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Archee - Metacomms / Metafriending


Archee

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SS14 account username: Archee
Ban reason: "Heavily suspected metacommunication / metafriending. Tentative ban, appeal at forum.ss14.io"
Date of ban: 24/02/2023
Length of ban: appeal only
Events leading to the ban: i played hamlet from round start, and the QM adopted me, took me to cargo. syndies roll and they reveal in their office to me that they're one, i emote play to help them and hint i want cognizine and that i have plans. later on i lag and run out the airlock and die, ahelp to ask to be resurrected. then later on in the round after the QM dies i get kicked with the ban
Reason the ban should be removed: i don't see how this is metafriending or comms... unless im not being given the full picture? i'm just really confused.

  • Confused 1
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  • Project Manager

Your ban was placed by the admin team after discussion and an extensive review of evidence of metacommunications and metafriending amongst a large group of players over multiple rounds. Amongst those players were:

  • Mrjoe
  • nhil
  • Skarlet
  • toe_stab
  • Toboyo

If it'd be helpful, I can probably get you some IC names of these users.

Given this additional context for the ban, are you able to provide any additional information or updates to your appeal, including any information or comments you'd like the admin team to consider while reviewing your appeal?

  • thistbh 1

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Regarding the names mentioned;

I can understand suspecting me of comming with Toboyo, I'll often follow him around cause he always either SSD/suicides or goes hyper detective so it makes for a fun round to follow him. they're also a player I have full trust in acting efficiently, for example the last time I interacted in game with him I believe was a shift where I was CMO, busy teaching an intern while I had 3 chemists that weren't effective at making chems, I think one was syndie or antagging with mislabelled pills and Toboyo came for bicar and just said "let me bicar" or something equally silly, knowing he'd make it in like 30s I let him (he then actually just went SSD on the dog bed in chem for the rest of the shift). I would give the same preferential treatment to other players that i trust the game knowledge of and that are well intentioned when they see the station is lacking in some regard.


As for Skarlet i don't have any idea how there could be comms between us, the most interaction I can think we've had in a shift was me slamming them onto a table as clown multiple times with them responding being angry, other than that screaming or pointing at her when I pass them in a hallway which I do for practically anyone I recognize visually.

Other than Skarlet and Toboyo, none of those usernames ring a bell, in character names would be more useful though I feel any of the players I'd be thought of metafriending with I'd at least have talked to them in OOC chat after a round ended and know them by that.

Additionally a suggestion on how to handle suspected metacomming in the future rather than bulk appeal banning suspects, over the last 7 weeks I've sank just nigh of 600 hours into the game playing solely on lizard, i feel that over this time if my characters presence was being perceived as a suspect of the rules I'm being banned for, requesting me to change my appearance and name would have been a better solution since you'd then get a lot cleaner evidence from me of metacomming since I'd randomly be getting preferential treatment from the other suspected players, I originally thought this was actually in the rules for that kind of reason but it appears I misinterpreted the rule on names being "recognizable" in regards to non-/fictional characters

I would also appreciate some direct examples of what makes it 'tentative' that I was metacomming, similar to how liltenhead has done on Skarlet's appeal.

I hope the information I've given is enough to shed some light onto this matter.

Edited by Archee
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  • Project Manager

Here are the IC names of the players, excluding Toboyo and Skarlet:
Mrjoe - Billy Crumble
nhil - Clayton Sheets
toe_stab - Willy Sulyard

Please provide information about your interactions with these players both IC and OOC.

You mentioned that there are players other than Toboyo who you'd give preferential treatment to based on their game knowledge. Are you able to provide any examples of other players who you would do this for, regardless of if you ever have?

I can't comment on how we've handled metacomm investigations in the past, how we currently handle them, or how we will in the future as that is likely to impact the effectiveness of the methods we use. For this reason, I can't respond to your suggestions with any explanations for why this situation was handled as it was, nor can I respond to tell you about any adjustments that may be made based on your suggestions. That all said, thank you, I appreciate any feedback that players are willing to give to try to improve the game or the overall experience of other players.

