Space Station 13

by Exadv1
Space Station 13
Stay alive inside Space Station 13
ID:1254476
 
This is going to come of as a bit preachy but bear with me please.

I had an admin jump me twice on one server for violating "comfort RP" rules and calling it server policy. The first was as a botanist, for wearing a pumpkin. The second was as a CE for wearing my hardsuit.

Engineering is usually radiated from the singlo, so hardsuits are pretty much required down there. A botanists pumpkin hat is kind of a tradition thing in this game. This admin however, did not care for either, and ultimately told me "obey or leave", so I left.

Aother round I was on a different server, everyone except me and an assistant were SSD and the station had no power. I was a shaft miner, so I took the starving assistant to the mining base for some hot donk. With no power, the vending machines were useless. Even the ones on the mining base were useless without the accounts server. So we had to raid the station for food.

At this point, starving and with little option but to sit in a cold and dark station for either an 8 hour shift or until someone with higher access logged on, I started to get a bit annoyed. We had no access to get power up or call the shuttle, or even unlock the food lockers in the kitchen. I found the unconscious HOP and went for his card...

(Admin) Taking things off SSD players violates server policy. I am giving you one warning on this. Put it back and leave the room.

O...kay... Fine, I'll leave the SSD players alone. I broke into the captains quarters and grabbed the spare ID and got power back up. By that time other players had logged in. When the round ended I explained what had happened, and got told taking the captains spare ID is also against server rules, dont do it. Someone else argued on my behalf that it was the SPARE ID, that I hadnt gone after an SSD player to get it, and got told the rule still applies. I said "Hey rules lawyers, here's a better question. Did my actions cause harm? Or did they keep things moving?". I was honestly expecting a kickban at this point, but amazingly enough the admin agreed with me.

Look, forget SS13 for a moment. I've got years of RP under my belt both in front of a keyboard and around a tabletop. The job of a GM/admin/mod/whatever is not to enforce the rules. Their job is to keep the game flowing and fun for their players. The rules are a good tool for this, but you also need to know when to set them aside when they get in the way of dealing with problems. Problems, in this case, is anything that negatively impacts enjoyment for the players. A game is first and foremost, about fun.

If someone is skirting just inside the rules but causing problems, its still a problem that needs to be dealt with. If someone is bending or outright breaking the rules, in such a way that either avoids or fixes a problem, (for instance my shaft miner should not have known how to start the singlo, but did because I was the only one on at that point) dont beat them down with the rulebook, praise their creativity and thank them for keeping things moving. Think of the rulebook as the pirates code. Guidelines, nothing more.

And remember, a badmin will run off a servers playerbase quicker than ten griefers could ever dream of. Keep it real, keep it fun.
Administration is about keeping players to follow the rules, with that keeping the game flowing, not to keep it fun.

Sure, I disagree with the rig suit being forced to be off, and I would have most likely kept the pumpkin in IC because that's just more fun.

Servers have rules, Mine has rules, and my policy is simple enough: Follow the rules, or go somewhere else. Rules are there for a reason. And I'm not sure breaking them is the way to go when you want to continue playing on that particular server.
But everyone his own opinions on everything, I guess. Every administrator does his thing in his own way, another administrator may even have left you to do your thing.
I have been in a similar situation, where on a server with no power everyone is stuck in their own rooms with no way to move about or even communicate due to the total lack of power in the station. As an engineer, upon heading to engineering there were no hardsuits available. No way to go outside to setup the singlo (why other engineers took it upon themselves to take the hardsuits, even the CE's, but NOT setup the engine is beyond me).

So I broke into the secure storage to retrieve one of the ones I suspected would be in there...

Admin warning: Breaking into secure areas will result in a ban or at least a jobban. Don't do it again.

I was simply trying to get the engine up. The admin didn't care (but fortunately didn't enforce the ban as I apologized, explained my reasoning and reversed everything I'd done).

Now, I do agree that you can't break the rules anytime you want because it'll make the game more fun. BUT it should be needed to keep the game moving. If that doesn't apply to letting players break them (in a tabletop game, the GM doesn't let the players bend the rules, he does it himself to keep things going), the admins should do it at that point.

Admins have the power to magically power up the engine. If the engine is completely dead, and no one is online who can put it on (or those that are cannot due to other reasons), then that's when an admin should step up and say 'Hey, let me turn it on for them, or spawn another hardsuit in engineering, or 'suggest' to a player the location of an SSD engnineer with a hardsuit or that secure storage might be a good location to find one, reminding him through 'his own thoughts' that should he be caught by security, it might entail a trip to the brig.

Rules should be enforced, possibly stringently by the admins. It's the only way to avoid abuse by players who might have seemingly valid reasons for everything they do. However Admins should also take it upon themselves to bend them to keep the game moving.

