A Real Discussion: Xeno Meta Gaming

[Gray]

Just going to chime in real quick and say that "xenos dragging corpses" being hard to investigate is an absolute bullshit excuse. Whenever an attack, disarm, grab or hell even a hug happens, it is logged. These logs are accessible to any admin or mod by two clicks. Right clicking the mob, and clicking the view variables button then scrolling down the list to the latest attack log. The attack log not only will showcase when the marine was grabbed by the xeno, it will also show exactly how much HP he had at the time.

If your excuse for allowing xenos this behavior is armor light then I'm willing to fight with it turned off just to report xenos who drag my corpse away for metagaming.

Edit: forgot to mention that the log also gives exact coordinates of where the grab happened.

[Jeser]

Playing xeno and fighting a group of shades is not as fun as fighting a group of humans, each of them having their personality, quirks, skill and story. I'm sure some people don't mind playing xeno against a single type of mob with a somehow randomized type of behavior, which is the way I felt when I played against blurred humans. But when I play xeno, I want to be able to recognise the marine I delimbed earlier in the round, the medic that saved him, the SL that sacrificed himself to kill the queen, the moronic doctor that nearly died in a boiler gas and the MP that made an arrest in the FOB. Rmoving that removes alot of the fun for me.
I'm also personally against the removal of name view for xenos, for the same reason I'm against forcing marines to use a random name every round. While I'm playing xeno, I want to know when it's Bill Carson I'm delimbing. Cutting marine#133's hands off isn't as fun. And remembering numbers is much harder than remembering names.
That's just my personnal opinion, but I believe it is shared by some of our players. The exact official reasons why the removal of the marine names view for xenos wasn't implemented, I do not know.

Tharinoma, obviously I don't quite get what you mean, let me explain how common salty player™ sees this situation.

Playing xeno and fighting a group of shades is not as fun as fighting a group of humans, each of them having their personality, quirks, skill and story. I'm sure some people don't mind playing xeno against a single type of mob with a somehow randomized type of behavior, which is the way I felt when I played against blurred humans. But when I play xeno, I want to be able to recognise the marine I delimbed earlier in the round, the medic that saved him, the SL that sacrificed himself to kill the queen, the moronic doctor that nearly died in a boiler gas and the MP that made an arrest in the FOB. Rmoving that removes alot of the fun for me.

The problem is, that xenos already are those how you mentioned "fighting machines". There is no RP from xenos to humans. Especially in combat. The only reason we can understand for not keeping blurr system is balance issues, since aliens should be able to see what weapons are they facing.
Everything else sounds just like a bad justifying metatargeting.

(BTW, it's completely devs fault. I wasn't there during blurr test, but from what I understood, they took my idea and fucked it up. Initially, aliens were supposed to see blurr only when mob wasn't in direct view. So they feel humans out of line of sight with their senses and actually SEE mob as it is when it entered line of sight. It would make alien play more carefuly and force them to think and calculate chances whether it's armless doc behind wall or a B18 with a shotgun. Something quite opposit to what devs doing, basically. Instead devs just took blurring, ran a test and said: "nah, it's bad." Ofc it will be when they threw out half of idea. But anyway, enough about devs, I'm just explaining why it should have work and was suggested in a first place.)

Now, second part.

I'm also personally against the removal of name view for xenos, for the same reason I'm against forcing marines to use a random name every round. While I'm playing xeno, I want to know when it's Bill Carson I'm delimbing. Cutting marine#133's hands off isn't as fun. And remembering numbers is much harder than remembering names.

The thing is, there is no reasons at all for aliens to see marine names. Literally. This only allows metatargeting and nothing else. Your own words, if you look at them from the side, kinda, just confirm that point. You want to know who marine is. While you shouldn't care about that. Marines don't see alien OOC names. Aliens shouldn't be able to see marine names either. It's about being fair.

Basically, we gave only one side in multiplayer combat competetive game possibility of outright metagaming by knowing names of other faction.
If the sound of this isn't something bad for you, well, then we won't be able to understand each other.

And we all know that aliens metatargeting is quite real. I am playing a lot and for a long time, I saw countless situations when aliens did outright reckless and not justified otherwise moves, risking A LOT for taking out of round one person simply based on their name. In ANY part of the round. In many cases even role of the person doesn't matter. I saw aliens prioritizing well-known PFCs over squad special roles, simply because their names are not famous.

Bottomline.
Marine names and indentity are for human factions RP and interactions only. Aliens should stay away from this. Only exception are predators, because they MUST know marine names for their shenanigans. It's the only allowed names meta-thingy, that should be on our server.

[CABAL]

For better addressing I will number parts of your post:

The only subject I claimed could not be enforced is metatargeting. I'm sure some metatargeting incidents were addressed at some point in CM history, but again, you can't enforce it if the offender is being subtle about it. You're not in his head.



