General lack of care for RP in admin events/ Punishing station for events outside the control of the station

[Medster]

Admin(s) Key: Don't remember as there where multiple I believe
Your ckey (Byond username): Medic_AG
Your Discord name (if applicable): Medster (Trees)#8368

Date(s) of incident (GMT preferred): 

7:30AM 3/18/2023 (GMT)
2:30AM 3/18/2023 (CST)
(Time after the round finished)

ROUND ID: Don't remember

Nature of complaint: Lack of care for station via lack luster Emergency Response Teams
(Select all that apply: EG - clarification required, misapplication of rules, misconduct, abuse of powers, feedback, other)
Links to all relevant ban appeals for any bans related to this complaint:

Brief description (tl;dr here. Just the critical elements):
Admin punishes whole station for not very garbled ERT request (It had Leetspeak in it) by sending only three ERT members to help deal with a station consuming infestation of Terror Spiders

Full description of events:
During the round, one or more of the admins where messing with the station, having some playful banter between the syndicate and the station it's self.
the syndicate ends up setting up a jamming field around the station, an admin thing that was purely RP and couldn't be dealt with in game. the mid round comes about and it ends up being terrors, which the syndicate takes credit for.

when the captain calls for help as they should in the situation they where in, the ERT request goes out garbled (a few extra odd characters in the sentence but still easily readable). The station gets a CC message saying that the ERT request is to garbled to mean anything and yells at the captain for using Leetspeak. a few minutes later CC reports back that they've deciphered the message and are sending a reduced ERT force as punishment for the ERT request.

The ERT request it's self was super straight forward, going something along the lines of "Syndicate Sent Terror Spiders, Send Help".
a straight forward message that you couldn't mistake for anything else with the amount of extra characters used to garble the message

when the inevitable happens and the three man ERT squad dies on the second encounter with the terror spiders, the admins resort to sending in Death Squad a few minutes after the ERT team dies

In this situation, Command tries to do everything correctly, they even faxed a message to CC after they sent the first virus to the syndicate reporting what we'd done.
We called for help, and got punished for things out of the stations control

I personally complained about it on the discord here
| https://discord.com/channels/145533722026967040/565872046312259594/1086554447951437885 |

 

From what it looks like, this isn't the first time this has happened either and multiple people I know are trying to outright leave paradise because the admin's response teams where always lackluster for the issue at hand

Off memory, the last time that this happened, Sec was manned with four total people, and all the active antags joined together and made it hell for the station. when an ERT was called for it was lacking in what the station needed

Both times the admins shrugged off the complaints

Edited March 20, 2023 by Medster
Adjusting Times/Time zones of incedent

[Sirryan2002]

Will try and get a response out for you in the next couple days :)

[DoctorDrugs]

Sorry this has taken so long to get around to, We've had a bit of a busy couple of weeks since Sirryan's last message. We do try to get to these as quickly as we can and we dropped the ball on this one more than a little bit. Before I get into the Admin complaint in it's content I do want to comment and make clear what counts as feedback and what doesn't really work well as feedback. The generally accepted forms of feedback will revolve around the forms here themselves more than anything due to the nature of being able to read and respond versus the Paradise discord as that generally ends up being flooded with messages between rounds or during rounds depending on what's going on for that day. It can make it difficult to hold conversations on specific subjects like that and/or leaving valuable feedback. Leaving an Ahelp during or the round after is also fine to try and give direct feedback to the admin about say an event or actions as well as I'd believe most of the admins would be open to being DM'd to discuss events of past rounds as long as the conversation is civil. There's other avenues as well for talking to admins just naming some of the more reliable ways to get a conversation going and staying on topic.

Now in terms of the complaint regarding the admin's actions and consequences. I've taken a little bit to look through game logs, far longer than I should've to try and fully understand the situation at hand during the round including issues with what happened, what led to them, etc. The admin's intentions weren't to be malicious but rather tie the previous portions of the round before the midround roll into what was going on. It seems they were intending to create an enjoyable/memorable experience for players that tied the general population into the situation and not just the command staff, this however backfired in that regard causing people headache rather than enjoyment. None of these actions regarding the ERT and deathsquad were done specifically to ruin things for the rest of the players, the deathsquad after the ERT were sent due the quickly snowballing nature the station had become (this is what I understand from the combat logs and chat logs, including admin chat pointing out the snowballing nature at that point and pointing out the amount of friendly firing that was going on as well). 

