Admin events

[Supermichael777]

Some things to consider:

Can this happen naturally? What would be expected of this situation and of players drawn in if this was a player driven situation? If it can not happen naturally- why can this not happen? Is their some reason that this is specifically prevented?

So recently a admin tc traded to make someone a antag beepsky. This was a very frustrating and disruptive experience for players in the round because player controlled beepsky is very powerful, arguably more powerful that any combination of 20 tc gear(the typical litmus test for about what a tc trade should be). I believe the above considerations were not properly made. Notably Beepsky can never be made player controlled without intervention, beepsky even if player controled would not be expected to act antagonistically. There is a legitimate FAIRNESS issue that goes beyond game balance into this is simply not a fun enemy to fight which is why it is specifically prevented. I interacted with it. It hid behind a cuffed person moved under then and then proceeded to stun cuff and space me along with at least 5 other victims.

Admin events are supposed to add spice while retaining the interest and interaction of players. The problem with this event is that it did the opposite, almost mathematically removing player interaction with the round in a way that actively HUNTED players down for removal. A hammy lose cannon beepsky could potentially have been a fun and funny sideshow for the round. The problem is that the context of the even was a tc trade. Murder was almost expected and thus it ate the whole round because an admin handed something very powerful to a player with almost no instruction and an objective that encouraged using that powers in a very unfun way.

[Qbopper]

A good admin event provides a new backdrop for players in the round to make interesting stories

the example in the OP is a bad event because although it might be funny for ghosts/the beepsky player it's overall not interesting to get beat the fuck up by a robot that you couldn't have had any idea was an enemy that round

[PKPenguin321]

That was a TC trade that Kevinz gave 500 HP to instead of something more reasonable. I lowered its health significantly at some point in the round but nobody managed to kill it. For what it's worth it was pretty funny to see as an observer.

I'm not sure there's specific policy to be made for admin events and this thread could have gone into Admin Feedback or something instead of being a policy thread.

[ShadowDimentio]

Let admins do what they want for events, if they run a bad event yell at them. Easy peasy.

[Lazengann]

I have a hard time thinking of a worse event than letting someone become beepsky

Every time it happens the player is unstoppable

[Atlanta-Ned]

I have a hard time thinking of a worse event than letting someone become beepsky

Every time it happens the player is unstoppable

Oh I know there's worse events than this...

[TheColdTurtle]

Thing is with the beepsky, no one knew it was an antag. It also had a Borg and dual esworder with him so once you got stunned you were either put into crit by the Borg from his modules or killed instantly

[Armhulen]

Beepsky with 500 health = slaughter demon

When will they learn

[leibniz]

That sounds funny, maybe making an announcement would have helped so the players have some idea about what's coming their way.

[bandit]

"Admin events" becoming synonymous with "TC trades" is honestly kind of sad. Admin events are things like salvage rounds, or Sticky's marathon station rounds, or even nations for that matter -- anything where the admin creates an overarching story outside the standard setup, that everyone in the round participates in. TC trades are not admin events.

[Qbopper]

"Admin events" becoming synonymous with "TC trades" is honestly kind of sad. Admin events are things like salvage rounds, or Sticky's marathon station rounds, or even nations for that matter -- anything where the admin creates an overarching story outside the standard setup, that everyone in the round participates in. TC trades are not admin events.

I was going to comment on this but I thought I would get yelled at for semantics

[PKPenguin321]

Thing is with the beepsky, no one knew it was an antag. It also had a Borg and dual esworder with him so once you got stunned you were either put into crit by the Borg from his modules or killed instantly

I sent a Centcomm announcement basically saying "kill it if you see it" after it killed its second person too

[bandit]

I was going to comment on this but I thought I would get yelled at for semantics

it isn't really a semantics issue, it just speaks to how nonexistent actual admin events are that people start thinking stuff like this is equivalent

and then they start pressuring admins to "not press buttons," meaning actual admin events are even further discouraged

[Nilons]

Admin events aren't tc trades. That's like saying round types are jobs

[Pascal125]

I was the AI that shift. It was a red Beepsky that was just chilling out. I noticed it seemed strangely large and moving erratically so i made a small remark about it on Common. The crew then ran to it and began punching it because fuck fun, i guess. So it started stunning them and trying to escape. It was then shrunk. Later on it was emagged by a traitor and from my perspective, that's when it went rogue. And it's not like people didn't know. I pinpointed out that i couldn't interface with it and it was saying some rogue-ish statements on common.

