New rules dropped, I’ve been told feedback is wanted. I’ve got a lot of things that I’d like to feed back.
First up generally, the new rules are way too long, nobody is reading all these, nor could reasonably be expected to on joining. Copypaste into a word processor tells me it’s 9143 words long. If the idea is that a new player will scan the subsection titles then move on, the contents of those subsections, often unintuitive, make that an ineffective way to learn the actual rules.
Conceptually it’s a poor idea to try to account for every edge case in rules, in practise this length will make sure most people only have the vaguest idea of what is and isn’t allowed, and probably find out via a ban once they’ve fucked up on a subclause. The other major issue is that this is rules lawyers heaven; trying to pre-litigate every single scenario is going to mean the only people who read the entire rules are either admins, the type of people who wouldn’t break rules anyway, or snotty rules lawyers looking for loopholes. Rule 0 or no, this is what a long rules list communicates. I don’t understand why we don’t simply have 6-8 fairly broad rules with tolerances, and then some examples of what constitutes breaking them.
However, since we’re clearly committed to this philosophy, I’ll take it as given for the next stuff.
Secondly, specific things:
‘Do not threaten to ahelp other players or argue with them about rules’ rule is entirely about talking about admins IC - clarification over whether this also applies to LOOC would be good
‘Use realistic character names, and do not use names of famous people’ rule doesn’t specify how enforced the naming conventions are; a human named ‘Joe Biden’ is put on the same nono list as any lizard name other than Uses-The-Format. Needs clarification on the line between conventions and rule-restrictions.
The categories in ‘Roleplay Rules’ as far as I know are not always communicated ingame - a player won’t know where they fall as, for example, a monkey full of cogni, a shipbound ghost role, or a mouse.
'Do not metagame, obey the Metashield’ restricting sec’s ability to investigate stealth items is fundamentally opposed to the social deduction core of the game. This rule is genuinely anathema to the SS1*; the idea that roleplay means you’re not allowed to partake in a central game mechanic is mind boggling and solves no issue; stealth items are not supposed to be impossible to detect, they’re supposed to be harder to detect than non-stealth weapons and having to pretend you don’t know a thing that you can determine using in-round information is probably the single most jarring instance of rules butting up against design. This is my biggest single issue with the rules currently.
'As an antagonist, only be friendly to your team and don’t work against your team’ isn’t clear how it applies to random ship ghostroles. Do they count as a team?
A lot has been said about ‘As an antagonist, do not cause excessive death, damage, or destruction beyond your objectives’; it seems worded that you’re unable to kill witnesses (above a certain number?) unless they’re a direct threat. This is going to make anything other than stealth antag be rolling the dice on a ban, which I don’t like.
‘Follow reasonable escalation’ is WAY too long. The rules themselves seem fine, but it needs a merciless edit pass.
‘Stick to your role’ seems muddled; it frames itself as broad but boils down to ‘dont validhunt’.
‘Set an example if playing command or security’ has a clause about sec/command not using confiscated syndie gear. I don’t see the point of this; if the issue is sec trading for gear with syndies, ban that instead. Granting access/roles to crew being against rules also seems like a overreach. These issues aren’t usually round-impacting, I don’t see the need to make them admin issues.
‘Command and Security must follow Space Law’ the lack of an ‘enemy corporation’ rule meaning sec have to release confirmed antags falls into the same issue as the metashield; fundamentally at odds with the design of the roundtype.