Admin Feedback Thread (Archived)

[Reid]

Normally I would be for the freedom of someone's roleplay, even though I disagreed with furries being on the server, there was no official ruling. But now there is an official ruling, they do not make sense in roleplay, so they should not be here. Bret knew what he was doing when he made a furry character in a game where they don't exist in lore. He knew what he was doing when he spent all that money on the images. That's not the admins problem. People had been asking the admins for years to make a ruling on this, and now that they have, everyone is screaming final nail.

Should an exception be made for Bret because he's been roleplaying the same character for years? Maybe, that's not my decision to make. Should exceptions be made for future characters with "believable" backstories as to how they became furries? I don't think so.

But then again, if your character's appearance is the main aspect of their personality and purpose on this server, I think you need to go back to the drawing board.

I find this more of a political stunt rather than solving actual issues. Or at least a decision that is poorly thought out with a very narrow target audience of two people.

While we have theoretical problems as ability to engage without RP ( Wilde ), broken IDs that are not being fixed for a month, event requests that are not being hosted for four months, people on probation/temp ban posting ooRP crap and other issues that are more common and more important than 2 furry fans.

If "wasting time" on this topic that's been debated on Discovery for longer than I've been here is such a big issue, then why do you seem so keen on pushing it any further. All you're doing is taking away "precious time" that you say can be spent on everything you listed.

[SnakThree]

I have not noticed the debates through my career on Disco except for the one created by Lyth month ago. I found furries immersion-breaking, but the way staff handled that is not the best scenario.

Heck, there were more debates about Zoner Capital ships and they are still ingame.

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[Reid]

I have not noticed the debates through my career on Disco except for the one created by Lyth month ago

I have because I was in the threads asking for an official ruling. And Zoner caps were going to be removed, until the entire community rioted and Gytrash wrote a 36 page report on why they should stay.

Furries being banned effects less people than Zoner caps being removed

[aerelm]

For the sake of transparency (since that's what people keep asking for, but every single time they get any extent of it they end up entirely missing the actual point and instead focus on arguing the rather unimportant wording of each paragraph instead), here's a quote of what I posted in the discussion thread in admin subforum:

I'm not really a furry-hater in general, as I generally don't really care about them. Over the years though, I haven't had even a single interaction with a furry in disco that I'd call "enjoyable". Every run-in I've had with every single furry char has been standard disco RP with furry elements forced on top of it, which is why I'm not a fan of those characters in disco and would even go as far as calling them immersion-breaking each to a certain degree (depending on how hard the player behind it is trying to come out as a furry). The simple fact about Discovery (and Freelancer in general) lore in my opinion is that furries have absolutely no place in it. If we were in a roleplaying environment based on an open ended scifi setting, then furries wouldn't have been a stretch, but keep in mind that we're roleplaying in a setting based strictly on a lore established around the original Freelancer storyline. There were humans, AIs and aliens, but no furries.

Funny (and sad) thing is, I don't think I've seen any actual furry-haters in Disco over the years. That says a lot, considering how much furries get "harassed" (the way you put it) in the community. Most furries I've RPed with have tried to force their characters on me, and even if I as an individual don't really care and reluctantly go along with it (while tryin to cut the RP short and get out of there to find a more interesting interaction) I completely understand why it might irk other people and make them react the way they do. Simply put, the way I see it furry characters don't bring anything productive to the game, and the friction they cause is in no way healthy or constructive.

Now the main question would be: Do I personally consider them a big enough problem to do anything to stop it? I guess I'll have to say no in this case, otherwise I probably would've brought it up long before, but just because I'm not in favor of banning furries, doesn't mean I'd like to do anything to support them and make their lives any less of a living hell in disco than it already is (though frankly, if given just two options, I'd rather ban furry RP from disco than support it). People who keep playing furries after their newbie days in Disco know the community attitude toward the whole thing enough to know full well the type of reactions they'd get, so imho they're just getting what they're asking for, and if anything, they should be the ones taking a hammer or two to the head for acting like trollbaits.

My personal opinion is that we should either continue the way things currently are, by "staying indifferent about it" (for lack of a better word) and let the community deal with it among themselves, or ban furry RP altogether due to being outside of disco lore. I personally wouldn't be in favor of any other move as green, cause officially displaying even a partial tolerance toward something like this is a can of worms you seriously don't want to open, cause there's a whole pile of "we have green-stamped furries, so why not green-stamped this or that as well?!" buried inside.