1. Playing xeno and fighting a group of shades is not as fun as fighting a group of humans, each of them having their personality, quirks, skill and story. I'm sure some people don't mind playing xeno against a single type of mob with a somehow randomized type of behavior, which is the way I felt when I played against blurred humans. But when I play xeno, I want to be able to recognise the marine I delimbed earlier in the round, the medic that saved him, the SL that sacrificed himself to kill the queen, the moronic doctor that nearly died in a boiler gas and the MP that made an arrest in the FOB. Rmoving that removes alot of the fun for me.
I'm also personally against the removal of name view for xenos, for the same reason I'm against forcing marines to use a random name every round. While I'm playing xeno, I want to know when it's Bill Carson I'm delimbing. Cutting marine#133's hands off isn't as fun. And remembering numbers is much harder than remembering names.
That's just my personnal opinion, but I believe it is shared by some of our players. The exact official reasons why the removal of the marine names view for xenos wasn't implemented, I do not know.


2.I think I understand th feeling, but please do keep in mind it is not universal. I don't give a damn about that when I play.


3. Metaknowledge does exist for xenos.
It's just much, much, much less relevant than marine metaknowledge.
The reason is very simple : xenos know nearly everything they need to know about the humans, yet the humans start knowing nothing about the xenos. Xenos have already fought human beings, they know about their general tactics and capabilities, while the marines know nothing about the xenos.
The discovery of the new species, with all the jump scares, fear, or curiosity is a strong part of the alien universe.

4. Most of the xenomorph metagaming issues were fixed by coding. They can't melt surgery tables for no reason, or important vendors, or important consoles, or wall off the entire sd room. These things are either against the rules and enforced, or so important that we ensured game mechanics prevented it. Xenos cannot drag items.
We can't apply these limitations to the marine side. Sometimes for practical coding reasons (how do you let the game know when marines know about aliens in vents..) but mostly because restricting gameplay is not something we want to do for these things that can be enforced well by the staff team. Some updates going in that direction have been considerably debated about, and rightfully (reading pill bottle labels), because they ruin part of the fun of SS13, which is a game that leaves youc ompletely free to evolve in a set universe in which you create the roleplay and the fun with others.


5. We're medium RP and you are not obliged to provide quality roleplay to play on the server, but some xenos do roleplay, and roleplay is always encouraged. Staff has always been less severe on the low rp shenanigans on the xeno side because they are not the main characters of the story, but they did put their foot down when things started getting out of hand.


6. What do you think we do during all that time we spend on the server banning morons that decided to shoot you in the face for no reason? Why do you think we keep the devs in the dungeon chained to their keyboards? Why do mentors painfully walk newbies too lazy to read and understand a quickstart guide through the basics every round? Why do you think I'm spending some of my precious time responding to you right now?
Coder, mod and mentor applications are open, you know. And the gitlab is accessible by everyone.


7. Marines metarushing and winning the round in 45 minutes is not a minor problem, it's a major problem.
A player being unable to be defibbed because his body was dragged away is not a major problem.
Xenos metarushing sd is not a major problem.

8. If a xenomorph can drag a dead guy away, he can very well drag him alive then kill him. Xenos have more than enough stuns to do that. If your dead corpse is so abandoned that a lone xeno could take him and bring him all the way back to the hive, the chances a medic would randomly stumble upon you and defib you are pretty slim.
Killing farwe planetside is a major problem. Just imagine every single marines and survivor planetside being completely free to murder the smallhosts there. Not mentionning that sane human beings do not fire on harmless fauna.


9. We tried. It doesn't.


10. I haven't responded to everything. Some of it is just salt. Some of it doesn't make much sense. I tried to clear up most of the misunderstandings I could find.
I'll check this thread later and try to respond to questions if there are any.

1: Inversion time!:
"Playing marine and fighting a group of shades is not as fun as fighting a group of specific xenos, each of them having their personality, quirks, skill and story. I'm sure some people don't mind playing marine against a few types of mob with a somehow randomized type of behavior, which is the way I felt when I played against xenos. But when I play marine, I want to be able to recognise the xeno I buckshoted earlier in the round, the drone that saved him, the Ravager that sacrificed his time to drag XO body to the another end of map, the moronic runner that nearly died near sentry and the sentinel that made an spit in the FOB. Rmoving that removes alot of the fun for me.
I'm also personally against the removal of name view for marines, for the same reason I'm against forcing xenos to use a random name every round. While I'm playing marine, I want to know when it's admeme I'm killing. Shooting Elite Warrior's isn't as fun. And remembering numbers is much harder than remembering names." - Marines also want this "fun" of knowing what xeno to metatarget (not just target, you have to play rounds before to know which player is robust, completly new xeno player don't know names it's a disadventage for him).