The same one who emagged the beepsky also subverted me and the borg, and was the dual esworder.

[D&B]

>Dying to beepsky

I thought true thugz never died?

[factoryman942]

You're thinking of heroes

[Qbopper]

I was going to comment on this but I thought I would get yelled at for semantics

it isn't really a semantics issue, it just speaks to how nonexistent actual admin events are that people start thinking stuff like this is equivalent

and then they start pressuring admins to "not press buttons," meaning actual admin events are even further discouraged

you aren't wrong but I just didn't bring it up because I figured I would end up in an argument and I'm not really interested in getting into more forum debates with people

[oranges]

A good admin event is to play Dead Or Alive - You Spin Me Round (Like a Record) and then use SDQL to slowly spin everyone around

[cedarbridge]

What is the point of this thread exactly?

[oranges]

Admin events

[kevinz000]

That was a TC trade that Kevinz gave 500 HP to instead of something more reasonable. I lowered its health significantly at some point in the round but nobody managed to kill it. For what it's worth it was pretty funny to see as an observer.

I'm not sure there's specific policy to be made for admin events and this thread could have gone into Admin Feedback or something instead of being a policy thread.

yeah that was my fuckup I assumed that it would never get fixed and had 0 defense so 25 lasers and it'd be dead but somehow I saw it still had a ton after I edited its health, so I seriously underestimated that, my bad.
basically I fucked up and applied basic human combat rules when I was considering balance for a simple bot without bullet density, apologies.

[feem]

I don't know anything about any of that.

But one of the reasons I don't do many "admin events" outside of TC trades and memes (RUSSIASTATION, YOU'RE THE BEST...AROUND! GET PUMPED UP, etc) is that if you do anything unusual or entertaining that _isn't_ an antag, as above (when the AI announced that a beepsky was acting funny) a third of the players instantly jump into kill whatever it is that you've unleashed, because "mah valids".

I'm not trying to derail this, but if players want more entertaining interactions with the admins that don't involve antags, then they should probably be more willing to give those interactions the chance to happen without immediately killing anyone and everything that's sent in.

Examples of things that y'all have killed almost instantly when I've sent them in:
> Centcomm Health Inspector (killed by his own centcomm guards shortly after they got off the shuttle)
> Frog Ambassador (actually this was qbopper, but i helped with the cleanup)
> Your Dad the Chicken
> Calamity the Safety Sloth
> An entire group of pigman refugees

In each of these instances, it was NOT an antag who killed the individuals sent in.

In the game's current form, you basically have to make any mobs you put into the game as an event invincible and ineffective (high hp, 0 damage on attack) or actively antagonistic and able to fight back.

[DemonFiren]

Why can't you ban whatever killed them without reason, revive them and move on?

[feem]

Why can't you ban whatever killed them without reason, revive them and move on?

Because after the 4th or 5th time a high-impact, low-badnote player does this, you realize that it's apparently expected gameplay and stop trying to correct it. I'm not here to take away player agency, and technically, in the rules, what they've killed is valid. If the playerbase would like the admins to police IC interactions a little more closely, well, I don't think you'd have much complaint from us.

But y'all'd probably complain.

[Grazyn]

Why can't you ban whatever killed them without reason, revive them and move on?

It is established policy that ghost roles are valid, and sadly anything spawned by an admin is a ghost role. Not to mention that if admins started bwoinking people for killing an event character, you'd instantly get a complaint for "admins forcing people to play along their shitty event"

[kevinz000]

if someone instavalids your event without a good reason just note it down to never ever give them anything fun that's event-related again, like people have done in the past.
works pretty well!

