Goonhub
02-06-2021, 08:53 PM
This post took me a super long time to think on what I wanted to say. I'll be upfront here, this is a -1 from me; for now.
The short of it comes down to a lot of HoS/NTSO/Security general play I’ve seen since November. And this is really tough for me to put my finger on some singular precise thing that I’d like to see improve because I do genuinely have moments when I have fun playing rounds with you. You’re really nice to me when I’m AI, if I’m on my known and named characters. I can get some good momentary comments from you every couple of rounds as non-silicon.
My first bit would be that I use PDA a lot. I started harping more and more on people about this since it’s fallen by the wayside when it comes to communication within Sec teams. I get that playing with an auditory headset is a trait and a burden I choose to take upon myself, but when I get little to no words from my acting HoS or NTSO, on PDA and Gen Comms, despite being active in seeking responses and feedback, and when I have to initiate most face-to-face discussions, it does feel like I’m being left out of things; when it becomes patternistic over the course of three months, I start to see it as a problem. There were a few other people who did deaf Security or Mime Security and just don’t anymore because they feel it’s not inclusive enough or they’re too arduous to have on a team. I don’t want people to feel like that. It’s a little thing, sure, but it does actively change player’s decisions in where they do/don’t feel they’re welcomed or they “fit”. This is a general problem with the busy RP server on the whole, but it’s one that is consistently there when I have you as a HoS. Which is terrible, because we did have a kind of neat but brief face-to-face interaction just yesterday, but that hasn’t been my average experience over months of playing as an inferior officer with this kind of setup. And I’m a little confused, I guess, since I have worked with tons of HoSes and Security Officers (and now Assistants too), on both Classic and RP, that have found it trivial to send back a message to me at some point in the round, whether it’s just a “hi” or “good to hear you’ve got it”, or a “can you go to there and check it out?”. I think general communication quality and keeping people involved and feeling like they’re getting to participate in a round has kind of dropped off.
My second bit is still Security related. I randomnamed at some point a while back, maybe late November. I had good fortune to get a HoS and you as NTSO on a changeling round, but I was assumed new so I just did the training run down since I was also with another officer who I knew was new (and deaf) and wanted them to not feel alone or lagging or behind; we had played a round together before that too, though I think this was either without a HoS or without a HoS who bothered to train them. Plus I think learning from every HoS I play with is valuable and meaningful. There was a point later in the round, we had already caught one changeling who, I believe ate someone in one of the cells, and you had run off solo somewhere in maintenance. I can’t remember if you used crisis alert or radio, but I ran to, as the other officer and HoS took care of the scene in the cells. You had the PortABrig and were trying to apprehend someone who downed you with a capu sting. I saw they were trying to carry you away, then I stepped in to grab you and take you to Medbay. I got to Medbay and realized the person who was with you in maintenance took your baton. I don’t know if you thought I was legitimately fresh-off-the-shuttle-new or anything. You popped back to and immediately asked “why did I let [so and so] take [your baton]?”. I remember that really clearly. I remember how absolutely defeating that was that I thought I did a good thing and was being told I messed up something. I wasn’t super bold or confident, I was still, I believe, pretty early in my Sec learning and hadn’t gone to Classic to really understand what it means to get your shit kicked in and be stressed out; nor played as much as I have since/as much as I do now. I said I would cryo after that because my heart wasn’t there anymore, on what had otherwise been a pretty quiet and fun shift with some really good RP moments, but ended up staying the rest of the round to try and find that baton because I felt like a failure if I didn’t. I think the bigger point is, presuming you thought I was new at the time (I was randomnaming on a not-previously-used character), I think it just would have come off very abrasive to someone trying their best and trying to learn, that they ran to help the NTSO and actually it was all just a big mess up versus having done something right. I wasn’t a new player, per se, but I feel like I was still a very new Sec player, and that experience still sticks with me.
I can’t attest to any teaching in other departments, really. I have played a lot of rounds with you since November, but I am usually AI when you are on at the same time, or randomnaming as Security when you are in other departments, and my experiences then have been that you’re usually quiet on comms, so I have no real metric for those rounds.