2: Strangely, as a random player outside staff I'm concerned about obeying rules by every player, no exeptions for their race. They can be xeno main degenerate, or pure, fabulous, great, smart and handsome PFC main. It's not a feeling, I don't feel anything when I see as a ghost that Young Runner 69 killed a single marine that went few titles too far and takes his lifeless body for great jurney around colony to deny any attempts to revive him. What I see is breaking metaknowledge (Xenos not knowing about defibs) and powergaming (Xenos doing anything to win, even denying defibs and slashing every bed in nexus on LV to deny every bit of metal) rules.

3: Please, do tell more. List all of metaknowledge "available" for xenos that is punished. I'm sure there isn't much so it should be easy.

4: Sure, it's great that this was acknowledged and dealt with. But there are still things left that xenos do and it breaks atleast 4 rules: 1. Roleplay, 2. Don't be a dick, 4. No powergaming and 5. No metagaming or metacommunication. Just by dragging lifeless XO body around the colony breaks those 4 rules.

5: Please, do tell more. The most "RP" I saw personally was fighting with single runner in prep room. He killed me and started to dance on my body, then resting on it, standing up, resting, standing up (I think he/she tried to do "teabagging" like cool kids in FPS). That was great "RP" experience, those aliens during combat... They are doing so much RP. I guess taking dead bodies for a road trip is a form of "RP", too. They just want to show you colony, but they don't know you are dead, only sleeping. Going straight for SD after dropship crash? Aliens just want to give marines some "RP" experience.

And I forgot another "RP" pratice from xenos. When engineer welds doors, then xenos come to that door from other side and also start to "dance" spin like autistic toy that was popular around year ago.

6: Sure, I appreciate that and it hurts twice as much when xenos are breaking rules and it's ignored and even excused without proper excuse.

7: Xenos killing marines in exact the same time (add 10 minutes for dropship hack and 10 minutes for shipside extermination) is accepted?
One player that didn't get defib one round becouse of xenos new adventure is minor, I agree, but many marine players being dragged every round I think is major.

8: "If a xenomorph can drag a dead guy away, he can very well drag him alive then kill him." - If dragging alive marines and then killing would be the case (common pratice that would replace dragging dead bodies), I would be fine. If this was a thing you wouldn't see me posting that much on a forum.
You also realize that this isn't only a "lone xeno" pratice? Metatargetting also means that killing "Bill Carson" is not enough, becouse he can be revived. What hurts more is dragging dead famous players during xeno, or marine push, under stray of acid spits and bullets, just to fuck up that one person round and let the xenos win by all means necessary (definition of powergaming and being dick).

9: You should know it better, yet I can't still belive that OOC message from admin about specific pratice and few bans for few hours won't work. Why do you(admins overall) deal with xenos dragging bodies under dropship this way if it does not work?

10: Yep, I'm salty, but I'm trying as much as I can to not oversalt and atleast I'm not throwing insults like I usually do.

[BobatNight]

Just going to chime in real quick and say that "xenos dragging corpses" being hard to investigate is an absolute bullshit excuse. Whenever an attack, disarm, grab or hell even a hug happens, it is logged. These logs are accessible to any admin or mod by two clicks. Right clicking the mob, and clicking the view variables button then scrolling down the list to the latest attack log. The attack log not only will showcase when the marine was grabbed by the xeno, it will also show exactly how much HP he had at the time.

If your excuse for allowing xenos this behavior is armor light then I'm willing to fight with it turned off just to report xenos who drag my corpse away for metagaming.

Edit: forgot to mention that the log also gives exact coordinates of where the grab happened.

The dead have no rights. It'd be way too difficult to moderate aaaand getting defibbed isn't a right.

Really though, the idea of admin intervention over people dragging marines off is absolutely fucking retarded. You died, get over it.

[CABAL]

The dead have no rights. It'd be way too difficult to moderate aaaand getting defibbed isn't a right.

Really though, the idea of admin intervention over people dragging marines off is absolutely fucking retarded. You died, get over it.

The dead have no rights, yet you can't husk them...

Really though, the idea of admin intervention over people husking marines is absolutely fucking retarded. You died, get over it. (Inversion is the best weapon, like cartoon character bending double barrel shotgun at the direction of shooter)

Being denied of defib is not a main reason, Xeno Meta Gaming is, like the thread title suggest.

[BobatNight]

You can't attack a dead body like someone suggested on the other page, the only way a xeno could attack a dead body as far as I know are...
-Flames (Which set the xeno on fire too)
-Disposal Chutes
-Boiler Gas

You'd have to go pretty far out of your way to purposefully husk a marine corpse, it's a whole lot easier to just hide them.