[calzilla1]

Admins, what is your opinion on giveing people OP items but promicing they won't murderbone/ do dramatic/funny stuff with it

[Armhulen]

Admins, what is your opinion on giveing people OP items but promicing they won't murderbone/ do dramatic/funny stuff with it

[[[[admins]]]], the singular entity

but yes I'd do this a lot

[Nilons]

Admins, what is your opinion on giveing people OP items but promicing they won't murderbone/ do dramatic/funny stuff with it

[[[[admins]]]], the singular entity

but yes I'd do this a lot

I traded changeling and antag status for VoG implanted the other day. Sometimes players would rather mess around with something fun than kill people if they're not a vital antag like in traitorling

[XDTM]

Admins, what is your opinion on giveing people OP items but promicing they won't murderbone/ do dramatic/funny stuff with it

[[[[admins]]]], the singular entity

but yes I'd do this a lot

I traded changeling and antag status for VoG implanted the other day. Sometimes players would rather mess around with something fun than kill people if they're not a vital antag like in traitorling

Promising not to murderbone should probably be required during TC trades with unique items/abilities imo.

[Qbopper]

> Frog Ambassador

wait did you do this yourself or are you taslking about the time I did this

because I spawned a frog called "freg" once and someone killed it so I posthumously created the joke

that begin said, you're 200% right, admins (or, well, me, I can't speak for anyone else) don't waste time trying to create funny events because there's ALWAYS at least one person who doesn't make any effort to interact in any way beyond "click until horizontal" and it's ridiculous

eg. me and doctor pork did a funny gag where we made everyone think some kind of horror event was going to happen, then I pulled a bait and switch and it was just danny phantom

some guy immediately tried to kill me despite the rest of the crew laughing/etc.

pork spawned as the box ghost and we had a dumb fight where he threw boxes at me

guy continued to try and kill me during this

like, if he had tried to create some kind of interesting scenario, sure, I'm not going to be mad because I didn't get to do something exactly as planned, but it's just mindless "click on admin spawned things until dead" shit that turns us off from wanting to do anything interesting

the worst part is that it's only that ONE GUY who ruins it for everyone, and THAT GUY is never the one who reads forums/etc.

[feem]

it was all you, corrected my thingy because i honestly forgot since i was involved in it too

[bman]

Why can't you ban whatever killed them without reason, revive them and move on?

It is established policy that ghost roles are valid, and sadly anything spawned by an admin is a ghost role. Not to mention that if admins started bwoinking people for killing an event character, you'd instantly get a complaint for "admins forcing people to play along their shitty event"

what admins can do is make a loud announcement that any people who try to kill them will be punished ICly, like bsa them or something, it's not against the rules to handle it ICly

[feem]

I've seen several admin complaints threads about admins who did exactly that.

Players don't like it when they can't get their valids or when they feel like they're being punished for getting their valids, even if they're told that they'll be punished because it isn't intended to be valid.

If I spawn a sloth, and announce that the crew has to keep this sloth alive, and that whoever attacks the sloth will be blown up, I will see at least three or four players (in mid to highpop) immediately head towards arrivals to kill the sloth. Of those three or four, I bet two of them ahelp when they get blown up.

In those ahelps, the player will insist that what they did was not against the server rules, and that whatever the admin says doesn't matter. Sometimes they'll ask for a different admin to make a ruling.

After this happens, an unrelated player, usually an observer, will file an admin complaint or a passive-aggressive policy discussion about admins running events.

I've seen this kind of thing several times, as a player, as an admin, and in the forums as complaints or policy discussions.

You can make the argument that this is a "you can't please everyone" scenario, and to a certain extent it is. But it also illustrates a fundamental dynamic of our community: that in many ways, the point of the game and of playing the game differs for many players, and many of those players take the actions of administrators personally when they feel that their interpretation of the game has been infringed. This includes such things as: making rulings, running events, changing the behavior of the round, not changing the behavior of the round, enforcing rules, failing to enforce rules...

[Armhulen]

Killing frogs is not a joke.