In your ban reason, "tentative" means that we either aren't absolutely certain that you've committed an offense or that we aren't certain that it requires a permanent ban. All appeal bans are tentative as there's always the possibility that something the player says in their appeal will cause the admins to reconsider. A majority of appeal bans are placed at the discretion of a sole administrator, so while they typically wouldn't be described as tentative by the banning admin, there's always a possibility that the admin team will disagree with the decision to ban, or accept the appeal for some other reason. In this case, while the ban was applied after discussion among the admin team, rather than at the discretion of a sole admin, it can still be described as tentative because, as you're aware, no one reached out to you about the situation prior to applying the ban, so there may be information that we weren't aware of when considering whether to place the ban. Ban reasons are free form and we have no templates for them, this causes some variation between the format and language used in them. Reasons typically follow the format "[reason for the ban] [info/instructions for the type of the ban]", but some admins use different formats. To give you an example of some variation in language, I would typically apply a metacomm ban with the reason "Metacomms. Appeal at forum.ss14.io", while others may apply it as "Suspected metacomms. Appeal at forum.ss14.io" or "Confirmed metacomms with PlayerUsername. Please appeal at forum.ss14.io to explain". For the player, the goal of all these ban reasons is to communicate that they've been banned because they're suspected of violating the metacomms rule and that they can appeal the ban at forum.ss14.io. Specific wording of ban reasons typically isn't discussed, even when whether to ban or not is, so generally ban reasons can't reliably be read into as more than an indication of what caused the ban and whether the ban can be appealed, along with if an appeal requires a voucher.

As far as some information about what gave rise to the suspicion that resulted in your ban, one example I can provide is the first one given by liltenhead in Skarlet's appeal:

On 2/25/2023 at 12:58 AM, liltenhead said:

The first example was when you were a mime snydi, who was breaking into the armory, but did not have insulated gloves. You came back into the station, and took off your blood red going back to just being a mime. You then met up with "toboyo" who was fighting with "Archee" over insuls. It more or less resulted in you getting the gloves with hardly any interaction. 

Later in the round, you managed to get Toboyo to refuel your jetpack while wearing a blood red with basically no communication since you were a mime in space with a blood red.

To give some more details about that event related to your actions:
You are who Skarlet initially strips the insulated gloves off of, this happens with no apparent IC communication between you two other than her pointing at you, some very generic emotes from her, and "Hi" and "Aaa" from you. In this interaction, there appears to be no way for you to know that Skarlet needed or wanted the gloves, nor any way for Skarlet to have known that you had them. Additionally, you appear to have spent a significant portion of the round, at least up to this point in it, near Toboyo. While that on it's own would be unlikely to give rise to suspicion, it does to some extent when Toboyo's actions later in the round are considered.

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Regarding the IC names given

Billy Crumble - I genuinely cannot say I've ever seen that name in game.

Clayton Sheets - I have 3 rounds in my memory that i can think of that involve clayton;

  • once where they were detective where i followed them around in maints as a lawyer and we caught a bloodred prepping at AI on bagel
  • another on Aspid where i was chemist and he was helping me learn how to use modular grenades and we both just die to zombie ops nukies
  • and a third where I was HoP on the first shift that fland was played and he looked like detective and i let him in the safe by accident (he was just passenger...).

Willy Sulyard - And again I don't think I can recall ever seeing this name in game.