P.S: Discovery has always been advertised as "closest RP environment to the original FL storyline", and imho we should do our best to keep it that way. If people like FL and furries, they can always go /v/lancer or whatever that ripoff mod was called.

Also, here's what I voted at the conclusion:

[N] Aerelm: After considering its pros and cons some more, I've also changed my stance to a definite N on this. They don't add anything worthwhile to the server to be worth tolerating their immersion breaking/out of lore/whatever you wanna call it state. I've also had the time to go through some of the roleplay posted by a few furry chars, and noticed they can play the exact same characters as human with no problems, so the whoof whoof is excessive and unnecessary and doesnt really fit with the general direction of the mod.

tl;dr of the above: Any "productive furry RP" that I found (and mind you, that's besides the some 10 hours I spent this past week reading through some furry RP that I honestly wish I hadn't) could've just as well been done with a non-furry character, and the fact is, I couldn't find even a single piece of RP where being a furry actually added to the quality of that roleplay or was in any way critical to existence of that character. Those very same roleplays that people are now linking and complaining about being nullified with this new announcement can easily be revalidated by nothing more than removing the furry pic from the transmission bar, so I fail to see how the "furries added to server RP" arguments hold any merit. There's no denying that some players who happened to play furry chars had impact on the progression of various RP lines over the years (but so does any other longstanding player who's focused on any character more than a mere couple of months), but if you look through those roleplays again you'll realize the "furry element" of their RP had none to minimal role in those RPs and often didn't even come into play. So a decision to prohibit that "furry element" would have zero impact on similar roleplays in future.

As a side note: The subject of other "out of place" elements also came up and was (and is being) discussed. The stretch even went as far as a mention or two of plain anime charpics and whether they added to RP in any way, so just because furries received their own announcement doesn't mean they were the sole focus of the discussion, it just means we decided to take it one step at a time.

[Garrett Jax]

Along with aerelm, I will post my remarks in Admin Discussion and in the vote itself.

Discussion

Allowing people to RP a furry, but disallowing Tbars and pics of a furry character strikes me as contradictory. In my opinion, we should either allow it or not. Either there is a place for furries in Disco, or there is not. Are furries part of Disco lore? No. Could they be? I suppose someone could RP a genetic manipulation between animal and human in some backwater science lab. There are a number of players that have years of RP already established with their furry characters. What happens to them? Would it come off as heavy handed if we arbitrarily decided to delete those characters?

I see nothing good from stepping in here and getting involved in this. Are they annoying? Yes, at times. Are they harmful? Not really. Can they be ignored? For the most part, yes. I think if we make any decision against RPing furry characters, it will incite even more hate and abuse against them.

If we eliminate them completely, which I'm not entirely opposed to, it would be better than a half way measure of allowing them to exist with a smaller pawprint on the forums. Get it? Pawprint? Eh, nevermind.

Vote

[N] Garrett Jax: I've changed my mind on this one. Furries have no place in Disco. Restrict them to the Reservation with the ponies.

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[Arioch]

Here was my part of the discussion, and in my personal opinion the announcement could've been done a little better:

I share a lot of what Aerelm mentioned. Not a furry-hater, but I tend to shy aware from RP'ing with Furry characters. It's immersion-breaking, and as mentioned above, we follow closely the original lore of Freelancer. Yes some people may say "Well in vanilla freelancer there was Primus and Apes!" Well, that's been removed and there was no real "lore" in FL behind them.

Anyway, as mentioned in the Admin chat, I'm a little more opinionated as to our approach. Giving a green statement saying "Don't treat them bad, but you don't have to accept them" is more keeping silent. I also kinda don't want to outright say "No furry characters allowed!" (I'm on the edge though, and would have zero problem if the staff went that direction). My suggestion is the approach with anything involving multiple parties - Everyone has to be in agreement. If you want to RP a Furry, then you need to ask others if they are comfortable RP'ing with them. To further emphasize that, I'd actually say we ban Tbar portraits of Furry characters. When I see a Furry character Tbar, I generally avoid it. That breaks the immersion for me, and in my opinion is forcing that RP on me if that comm is directed towards myself.

