In-game Username: greymaria
Discord username: greymaria
Characters you play: Lachesis Greyfin, and recently rarely Daedalus Scorchedwing.
On average, how many hours do you expect to admin per week: 10-15
Days you are available to admin on: Most days. The only time I’m guaranteed to be _un_available is the middle of Friday (Pacific time).
How old are you? 30
Do you have any SS14 experience outside of Wizard’s Den servers, or any SS13 experience? No.
Do you have prior administration experience (SS13/SS14 experience preferred, please also post a way for us to verify this)? My only notable administration experience in any capacity is several years ago, a brief tenure as a moderator of the official Mindustry Discord server, before being asked to step down after clashing with the community over actively moderating their memes and shitposts, which were often intended to be hurtful toward specific groups, and additionally clashing aggressively with a user who was flagrantly anti-vaxx during the height of the coronavirus pandemic.
Have you ever been banned from any SS14 or SS13 servers? No.
_ 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? Out-of-game rule enforcement. (I already find myself watching replays to identify events leading up to unusual problems.)
What are you least interested in doing as an admin? In-game events. (I think admemes and events can easily be hit-or-miss sometimes and I don’t think I’m imaginative enough to personally orchestrate anything of the sort, especially not one that would be a “hit”.)
_ 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?
Game administrators are here to ensure that the experiences of the players are enjoyable. Enforcement of the rules is a critical job, but they’re also here to listen to the questions and concerns of players who feel that something is detracting from their experience. Players may be seeking knowledge of a game mechanic that they can’t ask about in-character, or voicing a suspicion that a player is acting inappropriately, or reporting some sort of bug that they’ve encountered that’s hindering their game. And, of course, there may be some unusual event being run at the time, led by the admins to shake up the routine and explore the true potential of the game. TL;DR: game admins make for a better experience.
Why do you want to become an administrator for SS14?
I want to be able to help make the experience better, and I feel I’m already doing quite a bit of what that entails. I sometimes find myself observing rounds, stalking suspect players while dead, or watching a replay to investigate player complaints read in the Discord. The time I spend doing these things easily leads into time spent handling incidents discovered. I’ve already personally submitted a few reports created as a result of this research, and I believe I may well be capable of handling these incidents live as they occur, too.
How do you feel about the current roleplay status on the servers?
For context, I am largely a Leviathan server player. I will go to Lizard if Leviathan is full, or sometimes to Vulture when it’s populated. I am not a Salamander player and do not feel I have the energy to maintain Salamander’s expectations.
Rather spotty, if I’m honest. Sometimes interactions with players go butter-smooth. Everyone communicates, does their part, plays their role, and the station prospers. And it’s a great time, and I feel like everyone has fun, even if I get torn down by some antag activity. And sometimes it’s like squeezing blood from a stone, with players acting like everyone else is an NPC and they can just do whatever they want–I’m still particularly upset about a recent shift where the other players within my department didn’t even take their job seriously. It’s particularly disheartening to see completely uncustomized characters in gray jumpsuits and yellow gloves screaming like children and acting like they’ve got the right to do literally anything they want, even as Security drags them off for their multitude of crimes. TL;DR: it feels like it often averages out a bit south of LRP expectations.
Other than banning problematic players, what admin actions do you believe have the biggest positive impact?
Guidance. Players may well not even know that they’re in the wrong, or they may be completely clueless about a task with no one capable of helping them understand. I particularly recall being bwoinked to be informed that I can, in fact, eat airlocks as a space dragon, which immediately made my experience better. I don’t think I would have ever been able to learn this without being explicitly told.
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’ve not had a single negative experience with a game admin. Though as for negative experiences in-game, I will elaborate on the “recent shift” mentioned two questions up; it was as a Botanist where the two other botanists stayed dead silent, ran around with wirecutters in one hand and a mutagen dropper in the other, and even notably interfered with the one crop that I’d told them that I was personally working on. They didn’t seem to take their job seriously at all, reacting rather dismissively to my voiced concerns even after a few plants erupted into kudzu from the unsupervised applications of mutagen. They even had the gall to lie about using mutagen on the one singular plant I was working on as a project… I admit at that point I became fed up with the bullshit, smacked both of them once, and walked off the job to HoP for a transfer.