 

Regarding the event involving Skarlet, I'm unsure when this round was and it has fleeted my memory since, but I'd have to guess I was CMO? I remember a shift where I had 2 pairs of insuls from a maints dive to get a fuel tank, and I just tossed the spare at a table in medbay, and if you're saying she stripped them off me that would mean she had the ability to just see that I'm wearing the gloves and just decided to try her luck at yoinking them off me, as for knowing if Skarlet needed insuls, It's known culture for players to want insuls given how game breaking-ly powerful they are (denying grille shocks and enabling hacking being undefinably powerful tools), and if this was a round where i had 2 pairs then I would have just let her take the gloves off my hands and just swapped back to ones I had on the table for the comedic moment of someone just taking my gloves and running off similar to the common prank of stealing shoes. (if I'm right that that was the round I'm thinking of, tough fairly sure this round was around 7-14 days ago?).

Regarding players I treat more preferably I more refer to the concept of knowing a player understands the mechanics of the game and can make use of that knowledge when I feel I can trust them on a given round, consider the situation of shuttle building on box station and a brand new player or random chef walks past and asks to help, theres a high chance they would waste materials or get themselves hurt or only be asking to try assassinate you, I would much more likely say yes to a player I recognize since they have reason to want to and would much less likely be asking solely to assassinate you. When you've played on a single server as much as many of us have, its only a given that you would be able to identify players you can find confidence in for sensitive tasks, and that is more what I meant when referring to "preferential treatment". If absolutely required I could name off 10-20 players I know understand the game well enough if needed to but I feel that this matter is unrelated to the greater scope of the server, I also feel it would be antagonistic on my behalf and disrespectful to said people to have to name them despite being unrelated to my suspicions of metacomming, only to either get them involved in something they're unrelated to and/or lose personal face as a result.

And regarding your playbook on handling sleuth work for solving sensitive rules such as metacomming of course I understand what you mean, it's completely understandable to hold your cards close to your chest in that regard.

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  • Project Manager

Considering that you have no memory of seeing Mrjoe (Billy Crumble), or toe_stab (Willy Sulyard) in the game, and that you've only interacted with nhil (Clayton Sheets) on 3 occasions, would it be accurate to say that you wouldn't know that they understand the game, and therefore that there shouldn't be instances in the past where you appear to have given them preferential treatment?

The round was a week or two ago. I'm fairly certain that you weren't CMO but I can go check for more round details if you think it'd be helpful in any way. If I'm remembering correctly from the last time I checked the logs, the gloves were the greytider gloves not standard yellow insuls. While she would have been able to see them via the stripping window if she examined the gloves, without that window your character wouldn't have looked like they were wearing insuls.

Another factor that was considered was the convince of Skarlet running into Toboyo and you, who happened to have the gloves she needed at the time and happened to run into her very soon after she returned from the armory. It's entirely possible for this to have happened by chance, however when considered with other evidence it makes the case for some sort of metacomming being a factor more likely. I'll admit that even if metacomms were a factor, it's certainly possible that one of you was simply following the other. Have you ever witnessed Toboyo acting strangely or in ways you couldn't explain that could suggest he was metacomming with another player?

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I would say that its understandable that I cannot make an assumption on if a player understand the game well or not without multiple rounds of exposure to them, however there are other reasons than multiple rounds of exposure that you could use to interpret if a player has a good understanding of the game or is trustable in situations without knowing them e.g. seeing how other players acts around them, or someone making an extremely good first impression which was the case with clayton catching a blood-red 5~ minutes into the round and requesting backup before recklessly engaging. Additionally regarding MrJoe, I read his appeal that was made some time yesterday and it even states he rarely plays as a named character and is usually taking over ghost roles, I would like to ask how he specifically relates to my case.

Going back to the issues involving Skarlet, its possible for Skarlet to have dragged my player over herself to open the UI and see I had insuls, however after checking on a private server, gray kings gloves are identical both visually and functionally to regular insulated gloves, they simply have a different display name, unless your suggesting I would dare put budget insuls on my hands... (though I interpreted what you wrote to mean that the gray kings gloves appear as something other than insuls on the player model which confused me at first)

Additionally regarding Skarlet's ban appeal having been already accepted; I find it pointless to bring matters regarding her forward, as we would be going ad-nauseam over something that has already been adjudicated, since her 'coincidentally' running into Toboyo and myself to randomly obtain a pair of mission critical insulated gloves, would mean she is involved, which your team has already decided was not the case.

