cedarbridge wrote:The problem with "escalation" in general is that the person not-instigating is almost never in the driver's seat. If I get jumped in a hallway by Shit McGrey and the clown and I punch him in the face to get rid of him. He can just say "oh good, escalation" and proceed to beat me into crit. I never asked for this "fun minor conflict" that now just put me into medbay for 10+ minutes but the instigator got exactly what he was looking for. I just wanted to do my job, but somebody not assigned actual antagonist status was given antag-lite via our escalation policy to take me functionally out of the game for the sin of being too close to them in a hallway when the need to griff struck him. The standard model for escalation favors the instigator in this case though. Disarm/Push > Victim punches via harm > Instigator harms into crit.
What I haven't managed to get from this is what was added to the game experience generally that has improve the experience? The instigator got to griff within the rules. The victim got taken out of the round until medbay could put him back together. Tops instigator gets a couple minutes in the brig but probably not since sec usually has more to do than chase some random hallway brawl over nothing and probably never gets reported either. The victim essentially just has to "deal with it" as an IC issue and generally just gets a raw deal out of it.
Interesting enough, I had a full "escalation" experience shortly after I posted my last message here. Before people chime in to say "policy is the new ban requests", I didn't ahelp, I don't want them banned, I don't even know their character name.
Low pop, only modes extended and traitor, and it wasn't extended. I'm a roundstart scientist, I walk into dorms to grab the air pump there, and I cross an Unknown in a chicken suit who's just leaving dorms. As I'm reaching for the pump, Chicken Man turns back, wields a flash, and comes towards me. Now, earlier I heard the CE say over the radio that the clown was a menace, and this guy looked like a clown (they didn't say a word during the whole engagement, so they may have been a mime). He's obviously coming to flash me, so I disarm him and run away. He follows, still trying to flash, so I wear my welding goggles and I manage to grab the flash but he starts pushing me back, so I run to the bar hoping he wouldn't keep fighting me if we are in a crowd.
Chicken Man follows and we start a disarm fight, which eventually involves bar patrons as well who don't know who is the aggressor and who's the defender. I never once used harm intent, with the specific purpose to avoid escalation and to give him the benefit of doubt. He's the first to switch from disarm to kicks and punches, and by then I'm sure I must be his assassination target. He tables me, I punch him back, patrons punch me, Pun Pun joins the fight, finally I'm critted. A bar patron drags me to medbay and leaves me there to die. My corpse is ignored until Chicken Man walks into medbay and grabs it.
"Well, there we go, he's gonna finish the job". But here's the plot twist. He drags me to cloning. He waits for the cloning process, then he puts me in cryo, strips my old corpse and leaves all my stuff carefully piled up outside the tube. Now, under our vague escalation policies, he could've just gibbed me since I was the one who started the fight by disarming him (the logs would have confirmed it) or I could've went back for round 2 (and lose again due to my unrobustness) since he was the first to use lethal damage. Or I could've spent even more time ahelping, or trying to summon an admin from IRC, yet more time arguing in the eventual ban appeal and so on. I just gathered my things instead and went back to work.
The moral of the story is: there will always be non antag shitters who want to mess with you and yes you're gonna lose a good portion of the round dealing with them. But when it's all over, before you want to move to the next step (ahelps, IC retaliation, policy threads etc,) ask yourself "Do I really want to waste even more time over this stuff?". You're gonna find out that the answer is "No, I fucking don't."