My last odds and ends are still rather Security-related, because that’s where I get to meet you the most. There’s some other stuff that I’ll let other people represent if they want, but two conversations stick out to me from Discord/OOC stuff. One was a while back, where you told another whitelisted HoS, as a whitelisted HoS, that they needed to not cryo out of rounds and just stick it through. And I think this runs really counter to a great deal of what admins have told HoS and Security and just all players time and time again during some of the Worst Rounds EverTM, which is that this is not a job or obligation, it’s a game. And pressuring people to stay in somewhere that they’re no longer having fun, or even that is actively damaging their mood, is not really a mentality I stick up for. People need to leave rounds sometimes. People playing Important Roles need to leave rounds sometimes; and that’s okay. As a normal run-of-the-mill player and Security Officer, I would much rather have a HoS that is really happy and enthusiastic for 70 minutes, but then has to go or stops having fun and cryos out and knows when to call it quits; over a HoS that guts it out for an excruciating 2 hour round but isn’t having fun and doesn’t propel that to the team. This is actually precisely where my best rounds as Security have been made: people leaving, people cryoing, people DNRing, people who are puritans on Sec. I don’t think these are necessarily related, other than that I have a lot of fun with people who are also having fun, and once that’s gone and expended, I would rather they take a break than beat themselves up through something. The person this was said to even said it was legitimately messing with them and their confidence in their decision to leave a round. The guidelines for mentor point out that mentors represent Goon, in a way. There’s a weight to words that comes with being HoS, and then also being a mentor and HoS, and I don’t want people to think that sticking with something miserable is necessarily required, whether they’re HoSes, Sec, or any other job.
The second of this is more recent. I 100% have a sort of “escalation level” I like to see and am comfortable with and sometimes I don’t get that out of antags in rounds. And that’s most rounds and ultimately it’s fine the majority of the time because everyone has different expectations and goals from me when they’re playing antag vs. how I play antag. Someone who didn't ever play low-pop or RPO before the server flip was on a low-pop round and perhaps went too hard for the number of people playing and the staff available. Yes, there’s something to “hey playing this way kind of soured the round for people since it was too stressful.” This person came to Discord at round end and owned up to having made the round unfun as an antag and apologized repeatedly, then tried to seek constructive feedback for how to engage with people in the future. You reiterated you were mad, the round sucked, and you wished you were HoS so you could’ve “kicked their teeth in” for them singling out and killing the solo officer and other antag-y things. They continued to apologize and seek how to improve throughout this entire convo, and left feeling just winded. Sometimes you solo Sec and die horribly or are kidnapped alone and mindslave-cloned or fall out an airlock and no one can get you or the RD overthrows the Captain and leads an uprising against you and you alone, or a changeling bites you and that’s that. It sucks, it’s never fun or cool, but it’s also not something I pin wholly on an antag because some of the game is necessarily Sec v. Antags. Continuing with wanting to “kick [their] teeth in” when they had already said “I completely agree with you: what should I do to learn from this in the future?”, sits really wrong with me. These types of antag situations are the moments when it becomes apparent that maybe someone needs or wants guidance in-round and post-round on fun gimmicks to run or ways to escalate properly. And none of that was offered once, other than to keep telling the person they were out of line. And if, in event, you can’t come up with something of your own alternative and specific, I find that simply recommending “hey, I don’t play antag much/I don’t play lowpop much, but you can always defer to ahelp and ask admins if there’s any fun gimmick ideas they could offer you to make sure they’re within etiquette for this round setting,” does a lot of good. But I just saw this conversation happen and it was...a huge missed opportunity for everyone to grow and learn and really just shutting down of someone who genuinely wanted help.
This was very hard for me to think through and condense. I do like you, I think you’re a good person and have a lot of knowledge and I know you can be a good fit for mentor, which is why this is so frustrating to post, because I don’t think you’re there at this exact moment. But I have a lot of confidence that you can get there. If I saw these things resolved maybe more consistently, I’d be happy to change my recommendation.
