In-game Username: eric156
Discord username: eric156 (User ID: 269666235258503169)
Characters you play: Keer-Sar, Andrea Baker, George Moffington, Finds-The-Crew, Jei-Am
On average, how many hours do you expect to admin per week: 2-8 hours per week
Days you are available to admin on: Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays. Late-afternoon to evenings U.S. Eastern-Standard Time.
How old are you? 23
Do you have any SS14 experience outside of Wizard’s Den servers, or any SS13 experience? I have about 350 total hours of tracked playtime in the SS13 server byond://play.monkestation.com:1337
Do you have prior administration experience (SS13/SS14 experience preferred, please also post a way for us to verify this)?
I have no prior administration experience on either SS13 or SS14.
Have you ever been banned from any SS14 or SS13 servers?
I have not been banned from any servers as far as I’m aware.
Admins have the ability to perform various tasks which are not available to the average player. An incomplete list of these tasks is: in-game rule enforcement, in-game events, ban appeals, and out-of-game rule enforcement through things like replay/log reviews in response to player reports. With these, and any other tasks you’re aware of in mind, answer the following two questions.
What are you primarily interested in doing as an admin?
I am interested in answering player issues using the in-game ahelp function. I believe this would entail myself observing most rounds which I’ve grown more interested in recently. Specifically, I am most interested in working on the Salamander server, but that is most likely due to most of my recent playtime being mostly on Salamander.
What are you least interested in doing as an admin?
I am least interested in doing admin events for the servers. I believe my in-experience with using the Debug and Console commands will lead to many mistakes in any attempt at an admin event. I personally experienced a few failed admin events in the past half-year of playing on Wizard servers and do not wish to cause that feeling again for an entire server of players. I’m not interested on running admin events until I’m robust at all the tools at an admin’s disposal.
_ Answer the following questions in detail, so we can get a better idea of how you’d approach adminning. _
What role do you think game admins serve on our servers?
The role of a game admin is to enforce the rules of the server and maintain a positive relationship with the player-base. This is most-commonly done through the SS14 in-game Ahelp menu where players can talk directly to administrators and request their help. Some of the most common Ahelp interactions I’ve seen are: replacing an important round-progressing roles who’s player has disconnected from the round, clarifying and enforcing rules that a player has broken, and fixing destruction to the station that would lead to a degraded game experience for a player (fixing the arrivals area or an overloaded AME before the 30 minute mark).
Administrators are also tasked with protecting the server from bad-actors who maliciously join servers to spam advertisements, cheat, or engage in raids against the server.
The last thing admins do on Wizard servers is host occasional events for the server. This could be something as simple as trading TC for a Central command stamp, or something grandiose like a server-wide arena event where hostile mobs are continuously spawned in for the crew to fight.
All of these responsibilities exist to make sure everyone has a fun time playing SS14.
Why do you want to become an administrator for SS14?
I want to become an administrator for SS14 because I’ve had a ton of positive experiences playing this game and Wizard community. I really want to give back to the community with my time availability. Also, after spectating, interacting, dead-chatting, and sometimes being Ahelp’d myself with admins AjexRose, luckyshotpictures, LordEclipse, CptJeanLuc, and Chief_Engineer, I wish to continue getting to know the rest of the admin team as these folks have severely impacted my time spent playing SS14 in a positive way.
How do you feel about the current roleplay status on the servers?
The current roleplay status on the servers has not changed much over the past six months. Half a year ago I felt as though the LRP server Lizard and the new Leviathan server had a good source of players who actively attempted to talk, teach, and work together with each other during the quite first half-hour of every round. I only ever saw one or two characters with a special gimmick and only really saw self-insert characters. Most of the problems back then were power-gaming self-antag players who desired to cause headaches and explosions for their own amusement. I believe the current LRP on Leviathan servers has not changed much at all, there are still plenty of people who wish to talk, teach and learn new things about the game every day. The main thing that has changed about LRP is that on low-roleplay servers the rounds are packed to the brim with actions from antags. There’s almost never a quiet moment to stop and talk if you are playing security or a command role. Even antags themselves feel forced to act fast most of the time. If antags move too slowly to fulfill their objectives, then the round ends before they know it and have to make a last-ditch attempt on the evacuation shuttle. All of this is to say that the LRP servers are jam-packed with action which is easily more rememberable than the quiet teaching and chatting RP time usually spent in the first half hour of the round.
In regards to the Medium RP server Salamander, I believe Salamander has followed a similar trend. As more and more players fill up the server, more action and mayhem has filled up the server. Previously, one could expect several hour-long rounds with little to nothing to do except roleplay. This influx of new players has caused action to increase similar to the LRP servers. The most notable difference between the LRP servers and MRP server is the application of Standard Operating Procedure and Space Law. This has led to much better RP scenarios and has quelled a lot of valid hunting for wearing petty syndicate gear like Syndicate Pajamas.
Other than banning problematic players, what admin actions do you believe have the biggest positive impact?
One of the most positive interaction an admin can have is the many smiting tools an admin can use to enact humorous justice against problematic players. Hearing from an admin, “Yeah, they’re a trashcan now.” is one of my most memorable experiences when seeing admins right the wrongs done by problematic players. Having hilarious and whacky ways to round-remove someone can give the victim of the problematic player some peace of mind instead of a quiet and invisible ban.
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?
If i remember correctly, one of my very first time’s being contacted by an admin through the Ahelp menu was about 5 months ago when I was just only building my third ever singularity. I accidentally singuloosed on Origin station as a non-antag by forgetting to activate one containment field emitter. luckyshotpictures had asked me, “alright, how long you want?” shortly after I realized the singularity was loose. After de-escalating and explaining myself and how I had no idea I had been the sole cause of the singuloose, they let me off with just a warning and even apologized for being hostile from the get-go. I ended up joking that I really need to install OBS for situations like this and that was the end of the interaction.
