Swagile's report on RavingManiac or Awan

[Swagile]

Your Byond Key: Swagile

Your Character Name: Brett Tedrow

Their Byond key: RavingManiac or Awan

Approximate time and date of the incident (Central Us Time for best results): 11:30 EST

Which Staff Protocols (http://www.colonial-marines.com/viewtop ... =57&t=5647) were broken: Preserve the RP and enjoyment of the server

- Do not try to heavily influence the game unless it is for very good reasoning such as for an event, a player purposefully holding up the game, dishing out punishment for rule breaking (Examples: a commander killed a marine unjustly, a squad of marines are killing other marines for no reason, a queen is slashing every host known to man, aliens have stacked too many huggers) or other such things.

Description of the incident: So basically me and the Alpha bois (I was SL) land on LZ-2. We start to follow our orders of patrolling when we walk right into a land mine and our Engineer insta dies.

This happens again with two other marines and we find a survivor that tells us that CLF are in the area. So we find out that CLF are near both LZ's, and have seeded the ENTIRE AREA WITH NOTHING BUT CLAYMORES. This also means LZ-1 was seeded with claymores, and we lost a bunch of marines right on the first drop. I confirmed this with someone in ghost chat when I died a second time after going xeno and dying again.

There is nothing inherently fun about this (having CLF right next to both landing zones on a normal game of xeno vs marines and them spamming claymores all over our landing zones), cost us most of the marines, and the ones that did survive had to evac for injuries, losing us the planet.

The devs at the time (no idea which one had the funny idea for this "event") essentially added 0 enjoyment to the game and heavily impacted the round. ESPECIALLY since we essentially got the equivalent of "spawn camping" since we all started dying at the LZ's ON ARRIVAL (we have a rule against this btw).

On top of that, apparently there was a Queen Mother directive to not hurt CLF, so this was even more of a spawn camp than usual as it was a Xeno + CLF hybrid vs Marines with nothing given to the Marines to compensate for all of this.

Evidence (screenshots, logs, etc): Logs can be pulled.

How you would punish the accused: Teach them how to make actually enjoyable events by people who know what they're doing.

[Clutch]

you see regular events are for the enjoyment of players, dev events are for the enjoyment of devs. i was part of this event and it was cancer

[Avalanchee]

I was there, wasn't fun.

literally waiting 40 minutes just to get sent back to the Almayer

If they tried to enforce teamwork - pfft please.. you either metabuddy, stick to known marines or fail horribly and that's it.
It happened 4 times to me, 4 times someone CALLED out a claymore, POINTED at it and GUESS WHAT SOMEONE FUCKING TRIGGERED IT

[FGRSentinel]

Goddard Pearsall, Normandy Pilot here. Can confirm, there was a warning of mines "somewhere" but not where. I dropped Alpha down and we were groundside maybe 10-20 seconds before a series of explosions rocked the station. Estimates range from anything like a small handful of Alphas and Deltas got killed instantly to the mines wiping half the squads and it didn't seem like the staff were reviving the dead. Delta actually joked that they disarmed most of the mines with their faces.

This is even worse because the xenos had a chance to watch the CLF work and knew that when they heard explosions they'd get easy captures. The round ended at the 13:10-20 ish minute mark with what sounded like a combined xeno/CLF siege of the FOB with more than 70-80% of the Marines wiped. The boots on the ground had zero chance between this "event," the failure to correct the immense damage it caused, and the XO's absolutely abysmal response to everything (failing to call for HC backup when begged to do so, failing to respond to requests for support, etc).

The Marines received nothing to compensate for this and it was completely unfun for everyone involved from what I saw and heard, except the Xenos that were basically given an easy win until the a distress beacon-summoned PMC ERT showed up. There's also the fact that the Queen Mother directive would have cleared any illusion of the xenos not expecting the Marines as well, which robbed the Marines of an advantage as well.