[Heckenshutze]

I remember when, as a mod I was told that Xenos who hid bodies inside lockers, crates or disposal chutes was bwoinkable, and personally I enforced the rule with ease, staff has the tools to enforce most stuff and isn't a common thing to hide something from the mods for too long; what's the difference between that issue and this one? If "the dead have no rights" why it was ok to bwoink xenos for that and not for the main issue?

[Dolth]

I hope you all realize this whole clusterfuck could be fixed if rules were strictly applied and left over absolute zero grey-zone whereas admins have last words.

Right now everyone habe their own understanding/interpretation of what is and what is not allowed OF COURSE they will be confused and thus angry if you just go and say at them "Yeah, no. I am an admin and they are allowed to do that because... I am an admin!".

Roughly, it should end by "[...] because... Rule number X says you can metagame as an alien." Or anything else!

Also Jeser blurr idea is grand. Really.

EDIT: Please do not issue another toxicity warn for whzt I am about to say but;
Whoever says 'getting defibbed is not a right!!' is clearly beyond retardness as it IS NOT the fucking point at all. And if you can't understand that you're either too immature to have an inch of relativism whenever involved in a debate OR, most likely, you have no idea what roleplaying properly is. (And that applies to whomever misuse AND/OR mix up power and meta.)

► Show Spoiler

Also a lot of what you describe as not enforcable was actually enforced years ago... Just check the whole thread. People are constantly giving solutions to your 'we can't enforce that'. Please, just be a bit attentive and I swear we might all end having more fun. Having cleaner games etc..

[Symbiosis]

I hope you all realize this whole clusterfuck could be fixed if rules were strictly applied and left over absolute zero grey-zone whereas admins have last words.

Right now everyone habe their own understanding/interpretation of what is and what is not allowed OF COURSE they will be confused and thus angry if you just go and say at them "Yeah, no. I am an admin and they are allowed to do that because... I am an admin!".

Roughly, it should end by "[...] because... Rule number X says you can metagame as an alien." Or anything else!

Also Jeser blurr idea is grand. Really..

► Show Spoiler

Also a lot of what you describe as not enforcable was actually enforced years ago... Just check the whole thread. People are constantly giving solutions to your 'we can't enforce that'. Please, just be a bit attentive and I swear we might all end having more fun. Having cleaner games etc..

Subjective rules leave too much room for Admin bias and abuse. The community of CM needs to really speak out against clear abuses of power.

The blur idea sucked. You’d run up to a flamethrower marine and get roasted because you couldn’t see weaponry. Maybe remove name recognition.

Creating specific rules isn’t hard. Subjective rules enforcement is the antithesis of what the staff code of conduct calls for.

[Omicega]

The whole point of the rules rework was to try and trim down on the old set and see which ones we needed to be left as they were. Some of the remaining ones have wiggle room for subjectivity built into them because it's impossible to build a catch-all set of rules that encompass every potential avenue of abuse.

I don't know how you'd feel in my position, but I have seen more than enough rule-skirters and loopholers here and elsewhere to last me a lifetime. A 100% objective approach would never work, because then you're drawing a line in the sand where people can run right up to and still cause significant trouble as long as they never cross it.

[Gray]

The whole point of the rules rework was to try and trim down on the old set and see which ones we needed to be left as they were. Some of the remaining ones have wiggle room for subjectivity built into them because it's impossible to build a catch-all set of rules that encompass every potential avenue of abuse.

I don't know how you'd feel in my position, but I have seen more than enough rule-skirters and loopholers here and elsewhere to last me a lifetime. A 100% objective approach would never work, because then you're drawing a line in the sand where people can run right up to and still cause significant trouble as long as they never cross it.

This does not stop Admins/Managers/Heads from giving a proper ruling instead of "uh oh lights."

[Symbiosis]

The whole point of the rules rework was to try and trim down on the old set and see which ones we needed to be left as they were. Some of the remaining ones have wiggle room for subjectivity built into them because it's impossible to build a catch-all set of rules that encompass every potential avenue of abuse.

I don't know how you'd feel in my position, but I have seen more than enough rule-skirters and loopholers here and elsewhere to last me a lifetime. A 100% objective approach would never work, because then you're drawing a line in the sand where people can run right up to and still cause significant trouble as long as they never cross it.

I understand that side.

I think the concern is that many players play this as a competitive RP game. I personally love the RP side of CM, but when I play Xeno/Marine I do so to help my team succeed. I try to avoid breaking the rules; specifically the ones I know.

It’s the concern that these subjective rules can be used to oust people that bothers me personally. Intent matters; especially when it’s an unwritten rule.

My Xeno rule breaks as a player, minus the one I got when I was new to the server, were by no means deliberate attempts to break the rules. One was a dropship middle launch (an old rule that was in a changelog from 2015/2016) and melting surgery tables. Both were done to inconvenience the opposite side, but not an attempt to maliciously metagame.

