[STAFF]: WARNING

[vladimir26]

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).

Just a small fyi, Violation reports not going through goes both ways. I have knowledge of a few (not done by myself), on very basic stuff like not dropping lines, that didn't go through for some reason. If the warning of two people is the end of the road for so many others, then I guess that if all the other VRs went through it would've been a nuclear apocalypse. Maybe the admins should change the warning's title into another community warning? So we can continue with our game without any lessons learned or accepting any responsability.

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[Doc Holliday]

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.

I'm sorry you feel that way. Seriously. Between my time both as an Admin and currently as a moderator, I cannot think of the amount of times that I have been in server and spent hours at a time arguing with a player over a rule. I would catch them doing something, explain the rule and then the debate would begin.
"If you worded it THIS way instead of THAT way then I wouldn't do it." I have been through this countless times. After doing so countless times, I have become convinced that there are those that will exploit the rules and use loopholes to their advantage. We close those loopholes then we become the so called "dicks" that we have supposedly become.

We have also seen people make some rather petty reports and even revenge reports. If a player can't win a fair fight, they report or just to get back at someone for something. We also get some reports with rather weak evidence and Admins put the time in to checking the server log. Don't think that we don't do some digging when we could easily dismiss something for a lack of evidence.

And here is where I get a bit personal. In the real world, I am a Soldier, a teacher of military leadership. I preach accountability and impartiality and I practice both. I also accept responsibility when I am wrong. I have been reported and accepted the responsibility for it. It does seem that a lot of folks feel like they have a free pass. Maybe it's upbringing....I don't know.

I've said my piece. Have a good day.
-Doc

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[MFE]Med Force One | Tales of Recovery|Med Force Enterprises

[EisenSeele]

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.

It would be nice to have clearly and explicitly defined rulesets that cover everything you are and aren't allowed to do - but in a roleplaying environment where players are part of the game engine and imagination is the limit of what can be done, this is impractical at best. It would be difficult for us to list out a comprehensive list of even common and easily imagined scenarios that would end in powergaming and metagaming to the degree that you'd like. It would be impossible to make that list fit in a way that someone could realistically use, parse, and understand without getting into the weeds too much. It would also most certainly have 'loopholes' and serve as a reference for people who want to test boundaries, who would inevitably complain and try to rules lawyer when told to stop anyway. Both the solution space of things that are ok, and the problem space of what is not are infinite and limited only to the imagination - so the best we can do are guidelines which work for the vast majority of players, and Staff to step in when they don't.

We've had tests of what is and isn't acceptable speech and character names before, and people have asked what constitutes a racial slur or nazi imagery - and the problem is then as it is now - there is no sensible and comprehensive list of all words and symbols alone or in combination that are unacceptable, You can see a similar process with the discrimination between obscenity and protected speech in the US Supreme Court - thankfully, Discovery is an online game and not a country, so we're able to go by a less rigorous test. We've also found it easier to remove problematic players from the community rather than develop a unified theory (which would be to succeed where actual governments have failed) or to force people to genuinely reform their entire personality (which is something that very much out of our paygrade).

Trying to explain how something breaks the rules to players, and to try to get people to understand why something shouldn't be done - or at least, know enough to not do the bad thing, is the best we've got. If you or anyone else would like to write up more guides on what is and isn't acceptable for players to use, that is always welcome - but I doubt that there will ever be a realistic case where this game will get an official list of all possible bad things to not do.

If you take issue with the tone of the rules, maybe we can change 1.0 to - "Enjoy the game, and don't ruin the game for others," but it's all symantics.

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FEEDBACK

[IahimD]

Trying to explain how something breaks the rules to players, and to try to get people to understand why something shouldn't be done - or at least, know enough to not do the bad thing, is the best we've got. If you or anyone else would like to write up more guides on what is and isn't acceptable for players to use, that is always welcome - but I doubt that there will ever be a realistic case where this game will get an official list of all possible bad things to not do.

What genuinely moved the needle for how I was perceiving this whole situation is this:

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.

My issue was that this whole time I could not understand how this was powergaming, but then I thought about a situation when the undercover character would have been Intelligence (LSF, BIS, KOI, BDM, whatever). In this case, the human undercover can protect "their cover" by docking with a Freeport or with a Freelancer owned solar. The Wild undercover does not have this option because of game mechanics. I did not think of that until Kai pointed out the obvious. Speaking for myself, I can now understand how this can be categorized as powergaming, while an Intelligence undercover docking with his own solar and having their cover broken by this might not be categorized as powergaming (or are these cases also powergaming?).
Because there are instances when factions gathered info about other factions while being cloaked and that was not an issue (correctly so).
Is it worth making a rule out of this specific Wild related exception? I can also see that some time will pass and new people with no context might start feeling that Wild is favored in some sense because they benefit from this one exception. Thank you, Kai and Eternal.Journey (in another thread) for taking the time and explaining the other point of view.

