Admin complaint, general MRP failure

Melts

Your SS14 Username: JoulesBerg

Admin's In-Game Username: IcePick, OBerry

Round ID (if applicable): MRP-1 round 3737

Reason for Complaint: "Secret Admin event"?

This was a kind of typical round from an engineering / atmos perspective, until possible zombies were called. Okay, lets make some liquid tritium while we wait for the confirmation from sec/ command

No confirmation, we let that idea fall off, guess there aren't zombies and there's no IC reason to be atmos heroes and bother science incessantly for a condensor if there isn't an actual threat.

What I didn't know, was that the admins were doing a "Secret Event" and there WERE zombies, and station command was ordered by CENTCOM to cover it up? Or maybe even ordered by centcomm to CAUSE IT? I don't know the whole story.

IDK what the policies of conduct are for admins on the server, IDK if this is something that's allowed to happen normally, I've been around for less than a month, but I've been loving the community and trying to contribute.

The following are my opinions and observations, and an expression of my disappointment in how that round went, and how it made me feel as a player.

This round did NOT feel like MRP, or how realistically some scenario like that would have / should have gone down. CentComm, to my understanding, is the literal in character A-Help. They should not be encouraging LRP round behavior like the HoP covering up a Zombie infestation, or medical injecting people with romerol.

The way this round went down actually just felt like the entire server of 20-40 people were the admins personal sandbox/play things. I bet some of the people more directly involved might have had fun from it, but from the perspective of a role who has the tools and means to stop something like this and being unable to because of how many sheer shenanigans and straight up violations of the SOP were happening? Even with "Admin Permission"?

That was NOT an MRP round. and it was fully caused by the Admin / Admins (idk for sure who all was involved except icepick, who responded to my AHelp of asking if this was a "Secret Admin Event" with a brief affirmative that it was a "Secret Admin Event".

Personally I don't think this is the kind of thing that belongs on an MRP server, the players are not there and don't choose funky as their station to be the social experiment of some Admins. Its one thing if its on Merisa, and its an event that everyone has agreed to. Its entirely different when its on the normal MRP server where Admins are supposed to do the EXACT opposite of what they did that round.

IDK if they consulted anyone, if it was a planned event involving more admins, or what, but it happened and I personally was not a fan. Do with the information what you will.

Joules (Melts)

edit: added OBerry as a relevant admin, per IcePicks reply.

Icepick

It was Me and oBerry, if you want to edit your complaint.

Marin Goodwinter

i was the cmo that round, sydney. from my understanding, it went down as follows:

i was called to the bridge for an urgent matter, and said matter was a fax from centcomm explaining an order to conduct an experiment using a “strange syringe”, five units per subject. they said volunteers were fine, but they didn’t necessarily have to be willing.
virology was restructured to only allow command personnel and the cmo in; it was told to be hush-hush about it, and an admin even advised me personally to not explore the chemical and that we would have to make a cure by ourselves using deductive reasoning
the syringe ended up being romeral. the infection was also airborne, and so any unmasked personnel were infected by the roaming admins in ghost mode

i did enjoy it, as it gave virology a purpose and made the zombie outbreak feel more natural; however, it was an incredibly stressful round for me. sydney is mute, and i wasn’t able to communicate well with command staff or my medical staff. i was being screamed at near constantly and couldn’t defend my actions or explain my perspective to anyone because people kept trying to break in, and we had no paper. if i had known the round was going to be a med-heavy event, i wouldn’t have aimed for cmo that round as i personally feel i was a detriment to the event due to my lack of speech. i can absolutely understand how this event was a total shitshow for other departments—it admittedly was a shitshow in med too. i think more transparency would’ve been good, especially to the cmo and command staff.

Melts

To add some clarification to my complaint:
I am not against the idea of admins doing cool things to add to role play, like sending a syringe of romerol and telling medical its an extremely dangerous virus or something. That's not the issue IMO. Especially if handled well, things like that can add to RP in a great way.
I am not privy to everything that went down during this round, and so I don't know how much of this is what actually happened / how much of it is relevant, but these are the things I THINK could have been contributing factors to why the round was bad.

Explicit admin intervention to make the virus "Airborne", introducing a game mechanic to an unprepared player-base who by their understanding of how things SHOULD work, were probably being mostly careful.
- I can't speak for the Admins actual reasoning for doing this, but as a player in an unrelated department it just FELT like the admins saying "Dang, our social experiment to spread the virus is being handled too well / they've contained it. Lets make it airborne"
- Introducing a core mechanic change like this through admin intervention is not good RP (or at least, its not good storytelling). As much as I wish everyone could fully detach themselves from real life and hence look at a zombie infection from a "Oh heavens, this could be some kind of airborne virus", player brain is WAY too strong in most cases to do that, and people are just going to try to handle the zombies like they normally do (at least initially). Core mechanic changes like this should be reserved for situations where every player knows things that are out of the ordinary may happen (IE, an official event on Marisa, or a tailor made game mode players can vote on before the round, where the admins just get to fuck with us. <- that could also be a fun idea). My issue is with having no say in the matter and no knowledge given to anyone beforehand that this type of thing is a possibility.
IDK if the lack of communication about a literal zombie infestation was the unfortunate side effect of having a mute CMO ( you have my condolences ), or because there were attempts to cover it up - BUT The fact that no form of confirmation about a zombie infestation came through to the rest of the station was really not cool. It could have been the culmination of a bunch of contributing factors, but IMO in an MRP server it is the admins responsibility to press the "oh shit" button as CentComm in this kind of situation (at least in a situation they have explicitly already created through admin intervention). Whether thats as simple as a CentComm fax, forcing the station announcement about a level 5 biohazard, or what I do not know. I don't know how bad it was before code purple was finally called, I don't know almost anything. I just know the round felt "Icky" (from a post round perspective) as a player on the side lines fully at the whims of what I viscerally internalized as a social experiment. Of which I was an unwilling participant.
I think maybe the people who were infected were given the "initial infected" status? If so, I think that is HORRIBLE RP. Its the same logic that was discussed about the ling infection, people want to seek it out and people want to murder hobo. I always interpreted the "space law is no longer applicable to you" rule about initial infected as you being a purposeful plant of the syndicate who is infected, since you are NOT given the initial infected status when bitten by a zombie and given the disease. So if they WERE given the initial infected status that makes NO sense in a role play perspective - they wouldn't become traitors to the station, they would still be loyal and would seek medical treatment. My interpretation of how this works could be completely wrong though, and this could be my internally justified reasoning that explains why people bitten can be sick but not become immediate traitors to the station.

