/tg/Station 13

Bottom post of the previous page:

Making a friend on Teamspeak into the centerpiece of an event might not count as favoritism depending on the event. Making that friend unkillable by any means and fucking with all attempts to keep him contained while he griefs people clearly crosses the line.

This situation is sure making a good case for public logs. Everyone on singulo was calling Amnestik a dumbshit conspiracy theorist for suggesting that anything like this happened.

What Ausops said. Teamspeak is unlogged and unaccountable.

The admins are allowed meta info because its necessary for doing their job (adminhelps, not making friends immortal so they can grief), not just for the sake of rule immunity

This can be solved pretty easily by:

A) Making it clear to tedward1337 and all other admins that it is always best to choose people for an event form in-game and not outside of it.
B) Not doing an event like this again cause clearly people didn't find it fun.


Hell, this thread went on long enough before MSO pointed out the fucking obvious.

Vekter wrote:I highly doubt he gave the event to Kodeth out of favoritism. It was likely more of "this guy is right here might as well".

Pretty much all it was.

I would advise any player to not be in team speak with admins while playing the game and admins to reciprocate this suggestion.

Sure it may be fine for you to use it as admin speak 2.0 but even a sliver of the information gushing from you in chat is enough to get a player banned.

tedward1337 wrote:

Vekter wrote:I highly doubt he gave the event to Kodeth out of favoritism. It was likely more of "this guy is right here might as well".

Pretty much all it was.

Doesn't matter and it's not the point.

QuartzCrystal wrote: A) Making it clear to tedward1337 and all other admins that it is always best to choose people for an event form in-game and not outside of it.
B) Not doing an event like this again cause clearly people didn't find it fun.

"I didn't know it was bad to violate half the rules at once I promise not to do it again" is kind of light considering players who wordlessly helped each other grief security would be pseduo-blacklisted.

Why is doing it with admin powers somehow better instead of worse?

So what is the point? There is practically no difference between communicating with someone you're doing an event with either through PMs ingame or talking on TS.

There is a difference however between selecting someone for an event from ingame and through TS however, but apparently everyone wants to dwell on the communication issue and not the unfun event/unfair way of selecting someone for an event issues. You guys are talking about metacomms as if someone gained an advantage or disadvantage in the game through this event, which doesn't appear to be the case.

Here's a serious question: If tedward1337 and kod came up with an event idea and had to communicate on TS for it (or somewhere else outside of the game to facilitate quick communication) and the event was objectively fun and good (however you imagine this) would this be an issue still? What if tedward1337 came up with the event and pulled someone at random from deadchat and then asked them to get on TS to facilitate the event?

It's not bad that an admin "meta-communicated" with a player, it's bad that they chose a player for an event through the meta-communication not through the game (as in, by virtue of being on TS their chances of being involved in fun increased which isn't fair to those not on TS) and it's bad that the event wasn't fun.

The potential for abuse is far greater when it's admins and players *metacommunicating, instead of just players.

Is it possible for us to get the full logs of this round? I've heard multiple admins say prior to this incident that logs are available on request.

QuartzCrystal wrote:So what is the point? There is practically no difference between communicating with someone you're doing an event with either through PMs ingame or talking on TS.

Other than being logged

QuartzCrystal wrote: There is a difference however between selecting someone for an event from ingame and through TS however, but apparently everyone wants to dwell on the communication issue and not the unfun event/unfair way of selecting someone for an event issues. You guys are talking about metacomms as if someone gained an advantage or disadvantage in the game through this event, which doesn't appear to be the case.

I'm not hung up on anything, I think the favoritism/horrible event/being "organized" out of game is worse than the sum of its parts, which are all pretty shitty individually already.

QuartzCrystal wrote: Here's a serious question: If tedward1337 and kod came up with an event idea and had to communicate on TS for it (or somewhere else outside of the game to facilitate quick communication) and the event was objectively fun and good (however you imagine this) would this be an issue still?