[RavingManiac]

Firstly, apologies for ruining your game experience for the round. The event was intended to give marines an interesting scenario which they would have to approach in a deliberate, cautious manner.

Marines were sent a command announcement at the start of the round warning that a shipment of mines had been lost in the area, and were advised to exercise caution. At the same time, three CLF were spawned on the map with a large number of claymore mines.

Idea was that marines would get warned about the mines, then see the mines, then think "Oh, there are mines here, we should not walk into the mines". They would hence be forced to advance in at a cautious, measured pace, checking for mines and defusing them, which would be a change from the usual cycle of metarushing.

Evidently, the command announcement was not clear enough, or the landmines too hidden. Even after setting off the first few mines, marines continued to trigger landmines by accident, and suffered heavy casualties. The remnants quickly lost to the aliens, which proceeded to win the round.

In the future, landmines are probably off the table for events, at least in numbers such as these. This feedback is much appreciated.

[CABAL]

Queen Mother directive to not attack CLF? Isn't that against rules?: "...They are not friendly and will not negotiate..."
Giving xenos knowledge of attack that is comming is belivelable, but going strictly against their nature and enforcing things for what players were banned before (Famous CLF Synth that communicated with Queen and their "truce" in exchange for monkeys).

I don't want devs to further strict stuff available for them. Large minefields are cool, becouse they change the meta of round with small effort from staff. Just spawn them away from LZ's.

PMC's ERT is also bad way to recompensate shit that is throwed at marines. Players who were bald enough to directly trigger mines were rewarded with cool stuff,

[RavingManiac]

A previous attempt at a similar event had the CLF soldiers get eaten by the aliens before they could deploy more than a few mines. The Queen Mother directive was meant to prevent that. In hindsight, it would have been better phrased as a recommendation rather than an order.

[BillyBoBBizWorth]

This is probably a waste of time trying to get anything done about it, we all know whats it like around here, but seeming i was in a command position during the round ill mention the following.

Not only did Alpha take major hits from these mines, but also Charlie too, i think a Charlie was actually the first one that died from one almost as soon as we dropped, could of been others i missed as i was the only SO and the XO barked for me not to touch the Alpha and Bravo overwatch consoles...but i heard it all over the comm channels.
Basically Alpha, Bravo and Charlie squad members were screaming and pleading to command to please get Delta to stop setting the mines off, this was just a few minutes after the alamo touched down.Possibly not even that long.

Idea was that marines would get warned about the mines, then see the mines, then think "Oh, there are mines here, we should not walk into the mines". They would hence be forced to advance in at a cautious, measured pace, checking for mines and defusing them, which would be a change from the usual cycle of metarushing.

I understand the effect you were trying to get with this, but i have to inform you that the XO's orders were to scout and guess were the two first major contact locations were? Really, guess, surely you know.

It was the Chapel, and Crashed ship, it was exactly the same playout, because its all the map offers with how its positioned/lockdown/spawn points etc currently and the low amount of routes/paths you can even take, this has been said to you guys over and over again from multiple players.Long story short, it didnt work, infact it even helped push marines to engage west even faster somewhat.
Delta died at the crashed ship as usual and refused to retreat on their own accord or even with my direct orders, refused outright.Alpha died at the chapel and by LZ2 from some CLF/Xeno gangbang guillotine action.Charlie was lost trying to navigate the maze of blocked hallways trying to get west to assist delta even though it was far too late and im not entirely sure on details of Bravo, but im sure it was a similar fate as the rest of the squads.Then the rest is the usual story, COMMS/FOB gets swarmed and evac ordered, 20 minutes later alamo crashes into the almayer etc CIC defence etc..

So there you have it.

