Enforcing rules on metagaming

[Roland410]

Summary (a quick, 2-3 sentence summary):
Enforce metagaming on a higher standard than it currently is. Marines and xenos meta a lot of locations currently, and the staff are not (from what I've seen) doing anything against it.

Benefits (How this will benefit the server and game as a whole):
It'd improve gameplay both early and lategame for both sides.

Details (Description of how you think this would work, the benefits, etc):
Starting off with marines, almost all of them currently meta the fog/alien spawn, forcing the aliens to either go out and hunt them (which isn't bad by itself) or forcing them to wait for it to come up and just battle it out at the river.
Same on the other side, xenos when boarding the Almayer ALWAYS go for either the CIC, SD or BOTH, leaving the marines no chance other than metaing everything from the hijack to them attacking said places first.

Implementation (Optional, if you have an idea how to implement it):
Force the staff to enforce it?

Notes:
I hope I was clear enough, I'm kind of tired when writing this, so it may not sound that well written. Sorry.

[Jeser]

Impossible to hardcode it, staff not always online -> impossible to force it all the time, pain in the ass to enforce it all. Too many problems.

[Crab_Spider]

Well I'd be with you, but the problem is that these require complete context, and actual investigation. Sometimes, we as humans will use our past experiences to make our decisions, so we will make these decisions unconsciously to avoid a negative consequence.

[Challenger]

Dunno what you mean by "meta the fog/alien spawn". If you mean that the marines usually make fortifications in a northwards manner, facing the fog, well... the other three sides of the colony are solid jungle that's not gonna move anytime soon. It makes intuitive sense to barricade against the unknown. After that at tablefort marines tend to push northeast where the hive usually is, but it's really more just the aliens coming from there that draws marines there.

Aliens don't meta the Almayer locations. I don't know if you're writing this from experience or actually, fully observing aliens, but the Almayer isn't that big, there's plenty of aliens, and they cover a lot of ground fast with their speed and thermal vision. People like to whine about how they're targeted as a doctor by lone hunters, but I've played stranded Almayer runner/hunter quite a few times and it really only takes you a minute to scope out the ENTIRE lower floor via the vents, after which you're OBVIOUSLY going to go for the only guys you've seen with your thermal vision who 1. have no guns 2. have no one around them 3. are trapped in tiny rooms with a bonus host who's not even reacting to anything. Similarly the CIC is often understaffed by unarmed guys. The other thing is medbay/CIC/SD are all really central locations, it's hard not to miss these while moving from place to place or traversing vents.

[Kavrick]

How do you want us to enforce this? ban everyone who waits at the fog wall? the fog wall was put there in the first place to stop metarush, which it has done.

[shyshadow]

Just put it in the rules. If it's a literal rule, then people don't want to do it. Of course there are those people that won't do it, and that's your chance to weed out the people who don't like following the rules even more. I'm not a staff member or whatever so I don't have much experience with this.

[driecg36]

Just put it in the rules. If it's a literal rule, then people don't want to do it. Of course there are those people that won't do it, and that's your chance to weed out the people who don't like following the rules even more. I'm not a staff member or whatever so I don't have much experience with this.

If people followed rules by themselves, mods wouldn't need to be a thing.

As it stands, enforcing metagame through rule enforcement is incredibly difficult to do at all, not to mention to do fairly.

Though I wish metagameing were not a thing whatsoever, this is not the way to get rid of it. A massive -1 from me.

[misto]

i dont know if this sort of thing is reasonably enforacable to such a high standard. youd be demanding that each team wilfully leave certain weaknesses wide open, day after day, round after round, at some point youre either going to run out of players due to them becoming frustrated with being watched and restricted at every turn, or the mods/admins will get bored of policing it that closely and return to a more relaxed atmosphere

its also difficult to discuss alien meta, because their thought processes, intelligence levels, and the limits of their senses are rarely perfectly established in related materials, and even when they are can vary heavily between stories

as for the question of "fog meta" and similar situations regarding the marines - the marines regularly send squads to scout the very limits of the map in lv. they find the place encircled by dense impassable jungle except the foggy river to the north. what would a sensible investigation force do, upon finding this situation and then noticing the fog drop? they go check out whats on the other side of the river, its literally the only direction left for them to go.

[shyshadow]

If people followed rules by themselves, mods wouldn't need to be a thing.

As it stands, enforcing metagame through rule enforcement is incredibly difficult to do at all, not to mention to do fairly.

Though I wish metagameing were not a thing whatsoever, this is not the way to get rid of it. A massive -1 from me.

Well like, I'm saying it would nudge people to not meta I guess. I'm not sure or have a clue TBH. So Eh.

[NGGJamie]

For a start, because of how long the fog lasts usually the marines have scouted out almost the entire colony by the time the fog's about to lift and have nothing else to look at. Admittedly basing up at Hydro before the fog lifts could be slight meta, but Hydro is a location close to the Nexus with good potential for supply lines and is very central. It makes sense to base up there even if you don't know it's essentially the front line.