We just don’t want to see unwritten rules being used to remove people from the community or fear monger.

[Omicega]

I agree on intent mattering. I can't speak for other moderation staff, but I rarely even bother noting people if I figure an unwritten rule break happened by genuine mistake, depending on how they reply to me when I poke them about it. It only takes two or three PMs back and forth to get an idea of what most people's reasoning was behind doing something borderline, and I prefer to give people the benefit of the doubt.

The problem with subjective rules enforcement is, of course, that you can't guarantee every staff member will be on the same page where unwritten stuff is concerned. A lot of the time these sorts of discussions go to msay and there's some form of consensus drawn up; a lot of the time they don't and the mod or admin deals with it themselves. I won't comment on any specific names or recent events, but when people seem almost proud of derailing the normal flow of a round as a matter of course, or openly admit in deadchat/Discord/other places that they like to push things as far as they can within the rules, I find it hard to sympathise when they do eventually get prodded or slapped back into place.

I'm just a moderator, so my opinion doesn't count for much, but that about sums it up. I follow the head rulings that come my way as best I can, and for anything unwritten that I don't have a ruling for I just use my best judgement.

On the topic at hand, though - I have no idea why the whole 'xeno meta' thing has come up again, especially with regard corpse dragging. This is something that's been a thing since I started playing here in August (and probably for far longer) and it's never been a big issue - people just learn to accept it and move on. If we coded out corpse dragging at all, xenos couldn't empty their nests once hosts had burst (and there'd likely be at least a couple more oversights related to removing it from them entirely). If we simply made it a subjective rule (because there is no way to enforce it objectively short of having a staff member observe each and every xeno all round long), where do we draw the line? How much dragging is too much? Ten tiles? Twenty?

Basically, my stance on corpse dragging is more or less what I picked up when I first came here: suck it up and move on. Shit happens, and meta works both ways - robust marines know to countercharge boilers and queens while their abilities are cooling down, but somehow that more subtle form of metatargeting flies under the radar.

[Casany]

On the topic at hand, though - I have no idea why the whole 'xeno meta' thing has come up again, especially with regard corpse dragging. This is something that's been a thing since I started playing here in August (and probably for far longer) and it's never been a big issue - people just learn to accept it and move on. If we coded out corpse dragging at all, xenos couldn't empty their nests once hosts had burst (and there'd likely be at least a couple more oversights related to removing it from them entirely). If we simply made it a subjective rule (because there is no way to enforce it objectively short of having a staff member observe each and every xeno all round long), where do we draw the line? How much dragging is too much? Ten tiles? Twenty?

Basically, my stance on corpse dragging is more or less what I picked up when I first came here: suck it up and move on. Shit happens, and meta works both ways - robust marines know to countercharge boilers and queens while their abilities are cooling down, but somehow that more subtle form of metatargeting flies under the radar.

Chestbursted corpses have a special 'tag' so that they can't be defibbed. Make it so xenos can drag the bodies with those tags.

I'm not a fan of the whole "Just accept it, it's just how it is, can't change it". No one has been a fan of it ever, and even when I started I remember discussions about xenos dragging and devouring to prevent cloning. In fact, the devs made it so that xenos couldn't devour dead bodies to remove them from the round. Which is what disproves AGAIN the whole "the dead have no rights".

People have never been happy with it, but now it's been brought to center stage because of the recent rule changes. The playerbase for the first time actually feels like they can have an impact on the rules, which is why it is being brought up. By saying that it's always been like that you're basically advocating for no change.

I could do the same thing with Marine metarushes. Marines have always metarushed, why should we stop them from doing so?

[CABAL]

-snip-

Don't code it, just relay on ahelps like I writed previously, but I guess my post with lenght of biblical proportions is to hard to adress. All becouse salt from my post is just shooting at potential reader eye and it hurts. Say and write it loud and clear: "Dragging corpses by xenos is allowed only when they are clearing nest, or they are clearing their paths from light, but not too far away".

Don't watch every xeno, do like you are doing now and don't watch them at all, just wait for ahelp from a recently dead player. He should point specific alien, check the place of death and position of body, then bwoink alien and here you go. Repeat several times, ban few xenos for few hours, ban few players that ahelp for no atleast semi-valid reason for a few hours.

Then check another ecounters of xeno metagaming and powergaming like killing synths that showed no signs of hostility (just like bwoinking marines for shooting at xenos during first ecounter). Come to their house and spank them if you must, also don't forget about preds, those also fuck around like no predator would.

Or plan "B". ADMIT, just admit that xenos can powergame and have all the knowledge. Put it in rules as clear as you can. So clear and simple, that even kid that just learned how to read can understand:
"4. No powergaming - Powergaming includes performing actions outside your assigned job or chosen character’s abilities. Your skills or RP background prior to the round do not matter - a standard marine with "a brother in Engineering" does not know how to hack an airlock.
NOT Powergaming:
- Benos doing anything."

