What purpose do admins exist for in this day and age

[oranges]

In recent threads, I've noticed a trend among both players and admins to occasionally paint administrators as one of two extremes:

Stoic enforcers of rules with no comprehension of the niceties of player interaction or the unusual circumstances that may have led to game events
Favorite-playing ass blasters who pick and choose which rules to enforce and which players to enforce them on at any given time due to a combination of whim and vendetta

Unfortunately, I've occasionally fallen prey to the first of these myself, or at least, reading and thinking back, I feel like I might have.

I think it's worth getting other players' and admins takes on the role of administrators in our game. We have a very hectic, very disruptive game, and in and of itself almost everything your average player does is going to be considered disruptive to other players. I think a lot of times in appeal or policy discussion threads where admins make statements to the effect of "if you did this I would ban you" or "I've seen this behavior before and it was fine" that those things can be misconstrued as gospel or rote precedent.

For example, it's an extremely common tactic, among a wider variety of players than I would expect, to ahelp asking "is <x> bannable?" or "if I <x> will I get banned?" before immediately launching into an accusation of the same thing against another person.

In my opinion, almost every situation is going to be different, and often when an example is brought up in context of a discussion, it relates to that discussion or to other situations which very closely mirror that discussion, rather than it universally being an overarching description of policy. And I think that a lot of administrators, myself included, can often fail to make that clear when we speak about events we've witnessed or when we discuss player activities.

At the end of the day, I think that admins exist to use their experience of similar situations or behaviors and knowledge of the situation at hand after due investigation to apply considered judgment to the actions of players in order to uphold the spirit of the 'ambiguous' rules (e.g. don't be a dick) and the letter of the 'explicit' rules (e.g. no ERP or spamming).

I think that it's important that when we make statements, we continue to urge ourselves to make clear that what we're describing is applicable in this situation, and not necessarily in every situation, if the description of events is in fact not universal. I think that a lot of arguments come out of players listening to misleading admin statements as being de facto opposition to a play tactic or behavior that they've seen many other people engage in under different circumstances, to positive effect, without awareness of any mitigating circumstances that the admin in question might be thinking of when they make the statement.

Similarly, while a decent amount of cover-your-ass is expected in any human interaction, I think it's important to remember that a good investigator _will often_ figure out when you are misrepresenting facts as a player, and _will often_ take that into account in determining judgment of the situation, because you've made your misrepresentation part of the situation.

Why do you think admins exist? What standards do you think admins should be held to? Do you think there are better ways to positively influence and build the player/admin relationship?

THIS IS NOT A HATE THREAD. THIS IS NOT A THREAD TO GRIPE ABOUT SPECIFIC PEOPLE. THIS IS A THREAD TO DISCUSS POLICY CHANGES AND NEW BEHAVIORS WHICH CAN BENEFIT THE GAME.

[oranges]

Personally I think admins are too focused on enforcement, and should be more like dungeon masters than keystone cops, working behind the scenes to repair immersion breaks and to encourage goings on, as well as boinking shitters to encourage them to act better, rather than appearing out of nowhere to lay the banhammer down on only the egregious offenders.

[feem]

ugh thanks for regurgitating the thread i posted then locked and asked to have deleted, oranges

ugh

[Wyzack]

Why did you delete it feem it is a good question and an interesting discussion topic

[oranges]

A dm doesn't need to interfere with the round constantly, they just make sure it keeps flowing smoothly. You went to far to the other extreme

[Togopal]

Interesting points, personally I feel as if I had been victim to some pointless rule enforcing myself. However, as you said, it's a hectic game, and events are very fast paced. You don't have time to wait for other opinions on the situation when there's 11 other tickets open, so the most you can do is wait for an appeal if necessary, view their full side of the story, and then wait for other people who have witnessed to potentially chime in. And as players are human, admins are human too, and it can't be expected to not make mistakes, or not have biases (albeit biases can be controlled to the point where they don't affect your decisions as an admin). For example, I was once daybanned for killing and spacing the Captain. This was caused from events building up to the situation, including the fact that I was laying in crit on the bridge and the Captain ordered the HoP to take me to the Bridge. I was not aware of this, and it broke the final straw leading up to the events. Gouty, the admin who banned me, had no possible way of telling that I wasn't able to hear them. After I explained my situation on the forums, I got unbanned.

For your open questions,

Why do you think admins exist? What standards do you think admins should be held to?

Administrators are here to enforce whatever rules are listed. If somebody is warned/banned for something others would consider petty, is it not the rule's fault? It's not the administrators fault, they are expected to follow every single rule and make sure everybody else follows those rules. Most rules are very easy to follow and come down to using common sense, however, there's specific rules that can be broken casually without the person even knowing, such as OOC in IC (instances that aren't strikingly obvious like ooc terms).

Do you think there are better ways to positively influence and build the player/admin relationship?