Toboyo is a strange, and unpredictable player. As I said in my first response he can either go SSD, or start following someone I can only assume is catching his interest or he thinks is syndie, I find it fun to follow him as lawyer as it helps me be around interesting events (as I think we can both agree 3/4 shifts a lawyers real job is never actually requested required or even acknowledged, which is why I use the role to essentially play as a non-sec detective/reporter).

If I am being accused of metacommunications and metafriending could I please have all instances in your knowledge brought forward to me in one go so that these issues can be resolved, it currently feels that I'm in a limbo of being banned solely to be interrogated for information on things happening from over a week ago that I have little to- or no recollection of. I hope that doesnt across as rude or insensitive to your processes, but I've essentially had the game pulled away from on what is unarguably the best period of the week for what feels like ephemeral reasons.

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As someone who has also played with Toboyo quite a few times, I agree that he (I hope) plays an odd character, I wouldn't say it's metacomms when he does strange things.
I also trust him to not be a shitter, etc. since I've seen him around for a long time, which Archee described. I hold this for a lot of good players too. You might do things for, or tolerate in the alleged case of stealing insuls, a tider you know the name of than a tider with an unrecognized name, simply from good experience with the player. While this could be seen as metafriending, I feel a lot of people have this mindset too as opposed to outright metacomming.

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  • Project Manager
7 hours ago, Archee said:

I would say that its understandable that I cannot make an assumption on if a player understand the game well or not without multiple rounds of exposure to them, however there are other reasons than multiple rounds of exposure that you could use to interpret if a player has a good understanding of the game or is trustable in situations without knowing them e.g. seeing how other players acts around them, or someone making an extremely good first impression which was the case with clayton catching a blood-red 5~ minutes into the round and requesting backup before recklessly engaging.

To ensure I'm understanding correctly, are you saying that you might give the players that you've had little to no prior interaction with preferential treatment over others because of factors other than your experiences interacting with them in the past?

7 hours ago, Archee said:

Additionally regarding MrJoe, I read his appeal that was made some time yesterday and it even states he rarely plays as a named character and is usually taking over ghost roles, I would like to ask how he specifically relates to my case.

The names you were provided are the names of all banned players who's bans resulted from the batch of evidence reviewed. These players are a subset of a much larger group for who evidence of metacomms, metafriending, and other offenses was reviewed about. While all cases are indirectly related to each other, not every one is directly related to every other. I'm not currently able to reveal which cases are directly related to which. In case you aren't aware, while you're free to read other appeals, you're not required to. Any questions you need to answer will be asked in your appeal, and any information we believe to be relevant to your appeal that is disclosed in another appeal will also be shared in this appeal.

7 hours ago, Archee said:

gray kings gloves are identical both visually and functionally to regular insulated gloves, they simply have a different display name, unless your suggesting I would dare put budget insuls on my hands... (though I interpreted what you wrote to mean that the gray kings gloves appear as something other than insuls on the player model which confused me at first)

You are right that grey kings gloves are identical to regular insuls, other than their name. I misrememered which prototype they used from when I was reading logs and thought they were grey insulated gloves. Thank you for the correction, and sorry for the mistake.

7 hours ago, Archee said:

Additionally regarding Skarlet's ban appeal having been already accepted; I find it pointless to bring matters regarding her forward, as we would be going ad-nauseam over something that has already been adjudicated, since her 'coincidentally' running into Toboyo and myself to randomly obtain a pair of mission critical insulated gloves, would mean she is involved, which your team has already decided was not the case.

While Skarlet has been determined to be unlikely to be involved, her appeal being accepted does not mean that the admin team has decided that metacomming or metafriending did not occur at all in that incident, only that Skarlet was unlikely to be involved in it. Metafriending specifically can be one sided, with the player benefiting from it not being at fault.