"5. No metagaming or metacommunication - Acting upon knowledge your character does not have or communicating information about the current round, including but not limited to private discussions, chat rooms, and/or voice chats during the game. If you want to talk to other CM players about CM or just in general, we have an official Discord, but keep the discussion about past rounds and never about the current one.

Examples that are NOT Metagaming:
- Benos are omniscient thanks to hivemind. They know what canteen is serving on Almayer and they know medics can defib recently dead marine"

Belive me, I will be happy about it.

[Omicega]

People have never been happy with it, but now it's been brought to center stage because of the recent rule changes. The playerbase for the first time actually feels like they can have an impact on the rules, which is why it is being brought up. By saying that it's always been like that you're basically advocating for no change.

I could do the same thing with Marine metarushes. Marines have always metarushed, why should we stop them from doing so?

Whoever said 'the dead have no rights' misspoke. We specifically enforce against making the dead more dead, such as trying to husk them, but nothing against moving them around.

I don't think you're wrong in saying that people have never been happy with it, but it's not as if it's a gamebreaking issue. I get as pissed off when I get corpse dragged as anyone else - I ghost out, go into deadchat, and vent my anger - but then I get over it, because it's just part of the game. I am against removing it because marines are very quick to call meta on things xenos do, and stroke themselves off sardonically about their favourite phrase of "xenos can't meta" - yet somehow Delta squad unga blasting the caves every game, coordinating pushes between boiler gas waves and queen screeches and picking them out as HVTs is handwaved as just part of the game.

I am as heavy a marine main as they come - probably over 95% of my time played is on the marine side and a good 75% of that would be groundside - and I have never once felt so angry about corpse dragging that I'd petition for it to be changed, even being a fairly well-known medic player. I, personally, don't see why it should be changed, but I wish anyone who does all the best in convincing the people who can actually effect the rule change to fix it to your liking. I just can't see a way in which it can be done without putting a significant workload on staff - a group of unpaid volunteers who have more than enough ahelps to chew through in every round as it is without adding on 50 marines ahelping about being moved 5 tiles to the pile.

Don't code it, just relay on ahelps like I writed previously, but I guess my post with lenght of biblical proportions is to hard to adress. All becouse salt from my post is just shooting at potential reader eye and it hurts. Say and write it loud and clear: "Dragging corpses by xenos is allowed only when they are clearing nest, or they are clearing their paths from light, but not too far away".

Don't watch every xeno, do like you are doing now and don't watch them at all, just wait for ahelp from a recently dead player. He should point specific alien, check the place of death and position of body, then bwoink alien and here you go. Repeat several times, ban few xenos for few hours, ban few players that ahelp for no atleast semi-valid reason for a few hours.

Then check another ecounters of xeno metagaming and powergaming like killing synths that showed no signs of hostility (just like bwoinking marines for shooting at xenos during first ecounter). Come to their house and spank them if you must, also don't forget about preds, those also fuck around like no predator would.

Or plan "B". ADMIT, just admit that xenos can powergame and have all the knowledge. Put it in rules as clear as you can. So clear and simple, that even kid that just learned how to read can understand:
"4. No powergaming - Powergaming includes performing actions outside your assigned job or chosen character’s abilities. Your skills or RP background prior to the round do not matter - a standard marine with "a brother in Engineering" does not know how to hack an airlock.
NOT Powergaming:
- Benos doing anything."

"5. No metagaming or metacommunication - Acting upon knowledge your character does not have or communicating information about the current round, including but not limited to private discussions, chat rooms, and/or voice chats during the game. If you want to talk to other CM players about CM or just in general, we have an official Discord, but keep the discussion about past rounds and never about the current one.

Examples that are NOT Metagaming:
- Benos are omniscient thanks to hivemind. They know what canteen is serving on Almayer and they know medics can defib recently dead marine"

Belive me, I will be happy about it.

I won't even really get into this because I answered a lot of this above. Suffice to say that moderators, at least, don't have sufficient information to distinguish between where someone died and where they are now - unless we actually see the xeno dragging them there's no way to prove it happened. A grab log is not sufficient evidence in my book, because it's not uncommon for xenos to drag people away while slashing the shit out of them.

Stuff like enforcing xenos not killing synths unless "they show signs of hostility" is even more subjective, unclear, and frankly dangerous to get into. What defines hostility? Does the synth have to charge the xenos with a machete, or is simply shaking up and dragging away marines enough to piss xenos off? Do we really need to write this down?