The short of it comes down to a lot of HoS/NTSO/Security general play I’ve seen since November. And this is really tough for me to put my finger on some singular precise thing that I’d like to see improve because I do genuinely have moments when I have fun playing rounds with you. You’re really nice to me when I’m AI, if I’m on my known and named characters. I can get some good momentary comments from you every couple of rounds as non-silicon.
My first bit would be that I use PDA a lot. I started harping more and more on people about this since it’s fallen by the wayside when it comes to communication within Sec teams. I get that playing with an auditory headset is a trait and a burden I choose to take upon myself, but when I get little to no words from my acting HoS or NTSO, on PDA and Gen Comms, despite being active in seeking responses and feedback, and when I have to initiate most face-to-face discussions, it does feel like I’m being left out of things; when it becomes patternistic over the course of three months, I start to see it as a problem. There were a few other people who did deaf Security or Mime Security and just don’t anymore because they feel it’s not inclusive enough or they’re too arduous to have on a team. I don’t want people to feel like that. It’s a little thing, sure, but it does actively change player’s decisions in where they do/don’t feel they’re welcomed or they “fit”. This is a general problem with the busy RP server on the whole, but it’s one that is consistently there when I have you as a HoS. Which is terrible, because we did have a kind of neat but brief face-to-face interaction just yesterday, but that hasn’t been my average experience over months of playing as an inferior officer with this kind of setup. And I’m a little confused, I guess, since I have worked with tons of HoSes and Security Officers (and now Assistants too), on both Classic and RP, that have found it trivial to send back a message to me at some point in the round, whether it’s just a “hi” or “good to hear you’ve got it”, or a “can you go to there and check it out?”. I think general communication quality and keeping people involved and feeling like they’re getting to participate in a round has kind of dropped off.
My second bit is still Security related. I randomnamed at some point a while back, maybe late November. I had good fortune to get a HoS and you as NTSO on a changeling round, but I was assumed new so I just did the training run down since I was also with another officer who I knew was new (and deaf) and wanted them to not feel alone or lagging or behind; we had played a round together before that too, though I think this was either without a HoS or without a HoS who bothered to train them. Plus I think learning from every HoS I play with is valuable and meaningful. There was a point later in the round, we had already caught one changeling who, I believe ate someone in one of the cells, and you had run off solo somewhere in maintenance. I can’t remember if you used crisis alert or radio, but I ran to, as the other officer and HoS took care of the scene in the cells. You had the PortABrig and were trying to apprehend someone who downed you with a capu sting. I saw they were trying to carry you away, then I stepped in to grab you and take you to Medbay. I got to Medbay and realized the person who was with you in maintenance took your baton. I don’t know if you thought I was legitimately fresh-off-the-shuttle-new or anything. You popped back to and immediately asked “why did I let [so and so] take [your baton]?”. I remember that really clearly. I remember how absolutely defeating that was that I thought I did a good thing and was being told I messed up something. I wasn’t super bold or confident, I was still, I believe, pretty early in my Sec learning and hadn’t gone to Classic to really understand what it means to get your shit kicked in and be stressed out; nor played as much as I have since/as much as I do now. I said I would cryo after that because my heart wasn’t there anymore, on what had otherwise been a pretty quiet and fun shift with some really good RP moments, but ended up staying the rest of the round to try and find that baton because I felt like a failure if I didn’t. I think the bigger point is, presuming you thought I was new at the time (I was randomnaming on a not-previously-used character), I think it just would have come off very abrasive to someone trying their best and trying to learn, that they ran to help the NTSO and actually it was all just a big mess up versus having done something right. I wasn’t a new player, per se, but I feel like I was still a very new Sec player, and that experience still sticks with me.
I can’t attest to any teaching in other departments, really. I have played a lot of rounds with you since November, but I am usually AI when you are on at the same time, or randomnaming as Security when you are in other departments, and my experiences then have been that you’re usually quiet on comms, so I have no real metric for those rounds.