The admin in question acknowledges there was problem to how things were done in regards to the little "event" they were running at the start of the round that ended up not working out so well in regards to the ERT request/mid round issue. They'll be a little more open minded in the future in regards to mid round interaction with ongoing things they were running before terror spiders popped up from the mid round roll in this instance and how to handle ERT requests/considering sending their own of their own accord unprompted for situations like these. With all that said I do want to take a moment to also point out that running events in any scale sometimes don't work out the way someone intends or wanted to from the beginning, sometimes that works out well and other times it ends up backfiring on the person who's been running the event. That seems to be what happened here, if you have issues again with an admin's event feel free to leave them feedback on the forums, file an admin complaint, contact them directly in DMs over discord, create an ahelp in game or in the case of being a mentor reach out to them via msay in game.

[Medster]

Thank you for looking into it, Admittedly I should have made an Mhelp or said something during the round in Msay.
That being said, I did really enjoy the event up till the Midround and it only really made sense that it would be the Syndies that sent it. Though RP wise i would have likely enjoyed more either no ERT response with the idea that the Jamming field was jamming everything to the point of the inability to communicate outside of the station. Maybe with some jumbled message back from CC saying they don't understand and aren't sending anything. Or they send a full team with the idea that its a valuable station that they want to keep safe from what ever may be jamming the signal.

At the time it felt like the admin had sent in a reduced team for intentional reason of sending in a Death Squad later on. It ended up being the reason I've since started looking at admin interactions more cynically given it forced me to take off my Rose Tinted Glasses. from what I've heard around the community after posting the initial complaint, it seems to be somewhat of a trend at the time. Admins hosting events that don't quite fit the whole player base and more a few people lucky enough to roll good in Dchat.

I haven't seen anything of the sort as of late outside of some iffy Midround Antags that spawn after there's already been one. Which I'm still unsure if its a Admin Spawned thing, or if its a natural thing that the server can do, spawning a second midround such as another Biohazard, Shadow Demon, Etc. Other than that I haven't seen much, this could be due to me not being on quite as much, Or the admins genuinely getting better with how they host these types of events.

Over all I may have been blinded by a rage when I first saw the round, Partially due to recent news of friends quitting because of events like this, and partially because it hurt like hell to take off the rose tinted glasses. Its good to hear that the admin in question does intend to improve with their future events, and from the sounds of it, they meant no harm in the event that I've detailed above, Just following procedure.

As per the time frame of response, I'm ok with the response time as people have lives outside of the game. As well as the general vague nature of the identification of the round likely not helping either. Here's hoping that the Staff Meeting coming up solves some of these issues to a further degree

[DoctorDrugs]

Deathsquads are the primary way to force the round to end during terror spiders/xeno infestations that have passed a critical point and have snowballed out of control for ERT or the station to have a chance to recover, considering the deadchat comments and in game chatter between people I'm inclined to believe it had passed the point of no return so a Deathsquad was justified. Typically we might send an ERT that ends up with a Deathsquad after the fact in order to push the round into a conclusion and start the next round rather than leave a lot of ghost players and a station full of threats with not much else going on. 

As for multiple midround rolls, admins can either set up multiple ones on purpose to roll of which it can still select nothing as an option when the event triggers, they can set none to happen for the shift, or can let it happen naturally. The admin here let it happen naturally which isn't always the case but it's a thing some people either forget or don't mind letting it roll to see how it affects the round going on. Normally right before the end of the round without an extensions about 10 minutes or so there is usually another midround event roll that happens, sometimes nothing spawns from it and sometimes you get last second blobs, spiders, etc.

Last thing I want to touch on is that admins/headmins/maintainers/etc are not omnipresent beings, if we don't know what's going on from seeing it ourselves there's a chance we most likely will miss it. The best thing to do when having issues with admin events or admin interactions is to bring it to the appropriate parties attention in appropriate and easily seen places like the forums, directly to the admins attention or other easily accessed and a place that isn't drowned out by other chatter.

[DoctorDrugs]

It has been a little over 2 weeks since the last response to this complaint, unless there's something else you'd like to add, discuss or have addressed I will be considering this complaint resolved in a week from today.