You have a lot of big ideas regarding what staff should be doing without any real idea of how to practically and feasibly write it into the rules. Either we go back to writing a shitload more text back onto the rules page or we get even more subjective (which is what people don't want?) with the definition of the powergaming and metagaming rules. You can't have it both ways.

Frankly, if a xeno corpse dragging rule were implemented I would simply refuse to handle it in any incoming ahelps unless there were no other mods to do so. I wouldn't feel comfortable handing out punishments to players based off the information I'd have at hand - logs that are too limited to prove anything and 'he said she said' levels of accusations.

[CABAL]

-Snipe-

Plan "B", excellent choice. Can't enforce it, then allow it. Add notification in rules "Xenomorphs have any knowledge about marines tactics and equipment and can do everything they can to win the round". No jokes here, I'm fine with that, no unwriten rules, clear statement. Both sides have the same rules, but one have more leeway is bad. DIffrent rules for both sides is fair.

BTW. One staff member said outright "dead have no rights" and it took several days, pages and another staff members responses to get it's "misspoken". Strange.

Last words for a compromise from me: Can't enforce it, then allow it. Don't ignore it.

[Aceluke123]

Last words for a compromise from me: Can't enforce it, then allow it. Don't ignore it.

no

Oh wait I mean


No

[Aceluke123]

Just to be honest this whole thread was answered by tharinoma’s repnse and I’m not going to justify anything anymore as they have perfectly reasoned answers that are being ignored. Good day and have fun on the server.

[Tharinoma]

Metagrudging (targeting names) is metagaming, but we usually make a distinction and use the word metagaming as "All metagaming besides metagrudging", for practical reasons. I shall do so in this post.

Staff does not have a "xeno bias" of any kind. That's just dumb. Anyone that's been in staff private channels knows that.
Marines meta more than xenos.
Marines meta without it being punished or considered against the rules more than xenos.

The game is not supposed to be balanced, or fair, or even. Until recently, xenos were supposed to have a major, crushing advantage that was generally measured through winrate statistics. Marine and xeno gameplay being different and having different requirements is intended.
The game is not a "competitive multiplayer" one. It's a medium roleplay ss13 based server. Thisis where the focus always has been.
The marines are the main characters of the story and xenos are here to make it live. The focus of the game is on the marines. Xenos are here to make their time interesting.

However, xenos are played by players, and they are here to have fun too. They all have different taste and playstyles, and the staff has to make choices. Not everyone plays xenos as robotic fighting machines and many wouldn't enjoy it.

We try to stick to the lore as much as possible. Sometimes gameplay and lore are in conflit, and the staff has to make a choice. Sometimes, lore wins.
Many consider xenos dragging dead bodies away from other humans as part of the lore.
Xenos that want to metagrudge can easily drag people away while they are still alive then kill them in a remote place.

Investigating any kind of metagaming is hard, difficult, time consuming and unreliable. It litterally means guessing what the player is thinking behind their computer and what the true reasonning behind their actions is.
Logs provide a very low amount of information on dragging mechanics. I won't go in further details on that subject for obvious reasons.
We do not, will not, can not enforce all kinds of metagaming. For both sides. There will always be some metagaming in an RP oriented game. We enforce what we can, giving priority to major issues.
Yet, we still disallow it, and discourage it. We still don't want it to happen. Laws that are in effect but not enforced are common in human societies. (If you have ideas on how to solve this unsolvable problem, please write a book about it. It's a subject I'm interested in and I'll probably buy it.)

Metagrudging is unavoidable if you have anything carry over from a round to another. Marines metagrudge each other. This was not ruled a good enough reason to force random names on marines. Similarly, it was decided there were not good enough reasons to prevent xenos from seeing marine names.

Metagrudging played a very small part in the decision not to give names to xenos. There are many other obvious reasons (some discussed in other threads on the forums).

"The dead have no rights" is technically true. The reason we disallow husking is because it breaks the metagaming rule, bug abuse rule or roleplaying rule. Same with anything else done to dead people. In practice, the phrase doesn't reflect the reaslity of rule enforcement very well.

Hiding bodies inside lockers or disposals is considered meta and bad RP, don't do it. You don't see xenos in the movies do that, and xenos don't really know how to manipulate those devices.

Writing rules is hard and complicated. Lots of players don't read them. they must be short, to the point, clear and easy to read. We're not going to detail things there.
Staff does realize less detailed rules means more staff bias. We take it under consideration. Some of our staff are the most passionate anti-abuse advocates you can find on ss13.



These do not respond directly to other posts in this thread, but together, they should respond to most of them. This should give you a good idea of the problems we face with metagaming and how they are dealt with.

I humbly suggest to a few of you to change your attitude in this thread. I'm sure we're mature enough to have a discussion about 2d spessmen without insults or being passive aggressive. I am very dissapointed with some of you.

I'll be keeping an eye on any responses.