But I don’t know what we can do to prevent this kind of thing happening so that other players don’t experience this. It’s a roleplay issue at its core, I believe, and the only way that anyone could realistically invoke change here is to be the change… to surround the problem with a more desirable environment in hopes that the players will adapt and blend in.
Have you ever had a good experience with the game or a game admin? If so, what was it?
I’d like to refer back to the previously mentioned time that I played a space dragon ghost role, when the admin observing informed me that I could devour airlocks instead of simply bashing my way in. But I’ll also mention that there have been a couple of times that players in-game have uniquely praised my actions, as if I’ve done something that they normally wouldn’t expect someone in my position to do. Say–I’m the RD and wearing my hardsuit, my face will eventually heal if met with the shards of an ice anomaly; the APE keeping the anomaly stable will not.
_ 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’m not particularly inclined to oblige this request–or respond at all to them, in all honesty. The round has just started and players have barely had a chance to settle into their assigned roles. Let the living players dictate the course of the round organically for a while first. I don’t think any extraneous condition would particularly shift my position on this.
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.
Ah, this one’s interesting. At face value, the passenger and the detective are both likely in the wrong here.
Looking at the Detective: There is only one scenario in which the Detective is not blatantly in the wrong for immediately using lethals on the Passenger to take them to crit: the Passenger must still be in possession of the stun baton. The stun baton poses a significant threat to the ability to successfully detain the Passenger using non- and less-lethal methods. The Detective’s sidearm is for self-defense and cannot always be expected to be loaded with rubbers. However, he is likely to be in possession of a stun baton of his own. If the Passenger does not still have the stolen stun baton and the Detective uses lethals to effect arrest, the Detective has failed to appropriately engage. (The Detective normally shouldn’t be acting in the function of a Security Officer anyway, but I’ll leave that out of consideration for this scenario.) If the Detective does not immediately act to seek medical care for the Passenger once subdued (ideally, I would expect that an epen be used after the Passenger is cuffed and the Detective does everything to hasten the Passenger’s transport to Medical) then the Detective is likely to be to be given much more than just a warning.
Looking at the Passenger: The Passenger in this scenario is, with no room for argument, always in the wrong if they are not an antagonist. As a second Secoff responded to the arrest as backup, it is reasonable to assume that in this scenario both Secoffs are genuine. The severity of the Passenger’s misconduct may well depend on other factors, such as the antag statuses of the Passenger and Clown, and the distance and prior activity of the Passenger from the Clown prior to engaging with the Secoffs. After all, if the Passenger suddenly abandons hacking open a door two hallways away and beelines for the Clown, there’s a lot more than just self-antag going on here. A thorough examination of the Passenger’s prior actions will be required.
Looking at the Secoff: Did the clown attempt to flee prior to being stunned? While the graffiti is annoying to see and certainly a detriment to player morale, it isn’t inhibiting gameplay in any manner. I feel it’s more appropriate for the Secoff to attempt to arrest the Clown without opening with the stun baton, but I don’t feel strongly enough about it to say that the Secoff shouldn’t use the stun baton. I don’t think I would argue with the Secoff’s judgement here unless he’s particularly combative in his interaction with the Clown, but I should hope that he’s at least advised the clown to desist prior to declaring that he’s being placed under arrest for continuing. If the Clown hasn’t been previously reprimanded, the Secoff may well be overreacting.
Looking at the Clown: Do something funny. Scrawling “shitsec” in rainbow crayon in front of Security just isn’t funny. It’s annoying to see no matter who you are, you’re intentionally pissing off the players who are supposed to maintain the peace, and you’re giving the Janitor undue additional busywork. Even if the clown is an antagonist–find something funnier to do, please. However, I’m not going to talk to them about this or hand out a significant warning for this unless the clown has a history of being abusive toward Security in this particular manner. (And no, lubing the Security front doors isn’t funny either.) Antag Clown gets a pass–but still, do something funny. (Or violent.)
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.
My personal reaction to this is quite likely to be proportional to the severity of the rule being violated (and in perhaps some weird edge case, whether the nature of the round has some bearing on it), but in almost all cases I won’t just sit quietly. I will question that judgement and seek opinions from other staff. Allowing the rule violation to continue conditions players–even the bystanders, the ones not originally involved; monkey see, monkey do, as it were, and this is highly likely to be detrimental to the game experience.