Here would be my take on the proposed announcement:

There are a lot of strange things in the Discovery universe. Aliens. Robotics. Crazy humans. The intermixing of each of the differences between everything is what gives this place color. There however is another type of character that some players decide to pursue. One which might not be taken very well compared to the rest of the entities you may encounter.
People who decide to play their characters as a hybrid between animals, and humans. I'm sure a lot of you might know a few people who fall within that category. I'd like to make public the Administration stance on these players in order to clear up any disconnect that there may be currently.

We do not wish players to force their existence onto others. We have no rule stating that people must acknowledge what other people do, unless put forward by the Development team. We get that there are a lot of players who have no desire whatsoever to interact with people playing as animal/human hybrids. That is completely reasonable. Though it's been noticed that there is a lot of contempt aimed at the hybrid players. While they might be playing as something you don't like, that doesn't give you the right to target and single them out about it.

Since this is a heavy RP community, and as such when you are RP'ing you are immersing yourself into the Freelancer lore, we are enacting a new rule. Furry character pics are no longer allowed, and will be changed if we see them. Similar to the Old "Ponies off the reservation" rule. With that said, you can still RP a Furry character, but via text only. As for those whom RP Furry characters and you are reaching out to initiate RP, do so subtly or inform them from the get go that your character is a animal/human hybrid, and allow them the choice to continue the RP or not.

For non-furry characters/the people not RP'ing those: If you should find yourself in RP with a Furry character and do not wish to continue, politely tell them ooRPly that you don't want to interact with them and be done with it. There's no need to take things public. There's no need to create threads about how they shouldn't be allowed to exist (Yes, i've seen plenty over my time here). If you don't like it, tell them that. If they don't want to accept that you're ducking out, that's when you're allowed to let the Staff know, and we'll resolve the matter ourselves. There's no need to give them more attention than what's needed. This is a roleplaying community. A lot of what you do as ingame characters may not fit lore properly. So what. We're all (hopefully) having a good time in the end. Handle the existence of the hybrids appropriately by either going along with it, or informing the player that you'd rather not interact. That's all we ask.

For Furry characters/People RP'ing Furry's: We're sorry, but this mod follows extremely closely the original vanilla Freelancer. There was never any Furry characters, and as such we don't intend to bring them into Discovery lore. With that said, there's nothing we can do to force people to accept who you are. I'm sure you've created a character like that knowing this fully well. If someone doesn't want to interact with you, accept it and move on. If you want a situation where people can't do that so easily, I recommend you merely make a character who is fully human.

We're not going to ban these 'furry' characters from existing outright, but we will remove any images suggesting you are RP'ing a Furry character, so as not to break the immersion of those you wish to RP with who do not RP as or with animal/human hybrids. Though you as players have rights to duck out if you're not comfortable. The only thing we ask is that you don't make a big deal about it. That's all we as staff can ask.

[Jeremy Hunter]

Okay Drrobe, seeing this, I would like clarification:

So Furry IMAGES are banned? Or are furry CHARACTERS are banned?

I'd like to know now, as your proposed announcement is a more fleshed out version of Garrett's that clarifies a LOT of things.

[Garrett Jax]

The posts of the Admins here were part of the Discussion back and forth that we had. It went on for two pages, in actuality, so those that say that the matter was rushed are speaking in ignorance. The discussion brought forth various ways to confront the issue and the final decision, by vote, was to eliminate Furry RP from the server and restrict it to the Reservation.

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[Arioch]

That was just what I proposed, doesn't mean it was included. From this discussion, which led to the vote, to Garrett's announcement, I believe it was all or nothing.

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[Jeremy Hunter]

That was just what I proposed, doesn't mean it was included. From this discussion, which led to the vote, to Garrett's announcement, I believe it was all or nothing.

I know Drrobe. I was asking if it evolved from that.

I just wanted to know if infact it was character banning alltogether at this point, as Garrett's post is a bit...unclear. Putting furries in the same boat as ponies, of which the latter was spammed literally everywhere, is...not confusing.

Yes I know we did discuss this on Skype but I just want a final say, as it specifies IMAGES and not characters, per say.