Ban reason: Metacomms
Length of ban: Until appealed
Events leading to ban: Created a private discord server to invite regular players I enjoyed playing with. Admins found an invite in LOOC and read through discord logs uncovering some mid-round communication at the start of January that was perceived as meta-comming, and I was banned under a zero-tolerance policy. I was shown some messages which admins pointed out as problematic and given the lack of context I can understand how it looks that way (except for one I’ll totally cop it for that one).
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Admins made it clear that even discussing what I at the time deemed “useless” information is still meta-comms. One such example is a round I was observing I noticed a player repeatedly asking for my IG character over comms, clearly not checking the crew-manifest to see that I wasn’t there, and gently asked someone to just let them know I wasn’t there. I also asked if a certain department was struggling because of the lack of some basic items they had, which is information I at the time didn’t know how to observe as a ghost, so I tried to obtain that info out of players in the round. At the time I believed this information to be useless, but now that I’m much much better at the game, I realize how even this “useless” information can slightly influence the way people play mid-round and can agree with the Admin’s concerns.
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I’ve used the chat to discuss mid-round things with players not currently in the round, such describing my “borked sci setup” during a war-ops round where power was having issues, so I unanchored useless items drawing power to keep the point generation flowing while also trying to rebuild crafting stations my RD had taken out of the department. Another example is complaining that my chemist partner is making meth while I’m making all the meds and then later being blamed for letting medical “running out of topicals”. While these discussions were meant for people not in the round, posting it in a chat room where other people in the round could freely look at it was wrong, and I can understand the Admin’s concerns.
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There was one instance I was shown where I should be taking a fat-L. During an extremely difficult zombies round the Captain, myself, and 2 others had to relocate chemistry to the bridge, and while the cure was being made Captain and I heroically defended the entrance, narrowly avoiding infection. In order to create more cure, we needed more dead zombies, so I ventured away from the bridge to get some, where I was overrun and eventually killed in plain sight in front of the bridge. The Captain kills the zombies that killed me and then proceeds to leave my cured corpse outside instead of dragging it into the bridge to be revived. After a few minutes of not being saved I had a “mad-cause-bad” moment and vented in the discord chat, which leads to me being dragged to and saved at evac. While this is absolutely meta-comms, this information would’ve been given to the players IC had I just not been mad, shut my mouth, and waited for them to walk through the door and see me. While I certainly wasn’t trying to cheat, this is clearly a rule break as it may have influenced mid-round actions, and everyone has permission to point and laugh at me.
Reason the ban should be removed: While the zero-tolerance policy for mid-round communications is fair, with context provided I hope that it can be shown that these actions were not made in an attempt to cheat or undermine the roleplaying system. In order to be compliant with rules in future I will simply follow a vow of silence until the end of round screen is displayed before sharing any information. This situation has led to detailed rules discussions about what is and isn’t ok, and I’m willing to work together with the admin staff in order to make sure that future rule breaks like this are close to impossible and make the zero-tolerance policy extremely clear to any newcomers. I hope the admins show some lenience given my previous good behavior, and I’d like to accept responsibility, be better, and move on. But I can understand if that level of trust is permanently broken should my appeal be rejected.