My last odds and ends are still rather Security-related, because that’s where I get to meet you the most. There’s some other stuff that I’ll let other people represent if they want, but two conversations stick out to me from Discord/OOC stuff. One was a while back, where you told another whitelisted HoS, as a whitelisted HoS, that they needed to not cryo out of rounds and just stick it through. And I think this runs really counter to a great deal of what admins have told HoS and Security and just all players time and time again during some of the Worst Rounds EverTM, which is that this is not a job or obligation, it’s a game. And pressuring people to stay in somewhere that they’re no longer having fun, or even that is actively damaging their mood, is not really a mentality I stick up for. People need to leave rounds sometimes. People playing Important Roles need to leave rounds sometimes; and that’s okay. As a normal run-of-the-mill player and Security Officer, I would much rather have a HoS that is really happy and enthusiastic for 70 minutes, but then has to go or stops having fun and cryos out and knows when to call it quits; over a HoS that guts it out for an excruciating 2 hour round but isn’t having fun and doesn’t propel that to the team. This is actually precisely where my best rounds as Security have been made: people leaving, people cryoing, people DNRing, people who are puritans on Sec. I don’t think these are necessarily related, other than that I have a lot of fun with people who are also having fun, and once that’s gone and expended, I would rather they take a break than beat themselves up through something. The person this was said to even said it was legitimately messing with them and their confidence in their decision to leave a round. The guidelines for mentor point out that mentors represent Goon, in a way. There’s a weight to words that comes with being HoS, and then also being a mentor and HoS, and I don’t want people to think that sticking with something miserable is necessarily required, whether they’re HoSes, Sec, or any other job.
The second of this is more recent. I 100% have a sort of “escalation level” I like to see and am comfortable with and sometimes I don’t get that out of antags in rounds. And that’s most rounds and ultimately it’s fine the majority of the time because everyone has different expectations and goals from me when they’re playing antag vs. how I play antag. Someone who didn't ever play low-pop or RPO before the server flip was on a low-pop round and perhaps went too hard for the number of people playing and the staff available. Yes, there’s something to “hey playing this way kind of soured the round for people since it was too stressful.” This person came to Discord at round end and owned up to having made the round unfun as an antag and apologized repeatedly, then tried to seek constructive feedback for how to engage with people in the future. You reiterated you were mad, the round sucked, and you wished you were HoS so you could’ve “kicked their teeth in” for them singling out and killing the solo officer and other antag-y things. They continued to apologize and seek how to improve throughout this entire convo, and left feeling just winded. Sometimes you solo Sec and die horribly or are kidnapped alone and mindslave-cloned or fall out an airlock and no one can get you or the RD overthrows the Captain and leads an uprising against you and you alone, or a changeling bites you and that’s that. It sucks, it’s never fun or cool, but it’s also not something I pin wholly on an antag because some of the game is necessarily Sec v. Antags. Continuing with wanting to “kick [their] teeth in” when they had already said “I completely agree with you: what should I do to learn from this in the future?”, sits really wrong with me. These types of antag situations are the moments when it becomes apparent that maybe someone needs or wants guidance in-round and post-round on fun gimmicks to run or ways to escalate properly. And none of that was offered once, other than to keep telling the person they were out of line. And if, in event, you can’t come up with something of your own alternative and specific, I find that simply recommending “hey, I don’t play antag much/I don’t play lowpop much, but you can always defer to ahelp and ask admins if there’s any fun gimmick ideas they could offer you to make sure they’re within etiquette for this round setting,” does a lot of good. But I just saw this conversation happen and it was...a huge missed opportunity for everyone to grow and learn and really just shutting down of someone who genuinely wanted help.
This was very hard for me to think through and condense. I do like you, I think you’re a good person and have a lot of knowledge and I know you can be a good fit for mentor, which is why this is so frustrating to post, because I don’t think you’re there at this exact moment. But I have a lot of confidence that you can get there. If I saw these things resolved maybe more consistently, I’d be happy to change my recommendation.