Players Warned: @Michela Calliente ; @Space Port Federation

[EisenSeele]

@Space Port Federation and @Michela Calliente have been warned for:

1.0
1.1 - ... Metagaming and powergaming are strictly forbidden.

Consequences:

Factions intentionally attempting to stay undercover (IE: Wild posing as uninfected humans) can definitely out themselves through their actions - but it is very toxic behavior to have a Freelancer sitting cloaked in front of a secret base that it should have no knowledge of to catch people docking with absolutely no counterplay.

Official faction players should know better than to take that and start spreading evidence obtained in this manner, especially oorply it to enemies like Corsairs to the Order.

As a result, we are issuing a warning to not engage in this sort of behavior again, and we are retconning all mention and subsequent developments stemming from the oorp 'discovery' of Lichtenfelde Complex and "catching" people docking there as mentioned in these threads:
https://discoverygc.com/forums/showthrea...tid=206200
https://discoverygc.com/forums/showthrea...tid=206452
https://discoverygc.com/forums/showthrea...tid=206442

To put it into perspective, I'm sure DTR would really not appreciate having someone cloaked and monitoring all the non-corsair ID'd corporate ID'd barges and 5k's being used to supply POB's, or the FLIFF alt POBs it operates, and outing them all simultaneously to every house government and hostile pirate factions. It's toxic, and we don't want that sort of thing here.

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If you require evidence, you may request such via PM from a Staff member. Only the accused or an official faction leader of the accused person's faction may request such. Once you have the evidence, and if you wish to dispute it, you may post in the Sanction Thread below. Do not continue PM'ing a staff member, as that will result in your Appeal being denied. If you PM a staff or post in the sanction thread and you are not directly involved, you are consenting to be subjected to the reprisal of my choice which may involve in game repercussions up to a ban. Blaming members of your immediate family, neighbors, friends, pets, and assorted Orcs, Trolls and any other legendary creatures may result in the use of Admin Right #CTE 750AE

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FEEDBACK

[Michela Calliente]

First of all, a member of staff was explicitly asked if this is okay before publishing this RP to avoid this sort of situations. And we were advised that staff would have no problem and given the greenlight. I am quite baffled to now receive a warn for this action after getting explicit permission. Perhaps, you need to align yourselves internally.

Second of all, as far as what we have been advised, the ship that provided us that information followed the two Wild ships using a cloak after suspicious behavior. They weren't just camping. I can't speak on the other player's behalf but I don't particularly find anything about that to be toxic. How exactly do you propose one uncover a Wild in that case unless the Wild player on the other side willingly decides to reveal themselves? This means essentially zero agency on the side that's non-infected and absolute impunity on the side that is.

oorp 'discovery' - what ooRP discovery? Everything was done completely in-game, nothing about this was done via ooRP. I don't even know who these players are to begin with.

To put it into perspective, I'm sure DTR would really not appreciate having someone cloaked and monitoring all the non-corsair ID'd corporate ID'd barges and 5k's being used to supply POB's, or the FLIFF alt POBs it operates, and outing them all simultaneously to every house government and hostile pirate factions. It's toxic, and we don't want that sort of thing here.

Actually other factions have spied on DTR multiple times and used that information inRP. How is that even remotely toxic? If it was found in-game and someone overheard or uncovered something - more power to them. I don't think anyone would have a problem with that - let alone claiming that it's toxic.

Extremely strange ruling - so consider this as an appeal. If the warn is upheld, this is going to be the last time I bother with RP on this server. It took quite a lot of our time to actually get something creative only to be branded as toxic and punished for it. Not to mention the in-game efforts to actually pull this off. Espionage and politics is the fun part about RP. These sort of things happen all the time.

Really shameful.

[Knusperflakes]

1IC from DTR here. I am highly surprised about this warning as we talked with two staff members (Jammi and Barrier) before and shortly after posting that RP. None of them said that it would be against any sort of rule per se and would not be an issue from staff side (whether players are unhappy about that is another question of course, I am sure Phoenix will disagree with our posts).

We do not want to claim we have found the precise location of Lichtenfelde. Based on the visual report from PMF we could deduce that Noth is being followed (not camped) entering the cloud full of nomads and docking there (somewhere), which should be clear evidence that they must be infected since Nomads did not engage it. As we had no reason to believe there was a problem with that evidence received from Staff side based on what Jammi told us, we proceeded as you could see.

Therefore, I appeal to remove this warning, to restore the deleted threads and/or inform us how we can rephrase it in a way that is acceptable for you. Either way it appears to be a controversial topic even within staff and you should align internally before issuing such warnings. Even after reading the post in question Barrier literally told me "it is not breaking the metagaming rule", the precise rule you want to warn us for now.