7 hours ago, Archee said:

Toboyo is a strange, and unpredictable player. As I said in my first response he can either go SSD, or start following someone I can only assume is catching his interest or he thinks is syndie, I find it fun to follow him as lawyer as it helps me be around interesting events (as I think we can both agree 3/4 shifts a lawyers real job is never actually requested required or even acknowledged, which is why I use the role to essentially play as a non-sec detective/reporter).

To ensure I'm understanding correctly, are you saying that you are not aware of, nor have you ever been suspicious of, Toboyo ever doing anything that that may be described as metacomming?

7 hours ago, Archee said:

If I am being accused of metacommunications and metafriending could I please have all instances in your knowledge brought forward to me in one go so that these issues can be resolved, it currently feels that I'm in a limbo of being banned solely to be interrogated for information on things happening from over a week ago that I have little to- or no recollection of. I hope that doesnt across as rude or insensitive to your processes, but I've essentially had the game pulled away from on what is unarguably the best period of the week for what feels like ephemeral reasons.

One of the reasons that all the information and all the question we have to ask aren't immediately presented is to help keep the discussion organized and easy to follow. As you can see, our responses to each other have been relatively long. Presenting more information or asking more questions would lead to them being even longer, harder to follow, and harder to ensure that everything in them is responded to. Additionally, in this case, I'm not able to provide all the information that the admin team reviewed for various reasons including the impact that publicly disclosing them would have on other cases, including ones for which bans haven't been applied yet.

When the bans were being discussed and the handling of appeals was being considered, the expectation was that a majority of affected players would appeal within a day or two. They have not, and it's beginning to seem as if some have no intention to contest their bans. This has unfortunately complicated some of the appeals, but adaptations are being made so that appeals like yours can be processed without having to wait indefinitely for appeals that may never come.

I understand that it can be frustrating to not be able to review and respond directly to all the evidence that was considered in relation to an accusation about you. I'm doing my best to allow you to respond to as much evidence as possible, even if you can't be directly presented with the evidence. While the admin team considers this appeal, I'll make sure that they're aware of any evidence you weren't able to respond to directly so that they can interpret it as much in your favor as possible, or so that they can completely exclude it. 

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2 hours ago, Chief_Engineer said:

To ensure I'm understanding correctly, are you saying that you might give the players that you've had little to no prior interaction with preferential treatment over others because of factors other than your experiences interacting with them in the past?

No, I am saying that anyone; can give players a higher degree of trust or respect, based on their actions in the present, in situations where they don't have prior experiences to base judgements off of.

2 hours ago, Chief_Engineer said:

This has unfortunately complicated some of the appeals, but adaptations are being made so that appeals like yours can be processed without having to wait indefinitely for appeals that may never come.

If this has complicated the process or planned actions you had as an administration team, is it not wrong for me to bring to point that Skarlets appeal was not held as critically as mine, despite both appeals currently only resting on the same singular round's points of evidence which have already been disputed multiple times?

On 2/26/2023 at 8:07 AM, Chief_Engineer said:

Skarlet initially strips the insulated gloves off

Metafriending specifically can be one sided, with the player benefiting from it not being at fault.

Additionally it is an inaccuracy to say that this is one-way metafriending as she would also have had to have the expectation she would be allowed to get away with casually taking the insulated gloves off of my hands without expecting repercussions. (Also I already get that Skarlets case is independent from mine, I feel obligated to point this out as a minor error in judgement).

2 hours ago, Chief_Engineer said:

To ensure I'm understanding correctly, are you saying that you are not aware of, nor have you ever been suspicious of, Toboyo ever doing anything that that may be described as metacomming?

You are asking if I am aware of the thoughts going through the head of a madman, as has already been mentioned multiple times, Toboyo acts incredibly unpredictably.

10 hours ago, deltanedas said:

I wouldn't say it's metacomms when he does strange things.

