In-game Username: Doru991
Discord username: doru991
Characters you play: Franklin Werner, Malcolm Davis
On average, how many hours do you expect to admin per week: 10-15
Days you are available to admin on: I should have roughly equal amounts of time on all weekdays, and more on weekends.
How old are you? 21
Do you have any SS14 experience outside of Wizard’s Den servers, or any SS13 experience? About 40 hours on /tg/ SS13
Do you have prior administration experience (SS13/SS14 experience preferred, please also post a way for us to verify this)? No relevant experience.
Have you ever been banned from any SS14 or SS13 servers? No.
What are you primarily interested in doing as an admin? * Answering and resolving ahelps.
- Providing assistance/clarifications via other means (such as the admin-questions discord channel).
- Actively monitoring servers for issues and rule breaks that may not have been ahelped yet.
- Occasionally interacting with players in minor ways (prayers, centcomm fax etc.) to make their round more lively.
What are you least interested in doing as an admin? * Handling ban appeals.
- Scrubbing through replays.
Detail Questions
What role do you think game admins serve on our servers?
I think that admins on Wizden servers have the role of keeping the game fair, inclusive, fun and (to a lesser degree on LRP) immersive for the playerbase at large. This is done, of course, via using admin tools to deal with problematic players, put misguided players back on the right path and occasionally intervene in rounds to create interactions that wouldn’t be possible otherwise.
Why do you want to become an administrator for SS14?
I’ve recently taken a fairly long break from the game (around 9 months) and coming back I saw that the admin team seems to be more burnt out and stretched thin compared to the time I left. I’d like to be able to help the team keep up with admin duties and give back to the community after being part of it for so long. I believe my timezone is different from most current admins, so I’d also like to increase overall admin availability/uptime.
How do you feel about the current roleplay status on the servers?
The roleplay status on the LRP servers is, in my opinion, just that: low roleplay. From what I see, the average player is mostly reasonable, with some instances of tiding and… excessive mischief here and there. There isn’t much immersion, but I think it’s a given that there will be players who play more for mechanics than for roleplay.
I don’t frequent Salamander, but I hear that the roleplay quality there has declined, and I’m tempted to agree given that from screenshots and stories alone I could see some blatant LRP (maybe even NRP) behavior and rule breaks.
Grasshopper is a peculiar case; Since it requires ‘old’ players to be whitelisted to continue playing, it sometimes results in higher quality roleplay compared to the other LRP servers, which is good as it sets an example for new players to follow.
Other than banning problematic players, what admin actions do you believe have the biggest positive impact?
I believe guiding new players through means not accessible to regular players (eg. ahelp, questions about the antagonist they’re playing as), and helping them understand the rules so that they don’t break them in the future has a big positive impact on the community.
Admin events and other minor interactions, done in moderation, can help break out of the monotony that can occasionally appear in the game. Being in early access, the game doesn’t currently have that many round types and antagonists, and mixing it up with something like wizard nukies can lead to fun and memorable rounds.
Have you ever had a negative experience in the game or with a game admin? If so what, if anything, would you do to prevent other players from experiencing this?
I wouldn’t say so, the closest thing to a bad experience with an admin would be the time I received an ahelp for something I didn’t actually do, simply due to being in a crowd near the offenders. The situation was resolved easily though.
I have had some unexpected/unwanted admin events affect my rounds negatively in the past, but thanks to requiring a vote now, I can at least know to expect it.
Have you ever had a good experience with the game or a game admin? If so, what was it?
At one point, I took a nukie reinforcement role that was left behind on the nukie planet (after the nukies had already left), and decided to clean up the base for if/when they return. An admin offered to reward me for cleaning up everything, and teleported me on the station with a flamethrower spray. While this minor admeme didn’t end up affecting the outcome of the round in a significant way, it made the round more memorable for me (and the few bystanders that saw me, possibly).
Scenario Questions
Scenario 1
It is the start of the round. There are 60 players on the server. The game mode is traitors, traitors have not been selected yet. There are three players who decided to observe the round instead of join it orbiting you. Two of them are encouraging you to “do something funny”.
Given that the round has just started and there’s no arranged admin event, there’s no reason for me to influence it at all. I might use my admin ghost to play music for them (at least from my understanding, only other ghosts hear it) or go outside the station and honk a clown horn once or twice as a ‘funny’ thing to do, before returning to normal admin activities.
Scenario 2
This scenario takes place on LRP. The Head of Security has decided to coup the Captain. The Head of Personnel agrees with the Head of Security and has taken up arms in case it is necessary to aid in effecting the arrest of the Captain. The Captain is hiding with the Quartermaster in the cargo shuttle to avoid the Clown who has stolen the captains saber as a non-antag. There are five people named in this scenario. Please describe what actions, if any, you would take in relation to each, and why.
Assuming I’m not aware of the events leading up to this, first off I would question the HoS (and possibly the HoP) about why they think the Captain should be removed from their position. If the captain was indeed being unreasonably incompetent, outright malicious or blatantly breaking space law, I would suggest that they have at least half of Command on their side before proceeding. If it turned out that they did not have a legitimate reason for the coup, I would remind them that proceeding with it would be against the rules and could result in a roleban, and follow through if needed.
To me, the QM isn’t necessarily doing anything worth questioning, as the clown with a sword could be a legitimate threat and temporarily using the shuttle that they own to avoid said clown seems like a reasonable response.
Depending on the conclusions drawn from the previous investigation, I’d either question and eventually warn/punish the Captain for their rule breaking behavior up until then, or just remind them that they should not stay off station for prolonged periods. (If they’ve been on the cargo shuttle for a few minutes now.)
If the Clown didn’t somehow have a legitimate reason for taking the sword, I would tell them that since the Captain’s saber is an irreplaceable weapon belonging to the highest ranked crew member, stealing it is too far for a non-antag prank, and apply a warn/light punishment in accordance with guidelines, assuming that the theft itself is all they’ve done so far. (Here I am using the example of “Stealing high risk or high value items, like the nuclear authentication disk, for no reason.” as reference.)
Scenario 3
You are ahelping a player about an issue. The player has no prior noted issues. A few days earlier, an admin had told you that this type of situation should result in a temporary ban for a first offense, and you are confident that this situation is not substantially different from the type that admin was describing. During the ahelp, another admin pings you on Discord with a link to the ongoing ahelp and tells you to just indefinitely ban them and make them appeal. Excluding trialmins and headmins, all admins are equally “ranked”. A headmin is not currently available.
In the absence of a headmin, I would consult the Server Rules and Banning Guidelines again, and proceed with the option that seemed to most closely follow the guidelines. Otherwise I’d default to a temporary ban in the moment, and ask a headmin about the exchange before the ban’s expiration date so that they could extend it if they ended up agreeing with admin #2.