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[EisenSeele]

If you are mentioning the conversation with @jammi, I would suggest you look into the actual text of the conversation - at no point was any 'official permission' given to this, and he in fact mentions that it could be seen as 'cringey' and a breach of Roleplay Etiquette - which staff decided it was. @jammi is also a dev, and while he's a respected member of the team, he is not part of server rule enforcement.

Wild characters that are 'undercover' through exclusively using human tech and giving no indication of infection through any of their interactions with players are to be considered undercover - cloaked ships offer zero engagement or counterplay, which is why large developments stemming from cloaked stalking are considered a form of powergaming and staff reserves the right to moderate when the results are detrimental to the server. The same would happen if, like I mentioned before, that people decided to stalk DTR POB suppliers and alts to hunt them down and siege Elcano or Konpeki - it's a degree of metagaming that we don't want to see on the server.

Roleplay is about interaction, and if you enjoy politics and espionage roleplay, I would suggest you try doing it through interaction - and not through means that would require everyone to scan chatlists at all times for cloaked ships just to decide whether or not they can safely dock on their own bases when they think nobody else is around.

EDIT: I would also like to clarify that Barrier is part of the Event team, and also not able to decide the position of the enforcement team.

DOUBLE EDIT: I've seen the chatlogs from Barrier and made no mention about how any of this was fine, either.

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FEEDBACK

[Michela Calliente]

I would suggest you look into the actual text of the conversation

I don't need to look - we were literally told and I quote ''I mean, if you caught them docking, that's a fair cop.'' and ''Sure, seems reasonable.''

fact mentions that it could be seen as 'cringey'

Anything can be seen as cringe by someone else. Cringe and breaking the rules are two vastly different statements.

a breach of Roleplay Etiquette

I cannot find the roleplay etiquette anywhere in this official rule thread. So in other words, you are arbitrarily making rules on the spot and as you go. I have never ever heard of an alleged roleplay etiquette - why is this not part of the rules then if I can get an official warning for it?

cloaked ships offer zero engagement or counterplay,

What is the purpose of the cloak disruptor for? Or having scouts? Or maybe people ensuring the system is safe before engaging in undercover activities?

which is why large developments stemming from cloaked stalking are considered a form of powergaming

Where is this in the rules?

The same would happen if, like I mentioned before, that people decided to stalk DTR POB suppliers and alts to hunt them down and siege Elcano or Konpeki - it's a degree of metagaming that we don't want to see on the server.

You do realize this has happened multiple times and people have used alts or multiple factions and it has never been a problem. People have also spied on DTR and used this information. If someone overhears a conversation or finds an information about DTR while logged in game - more power to them. Nobody would have a problem with that. If you can't use information that you've found in-game - what's the point of roleplay?

Roleplay is about interaction, and if you enjoy politics and espionage roleplay, I would suggest you try doing it through interaction

This was done via actual in-game interaction. Our ship literally witnessed two ships and Phoenix interacting with one another in-game.

[EisenSeele]

Anything can be seen as cringe by someone else. Cringe and breaking the rules are two vastly different statements.

We are clarifying for you that, after staff discussion, this was found in breach of the rules. Devs are important members of the team, but they do not have the ability to dictate policy - and both devs in question have specifically told me that they didn't say anything to suggest that the staff team condones what was done.

This was done via actual in-game interaction. Our ship literally witnessed two ships and Phoenix interacting with one another in-game.

If the RP was just based on seeing Phoenix and two human looking ships interacting in game, that would have been fine. The warning is with regards to the method by which the 'evidence' that the wild ships were infected was gathered - and subsequently, any rp surrounding and resulting from this have been deemed invalid.

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FEEDBACK

[Knusperflakes]

To my knowledge we should not need any "official permission" to post RP in this forum. There is no server rule, stating that in-game information obtained from cloaked ships cannot be used inRP. How is any player supposed to know about it? If there are any similar cases from years ago, a newer player such as me, simply cannot be aware of that restriction without being forced to look through thousands of forum posts.

While both mentioned staff members are not part of the rule enforcement team as you say (I dont even know who is, I assume you are?), it is still baffling that their opinion is decisively different than that of the "server rule enforcement". Claiming that our behaviour is toxic to the community is once again ridiculous and just encourages truly toxic people to thrive in this community.

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[Michela Calliente]

We are clarifying for you that, after staff discussion, this was found in breach of the rules.

Breach of which rules precisely?