[Semir Gerkhan]

I'm also in favor of regulating things a little more, but I don't think it's an all or nothing thing. I don't believe we've to choose between having a legal code that contains thousands of assumptions, or having a few lines of rules that basically boil down to "behave yourself."

I'm aware that, as @EisenSeele says, this is not a country, but an online game. I understand that it's not necessary to set up a complete legal system, and that it's also much easier for the staff to make public some very basic guidelines for behaviour, and then decide for themselves what behaviours may be acceptable and what not, in each case. That way there is no written rule that the offender can use to try to shield himself behind, because the only thing that decides whether something is acceptable or not is the staff member's sole interpretation. It's obvious that this makes things easier to a staff that works for free in their RL leisure time to keep this community going, and that without a doubt in many cases is very overworked. A staff that constantly has to deal with some people who seem to enjoy creating chaos and causing trouble. With this in mind, it's more than logical that they look for ways to make their work easier.

However, this is a double-edged sword. As many members of the staff have acknowledged, they're human beings and therefore fallible. So it's necessary for players in the community to feel that they've some assurance that the staff's application of the rules is based on something tangible. If this doesn't happen, it can foster a feeling that they're acting arbitrarily. There are already accusations from some members of the community that the staff is acting arbitrarily, and whether this is true or not, it's encouraged by the fact that the rules are tremendously indeterminate.

Of course there will always be people who will continue to cause trouble, and use every possible means to try to get their way unfairly, regardless of what you do. If the rules are too specific they will become lawyers, looking for the dots and commas in the written text to argue that they're right. If the rules are too generic they will argue that the staff's interpretation is incorrect and motivated by their personal feelings. But I think that when you try to make rules of coexistence, which is what these server rules are, they have to be made towards people who are not antisocial elements, but towards the vast majority of players who just want to have a good time playing this game.

I think right now the community is reflecting quite logically on an old problem: the vagueness of the rules. I insist, I understand very well why the staff is reluctant to specify more what can and cannot be done, but it is quite clear to me that this has many more disadvantages than advantages. I'm not saying that the staff should now start legislating and writing extensive rules compendiums. But it occurs to me that when there is some kind of controversial situation, a clarifying thread should be made later that links the rules thread, as has already been done very well with the issue of ganking.

That way, when something similar happens again, which it will, we'll only have to refer to the clarification that was made at the time so that both staff and offenders, as well as the rest of the community, know what to expect. I honestly believe that this may be a middle ground that works for the future, and allows to have a clear and public basis of interpretation of rules for everyone, even if it's based on precedents.

[Eternal.Journey]

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.

The only people who should be looking over their shoulders are the people deliberately straddling the line. No one who is generally behaving themselves should need to consider if what theyre doing is going to get them sanctiomed. The fact that the whole issue stems from claimed doublechecking that they're not being Poor Quality in terms of their actions, speaks volumes.

(the rest of this post is not directed at the quote, for the readers clarification)

You dont need to be guessing, or need to be fearful youll get slapped. you just need to not deliberately and knowingly be that guy whose about to shaft an entire group of people to spite the maybe 5 interactions one has had with em. I do think that this whole recent incident, among plenty of others that have been actioned on, have been solid actions on staff part.

The rules work well enough. Most of us are behaved well enough. We are all adults here. We shouldnt need to be questioning rules and regulations that the bases of have been here for nearly two decades. its generalised to give people more flexibility in the roleplaying environment, while clear enough to be understood by most people. If you stop and consider your actions, and you perceive yourself to potentially be breaking the rules, then that is quite literally on you for going ahead with it anyway. Vague opinions of staff on an even vaguer explanation of events that happened, just to say "staff told me differently!" ain't ever gonna go well for anyone. Lol

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[Brain_Scratch]

The guy who started does not care to comment.

So Instead of spending 20 min on writing or reading supper-long posts, i prefer to play the game.

I strongly invite you to do the same.

[Nepotu]

The guy who started does not care to comment.

So Instead of spending 20 min on writing or reading supper-long posts, i prefer to play the game.

I strongly invite you to do the same.

Based answer. The server would be more alive if everyone would stop yapping on the forum for some nonsense and actually play the game. Yeah, I know wild idea

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[EisenSeele]

The guy who started does not care to comment.

So Instead of spending 20 min on writing or reading supper-long posts, i prefer to play the game.

I strongly invite you to do the same.

Staff collects people with the sort of brain damage that enjoys explaining mechanics and rulesets - this is the actual discovery freelancer endgame.

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FEEDBACK

[Michela Calliente]

The fact that the whole issue stems from claimed doublechecking that they're not being Poor Quality in terms of their actions, speaks volumes.

Lmao, are you actually claiming I am guilty by virtue and association of checking with the Lead / Story Dev whether something is above the line or not? Who here in Discovery have not checked something with the staff?

You dont need to be guessing, or need to be fearful youll get slapped. you just need to not deliberately and knowingly be that guy whose about to shaft an entire group of people to spite the maybe 5 interactions one has had with em.

Nice presupposition of intent.