Bottom post of the previous page:
For those of you who don't follow singulo (yes I know keep reading), one player quit, reasoning explained here: http://pastebin.com/Ltu19DV5The gist was that this player was tired of being BWOINK!ed for security "powergaming," specifically for fortifying the brig and dragging Beepsky around to apprehend antags. In one case, I have a broader than usual grasp of the full situation, as I was the AI in this round. There was an antag with an e-bow, esword and magboots (I think the gravity was out) on a murderbone. They only got dunked because of Beepsky dragging. This was a traitor who had e-bow and e-sword murdered about 10 people. I saw about three of the murders take place personally -- they were zipping around the station murdering whoever they came across, and stuffing their bodies into a locker. By the time Beepsky finally took him down, the locker contained about 12 bodies.
So who's powergaming more?
I think this boils down to two things, really:
Point one: You cannot tell security not to powergame when antags are powergaming. You just can't. If an antag is running around with an e-sword (that blocks tasers), e-bow (that GGs at range), magboots (permanent speed boost), potentially ablative (blocks even more tasers/lasers) and such, security basically has to use things other than their standard gear loadout. You can punish powergaming on both sides, or you can not punish powergaming on either side, but you cannot punish powergaming in a lopsided way. This particular case will result in:
- A decrease in players playing security, as they do not want to get BWOINKed for doing their job. This, as everyone knows, is already happening. People like to say that players don't play security because of the antag roll, but the antag roll is being moved, and I predict we are still going to see a comparative lack of security, due to the reasons above.
- An increase in murderboning; as everyone knows security is powerless OOC to stop it, as the only effective tactics might get them BWOINKED. Currently this is a case of "which admin is on currently, and which rules are they picky about?"
- Idiotic, stupid and/or tiding tactics such as lubing chemists, banana-slipping clowns and/or stunprod-wielding assistants being the most effective and/or most acceptable line of defense against antagonists. The "higher standard" rule shouldn't lead to non-security players playing vigilante security because it is "safer" banwise, but this is exactly what is happening.
Point two: Not all complaints are made equal. "A lot of people complained about you," on its own, is not evidence enough against a player. I realize I have a dog in this race, having submitted an admincomplaint recently over this very thing, but: When graytiders, antags and other people get dunked, they are likely to complain about it -- solely because they got dunked. Their definition of "powergaming" is "i lost, plz nerf," or in this case, "i lost, plz ban." I believe this is the reason why security is the sole policy target of anti-powergaming, rather than antags (there are anti-powergaming efforts for antags, but they are mostly on the code side and met with resistance): security can't complain about any powergaming an antag does under our current rules, and the sort of people who gray tide are also the sort of people who are likely to whine about security.