Unfortunately, nothing. Standards of roleplay could be lifted so rules are less vague, but very few people want a strict environment in a video game, in this community.

At least, those are my two cents.

[J_Madison]

There's two kinds of admins.

One that presses buttons.
One that doesn't.

One deals with more player and content based stuff.
One deals with more administrative and server based stuff.

Apples and Oranges. No fair comparison.

[imblyings]

>almost not post what was on your mind
>did it but regretted it but oranges reposted it

Sad

With some people, especially people who go 'well if x could do y why can't i', we don't and shouldn't have to think about explicitly improving our relationship with them. In some cases it may even be harmful to do the things that would improve it. In disputed cases sometimes it's the greater good for the most. Or something which isn't an immediately satisfying response because you can't do that for 2 or more players and have to settle for a limp compromise. Sometimes you just don't want to type several paragraphs detailing your thoughts on the matter and would rather a player just understand case by case doesn't mean you don't like them.

We're here to volunteer time better spent elsewhere to help a little bit with keeping the server alive with players, that's the bottom line. That's essentially the rule 1 for admins and what we are here for. Admins shouldn't be doing anything that deviates from that too much

[Yakumo_Chen]

Admins have been fucking with my antag too much and should be focused on rulebreakers. Twice recently I have had rounds where I take an hour to build up a grand scheme and enact it only for an admin to interfere and ruin things.
Just this week gouty called a death squad for my attempt at a hijack... because I killed everyone. To hijack.

[oranges]

Admins have been fucking with my antag too much and should be focused on rulebreakers. Twice recently I have had rounds where I take an hour to build up a grand scheme and enact it only for an admin to interfere and ruin things.
Just this week gouty called a death squad for my attempt at a hijack... because I killed everyone. To hijack.

This is a bad post, and your specific kind of "greens are my right" player are the kind of cancer killing tgstation

I unironically hope you get hit by a bus in the near future.

[bandit]

The bottom line is that admins exist to maximize the amount of enjoyment players get from the game. At the most fundamental level this takes the form of preventing people's fun from being ruined by assholes. Ideally it also takes the form of actively creating more and new kinds of fun for players with the game. Usually it just takes the form of admins making fun for themselves.

[Cobby]

> admins just IC issue everything

> admins always want to shoehorn themselves into situations

The line is usually drawn per player and that line can be adequately summed up to "am I affected"

[oranges]

Admins have been fucking with my antag too much and should be focused on rulebreakers. Twice recently I have had rounds where I take an hour to build up a grand scheme and enact it only for an admin to interfere and ruin things.
Just this week gouty called a death squad for my attempt at a hijack... because I killed everyone. To hijack.

This is a bad post, and your specific kind of "greens are my right" player are the kind of cancer killing tgstation

I unironically hope you get hit by a bus in the near future.

Code issue. Remove objectives that create this kind of playing.
How else do you hijack reliably? Freon? Plasma fire? Killing everyone on station at the point of hijack?

I'm not mad that they attempted the hijack, that is useful and causes conflict

I'm mad at Admins have been fucking with my antag too much and should be focused on rulebreakers

[Arianya]

Admins have been fucking with my antag too much and should be focused on rulebreakers. Twice recently I have had rounds where I take an hour to build up a grand scheme and enact it only for an admin to interfere and ruin things.
Just this week gouty called a death squad for my attempt at a hijack... because I killed everyone. To hijack.

Specifically you used a method that's very difficult if not impossible to counter and acquired such method through a admin spawned anomaly event/core.

Also its not like they gibbed you with no recourse, you could have and might have murdered that deathsquid with ease, given that they had no protection to your particular method of hijacking.

Also also, even though oranges hijacked the thread from feem, this still applies:

THIS IS NOT A HATE THREAD. THIS IS NOT A THREAD TO GRIPE ABOUT SPECIFIC PEOPLE. THIS IS A THREAD TO DISCUSS POLICY CHANGES AND NEW BEHAVIORS WHICH CAN BENEFIT THE GAME.

---

Regarding the topic, I think the issue is that quite a few admins have gotten used to mainly interacting with shitters when it comes to the rules, so their response to rule related questions or the like tend to slant towards the extreme because they're imagining/describing the worst case scenario.

This combined with the perception that certain grey zones will get you anything from nothing to a ban depending on the admin in question makes it very easy for people to see the admins as the "Stoic enforcers" as well as the "Favorite-playing"

I also think admins have some secondary duty to keep the round interesting, whether thats giving the traitor some opposition or creating adversity for the station to overcome. Its not an every round thing but its something I think is part of their "duties".

[Gouty]

This whole post

Nail on head: you hit it.

Yakumo, as I told you during the game, I honestly thought you would defeat them as until then I though a Phazon with a grav catapult and a supermatter crystal was basically uncounterable.