The other problem is that it's very difficult to tell who actually is metagaming first here. All it takes is for one person to say something about the fog and xenos coming from the north over the radio for everyone else to wait at the fog. In this case, only one person MGed and then all the marines headed that way from IC information. It would be harder than it's worth to try to dig through logs and find that original MG. If they didn't actually say anything and just happened to go there with other marines following them, it may not be findable at all without careful observation and perfect level judgement calls.

[Jay Burns]

its fucking hard to constantly enforce that, plus there are no logs that would help investigation and I as staff would still like to play the game and not have to watch the CIC constantly.

[Rain7x]

How do you want us to enforce this? ban everyone who waits at the fog wall? the fog wall was put there in the first place to stop metarush, which it has done.

This

There is no realistic way to ban people for "entering the CIC", that's just stupid

[MrJJJ]

You really should have suggested a mechanical fix instead of "make staff enforce this harder!" because thats not how you can solve problems, the staff while might have a certain restrictions (aka minimal time spend so to consider if you are still active and etc) but they can't simply enforce something harder.

They are here to enforce the rules that are already set in place to the best of their ability, do you really think a 5 staff members, let alone 2 or 1, can constantly monitor like hounds a certain area?

Those are still people, they want to play the game too, nobody wants to spend 2 hours staring at SD trying to catch a alien that metarushes to it, or constantly go over for about 30-40 minutes to warn about 20 people for staying near the fog too much? At that points its a job that you don't get paid for doing and not something you volunteer for.

[Butterrobber202]

There will always be People that want to WIN instead of Have Fun, there will always be people that bend the rules so they can WIN. It won't stop. The staff is there to handle it, but there are limits to what they can enforce.

[Roland410]

Reading over the comments, many of you pointed out that the fog being camped isn't really preventable, which now that I think more about it, I do realize, but fairly sure the aliens camping vital rooms such as the SD room could be prevented by someone watching it, since they only have to deal with it AFTER aliens board, unless an XRT is sent in.
Over the last few days it has been especially bad. Today I played a round where we had to evac etc. the usual, and that was called in less than 30 seconds aliens boarded, but the time I got to the SD room about 2-3 aliens already camped it.
Yesterday or so aliens acided into the EMPTY SD room.

I'm fairly sure if I thought hard enough I could say quite a few examples. If there are people here who want to prevent it, I'm certain we can think out a solution to this, but for now the option I stated is the only thing I can think about.

[driecg36]

Again, unless someone specifically ahelps it and there is a lot of proof, it is really hard to enforce metagaming.

Really, the only way to avoid metagaming is through mechanics. Sure, you should definitely report really serious cases of metagaming, but almost every single player metagames to an extent on the server, consciously or no. Enforcing that fairly would be an absolute nightmare.

[ZDashe]

If you believe someone is metagaming, ahelp it with clear and concise evidence. I have enforced the metagaming rule on multiple occasions, but many times people either ahelp "Xenos are metagaming" or "METAAAAAA", which is often times unhelpful. Most of the metagaming cases where I ban/note people for are always the ones where I have been observing myself, such as Xeno walling off an empty SD room and failed to give a valid IC reason for, camping the LZs when there's no survivors in sight, building at the LZs before marines arrive, mass murdering monkeys for no IC reason and many many more.

If anyone has a good and enforcable way to enforce rules on metagaming without requiring us to set up a panopticon with over 10 monitors to cycle observing every single player to judge their intent, or relying on uninformative ahelps mixed with salt, i'm open to suggestions. Keep in mind, staff are players too, and probably want to play as much as you do, and not spy on every single player. Well, with the exception of some of us... I enjoy spying on people

[NGGJamie]

If you believe someone is metagaming, ahelp it with clear and concise evidence. I have enforced the metagaming rule on multiple occasions, but many times people either ahelp "Xenos are metagaming" or "METAAAAAA", which is often times unhelpful. Most of the metagaming cases where I ban/note people for are always the ones where I have been observing myself, such as Xeno walling off an empty SD room and failed to give a valid IC reason for, camping the LZs when there's no survivors in sight, building at the LZs before marines arrive, mass murdering monkeys for no IC reason and many many more.

If anyone has a good and enforcable way to enforce rules on metagaming without requiring us to set up a panopticon with over 10 monitors to cycle observing every single player to judge their intent, or relying on uninformative ahelps mixed with salt, i'm open to suggestions. Keep in mind, staff are players too, and probably want to play as much as you do, and not spy on every single player. Well, with the exception of some of us... I enjoy spying on people

Far more well put than what I said to a similar effect. Can confirm ZDashe just stalks people for hours.

[Tidomann]

Ok, just set up 100 junk connections set to join the server and record every round covering the map. Then set up a script to splice each recording together.

It would probably just cost an insane amount of storage. But now you have sick replay features.

[Rain7x]

Ok, just set up 100 junk connections set to join the server and record every round covering the map. Then set up a script to splice each recording together.

It would probably just cost an insane amount of storage. But now you have sick replay features.

Genius.

[Snypehunter007]

IDK what you are really trying to establish with this suggestion. Staff aren't omnipotent and we do the best we can do every time we log onto the server.

Also most of the points of the OP are addressed above.

Locking.