Also mention that i had a round on Big Red either a few rounds before this one, or possibly even last night where it was the same thing.We dropped from the Alamo and there was mines all over, just south of the LZ1 and it had the exact same effect that this report is pointing out, except this time i was one of the victims as a sniper spec.In that same round there was a instance in the engineering part of the map just above ETA where a rogue CLF popped out of no where and was trying to snipe, i set him on a fire with a incen round and run up to engage with a M39, starting shooting and a Runner shows up almost supporting the CLF player, totally singled me out slashing me whilst im engaging the CLF dude.The CLF player was moreso inbetween me and the runner, so the most likely thing would be the runner engages the closer and safer target, yet never saw it slash him once, he was seemingly safe around xenoes for some reason.Infact the CLF came from the same direction as the runner as well too.Same kind of double hostile faction gangup like i saw this round in question.

Take this info however you wish.

[RobBrown4PM]

I was Delta Squads ASL during this round. A ton of the mines were placed in or around LZ1, thus, when we disembarked from the Alamo we immediately started stepping on them. I lost the vast majority of my squad to major injuries from the mines, taking them out of the fight and back to the Alamo for surgery due to the damage mines cause now, or, outright death. The other squads experienced similar results after landing. When we finally met up with the Xeno's we were in absolutely no way shape or form capable of holding them off, let alone capable of holding any sort of offensive. We were routed immedietly after meeting up with the Xeno's, in fact, I wouldn't even call it a route, I'd call it a joke of a resistance due to our extremely limited capabilities.

There was a Corporate announcement about a lost box of mines before departure, so I think everyone knew that they would be out there. I don't think anyone expected LZ1, telecoms, and the surrounding area to be peppered with them however. While it was an interesting dynamic, there was no fun in the event what so ever.

[FGRSentinel]

It should also be noted that the "Admin-given PMC" was a result of someone launching a distress beacon. Unless staff are able to directly influence what the result is, the PMC was selected by pure RNG.

Likewise, since I was looking at the console as Alamo launched from the station for the last time I can say only three of the Marines that were on the ground when evac was called survived. I've only seen mortality rates that high in particularly gruesome 2+ hour rounds and the Xenos went up to the Almayer with something like 30+ xenos while the only living Marine players were the ones sent up from being blown up by the mines or that didn't manage to drop in time. The defense when the xenos landed was depressingly barren and, realistically, there were so few people left the XO could have simply ordered all hands to abandon ship and there'd actually be enough pods for everyone to fit in them. The Marines weren't "compensated" with a PMC or given fun shit and, in the end, the PMC didn't even make much difference.

[awan]

I am mentioned here and need to say a few things.
1. This was not my event.
2. I was in it as one of the clf.
3. We had instructions to plant the mines and to not plan them on airlock tiles. (After the door was fine.)
4. I did not plant any mines at the lz. The closest I saw one planted was telecomms and the foyer. (Part where you go to the kitchen.) But I did not see mines between telecomms and the double set of doors at lz1.
5. Marines were intentionally walking into mines.
6. This also helps the dev team. We now know for example to exclude mines from project nightmare and what kind of effect they will have. So lessons are learned.

[Swagile]

You don't need to test mines in a live server to know putting claymores all over the map that go kaboom near LZ's at arrival is not a good idea, nor a fun game mechanic.

Using that as an excuse to run such a shit excuse for an event is frankly insulting.

[CABAL]

...
6. This also helps the dev team. We now know for example to exclude mines from project nightmare and what kind of effect they will have. So lessons are learned.

No, no, no.

It's like: We spawned 20 ancient ravs for xenos next to LZ. 20 ancient ravs too OP? Ravs never more in any events.
Mines are fine, but not on LZ. Plant it in whole Nexus, plant them in whole Virology, plant them in whole Engineering.

[KennyTGuy]

I think some people are getting too emotional about this round, yes it wasn't the best but I believe it came from a genuine place to try and provide entertainment for all players, its just a shame it didn't work out that way, i feel the accusation of rules broken is pretty subjective too every event would generate a staff report if that was the case, ive felt salt towards some events doesnt mean staff was being malicious. I just ask that people who are understandably upset remember that.

Edit: I also agree with cabal above dont let the backlash frighten you too much the idea was fine its just execution that needs some work.

