SS14 account username: benevo
SS14 most common character: Skylar Feufer
Ban reason: metacomms with ShadowShibbi
Date of ban: 2023/6/13
Length of ban: appeal only
Events leading to the ban:
Background:
Since about mid April I had been attempting to recruit some friends to play SS14, not necessarily with me but simply because I enjoyed the game and wished to share it. This had an extremely low degree of success for a combination of reasons including: The game’s presentation the material that is provided on the SS14 web page and the steam posting could not effectively convey game play; The duration of a round is substantial even on chaos servers such as lizard; and the time investment to learn basic controls is not only long but is frustrating. This last issue was initially exacerbated by my providing third party guides created by Liltenhead. The issue with guides for game controls was that information was provided without experience and each control was given equal treatment. There is a similar issue with job guides where information must be simply memorized to be employed at a later time. Acquiring the information to control the game then play a department could take 40 minutes.
Regarding my choice to abandon third party guides in favor of a method of continuous communication over discord. This can of course be done via the in game chat, and I have trained new players in the in game chat; however, given my ridiculously poor spelling, slow typing speed, the availability of tools to greatly accelerate the training process, and very importantly a near certainty that my friends would not play the game without my initial presence, I felt that the employment of voice communication was the only reasonable course to accomplish my goal.
The Ban Event:
My friend (ShadowShibbi) whom I was in communication with had chosen to play botany given that the previous round we had located a gatfruit while playing salvage. We where both interested in experimenting with the gatfrut as neither of us had ever seen one despite my excessive time spent as a salvage specialist; unfortunately, we where unable to as a chemist had my friend as a target for that particular round. we where killed and stuffed in maintenance. We where later found, but our harvest was confiscated before we could be revived. As I had only seen the gatfruit once during my playtime I expected that it would not be fruitful to attempt to look for one and thus I played chemistry so that I would be available to immediately support demand for fertilizer and mutagen from my friend. On round start my friend promptly visited the HoP and requested access to salvage to look for seeds; the HoP denied the request. My friend then spent the round in botany experimenting with the botany systems as I could only help with the very basic elements. I do not have a good understanding of mutations so my friend would request chemicals from the wiki to experiment with and I would create them.
At some point my friend got curious about the foam from the previous round. My friend requested some; I stated that I was not sure what it contained as I have never gotten chloral-hydrate to put someone to sleep, and as a syndicate the chemist from the previous round would have access to nocturne. He requested me to create a chloral-hydrate foam regardless. I engaged with the request out of skepticism and curiosity; producing what I thought would be at worst a harmless prank. As I had never made a coral-hydrate foam, and I had little experience with foams created, I made a mistake which I was unaware of. I expected the solution to disperse over three medium transfers as one bucket contained the chloral-hydrate and water and the other the fluorosurfactant.
After producing the reaction mixture I left chemistry and went to go see what was happening at the bar where most of the server was gathered. To the displeasure of many of the people at the bar the RD had been experimenting with smoke and foam grenades in the bar this would false flag the RD later. Just after I was seated I see my friend’s sprite descend in its green uniform. I am immediately put to sleep along with a number of other patrons at the bar. I later perish while in medical. I eventually was revived and started to replace the pills that where used for revival of various members of the crew.
It is at this point I receive an Ahelp message from Chief_Engineer asking why I had given ShadowShibbi the chloral-hydrate foam in which I communicated that it was a request via external methods. This is the point where I was banned; unfortunately, I was unable to convey the severity of creating a second account to my friend.
Addressing dependencies with sister post:
The information in the sister post is essentially correct with one exception the phrase where discord message is more accurately discord voice communication; although, this could be argued to be a semantics difference the level of communication that could occur over discord text is not comparable, and another issue is that discord messages as opposed to voice violates the purpose of rapid commutation and can only be employed for subversive or malicious intent. I believe that I have conveyed why my intents where not malicious in nature.
Reason the ban should be removed:
I fully understand why I was banned; truthfully, I understood that this was a rule with my specific use case is explicitly addressed, and I believe I understand the reasoning behind the rule foremost being that metacommunication is exclusionary and is damaging to role play. I believe that I have conveyed although my behavior was negligent, I did not have any malicious intent.
why I would like to have my ban waved:
I would like to be unbanned from the Wisard’s Den servers as this is one of the few games that I enjoy playing on my own. This is a bit odd to say about a interaction based game; what I am trying to convey is that for most other games I would not be particularly interested in playing unless I was joined by people I know; this is not the case for SS14.
If my ban is removed I look forward to making new friends in game. I will probably take a further break from recruitment, but when I do resume I promise to be judicious. Stated explicitly I have no further plans to use external communication to assist other players in leaning the game.