Overall it was just a bad, not fun experience for me. That happens sometimes, and this is by no means a "ban he" salty request. I just didn't have a good time, and wanted to put forward my concerns and maybe get some clarification on the whole situation.

Joules (Melts)

edit: parenthetical clarifications, spelling

HGoltara

I have a few things I would like to add, regarding the event

on point 1, while I understand your point, it is not uncommon for viruses to be airborne, in zombie related media. the whole airborne issue was actually brilliant, given the way the infection was happening, being in virology and then leaking to the rest of the station, affecting all who did not have a mask. that's the whole point of an outbreak, to be honest.

about point 2, i (Clara, the captain)attacked the rest of command, got arrested, got my hands on a headset and told everyone on station via comms what was going on in that room, so the crew could revolt or prepare themselves. there was, indeed, a warning to the general crew

about point 3: there were no initial infected as a antag role, we, under CC's orders, infected selected individuals mid round.

just my 2 cents, here. thank you all.

Melts

HGoltara
Thank you for your side of things. Again I don't have all the information and the additional perspectives are appreciated. i have not gone back to watch the replay because this is not really a priority for me, and I don't think its one for the admins either (and probably shouldn't be), as evidenced by the fact that only one admin (a named party) has commented so far.

My argument about the airborne thing has nothing to do with real life. Its a practical argument against changing core game ENGINE mechanics mid round via Admin intervention. Ideally while role playing players should always act as though things won't work according to how the engine has always functioned in the past. --- PRACTICALLY though, player brain is too strong, and you just can't meta shield core game engine mechanics. It puts too much burden on players and detracts from the experience. In REAL LIFE yea, viruses can be airborne. In SS14 that's literally not possible without the intervention of Admins, and that's my complaint. To these characters the game engine IS real life.
Why did you attack the rest of command? Was almost the entirety of command complicit in covering up the virus? If so, once again those are the exact blatant SOP violations (perhaps encouraged by the Admins, idk) that I am explicitly complaining about. If you attacked command because you were infected, then got a headset to warn the crew that also makes no sense. More clarification is needed here, but again I think this fully reinforces my argument that the Admins were not doing their duty to encourage proper MRP round progression.
- Side note, People don't always see every radio / chat message, and though your message was probably SOME advanced warning it clearly was either not taken seriously, or not seen by a majority of the crew. My complaint about "no warning" is a complaint about the general chaos and absolute breakdown of the command structure because I believe CentComm (literally GOD from a player/ RP perspective) was sending conflicting signals and interfering with SOP.
I said nothing about antag rolling at the beginning of the round. I hypothesized that maybe the admins in this case gave the individual(s) who were injected the role after injection (admins can right click people and give them antag roles). IDK if that's the case, but if so my point 3 was that doing so was a terrible RP decision. They should have been injected with the romerol, but they should not have been given in character excuses to lie to the CMO about their illness or go do antag shit by breaking out of virology. The reason I thought this might be the case is because I remember the CMO (or someone) saying something about "Yea I knew something was up when y'all said you were fine", and sec officers talking about trying to find Mewan after they broke into places. But it was just a theory that the injected individuals were given these roles. I have not watched the replay. If one of the things I mentioned as a potential problem didn't happen then good.

I do not know what the role of Admins or the limitations on Admins are for Funky. I just personally don't think social experimentation and giving orders that conflict with SOP (if that happened, IDK) are things that fall within or should fall within their purview. The way CentComm acted in that round (from what I've been able to piece together) was more how I would expect the syndicate or an evil god to act. Even greedy corporations (CenComm) have a vested interest in keeping their people alive and their stations profitable.

All I am seeking from this Admin complaint is to offer feedback and get clarification on the whole situation and have it looked into if necessary, since genuinely it was a pretty negative experience for me.

Raccoon

I can't believe I missed a zombie outbreak 😞

Mish

Hiya!

Sorry about the delay on the response, I was out of state BUT I have been reading all this as well as speaking to the admins responsible.

I think the biggest issue I have here which I have expressed to the admins was the lack of notification that an event was happening, which I've discussed with the involved admins.
In-lore? Central Command and Nanotrasen are some shady companies, and dealing with them IC is not always a positive thing for the crew.

I don't have any issues with how the event happened overall, though - it seems you unfortunately got the short end of the stick because you were kind of cooped up in Atmospherics, with no knowledge of how anything went down. Even if I am not a fan of how it was initially set up, the overall reception seems to have been positive. During events, most of everything, including game mechanics, are liable to be thrown out the window.

But yeah, I will bring this up at our next staff meeting as well.
Thanks for the complaint and I do appreciate your explanation and feedback.

Melts

Yea, every complaint I had about the round is nullified if there is advanced warning its an event, since that makes sure everyone knows that its not a standard game and there may be shenanigans.
Thanks for looking into it Mish