Red_Bread - "Power gaming" (Selling Items in Cargo)

SS14 account: Red_Bread
Character name: Zeke Ssstone
Type of Ban: Role-ban/Ban 
Date of Ban and Duration: 22-11-22 to 23-11-22
Reason for Ban: “Continuing to complain about role-ban in ahelp.”
Server you were playing on when banned: Lizard US-West
Your side of the story: My role was Quarter Master of Cargo. I scavenged the maintenance hall for some things to sell (Fuel, Water, Loose Valuables.) and loaded them into the shuttle. The admin (Chief_Engineer) was not happy with me selling things from the station. I had been using this method for months now on other shifts and not a single problem from any other admin or Director Head. The admin claimed that selling things around the station was “Power Gaming” then he continued to use his admin powers to blow up cargo and kill me via commands.  We then had an argument in ahelp where Instead of  them explaining to me how it was “Power Gaming” I was left with unpleasant banter and a ban.  
Why you think you should be unbanned:  I don’t believe I am in the wrong, I play the game how I thought it was intended to be played. I follow the rules. None of the rules from what I see  specifically says cargo is not allowed to sell things from around the station.
Anything else we should know: If I can’t simply talk to an admin about the rules how are these problems supposed to be resolved?
 

In the interest of transparency, the alleged ahelp where you claim the admin was unpleasant and did not explain the breakdown of the recently updated ruleset will be posted below:


Rather than weigh in independently on the situation at this point, I’d just like to point out as an aside - instead of arguing with the admin you’re disagreeing with via ahelps, I would like to highly encourage you to reach out to @mirrorcult in the event you have any issues with how an admin handles a decision in the future. She’s the head administrator, specifically for these sorts of situations.

Regardless of how this appeal turns out, you largely brought the situation on yourself by reacting the way you did.

You are absolutely right I foolishly thought I could change the mind of the admin when we were in disagreement and I may have escalated the situation.  I believe I was wrongfully punished, the admin did not give enough effort into the explanation and decided to just drop an invisible bomb in cargo then continue to make my character explode. So forgive me if my reaction was a bit heated I hope you see where I am coming from with this. I will be more diligent in admin chat next time.

 

Hello!

You seem to be confused about what you actually did wrong. Here’s a breakdown.

Our rules 16 and 17 outline definitions of “powergaming” and “self-antagging”. Ingame, they describe that rushing for equipment that you don’t realistically need for your role is against the rules, and that being an unnecessary nuisance to others is against the rules. I would describe taking the vending machines from the hallways as somewhere in violation of both. Our wiki contains a longer form section of the rules which details exactly what you should not do as cargo, and that is explicitly listed as something that you should not do. You can find all of our rules here. I have helpfully provided a link exactly to the cargo section where it lists:

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Powergaming by liquidating public station assets to sell for money to the detriment of the rest of the station

Here’s a log of you instructing your employees, as QM, to sell everything.

This falls in violation of the rules as described above. This would normally be a warning. Due to the mass issue of it being the entire department, the admin in question decided to handle it partially IC. This happens sometimes when the issue stems from an entire department rather than a single person- it is easier to collectively deal with the department rather than every individual that liquidates public vending machines.

Cargo selling vending machines is widely regarded as one of the most irritating and immersion breaking practices in the game right now. Here’s a picture of it being discussed by a user two weeks ago. Of the three dissenting voices in the picture below, one has been banned from the game multiple times and the other two have never posted in our discord. It really does appear that this is nearly universally agreed upon as a bad practice and so we have included it in our recent rules rewrite. To clarify: you are not being punished for having done this prior to the rules rewrite- even though it has been something we have tried to stop cargo from doing for months.image.jpg

This was initially going to be an issue that was handled IC and serve as a warning not to repeat it. That escalated after the way you spoke to Chief_Engineer and a few specific things you mentioned that indicated that you were likely to do this again. I can’t speak for him, but in particular I took issue with:

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Red_Bread: We sell a little but of salvage stuff and somethings around the ship how are we powergaming?

Which, as Chief_Engineer pointed out, is contradictory to what you instructed your department to do. You doubled down.

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Red_Bread: Yeah so what?

This type of response does not provoke any good faith. Chief_Engineer decided to escalate your warning into a jobban from command roles (unclear guidelines in violation of rules) and supply roles (for your liquidation of the station) as a result. That’s when things really blew up out of proportion.

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Red_Bread: Seriosuly man you woke up on the wrong side of the bed
Red_Bread: you need some help mentally
Red_Bread: if you power trip over a game like this
Chief_Engineer: I don’t have hours to explain to you why cargo selling “anything you find” on the station is harmful to other’s experience. Appeal on the forums if you want to contest the roleban
Red_Bread: I guess I dont have a choice since you are so short-tempered
Red_Bread: what goes around comes around

After reviewing the situation and the conversation you had with Chief_Engineer, we (the game administration team) collectively agree that this ban should stay for now. I advise you to appeal in two weeks if you have had no further warnings or bans and we will revisit this.

 

For the record, I 100% agree with this point.

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Red_Bread: You just say selling things on the ship is bad, what are techies even supposed to be doing then

If you have any interest in coding, I encourage you to come to github and discord to work with the rest of our volunteer development team on creating a better gameplay loop for cargo technicians. They are perhaps the least fleshed-out role in the game and need something else to do while waiting between shuttle calls.

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