[Saegrimr] Hunting247 & Dattinderbox Permaban Appeal

[hunting247]

Byond name:
Hunting247

Character name at time of ban:
Billy Harrington

Banning admin:
Saegrimr

Ban reason and length:
The ban reason is: "metacommunication" Permaban

Time ban was placed (including time zone):
9/5/14 - 03:01:14

Your side of the story:
My friend and I were banned for "metacommunication." We simply were rping as Billy Harrington and Van Darkholme doing simple set up and reenacting scenes of Gachimuchi where one of us would be in a room and the other would walk in and (cue scene into wrestling). After a while of running around and pushing each other we were both in maintenance when suddenly we were both put to sleep via admin (presumably Saegrimr) and I was kidnapped, cuffed, stripped of my PDA and headset, taken to a random room in maintenance, and shoved into a locker by Saegrimr. After a while Van Darkholme regained functionality and came looking for me (while I was slowly dying) and eventually finding me. We are both back in the hallways when I get chased by a mad man and I am once again put to sleep suddenly; I get up after getting lit on fire and adminhelp to wonder about being put to sleep twice with no reason behind it. Saegrimr responded with "Must be something with the game's code" after that he proceeded to question my friend and I about how he found me so quickly and "Knew of my location (after I was kidnapped) without any IC communication" (I was right next to my friend before being dragged off); after several answers from both Dattinderbox and I we are continued to be questioned by Saegrimr until I told Saegrimr what he wanted to hear, that we were talking outside of the game.

Why you think you should be unbanned:
5. Don’t metagame. Do not ever use information, acquired out of character or through patterns or events your character would not be able to know, in game.
I strongly disagree that any action that could be listed under Metagaming was preformed by Hunting247 or Dattinderbox.

[Saegrimr]

Kind of strange, I was expecting both of you to make a separate appeals for each of your accounts.
I enjoyed the gachimuchi gimmick. It was funny, but theres a line to be drawn when it comes to metacommunication. You were watched by several admins following eachother around like lost puppies for three rounds, no words exchanged in-character or via PDA. You just spontaneously meet up and start the show, and then both of you gang up on someone when anybody tries to stop you beating on eachother.

The problem here is if an actual traitor comes around because you were an objective (Van Darkholme was during that round, actually) it gets pretty shitty for the guy when one of you reveals "hey i'm getting eaten in the dorms/maint tunnels/carp rape cave" over steam/skype/voip of choice. The rules are there for a reason, to keep it fair for everybody involved.

[hunting247]

"then both of you gang up on someone when anybody tries to stop you beating on eachother."
That is just natural progression.

[Saegrimr]

Are you just not seeing what the problem with this is?

[hunting247]

Are you just not seeing what the problem with this is?

I understand the problem but I feel the punishment is excessive since we've been given the okay to do gimmicks in the past by other admins.
I feel it unjust as no in round information was shared, thus no rules were broken.

[Dattinderbox]

If there really is a line to be drawn to what we did why didn't you immediately tell us to stop. You obviously knew what we were doing, other admins knew that we were doing, Dana Ray beat the shit out of us during it. You spawned clowns on us for ERPing. At any moment you could have been like hey you are being meta, stop right now you are breaking a very important rule. I don't think Hunting or I have or had caused any problems on the server. You were trying to preemptively get us to really break the rules by throwing us into a scenario where it would seem like we are metacommunitcating. When the extent was us just saying hey let's go here and do an event, when you or another admin had unfrozen me in maintenance I didn't know where he was, I ran around the maint looking for him. Like any two wrestler men would do for each other.
All we would do would push each other down, if a player did attack us that is natural progression and would would push them down. Only time we did get lethal was when someone was trying to bash in our brains with a fire extinguisher. All coworkers in the game band together when they are getting attacked, that's a lot of this game. I honestly didn't think we were crossing any lines, because you clearly saw us doing what we were doing and you said nothing prior until you already made up your mind about banning because you saw me open up a maintenance door and check all the lockers. When we were pushing the clown, which really isn't uncommon in this game, you PMed me and could have asked and told me then. You just asked why I was beating him (We were just pushing him, no attacks). If someone attacked us lethally we would fight back, are we to just run away and get battered with a crowbar. We never did, HEY GIT DAT FUKKIN GUY!
I'm sorry if our gimmick caused you any trouble or problems, we were just trying to do something fun and silly and we needed to communicate a bit for setting it up. I understand that this is a problem and that you do have to punish it but I think the punishment is going to far. A permaban for being pro pantsu wrestlers. I love this server, it's great! It's really fun and I didn't think this would have been met with such harsh measures. You guys do great events too, I loved the JoJo one, LIZARD BALLZ! and the great tribe rain dance turned spirit quest that was busted up by metapowercrew. Thank you for reading this and I'm sorry if this doesn't change your mind. We really love the server and it's culture. We weren't trying to be malicious.

