An Actual Open Discussion On The Culture Killing Armageddon

You know, I have copy-pasted logs of people I wasn't collaborating with that just got banned for no fucking reason. He is utterly full of shit, and is a fan of abusive ex-boyfriend logic.

Are you Nergal, Danhalen? Also, dig the name. No one here plays nice with anyone else.

*smooches*

My solution, eat some anti-psychotics and go to sleep.

I actually have to say, I'm not in favor of "softening" the atmosphere of the game with yet more rules that prohibit what players can or can't do, and I've had a few unfavorable encounters with admin animations, that while they left me saying, seriously, wtf?, I didn't complain about or object to (because despite some of them being rather terrible, I didn't feel like I'd just gotten a super-statted NPC dropped on my head for doing something somebody else didn't approve of, but genuinely felt this was a situation that was RPed out and I possibly could have avoided the consequences if I'd interacted differently). I'm not in favor of making it impossible to do such things by an means, all I'm in favor of is more meaningful communication and consideration between players and staff. I was actually a bit on the fence on the christmas rape ban, and eventually ended up admitting I was in favor, after much consideration. I don't want to see the "PG-13" slide go further. All I'm asking is that before you do something, no matter the setting and the grim-dark street-cred, you pause and remember that there's a human being on the other end of this transaction. Oftentimes, in the past, when I've heard justifications of doing shitty things to other players' characters, it's been, I keep it IC dawg. I'm like, that's all well and good, and while I like the concept of your character, I have to point out that some of these traits were of your choosing and you had to know coming in that they'd result in your character having to do these things to stay IC, so who is really responsible for this, in the end?

The only possible conclusion is, you made this character with the INTENT to do these things. Nobody forced your hand when writing the backstory, and nobody or nothing forced your hand in your decision in this case. Politely disagree with me all you like but I can only see malicious intent here, because you already knew before you stepped out of chargen the kinds of situations and personalities you would encounter. Rolling up a stump with a focus of kill everyone is completely on you, and nobody else, and going to code with random characters you mildly dislike was your own decision.

Anyway, ranting aside, I think it's pretty easy for us all to agree there are certain things that simply should not happen, particularly in regards to what staff does to players. I've already spoken my piece on what they can do to fix that, but I think they'd rather keep the Stanford Prison Experiment going and dehumanizing, even demonizing, the player on the other end of the exchange, than admit that mistakes were made, and what can be done to prevent such in the future? What can WE do differently, because we can't expect to control the playerbase and have to expect sometimes infractions will occur, and not even most of them are mistakes that require any degree of retribution. But no, let's lock threads and move them to moderation and ban players recklessly because that's much easier than doing any serious introverted reflecting. More of the same, except it's better this time around because it's more of it! Obviously they don't appreciate the crap you took on their dinnerplate so the only solution is to take a bigger dump next time around, right?

EDIT: Edited to add, the murder-stump rant isn't about anyone in particular, much less a stump, a stump is just an easy target because everyone can remember way back in when a newblet Kadian sponsored role was backstabbed in the bazaar for absolutely no reason by a stump that, to all outside observers, was not the type to just go out and do such a thing. I read about this on the GDB years ago, so it seems like even staff did not know why this happened, much less anyone who knew either character.

EDIT AGAIN: I think in most instances staff could open a dialogue with the player in question and get much less aggression in return if the only response from them was communicating their dissapproval of something and discussing it, instead of banning or force-storing. Much like the player who rolls the murder stump, staff's hand is by no means forced, they, too, have to admit that they knew coming into this situation what the results of following a hard-line approach would be.

how every single thread like this goes:

-random showboarder makes thread for discussion.
-usual suspects chime in about how shadowboard is ugh just the worst.
-usual suspects chime in about how they only read the shadowboard that one time and it was so terrible, they don't ever read it it's so bad.
-someone suggests that maybe the board is not made up of completely fabricated incidents.
-nergal/nyr comes out and says well maybe there was some incidents in the past but things are great now.
-player points out incident.
-nergal/nyr/other staff sweep it under rug, under guise it's IC if it's recent or it's too long ago if otherwise.
-another player points out another incident.
-nergal/nyr/other staff sweep it under rug, same bullshit pretenses.
-people realize that staff actually never accepts responsibility, nergal/nyr goes 'REEEEEEEE' and locks thread.
-years later, people realize those staffers were full of shit.

we've gone through this cycle many times. i remember when sanvean was talking about how it wasn't anything like the old days...and then halaster and naionia got caught being twinky as hell.

then nyr was the putz of the week who responded to this stuff, everything was ok, blah blah blah. then it turns out apparently most of staff hated him yet didn't do shit, and he would do shit like have a psionicist LIVING IN TULUK and keep her undetected by never giving a single hint because of thinks, feels, or any information in their biography about BEING A PSIONICIST.

and now nergal is back out here, oh hey fellas no that stuff is long in the past. except he gets called out multiple times for flat out lying, back pedals like a moron, and skitters back under the rock he came out of.



no one thinks there's a staff-wide conspiracy. they just continue to think that staff don't give two shits about complaints...like people said in the thread. here's what everyone thinks happened: one staff member was inappropriate with their animations. they may or may not have liked anaiah...it's really irrelevant, either way the behavior was agreed upon by most people as inappropriate. anaiah did what she was supposed to and submitted a request. nergal covered their ass - either because he's the type of person who doesn't like admitting fault (demonstrated multiple times in that thread), wanted to protect the staff member, didn't like anaiah himself, or some combination of which.