If the station is dead without power, it can be fun for the players to try to work around the obstacle. BUT it also might cause a bunch of players to log on, see they can't do anything, or even talk to other players, and then log off again... The situation as a whole needs to be taken into account, but remembering that the game shouldn't stall and die in order to enforce the rules...
Exactly my point. Many of the current rules depend on a fully staffed and functioning station. But in the case of my shaft miner, the first thing I did was retreat with the assistant to the mining base to wait for "qualified" engineers to log in. When food became a problem, I tried escalating solutions. Vending machines? Wont give anything with the account server down and cant be broken into or hacked to dispense product (hey devs, take notes here). The kitchen? The meat and flour lockers cant be broken into or hacked either (Still with me devs?), else the microwave on the mining base would have fed us.

Grab a card? No, against the rules. Grab the spare card? No, against the rules. Was the moderator beating me with the rulebook actually doing anything to resolve the issue like charge the SMES? No. A challenge can be fun, but when every solution gets summarily vetoed and threatened with a ban, theres no fun. And a game without fun is not worth playing.

This gets even worse when it becomes a downward spiral. SS13 depends on people doing their jobs for the station to function, and those jobs intertwine. These situations arise on low population servers specifically because those jobs arent being done, the system that makes the game great has now turned on the few or single active player. Their options already limited, an admin cutting off the remaining options by stating "thems the rules, obey or leave" results in a too small playerbase growing even smaller, and they wonder why their servers die off.

Basically, all of the qualities that make for bad security or a bad captain, make for an even worse admin, with worse results. On a low pop or no pop server, its a different situation calling for a different playstyle just to survive. It likewise calls for a different set of rules. Adapt to these situations as they come and roll with it. Maybe come up with an off the cuff reason WHY the station is suddenly devoid of life and turn it into a mystery or survival horror type situation. On a station usually crammed with active players, you dont get the quiet atmosphere such a scenario requires. So if you get a chance, USE IT! But just as players who refuse to adapt will die, admins who refuse to adapt will find their servers empty.
I, personally am a new admin and i have heard from people that admins have even forced a botnast from doing his job, we know how important he is. But like Shadox sayed, being an admin is to make a game fun, not annoying like in a situation described earlyer. But still back to the game.
Don't mean to advertise, but you oughta try NoX station, we're lax about stuff like this. It really doesn't matter that much that you are wearing internals even though there isn't any immediate emergency.
NoX is notorious for its laxness.....
guys stop advertising
Shadox, is right at his point and dr huxleyy and longton NoX is extremly dumb, all the admins are totally jerks.
I never said I liked NoX, just said its lax.....
hay guys come to gibbed the admins are nice so are the players :D
In response to Rataca6060
riiiiiiight...
lmao "Administration is about keeping players to follow the rules, with that keeping the game flowing, not to keep it fun." -Laser50

Rules should be used to keep the game fun for everyone, not to force players to conform to some arbitrary junk all the time.

People murdering everyone in sight without being traitors, roleplaying rapists, or cheating with multikeys or skype: these make the game less fun.

Wearing goofy hats, breaking into places during emergencies to try and fix the problem, embracing emergent gameplay instead of rigidly structured gameplay, and expecting that people will find entertaining solutions during a crisis: these make the game more fun.

But hey, that's just my opinion mannn.

If you agree with that approach, you'd probably feel more at home on goonstation or maybe TG than on the strict RP servers.

Nope, nope, I agree with you. I agree. But it all comes down on what kind of server and what "severity" of role play they enforce.
what point are rules if they drive people off?
Or if no admins are going to care about them since one gets banned without having violated ANY of them.
(You three people know who you are.)
Just gonna say this, NoX spawned a guy in the brig a claymore and allowed him to murder me. The admin even spawned in and welded the doors shut. How thoughtfull.
In response to Blackopsman9999
Why?
Shadox wrote:
Look, forget SS13 for a moment. I've got years of RP under my belt both in front of a keyboard and around a tabletop. The job of a GM/admin/mod/whatever is not to enforce the rules. Their job is to keep the game flowing and fun for their players. The rules are a good tool for this, but you also need to know when to set them aside when they get in the way of dealing with problems. Problems, in this case, is anything that negatively impacts enjoyment for the players. A game is first and foremost, about fun.


This made me almost want to shed a tear of joy. I fully agree with this statement. Most of the users who are admins, try to become admins, or interact with admins assume their main goal is to heavily enforce the rules and reign with some superior form of authority.

This truly isn't the case. Their job is to help maintain the game's stability in anyway they possibly can, and their position is suppose to mean they're entrusted with this task, and are held responsible for it as well.

Game developers can not foresee every action, our outcome. Knowing this is why they help themselves, and the games by allowing authoritative figures to help keep both balance and control. These little power starved users running around acting like some form of a corrupt cop in the game's eyes are a blight to the game, and to it's balance and fun, and thus should be removed pronto.

This alone is why even though I absolutely adore SS13, and have for a long time, will not enter most servers. These kids seem to have no idea what they're doing, and no regard for the repercussions of doing it.
no admins are for enforcing rules mods are there to consult for RP etc etc and questions when admins are not present etc etc GM's and higher are for keeping the game fun and all so enforcing the rules GM and higher
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