10 hours ago, deltanedas said:

You might do things for, or tolerate in the alleged case of stealing insuls, a tider you know the name of than a tider with an unrecognized name, simply from good experience with the player. While this could be seen as metafriending, I feel a lot of people have this mindset too as opposed to outright metacomming.

And to quote deltlanedas who has decided to help shed light on Toboyo's nature, this helps affirm that I don't know and cannot say with accuracy, so no, I am not aware if Toboyo is metacommunicating with other players.

And I share the sentiments expressed by this player.

2 hours ago, Chief_Engineer said:

I'm not able to provide all the information that the admin team reviewed for various reasons including the impact that publicly disclosing them would have on other cases, including ones for which bans haven't been applied yet.

This is a fair point, I can understand not being able to disclose all information regarding the cases, however if I myself am tentatively banned, and its clear the issues relating to myself are primarily directed in regards to Toboyo who is also banned for the same reasons, could I receive some additional examples of suspected metacommunication between us both, as you already said its best to keep these responses short I would greatly like to spend the majority of them discussing actual in game events rather than semantics, since we've had a 3 day correspondence and I'm fairly sure this thread will end up being wordy enough to be considered a  college/university dissertation by the time we are finished (which I think both of our minds and hands would appreciate not happening).

And as a final point to bring to light off platform communications with Toboyo;

I can only comment on a private discord, of which yourself and multiple other admins are members of. I think I write with accuracy to say that you are aware his Text-To-Speech name (or display name at that) was at one point "SelfAntag Metagamer", As far as external communication with Toboyo is concerned our private messages on discord are comprised of post round comments, and generic memes, which I am sure are perfectly within reason to be communicated.

I also believe that I have verbally discussed my disdain towards the metacommunication rules in said discord within your presence, however as someone with a background in community management and game design, when expressing this it is coming from a place of care and passion, as I believe the rule is detrimental to the growth and appeal of the game, I understand what the rule represents, seeing at its worst you could have cases like the Samuel incident, and at its most malicious you could have players power gaming to have complete power and knowledge over a round, my resent towards the rule is solely aimed when considering the rule for small groups of friends initially approaching the game, it is at that point that you can easily scare players away from experiencing the game as they are essentially stripped from safely having experiences involving people that they are comfortable around. I feel it is important to express this myself as to why you may have believed what I mentioned had general resentment to the servers rules and order, I speak with a moderate amount of justifiability when I say that we as people play games to make friends, and that a rule encouraging you to not do that can not come without some harm.

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1 minute ago, Archee said:

If this has complicated the process or planned actions you had as an administration team, is it not wrong for me to bring to point that Skarlets appeal was not held as critically as mine, despite both appeals currently only resting on the same singular round's points of evidence which have already been disputed multiple times?

Skarlet's ban was based on evidence from two rounds, both of which were presented in her appeal, and which you having been involved in only one. While I understand the confusion caused by an appeal for a ban with seemingly more evidence than this one being accepted sooner than this one has been processed, the most I can say to address this is:

  • As previously stated, not all reviewed evidence, including evidence which lessened suspicion of involvement, has been made public in relation to either ban.
  • While the rounds are the same, the suspicion on individual players of metacomming or metafriending is not because not everyone performed identical actions in the round, and not everyone would have had identical perspectives.
15 minutes ago, Archee said:

Additionally it is an inaccuracy to say that this is one-way metafriending as she would also have had to have the expectation she would be allowed to get away with casually taking the insulated gloves off of my hands without expecting repercussions. (Also I already get that Skarlets case is independent from mine, I feel obligated to point this out as a minor error in judgement).