[Gray]

Investigating any kind of metagaming is hard, difficult, time consuming and unreliable. It litterally means guessing what the player is thinking behind their computer and what the true reasonning behind their actions is.
Logs provide a very low amount of information on dragging mechanics. I won't go in further details on that subject for obvious reasons.

I'm going to call you out once again. While I agree with the first part of quote where you say that investigating any metagaming is hard, and I absolutely emphasize with that thought, the second part where you talk about logs is completely wrong.

It is in fact, very easy to investigate corpse dragging. The only instance where i'd even consider it not corpse dragging is if they were dragging the marine and attacking them at the same time, which is completely legit.

HOWEVER. If the xeno drags a dead marine, a corpse, one that is dead and needs defibbing, it is very easy to detect this in the logs. The majority of the time(read majority, there are exceptions and it understandable if some things slip), human mobs die when they reach a total of 200 damage. In every attack log generated on a human mob, the total HP is displayed at the end. Meaning, when the HP in the log goes below -100, the mob was dead. Combine this with a log that specifically pops up when a grab happens, and you can very easily know when a corpse is grabbed. Take into account the co-ordinates that also show up in the same log.

The log shows you the co-ordinates, the action(the grabbing), the intent, and the HP of the mob that is being affected. 3 of these alone are more than enough information to determine if someone was corpse grabbed. The only instance where this is hard to determine is if the case is only being investigated after the front has shifted. If the admins tackle the ahelps immediately then there should be no issue in finding corpse dragging xenos.

I'll point out that while I personally dislike corpse dragging, i'm not against the notion of it. I understand its importance for xenos. However, it really annoys me when you try to cover up the fact that every single admin and moderator on the staff team has the capabilities and the tools to do a simple investigation but instead decides to cover it up with excuses. If you want to allow it, allow it. If you want to disallow it, then do so. If you want to discourage it subtly, it's too late at this stage as everyone is up in arms about it. There is no turning back now and a proper binary answer will be given or the masses will continue to be pissed.

Also, some mod said that mods don't have the tools to investigate. If you don't give your mods the basic ability to open the VV panel then what are they there for?

And before I end this post that is clearly aggressive and will probably be taken the wrong way, let me give you the steps to properly investigating a corpse dragging xeno ahelp within 5 minutes of receiving it.

1) Receive ahelp, jump to victim's corpse.
2) Check the co-ordinates of the corpse(per your old version, it should be on the stats tab unless it was moved)[If you can't find it, VV at the corpse and scroll down to the bottom]
3) Open the VV panel of the corpse, look for the latest grab log. Check the timing between when it happened and now, how much HP the human mob had, and the co-ordinates.
4) it happened 3 minutes ago, the human mob was at -160 HP when it was grabbed.
5) Jump to the co-ordinates and find out it's somewhere in between the firing lane of the marines, and where the xenos are holding.

Now, I realize that the 5th step is extremely optimistic as you wouldn't know where the battle is happening most of the time unless you are actively watching the battlefield as an admin. However, it is absolute bullshit that you don't have the tools or capabilities to investigate corpse dragging. Infact, i'd even say you can investigate a corpse dragging that happens 10+ minutes prior if you dig into the attack logs and find out where most of the firing was happening at the time of the dragging. but I realize how much of a ridiculous idea that is with all the attack logs that are generated on CM. Ridiculous, but not impossible.

And then there's the possibility of a marine ahelping as he is being dragged and you being free enough to immediately jump and watch it happen.

[kroack]

I understand why the body dragging thing is annoying for marine players, but it's just not going to change. Beef up your squad cohesion.

As for xenos avoiding OBs and CAS, most OBs and CAS are absolutely terrible and painfully obvious. Get better at timing the strikes with the indicators so that they're seamless.

Aside from melting surgical tables and LZ1 nests, most complaints of xeno meta really stem from poor marine play.

[Nickvr628]

On the OB "wont force xenos to stand in a killzone" issue, why not just pull a pill bottle and make the lasers invisible to anyone not wearing a marine hud.

In lore it can be just an IR laser that only marines with the HUD can see.

[Sleepy Retard]

On the OB "wont force xenos to stand in a killzone" issue, why not just pull a pill bottle and make the lasers invisible to anyone not wearing a marine hud.

In lore it can be just an IR laser that only marines with the HUD can see.

Because getting dunked by a fatty you can't see isn't fun

[Nickvr628]

But getting injured/killed by something you cannot see literally happens all the time to marines. See: Boilers, pouncing from near off-screen, crushers meme running up and down the entire map. I do not see a bright green crosshairs appear when a boiler starts preparing a glob, it would be dumb to have it. Why do marines get that penalty?

The xenos still have the audio queue before air strikes, just remove the bright red laser that lets them know 20 seconds before the CAS starts.