I believe what had caused this to happen was a sudden spree of problematic players at the time. This caused Luckyshot to be fed-up with all the same back-to-back ahelp tickets and stopped empathizing with me until I had a chance to explain myself. Luckyshot realized this and even apologized for their actions. I believe at the time their workload may have been too high and just needed to take a break. All my further interactions throughout the past half-year have been very friendly and positive.
Have you ever had a good experience with the game or a game admin? If so, what was it?
Usually, admin events are the most common ways I’ve enjoyed the game. However, recently I executed a successful Nukie round where the three of us invaded and successfully did a zombie operation. The best feeling in the world was hearing all the chat in OOC about how much fun the entire server had. Hearing from all the different players how they enjoyed every minute of the round was amazing. My best experiences playing this game is when the entire server enjoys the round. Winning and losing the greentext as antags isn’t what SS14 is about. Aiming for a experience where all players enjoyed their own round is where the best moments of SS14 are. Admin intervention is not needed for everyone to have fun.
The following are scenarios, respond with how you would handle each as an administrator. Respond with the assumption that you are an administrator with full access to the admin tools, and that you have all the knowledge needed to use these tools. Respond in detail, explain the reasons behind decisions you make and describe any assumptions you are making. When you need to make an assumption, it is preferred for you to describe how differences in the assumption would affect your actions.
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”.
I would take action based on how long ago the last admin event happened and wait about five minutes after the traitors are selected. The reasoning behind this is to give the traitors a chance if they require a ghost-role helper, like a Holo-parasite or reinforcement. This also discourages begging from the players as they see no immediate reaction to their demands for entertainment.
I would have to make three assumptions before any action.
One would be that the players asking for “something funny” are not problematic-players and are not new to the server. Problematic-people may seek to abuse the fun granted to them which could ruin another player’s game. New players shouldn’t learn to expect admin fun every time they see a colored ghost next to them. The second assumption would be that there were no recent admin events in the last round. Any fun activities by admins should be sparce in usage in order to keep a friendly but responsible rapport with the players. The third assumption would be successful approval by another admin on the discord. Asking if your idea for some fun is okay would help double-check if the fun would do something unintentional and prevent unforeseen consequences. If any of these assumptions are disproven then I would not take any action at all and just continue observing the round as any ghost would.
For the “funny” I would likely copy gimmicks I’ve seen performed by other admins. An example would be Bread in space, where several ghost-possessable bread is placed in space with a hand-held radio nearby. Another example would be giving Coleslaw to a captain as a bit of an inside joke.
You see a clown using crayon to write on the floor in front of security. The clown writings are negative things about security, like “shitsec”. A secoff tells the clown that they’re being arrested for vandalism, stuns them, and cuffs them. Before the secoff is able to get the clown into the brig, a passenger slips the secoff, causing them to lose their baton, then uses the baton to stun another secoff that comes to help as the clown runs away. The passenger escapes through disposals. Having heard an AOS radio callout, the detective enters maintenance near disposals and shoots the passenger to crit. There are four players in this scenario, the clown, the passenger, the secoff, and the detective.
First, check to see if the passenger has an antagonist role assigned to them. If they do, then no action is necessary.
The rule, “Don’t be a Dick” protects the clown in this case. They are allowed to start small IC conflicts.
The secoff instantly moving to arrest the clown may be over escalation as they could have just asked the clown to remove the writings. That would have been a perfect scenario. In any case, the secoff was allowed to arrest the clown for an IC conflict caused by the clown.
The detective is permitted to use lethal force on the passenger. While security instantly gunning the passenger down on sight is discouraged by the rule, “Follow escalation rules, don’t make Cargonia,” it is not forbidden. The detective also only shot the passenger to crit, not killing them. The detective even shot the passenger while not being aware that the passenger could very well kill them with the secoff’s baton. Still, the detective is not explicitly breaking the escalation rule. The detective would then be expected to, “make an effort to prevent the other party from dying by either treating them or bringing them to Medbay.” However, the facts of the scenario do not move past the point the passenger enters crit.
Only the passenger deserves at least a recorded warning for breaking the Rule, “Do not intentionally make everything worse [Self-Antagonism].” By interfering with the arrest, taking the secoff’s baton, and fleeing the scene, the passenger is clearly now a major problem for security. A stun baton is deadly in solo-combat and the passenger did all of this unprovoked.
You and another admin have been adminning for around an hour. The rate of issues has been easily manageable due to having 2 admins. Neither of you have been talking in admin chat. You are using ahelp to warn a player for breaking a rule when the other admin joins the ahelp and confirms that it is against the rules, but that it’s fine in this case and they can ignore the rule for the rest of the round. You haven’t taken any other admin actions yet, such as applying a ban or writing a note.
This is assuming I do not know why the player is exempt from the rule the other admin confirmed was broken.
There are many circumstantial series of events that are impossible to predict which could lead to another Admin explicitly telling a player to ignore a rule. What if the player is an antag? What if the player is part of an admeme event by the other admin? What if nukies were camping the area around arrivals? There best way to handle the situation is to communicate with the other admin on why they took that specific action. Under the assumption that all communications in ahelp are recorded in Discord, a reasonable explanation should be able to be communicated.
If all attempts at communicating with the other admin in Admin chat or discord have failed, communicating with a higher-up would be needed to help clear up any misunderstandings or investigate the other admin’s actions.