[NGGJamie]

All right, I understand that because this was an event, it affected a large number of people. However, please avoid posting unless you are:

A. Contributing new information that was not presented before.

B. Are the complainant, or the complainee.

C. Contributing an angle to the information that provides some valuable insight not already given.

[Sleepy Retard]

I was in this round as delta SL and felt it was pretty fun. Marines still won, easily, on this map. Just a few salty lads mad they got mine'd and had to be defibbed.

It was fun as well, having to actually be worried about something as a marine for once and not just mindlessly rushing to Lambda/ETA for an easy win.(Which happened anyway despite a few people getting mine'd)

Also this is AFTER a round where admins bussed the hell out of a few surviving aliens for 'delaying' when a a grand total of 3 aliens killed multiple squads, an admin spawned ERT, and a predator only to be forced to the ship due to 'bombardment' and loose.
I didn't get salty and make a report. Not saying most muhhreen mains are salty lads or anything over a few mines.

Since I was here for this round, no, this is completely wrong - you mention we rushed Lambda and ETA, which is a bit of a run from a prison station to Solaris Ridge

You're thinking of another round where they spawned in total, about 6 claymores. Across the entire map. This one had at least six claymores on the lz - and xenos won this round, that the report is about. Too many marines got instantly chunked, IB'd, and killed when claymores when off.

It didn't help the CLF was full of staff who had no regard for fun, and just set up claymores infront of doors, under things, and in the worst spots. It would've been OK if there was only a couple, but there was enough to completely cripple the marines before first contact

[NethIafins]

I was on during that round.

1) CLF were transformed survivors, however one of survivors had to go, so Awan took their place. As far as I know, he was only staff member IN CLF.

It's like: We spawned 20 ancient ravs for xenos next to LZ. 20 ancient ravs too OP? Ravs never more in any events.

2) Mines are docile, they do not jump at you as 20 ancient ravs would, they are not controlled by players and they are disarmed with a single use of multitool.
3) Marines were warned via command channel, although it was done directly to commander (so probably better give general announcement instead of a hidden one). Then a public announcement was made about "Shipment of mines being lost"
4) Freelancer Traders (that were spawned by me) WERE consisted primarily from staff members because they were only ghosted ones at that moment. They DID NOT planted any mines at LZ because they had none, and even if they had, those mines would be IIFed to marines. They also had IIF turret that had burstfire buffed (because I did not want them to get swarmed before marine deployment)

I do understand the feeling of event going awry, however people were warned.

But yeah, probably mines on LZ should've been deleted, lesson learned.

Question to OP: Did you ahelp the mine on LZ during the round? I assume you didn't, I was a bit preoccupied with the traders, so maybe I personally didn't notice. I do expect that it might've been against the spirit of the event and you would've got aheal.

But let's agree that after LZ and global announcement - everything is a fair game. If you want to unga your way around... well... I don't want to say "you deserved it" because we hope for maximum enjoyment of every player, and if every player wants to unga even if warned that it will get you killed... well... you can say that WE fucked up that we didn't read that round's playerbase or didn't warned you enough. I hope you will be able to forgive us all for that.

Also

you see regular events are for the enjoyment of players, dev events are for the enjoyment of devs

I will remember that, thank you

[awan]

I was on during that round.

1) CLF were transformed survivors, however one of survivors had to go, so Awan took their place. As far as I know, he was only staff member IN CLF.

2) Mines are docile, they do not jump at you as 20 ancient ravs would, they are not controlled by players and they are disarmed with a single use of multitool.
3) Marines were warned via command channel, although it was done directly to commander (so probably better give general announcement instead of a hidden one). Then a public announcement was made about "Shipment of mines being lost"
4) Freelancer Traders (that were spawned by me) WERE consisted primarily from staff members because they were only ghosted ones at that moment. They DID NOT planted any mines at LZ because they had none, and even if they had, those mines would be IIFed to marines. They also had IIF turret that had burstfire buffed (because I did not want them to get swarmed before marine deployment)

I do understand the feeling of event going awry, however people were warned.