[Saegrimr]

The kidnapping situation was put there to see what the reaction is. Sorry if it seemed like I was baiting you, because well.. thats pretty much what it was. We wanted to see what the extent of the communication was between the two of you.

Standard policy for metacomms is a permaban, and you caught the eye of the other admins first hence some of the other things like clowns and questions coming at you.
I can see it as being a mostly harmless parade, and adding a bit of much needed humor, but the metacomms rule is taken seriously here.

I'd gladly reduce the ban to say a week, if three things happen.
1: Both of you cut the metacomms, no IC information whatsoever while the round is going.
2: If you two want to do another gimmick like this, play it out in-character. That means using the PDA to communicate, ask eachother where you meet up, one of you goes AFK in the dorms, whatever. Things like that. None of this silently follow eachother around and meeting up after a split. This is extremely suspicious and one of the primary reason action was taken.
3: A headmin or someone else above me okays this.

And another thing is to just be completely honest in ahelps. Half-truths and lies only makes it worse.

[Dattinderbox]

This is very agreeable to me, I understand that meta-communication can become a giant problem and I'm sorry it had to come to this. You were looking at it from the stand point of real shitlers meta'ing to get delicious greens and making a round truly terrible for everyone else. I'm glad that you are so diligent with sorting out the issues such as this. I do ask that you point out this thread and posts to an headmin and they make a post in this thread too so that we know who it is and if they want a bit more information about your actions and our actions. I think it would be good to have someone with a fresh set of eyes to look at this and also through in their thoughts. Or if you could tell us if there is a current headmin on that is active and wouldn't mind reviewing what happened, and we could PM them about the situation.

[Hibbles]

... we've been given the okay to do gimmicks in the past by other admins.

Who?

As for this case, if SG is honestly okay with it, then I'm cool with giving a reduction too. You've already seen we take this pretty seriously, and in the future you'll probably do things in-character and all that.

[hunting247]

... we've been given the okay to do gimmicks in the past by other admins.

Who?

SG

[Hibbles]

Did you mention that the gimmick would involve metagaming or was that detail omitted?

[hunting247]

Did you mention that the gimmick would involve metagaming or was that detail omitted?

That's the thing thou we didn't metagame. We needed communication for the funny gimmick to work but we were always right next to each other; not a single form of information regarding the round was exchanged. The only time it could be presumed that information was exchanged (which it wasn't) was when a admin intervened in the middle of the round, kidnapped me and left my friend to find me. During the kidnapping my friend and I were both put to sleep and we couldn't see a damn thing so to say/think "oh how did your friend find you so fast, you must have been metagaming" is crazy. It was only by luck that my friend found me and I'm lucky he did cause I was slowly dying from suffocation.

[hunting247]

^ What was that about?

[Hibbles]

Guy was actually making a valid point. Metagaming is any communication about the game, between you and another player, with anything but the game. So, for instance, talking to their character, using the radio, or PDA is in-game communication. Using the BYOND pager, Steam, Skype, or Teamspeak to talk about the game you're in is bad.

[hunting247]

Guy was actually making a valid point. Metagaming is any communication about the game, between you and another player, with anything but the game. So, for instance, talking to their character, using the radio, or PDA is in-game communication. Using the BYOND pager, Steam, Skype, or Teamspeak to talk about the game you're in is bad.

Alrighty, It won't happen again.

[Saegrimr]

Alright then, bans will be removed on the 11th which was one week from when I said I would. Expect to be watched for a while afterwards though.

[hunting247]

Who wouldn't want to watch Billy Harrington.

[Saegrimr]

I will admit I was laughing pretty hard during your skit in the boxing ring.

[hunting247]

I will admit I was laughing pretty hard during your skit in the boxing ring.

How about the 10th since we made you laugh.