Admin Feedback Thread (Archived)

[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.