But yeah, probably mines on LZ should've been deleted, lesson learned.

Question to OP: Did you ahelp the mine on LZ during the round? I assume you didn't, I was a bit preoccupied with the traders, so maybe I personally didn't notice. I do expect that it might've been against the spirit of the event and you would've got aheal.

But let's agree that after LZ and global announcement - everything is a fair game. If you want to unga your way around... well... I don't want to say "you deserved it" because we hope for maximum enjoyment of every player, and if every player wants to unga even if warned that it will get you killed... well... you can say that WE fucked up that we didn't read that round's playerbase or didn't warned you enough. I hope you will be able to forgive us all for that.

Also

I will remember that, thank you

This is not about the same round. This is about a prison round after. (Not sure don't think it was the round directly after.)
I did not play the big red round. Also not as a late-join in the event. Neth is mistaken here.

This map is an indication of mines I have seen placed.
There might be mines missing from this.
But like I said afaik nothing was placed on the lz itself the closest are the telecoms hallway and the foyer one.
https://gyazo.com/9367c11f47e078f34f181dfba2fa1454
(I count 17 and don't know how many were spawned in/used in total.)

[MattAtlas]

This is not about the same round. This is about a prison round after. (Not sure don't think it was the round directly after.)
I did not play the big red round. Also not as a late-join in the event. Neth is mistaken here.

This map is an indication of mines I have seen placed.
There might be mines missing from this.
But like I said afaik nothing was placed on the lz itself the closest are the telecoms hallway and the foyer one.
https://gyazo.com/9367c11f47e078f34f181dfba2fa1454
(I count 17 and don't know how many were spawned in/used in total.)

There were 2 mines directly in the west landing zone airlocks and another immediately west of said airlocks.

[Swagile]

Please stop talking about the rounds that weren't the PRISON STATION round with CLF and NO TRADERS.

[RobBrown4PM]

This is not about the same round. This is about a prison round after. (Not sure don't think it was the round directly after.)
I did not play the big red round. Also not as a late-join in the event. Neth is mistaken here.

This map is an indication of mines I have seen placed.
There might be mines missing from this.
But like I said afaik nothing was placed on the lz itself the closest are the telecoms hallway and the foyer one.
https://gyazo.com/9367c11f47e078f34f181dfba2fa1454
(I count 17 and don't know how many were spawned in/used in total.)

There were at least 2 more at LZ1 at the very least. 1 was right in the north set of doors at the sec checkpoints, the other was right after it maybe 4-5 tiles west of it. There may have been more at the LZ that aren't in this picture. There were a ton of booms upon the Marines disembarking and flowing out in to the normal FOB area.

[awan]

Feel free to take my picture to add what you think was there in blue and to edit your post to put it in like that. I can only comment on what I saw myself.

[solidfury7]

I witnessed this event, however I kinda struggle to see the reasoning behind the report.

The event was mishandled at parts and hit a few hickups on others. Not every event will run smooth. Hell most don't if you witness what's going on behind the scenes.

Did the event suck for some people? Sure did, is it worth this whole show and dance? No.

I remember when we had ANTI AIR missiles hit the dropship on first drop and it gibbed a few marines and critically injured others, myself included. However it was of the most interesting events I've ever had. Did it suck for the gibbed guys? Sure, but the other 200 marines we had sure were hyped about this really dangerous event where anything could happen.

Not everyone will have fun during events, everyone has different wants and needs, you can try cater to every single person but you'll generally get one of those boring generic events which provide something new.

If someone fucks up trying something new, so be it. The guys involved apologised profoundly in OOC after the game, it should of been left there, instead we got this report which itself just basically is a big complaints thread, (just look at the punished recommendation in OP.) not to mention that the rule break cited is -

"Do not try to heavily influence the game unless it is for very good reasoning such as for an event, a player purposefully holding up the game, dishing out punishment for rule breaking (Examples: a commander killed a marine unjustly, a squad of marines are killing other marines for no reason, a queen is slashing every host known to man, aliens have stacked too many huggers) or other such things.

