[STAFF]: WARNING

[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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