I don't think it's even comparable at all. This wasn't an "event." It was someone logging on and telling his friend he could break the rules and making it so no players could stop him from griefing.

For the sake of argument though, I'd rather him not do it that way, or at least be upfront about it. "Hey we came up with this cool story and made the server fun for everyone" is vastly different than silently fucking everything up and then denying it ever happened.

QuartzCrystal wrote: What if tedward1337 came up with the event and pulled someone at random from deadchat and then asked them to get on TS to facilitate the event?

Different order, different issue. Again, asking first would be better. Would still probably be kind of odd. And there was no fucking event to facilitate, there was no VOIP coordination at all needed to spam heal on someone.

Why do I need to make rulings on all these hypothetical scenarios where tedward used teamspeak for the good of all instead of talking about what happened?

It's not bad that an admin "meta-communicated" with a player, it's bad that they chose a player for an event through the meta-communication not through the game (as in, by virtue of being on TS their chances of being involved in fun increased which isn't fair to those not on TS) and it's bad that the event wasn't fun.

So you agree it's bad but want to argue semantics about which part is bad because of which part?


Anyway I promised myself I wouldn't get drawn into huge arguments about SS13, so let's just wait and see what the headmins say now.

Amnestik wrote:Is it possible for us to get the full logs of this round? I've heard multiple admins say prior to this incident that logs are available on request.

Sure. Do I just scrub IPs or what?

I keep seeing the word "event" thrown around here and it's starting to bother me. I think it's important to establish whether there's a limit to what sort of uses of admin powers can be considered an event.

I think that the defining features of an event are that the admin looks at the roundtype, looks at the circumstances on the station, and decides on something to spice up the round. There's a deliberate planning process with the intent of involving as many players as possible in something as fun as possible. Wherever possible, the players are notified through in-character means that something out of the ordinary is happening. During the event, there are efforts made to keep things balanced and make sure that the consequences follow from player actions. And after the event is done, the one who ran it spills the beans on what happened and asks for feedback to help improve future events.

None of these things seemed to happen here. The event was random and kind of nonsensical, the admin involved used teleportation and deletion to reset things when the station staff managed to legitimately win, and after the round he flatly refused to admit that he had had a part in it. When the event came up in discussion on singulo, the player who had been part of the event repeatedly denied that anything had happened and said over and over again that the logs were fabricated. That says to me that the player wasn't approached in a manner like "Hey, want to be part of an event?" It indicates that he thought he was getting away with something.

If tedward had said after the round "I ran a bad event, sorry," that would be one thing. But he kept on obfuscating the issue until another admin took matters out of his hands and revealed that he had done something. That's not something you do after running a bad event.

What we know:
Kodeth was being a fuckface, got arrested for ????. Tedward jumps on and makes him
1. Unstunnable
2. Uncuffable
3. Un-arrestable
4. Invincible
Kodeth runs around and, while not directly killing anyone(apparently), he does become a general nuisance and continues to be even more of a face-fucker.
Tedward claims that this is an event, and the fact that
1. He was in an out of game chat with Kodeth
2. He is pals with Kodeth
3. Kodeth was arrested LITERALLY right before this shit went down, and Tedward got on and (apparently) wordlessly did this
All have NOTHING to do with it WHAT-SO-EVER.

What we don't know:
What was being said in the TS, because, hey wow, it is unlogged. Why we have this is a mystery to me personally, as it reminds me of 2012 era basil metafriends, but w/e
WHY he picked Kodeth, but I have my own suspicions
WHY no other admins said 'what the fuck is happening'

Side facts:
This shit was unannounced, except for a Centcomm announcement of 'Meth is a hell of a drug.", and Tedward CLAIMING that he renamed Kodeth to 'Meth Head', a statement that is simply untrue(lying???/)

This is literally the most obvious, clear, cut-and-dry, textbook example of favoritism I have ever seen in this whole piece of poop video game.