[FGRSentinel]

I can understand the point of this event (to test and see how Marines respond to mines for future events) but I feel the most significant mistakes made with the one that the report was made about was the setup (CLF hostiles that were technically allied with the xeno hive, which gave an implicit excuse for the benos to know "someone" was coming to the station and where to look) and an understandable failure to take human nature into account: just like a CAS pilot will never get unga SLs to understand they're more help in a dire situation if they sit back and lase targets rather than run to the front line and get killed/captured with their irreplaceable binocs that the Marines will never recover, you can't simply plant mines in places that guarantee easy kills and expect Marine players to unlearn months or years of muscle memory in a single round to deal with them, especially if mines are put in places where the only way to disarm them is to take a wide detour and they'd have to stop at every door they open before going through without being pushed into the mine's sensor area.

It's important to remember that a claymore is basically a unidirectional version of a resin hole (at least with how the sensor works) that delimbs/crits/instakills rather than infects. Many Marine players have a hard time dealing with resin holes and egg traps in places similar to where the claymores were placed even after they have ic knowledge that they exist, which if you stop to make the connection I stated in the last sentence would tell you what to expect: the claymores shred the Marines in the same way resin holes by doors are almost always a guaranteed infection.

Do I think this is something worth a staff member getting in trouble for? If it was meant to test the waters, absolutely not. I do, however, think that everyone involved, both Marine players and the staff involved, should take this as a learning experience: Marines need to be more cautious about doorways and other choke points for traps and staff that want to test the waters should try to find something similar that happens in regular gameplay to help gauge how it'll likely impact the round before testing it live during a round.

[Swagile]

Ok so I guess I didn't explain myself correctly then.

Heres the deal:

When you are doing an event, sometimes you fuck up, and sometimes its a major fuck up. To remedy this, you can do a few things, some of them positive and some of them negative (in my view).

Take, for example, vanilla SS13. If you make an event that fucks over the Antags round (traitor, changeling, whatever), you can give them antag tokens they can use for the next round or other rounds as a "sorry for fucking up your antag round". If you fuck over the crew, you can either send ERT, send them more Cargo points, or directly spawn them gear they need to deal with the situation at hand (such as mass RCD's if you abombed the hallways or some shit).

If the round is unsalvageable at this point due to you fucking up horribly or the window of opportunity for ERT / cargo points / etc. helping being over, you can solve it next round by giving the people fun stuff that round (such as full RnD levels, lots of cargo points, maybe a cool mech, etc).

This is showing that you were sorry, and took action to remedy your fuck up through compensation.

In CM terms, this is sending a WO reinforcement ERT / spawning some turrets, grenades, etc. for marines, giving xenos more larvaes / T3 spawns to work with, etc. to compensate. Or next round giving them extra gear / larvae / maybe an Abomination to compensate for a round ruined for either side.

The negative things you can do, is reprimand the admin in charge, suspension, demotion, or outright removal for their fuck up. This is only in the case that someone keeps fucking up constantly, and not in cases like this; but id thought id mention it.

None of this happened; all the dev(s) in question said was "sorry" but they weren't /being/ sorry. By that I mean they didn't do anything to compensate for fucking over the entire round either during the round, or after the round. Anyone can say sorry; actually acting on it is what matters.

Ive seen a few admin events since ive come back that were shitty, but I never reported any of them because the admins actually remedied the situation by providing either side compensation and didn't just say "sorry but not sorry we ruined your round, its just for testing purposes xD".

Thats the main point behind this complaint, and hence why I said action taken being that they were taught by an experienced admin (who knows how to run events) how to actually run events. Because this is clearly an example of how NOT to run an event.

And no, "running an event" is not a catch all that allows you to fuck with players rounds with no repercussions because "its an event", fuck off with that shilling, SolidFury.