• Where in the rules does it say anything about a roleplay etiquette?
  
• Where in the rules does it say ships using cloak cannot use the information they find?
  
• Where in the rules does it say that cloak are considered power gaming?
  
• Isn't cloak disruptor or the other methods mentioned viable ways to counter a cloak?
  
• If not, if cloaked ships offer zero engagement or counter-play, why is that an approved mechanic?
  

The warning is with regards to the method by which the 'evidence' that the wild ships were infected was gathered

So you are saying that any RP obtained using a cloak is not admissible? That's not even coherent because the other RP was also obtained using a cloak. And if it's the station's knowledge itself, that's the problem - the fact that the infrastructure/NPCs are also not shooting should be a clear indication. Or is that also part of some hidden roleplay etiquette?

[EisenSeele]

To my knowledge we should not need any "official permission" to post RP in this forum.

You do not. You're free to do anything you want to so long as it doesn't violate the rules - and we have flexible rules in place so that people have a high degree of freedom to roleplay while allowing for us to step in when something happens that is detrimental to the community.

There is no server rule, stating that in-game information obtained from cloaked ships cannot be used inRP. How is any player supposed to know about it? If there are any similar cases from years ago, a newer player such as me, simply cannot be aware of that restriction without being forced to look through thousands of forum posts.

This is why we are issuing a warning as a notice that this is not acceptable, so everyone can know where the line is - we are not assuming malice, so no punishments have been issued.

While both mentioned staff members are not part of the rule enforcement team as you say (I dont even know who is, I assume you are?), it is still baffling that their opinion is decisively different than that of the "server rule enforcement". Claiming that our behaviour is toxic to the community is once again ridiculous and just encourages truly toxic people to thrive in this community.

Devs have their names in yellow, Moderators have their names in Orange, and Administrators have their names in Green. If you have questions regarding things like story and systems development, the dev team handle those - if you have questions regarding server rules, Moderators and Administrators are available on forums and on Discord.

There's no need to take this personally, we're not saying that you are toxic - we're saying that this behavior can be toxic and will lead to more undesirable behavior that we do not want on the server. We really don't want to normalize people following each other while cloaked to get a "gotcha" moment, it just isn't good gameplay - and just means everyone will feel the need to be on guard at all times.

This sort of policy has been a pretty long history - it used to be that quasi-legal factions like IMG and the Junkers would avoid playing the unlawful portions of their roleplay because people would just wait for them while cloaked to catch them docking on unlawful stations or hauling contraband - and getting them labeled as fully unlawful in house space. This sort of thing does not end well for anyone and remove nuance from a lot of different avenues of roleplay - which is why we do not want it happening.

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FEEDBACK

[EisenSeele]

Breach of which rules precisely?

• Where in the rules does it say anything about a roleplay etiquette?
  
• Where in the rules does it say ships using cloak cannot use the information they find?
  
• Where in the rules does it say that cloak are considered power gaming?
  
• Isn't cloak disruptor or the other methods mentioned viable ways to counter a cloak?
  
• If not, if cloaked ships offer zero engagement or counter-play, why is that an approved mechanic?
  

So you are saying that any RP obtained using a cloak is not admissible? That's not even coherent because the other RP was also obtained using a cloak. And if it's the station's knowledge itself, that's the problem - the fact that the infrastructure/NPCs are also not shooting should be a clear indication. Or is that also part of some hidden roleplay etiquette?

As listed in the original warning post:
1.0 - Don't be a dick. It's a game, try to keep it fun for everyone playing it. Behavior that falls within the technical letter of the rules but not the spirit won't be tolerated.
1.1 - Discovery is an English-language roleplaying server. Communication in-game and in the roleplaying areas of the forums must be in-character and appropriate for Discovery Freelancer's setting. Metagaming and powergaming are strictly forbidden.

We found that having cloaked freelancer alts stalking players who have no way of knowing if they were in an interaction and have no way of responding to an interaction to be not conducive to a healthy community. We also found that deliberately going to a base that a character has no knowledge of to deliberately screenshot ships docking in secret in order to forcibly reveal an identity that they have otherwise done everything correctly to keep secret is both metagaming and powergaming (using information that you should not have access to, and forcing consequences on another player with zero recourse or interaction).

These things are necessarily not all explicitly written down, as it would be a lot of work to list everything that isn't allowed. We try to allow as much freedom and flexibility to everyone as we can, while also having rules to fall back on to step in when something happens that we don't think is healthy. The point of these warnings is to convey precedent without punishing anyone (notice, you are not being punished here, we are just letting you know that what you've done is something we do not want to see from anyone).

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