[cedarbridge]

It's no secret that I like trader gimmicks. That said, I absolutely cannot run a trader shuttle event without arming and armoring the trader, sabotaging the side airlocks and picking an experienced player for the role because without fail some non an tag asshole WILL attempt to mug/rob/trash the shuttle. Without fail. It's usually one of a handful of people I can count on to ruin events and they're also not the sort that would be punished by withholding tc trades or events that they already don't ask for.

[Qbopper]

I'm honestly considering throwing caution to the wind and trying to think of fun events again and just telling people "if you try to ruin the event for everyone you'll just get punished for it" because it's not fair to the people who want something different to happen

I don't mean "if you kill my mary sue i'll ban you" but it's annoying that I just don't care to do events because of these specific people

[Nilons]

I'm honestly considering throwing caution to the wind and trying to think of fun events again and just telling people "if you try to ruin the event for everyone you'll just get punished for it" because it's not fair to the people who want something different to happen

I don't mean "if you kill my mary sue i'll ban you" but it's annoying that I just don't care to do events because of these specific people

This would work well if events were coordinated to only be run on one server at once, so players who didn't want to play the event didn't have to and could play on the other server.

[Qbopper]

I'm honestly considering throwing caution to the wind and trying to think of fun events again and just telling people "if you try to ruin the event for everyone you'll just get punished for it" because it's not fair to the people who want something different to happen

I don't mean "if you kill my mary sue i'll ban you" but it's annoying that I just don't care to do events because of these specific people

This would work well if events were coordinated to only be run on one server at once, so players who didn't want to play the event didn't have to and could play on the other server.

I think most admins try to do a vote to get feedback on if players are interested in an event the following round which is a good practice and usually lets people hop if they aren't interested

[lumipharon]

If policy/server rules say that non antag can valid the shit out of anything admin spawned, why don't the headmins just change that?

The idea that everyone would just randomly swarm and mug/murder the centcomm inspector or whatever for no reason is rediculous, considering if they did the same thing to the captain 4noraisins they'd at the very least get bwonked.

Really though the 'act like an antag get treated like an antag' thing should apply to both parties.
If the admin spawn is acting antag like, lynch thee, if some random crew member starts inexplicitly trying to murder some random visitor to the station? At worse they're acting like a traitor, at best they're clearly stark raving mad and should be dumped in a lonely cell.

[TheColdTurtle]

Either just ban the shit players or stop being an admin. It seems the "player base" doesn't want interesting situations or things that are not LOL VALIDS GOTTA MAKE THAT SPRITE HORIZONTAL in TG station.

[feem]

Either just ban the shit players or stop being an admin. It seems the "player base" doesn't want interesting situations or things that are not LOL VALIDS GOTTA MAKE THAT SPRITE HORIZONTAL in TG station.

lollerskates!

[PKPenguin321]

No, yeah, randomly killing admin event things for literally no reason is pretty shitty. I'd be willing to make it policy to not allow that unless there's explicit IC reasoning to do so.

That said, if the event is "AN EVIL MURDERER" then there's inherent IC reasoning to kill it. Also I'd be wary of shit events, because there are some events that can be forced or just bad. As a general thing, though, I think this suggested policy would be good.

Edit: This is now policy.

[ThanatosRa]

DO IT. This kind of shit is one of a few reasons why I rarely play anymore.

[lumipharon]

Neat. That should (in theory) cover the shitty player side of it, now if only we can cover the other side (shitty lelrandumb admeme events) too.

[ThanatosRa]

Admin Complaints for the extra retarded ones as usual?

[PKPenguin321]

Admin Complaints for the extra retarded ones as usual?

Feel free to, but directly expressing how you disliked the event to the admin in question in OOC after the round might be better in a lot of cases. ESPECIALLY bad ones, sure.

[Qbopper]

yeah if you don't like an event don't stew on it or whatever let the admin know

a lot of the time we're just trying to make things fun and sometimes we fuck up

also holy shit it's policy now fuck yes time to griff players create enjoyable events

[cedarbridge]

I can finally run trader shuttles that don't end as corpsewagons.