line anyway, that's the next best thing. If that involves choosing to not participate anymore, then it's everyone's loss to lose a member of the community - but that's just healthy boundaries being set for yourself.

In any case, try to understand what we are trying to accomplish here - if you feel there's a better way to do it, please share it with us and we'll try to improve how we work towards getting there. We're human, and that means that we will make mistakes and hopefully be humble enough to recognize when we have made them - but also recognize that argument without actionable suggestions on how to do things better is very difficult to use constructively.

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FEEDBACK

[Czechmate]

Yeah just realize this isn't working, make explicit rules and actually use the rule clarification thread, ditch the awfully worded don't be a dick (whose idea was that? It makes YOU sound like dicks guys)

It's so hostile and unnecessarily complex to have an arbitrary system with lengthy precedents you need to look for in sanctions. It looks TERRIBLE when you issue community warnings instead of changing a rule or replying in rule clarification.

You guys are human, biased humans, and people have to look over their shoulder when they play the game now, always worried that admins will vote on a whim, driven by personal biases and dislikes. I am worried I will be screwed by factors outside of my control now when I play the game. And that factor is you - the staff and your arbitrary approach to sanctions and warnings.

You guys also tried to simplify the rules but have just made them much more complex instead I hope you realize with this precedent system that brings huge back and forths and essays without spelling what people can and can't do out.