You have previously provided an explanation for why she may have stripped the gloves off of you that does not involve metacomming or metafriending on her part:

On 2/26/2023 at 4:57 AM, Archee said:

if you're saying she stripped them off me that would mean she had the ability to just see that I'm wearing the gloves and just decided to try her luck at yoinking them off me

As you said then, it is possibly she simply decided to try her luck at taking them off of you. It's both possible that she didn't expect to have to face repercussions because she didn't expect to get caught, or that she did expect to face repercussions but was prepared to deal with them. If this was the case, it is still possible for issues to have occurred on someone else's end.

32 minutes ago, Archee said:

I can only comment on a private discord, of which yourself and multiple other admins are members of. I think I write with accuracy to say that you are aware his Text-To-Speech name (or display name at that) was at one point "SelfAntag Metagamer", As far as external communication with Toboyo is concerned our private messages on discord are comprised of post round comments, and generic memes, which I am sure are perfectly within reason to be communicated.

You are right that information about rounds that have already ended can be shared freely without any concern of violating the rules about metacomming. Excluding the server with me and the other admins in it and the official SS14 server, do you currently share, or have you recently shared, any other servers with Toboyo, or any other one of the players listed earlier?

39 minutes ago, Archee said:

I also believe that I have verbally discussed my disdain towards the metacommunication rules in said discord within your presence, however as someone with a background in community management and game design, when expressing this it is coming from a place of care and passion, as I believe the rule is detrimental to the growth and appeal of the game, I understand what the rule represents, seeing at its worst you could have cases like the Samuel incident, and at its most malicious you could have players power gaming to have complete power and knowledge over a round, my resent towards the rule is solely aimed when considering the rule for small groups of friends initially approaching the game, it is at that point that you can easily scare players away from experiencing the game as they are essentially stripped from safely having experiences involving people that they are comfortable around. I feel it is important to express this myself as to why you may have believed what I mentioned had general resentment to the servers rules and order, I speak with a moderate amount of justifiability when I say that we as people play games to make friends, and that a rule encouraging you to not do that can not come without some harm.

I don't recall you making any negative statements about the metacomm rules. Our enforcement of them is very strict because, by it's nature, it is difficult to tell exactly what information is being communicated when players metacomm. This strict enforcement does create the potential for players who are metacomming, but not doing so maliciously, to be banned. I would encourage anyone who is trying to teach a friend the game, while that friend is too new to be able to be reliably taught in-game, to watch the friend stream while themselves not being connected to the server. This allows the teacher to see everything the new player sees as they see it and provide any knowledge that they want without risk of metacomming or creating unfair situations for other players. We focus our enforcement of the metacomming rule on players who are using it in a way that makes the game unfair for other players. I can assure you that all the evidence of metacomming and metafriending which we reviewed suggested the metacomming or metafriending being used in bad faith, in a way that creates an unfair situation for players. There was no evidence presented that suggested any user was metafriending or metacomming with another user in order to teach them.

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1 hour ago, Chief_Engineer said:

do you currently share, or have you recently shared, any other servers with Toboyo, or any other one of the players listed earlier?

The only other discords we share is my personal discord which he was invited to on the 23rd as we planned on playing Project-Zomboid with a friend group of mine.

 

Also given that there are no other cases to be presented currently as evidence, Am I correct to assume that this would mean all remaining evidence consists of either;

  • Myself and another undisclosed suspect
  • Toboyo, another undisclosed suspect, and myself
  • Or examples of myself being perceived to metafriend currently unmentioned players

And should that be the case I am ready to hopefully be able to give more information on passed rounds. May I add it is beneficial to request knowledge now before these cases are from 2-3 weeks ago and that I will have completely forgotten their events except for minor vignettes that may not even be relevant to the discussion.

 

Shorter reply as its 1am and I have had a busy day, If I missed any questions from your previous message and I have not replied by your next post, please requote any sections I need to address.

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2 hours ago, Archee said:

The only other discords we share is my personal discord which he was invited to on the 23rd as we planned on playing Project-Zomboid with a friend group of mine.

Am I correct in interpreting this as meaning that Toboyo is the only one of the people who you currently share, or have recently shared, another discord with, and that discord being your personal project zomboid discord?