So I thought a deathsquad would be a fun way to get some people back into the round (as a LOT of people were dead) and would give you a bit of a challenge.

Instead there was a bug where the pulse rifles ignored your mech and crit you inside it, something I had not anticipated (I also thought that Phazons reflected energy weapons so the DS would have to get creative).

[Cobby]

Being creative in a way that makes you unstoppable and being creative in a way that is fun(ny) are two distinct things, although they may have some overlap.

This is really directed to yakumo, but admins can also apply this to how they approach situations "creatively"

[feem]

One of my favorite things I've done as an admin was a situation where someone did a bunch of gamebreaking OOC crap and I was able to manipulate it ICly into a series of escalations between the crew and Centcomm which resulted in the crew winning against a deathsquad.

I'm pretty okay with that.

[feem]

Every situation is different. The process of administrating this game requires constant oversight. I feel it is critically important that

1) Administrators DO act upon situations that they believe require intervention
2) Players and other administrators DO engage with events which are in dispute
3) Resolutions ARE reached (or mandated) to satisfy _the issue_, if not the players and administrators

Blanket statements to the effect of "players shouldn't ahelp" can lead to things like "admins don't do anything/don't help me when I think people break the rules, why should I bother ahelping/following rules in the first place?"

Blanket statements to the effect of "admins shouldn't involve themselves in IC events" can lead to things like "admins don't do anything/don't help me when I think people break the rules, why should I bother ahelping/following rules in the first place?"

An admin doesn't exist to immediately follow through on everything someone ahelps about. You would be _shocked_ at how many ahelps we get that DON'T result in anything, are immediately resolved, or which result in talking-tos without documentation. A lot of admins DO understand nuance and actually do investigate shit before making notes or bans.

One of the reasons I made this thread in the first place was that I'm sick and tired of two things:

1) Admins who are adamantly against players having fun
2) Players who are adamantly against the existence of admins

NEITHER of those attitudes are good for the game.

[Cobby]

Getting told on the forums I'm MrNoFun and I put my foot in everything then getting whined at ingame because I IC issue everything is an interesting concept.

I remember a complaint as a newer admin where I ICd issued someone NEARLY killing the other guy because he took their hardsuit without explaining why and was told it's not ok to Ic issue stuff just because the person got to medbay immediately after.

Now I'm getting told that this is in fact perfectly acceptable to send someone to crit/near crit because they remotely inconvenienced you and this is actually one of the staples of ss13. There have been ZERO policy changes, ZERO announcements about this shift change in adminbus or admin forums, etc.

I just position myself as the players involved and ask myself is this fair (or in the case of being an acting DM, will this create a neat story that people may tell after) and just gotta roll with the punches because you can't please everyone.

Edit: Fair is on an OOC level. Would I be upset if I got in trouble for this and why?

[captain sawrge]

i think the best mindset an admin can adopt is the role of mediator rather than trying to police things

[bandit]

An admin doesn't exist to immediately follow through on everything someone ahelps about. You would be _shocked_ at how many ahelps we get that DON'T result in anything, are immediately resolved, or which result in talking-tos without documentation. A lot of admins DO understand nuance and actually do investigate shit before making notes or bans.

More or less this -- for every complaint that an admin is literally hitler and over-involved there is an opposite complaint that the admins aren't bringing down the hammer of Thor on everyone. (Often they are two sides of the exact same adminhelp.) The point of said talking-tos is to get people to correct their dickish behavior without having to ban, or to help people understand why they deserve a ban if they do. Give a man a ban, teach a man not to be banned, etc.

[cedarbridge]

I exist to amuse myself and accidentally amuse the players on the server at the same time.
I exist to ban the mean people who made you feel bad or ban you for doing the same to others.
I exist to skip the line above this one because I'm a lazy person who just wants bad people to run around breaking rules unless its you because I have a grudge against people with your name.
I exist to ruin the game experiences of dozens of people because I'm an asshole who hates fun and hates this game.

[Whoisthere]

It's telling that Oranges "secret" server, where players had their ahelp removed, and icepacks and Oranges just bwoink people based on observation of player behavior, has the least issues.

[Qbopper]

why would you bump this

before the inevitable "hurr u just bumped it" someone else would have replied anyways because now it's an unread thread

[Cobby]

Wow.... I thought necromancy was banned in Cyrodil!

[Whoisthere]

Are you just mad because you got banned there

[feem]

since this thread got bumped unnecessarily and nothing worthwhile has been said since it was bumped and i wrote the OP before oranges copied it in, i'm now declaring this thread a horse zone until someone tells me otherwise, either verbally or through their actions

[youtube]_Q-g-HiVEGU[/youtube]

edit: silly pkp unhorsing the thread; it was bumped three days ago from _september_ to add a stupid comment about a different server; this is an old thread and is thereby horsed