Steelpoint wrote:

Vekter wrote:Can I posit something here, and you guys are welcome to delete this if it's not warranted or just ignore me, whatever.

Why the fuck are we getting this worked up over a single round of a video game?

I'm not defending Ted (what he did was p shitty tbh) but holy shit guys. Really?

That's a pathetic cop out and you know it.

The main point of contention I'm seeing here is that people really seem to dislike the idea that a admin essentially turned someone who was arrested by security into a unstunable, unarrestable, nusience that frankly is something I would expect (and actually have had happen) from SoS.

He wasnt arrested at the time. He was only arrested AFTER he was injected with meth and ran around punching people with boxing gloves (stam damage)

I've had admin assisted prison breaks before, and it can be some of the most bullshitty rounds you can ever be forced to deal with
Making an unstoppable wrecker and deleting chairs and handcuffs is very very uncool, You aren't adding anything to security's enjoyment of the round by making an already overburdened job even less manageable.
The playerbase is already shitting on sec enough as is, can't fight the grey tide and you at the same time, it's too much to ask, so keep your shitty events to yourself. The only saving grace is that you didn't make him an antag and allow him to outright murder the whole department, but even so, Looks like you were perfectly fine with making it impossible for the sec team to stop you and your special meth-head.

currently the three main reasons people are saying this was bad are:

meta coms
favoritism
shit minivent(my new word for any time admins fuck with the round in small ways, because admins fuck with the round in small ways all the fucking time, and it flat out says in the rules we are allowed and expected to)

I'm arguing against the 1st as being a reason for deadmin and ban when it was explicitly stated as allowed by people who were headmins at the time.
I'm also arguing that the second may or may not be the case, and that it *appears* to not be the case
And I'd argue that the worst any admin should get for the 3rd is a button removal.

Personally I think the only real punishment teddy should get is a smack on the wrist.

And also an apology to the sec players (individually) who had to deal with an unstunnabble unkillable druglord all round.

It's shit, but not that shit.

I will say I've never seen Kodeth and Ted talk before, and he doesn't generally have any friends among the administration.

I highly doubt that Ted's choice of player was influenced by anything more than convenience.

I don't see how it matters. He still gave preferential treatment to a player based on an out of game interaction that gave him an unfair and intentionally uncounterable advantage over other players.

I don't think MSO is interpreting events correctly. This was a piece of admin abuse, not an event. There was an attempted cover-up and Tedward got extremely defensive after what happened was revealed to the players.

I don't think direct assistance should be offered by admins to players during events. Spawning meth on the Centcom shuttle and sending it to the station would constitute an event, although a pretty one dimensional one; helping someone grief and escape security obviously does not.

This should be cut and dry, admins shouldn't be providing assistance to players during combat. That's not an event, it's interfering with the round to give favoured people an OOC advantage.

It's frankly incredible that an obvious shitty thing happened that we don't want admins doing and people can come up with excuses for it, obfuscate the issue and downplay it. Nobody died, but I don't think that's the point. The point is the methods used were unfair and excessive.

The headmins are meeting to discuss this.

Bust him back to trialmin and make him go through the public review process

tedward1337 wrote:

Amnestik wrote: If you didn't think he could escape, why were you deleting chairs for him? To irritate security?

The shuttle was docked/ a few seconds away from docking with centcomm
It was ilrelevent at this point, I could've filled the shuttle brig with say, lockers, or clowns, and it'd have the same affect.

Players that use the "few seconds from centcom" excuse get bant. The round doesn't end on the shuttle ride and if you had done anything else like that people would have complained anyway.

After discussion the issue we have decided to demote Tedward to trial admin and put him through the trial process including public review. Furthermore, admins are no longer allowed to be in teamspeak or other communication media with players beyond what is necessary to fulfill their duties.

To clarify HG's last statement:

Admins can not be on ts or anything like ts while players are on it when connected to the game server.