2 hours ago, Archee said:

Shorter reply as its 1am and I have had a busy day, If I missed any questions from your previous message and I have not replied by your next post, please requote any sections I need to address.

No worries, I think you've answered every question from my previous post.

2 hours ago, Archee said:

And should that be the case I am ready to hopefully be able to give more information on passed rounds. May I add it is beneficial to request knowledge now before these cases are from 2-3 weeks ago and that I will have completely forgotten their events except for minor vignettes that may not even be relevant to the discussion.

I'm currently awaiting consensus from the admin team on what additional information can be shared at this time. I'll hopefully be able to update you within about a day. We all understand that the longer things go, the less likely you'll be able to remember them. I'm doing my best to move this along as fast as is reasonably possible and I don't expect it to get to the point where you're having to attempt to recall round details from 2-3 weeks in the past.

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14 hours ago, Chief_Engineer said:

Am I correct in interpreting this as meaning that Toboyo is the only one of the people who you currently share, or have recently shared, another discord with, and that discord being your personal project zomboid discord?

17 hours ago, Archee said:

my personal discord

Which;

17 hours ago, Archee said:

he was invited to [as we] planned on playing Project-Zomboid with a friend group of mine.

The only other player among the ones listed in this appeal of which I share a discord with is Skarlet.

 

Edited by Archee
forgot to address the statement, only corrected it originally*
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If you don't respond soon, your appeal will be closed due to inactivity. You've been actively visiting the forums since my last question on this appeal, if you're no longer interested in appealing this ban you can indicate that in a response and we'll close it to declutter the queue of open appeals. If you are still interested in appealing, please post a response to the question.

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Apologies, had a really busy week in real-life and wanted to avoid dealing with this to avoid stressing out excessively.

Actually yes I have been in :t briefly, I was invited to it the same day a few hours after I joined clon station' however I think I was kicked some time a few days after I'd joined it, as far as I know the discord was just a place he would socialize with his other friends of which I gathered the dialogue was a bit out of my taste (I also suspect that was why I was kicked) so I never really involved myself much with it other than sharing a couple pics of aHelps I'd had that day, to cope and seethe over etc, as far as users in there it was maybe 7-9 people (this was also on the 6th of February when I had joined it) though I have no idea who those people would be.

As far as the discord goes thats essentially the extent of what I know about it, again sorry not for mentioning this in my original comment on discords, it had actually completely slipped my mind being so minor and 3 weeks prior.

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I dont like too peanut post but after seeing the in game names of those players I also have reasons to suspect they may have been meta communicating/teaming    but due too being just an average joe player I didn't ever a help it I just avoided this group of people like the plague even logging off when seeing this seeming large gang of similar minded people roaming the station. 

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5 hours ago, Junglistunite said:

I dont like too peanut post but after seeing the in game names of those players I also have reasons to suspect they may have been meta communicating/teaming    but due too being just an average joe player I didn't ever a help it I just avoided this group of people like the plague even logging off when seeing this seeming large gang of similar minded people roaming the station. 

The admin team takes metacomming very seriously as it can have a significant negative impact on the game for other players. While you're certainly free to log off when you see people playing who you don't want to play in a round with, please also ahelp in the future if your suspicions are based on something. While it may be tempting to think that someone else may report or catch it, unfortunately many people share that idea which can result in things being missed.

I think a lot of people avoid ahelping things because they don't want to waste admin time with duplicate reports or reporting someone who might be an antag. It is very easy for admins to do things like handle duplicate reports or check antag status. Personally I'd rather get 10 reports of the same thing than have to rely on seeing it myself, and checking antag status takes seconds.

If you're interested, you can read more about when to ahelp and what information is most useful to include at https://wiki.spacestation14.io/wiki/Ahelp. If you're ever in doubt, feel free to ahelp and feel free to ask if you should ahelp similar situations in the future.

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