Squad preference is going away for a month

[NorthernMaple]

I don't think you understand Carson rounds, although the CMP in question should've held a higher conduct then he did. In any case, if you feel he broke any rules-including Marine Law, write a player report.

The CMP also flat out refused to investigate an incident where an MP emptied a handgun magazine into me, said he was too busy.If you have a rouge MP (or someone posing as an MP) running around shooting and trying to kill people that should be your top priority. Especially on a meta level because of the OOC MP protection i'm sure this rouge/fake MP got a lot of hesitation from people trying to fight back because they were in an MP uniform.

[Blade2000Br]

The CMP also flat out refused to investigate an incident where an MP emptied a handgun magazine into me, said he was too busy.If you have a rouge MP (or someone posing as an MP) running around shooting and trying to kill people that should be your top priority. Especially on a meta level because of the OOC MP protection i'm sure this rouge/fake MP got a lot of hesitation from people trying to fight back because they were in an MP uniform.

Regarding the CMP actions, they weren't law broken. If an officer(CO/XO/SO/aCO) didn't ordered him to perform an arrest, he technically don't have to. Even if it's as grave as AWDW or murder. Though this is more than a oversight of Sir L than anything and will be fixed in the upcoming days.

If an MP went rogue and unloaded on someone, though, that's breaking marine law and if you do not report it/ahelp it, we can't do anything about it. It's no use you complain about a MP breaking marine law if you don't report it or ahelp it.

[FGRSentinel]

Regarding the CMP actions, they weren't law broken. If an officer(CO/XO/SO/aCO) didn't ordered him to perform an arrest, he technically don't have to. Even if it's as grave as AWDW or murder.

And this is the crux of the issue that I'm using Carson as an example of: CMPs don't have to listen to any crimes reported by PFCs or NCOs, even if the crime reported can and will result in a mutiny or ahelp-worthy actions if ignored... But the moment an officer orders an arrest, they instantly jump to it and carry out the sentence without question if they aren't lazy, especially if they're metabuddies with whoever gave the order. Hell, half the time they don't even follow the proper procedure of confirming that the arrest is valid and not the officer fabricating the charges. In the hands of someone like Bill Carson, this creates a dangerous status quo where the MPs can be used to arrest entire squads over small issues. When it's someone like Bill Carson who can get away with anything and COs seemingly are obligated to humor, it gives them the power to have someone's entire round ruined off a whim if they can't get help from their squad. I'm more likely to survive a pissed-off shitler with a squad of people I know than I am a group of random people who I don't know, and getting rid of Squad Preference takes that safety net away from me. I will, however concede the point that not all MPs are shit as a result of the Denholm incident, but you have to understand that my expectations of Squad Preference being removed and the results are justifiably poor.

[FGRSentinel]

This is also all without factoring in the fact that MPs and CMPs aren't obligated to look into crimes committed by Officers if they're reported by grunts and, in fact, some will even refuse to let a marine report a crime if they think it involves an Officer. This is another thing squad preference going away for a while won't solve: to the rank and file Marine, the MPs exist to make them miserable because they only ever go after an SO, XO, or CO that either gets reported by another one of those officers or does something to piss the MPs off specifically. MP and CO/XO/SO metabuddies will always exploit this and, since the MPs aren't required to do anything under Marine Law if a grunt reports it, many officers can do whatever they want so long as they don't pull a gun and shoot someone in the face without reason or do something visible and public.

If Squad Preference is being temporarily removed to help with the MP's image, I'd say the better solution is to change the rules so they can't cherry pick the reports they look into (or even who they allow to report crimes) nearly as much and maybe look into having CMPs become whitelisted instead, with the same kind of standard as Synths have (ie, they need to be able to do the job even if they'd rather meme it up or help their metabuddy). Both of these would improve the MP's image far more than the loss of the ability of marines to close ranks like the MPs can as well as their only real ability to dispense justice on officers.

This is still without factoring in the fact that, if it's to prevent "metabuddying" completely, there's still many things that Xenos are allowed to do that, even if I might do some of them as a xeno player on rare occasions, still feel like bullshit and need to be straightened out first or the loss of Squad Preference just comes across as a subtle nerf to the Marines.

[Blade2000Br]

I am already talking with Lord about this issues with the MPs. We will get some ammendments regarding this in the next few days or so.

Meanwhile, all you can do is ahelp the shittlers and law break worthy MP actions.

[Griff92]

I'm colourblind and i couldn't tell the diference between Charlie and Delta colours so i used squad pref to help me stick with my squad.

[Arkon897]

i think this change would add more randomness to the game, meeting new characters, squad assignments might actually be more then the same bloody job every time (my personal pet peeve) regardless what comes of it, seeing the effect should be educational.

[Willofol]

So when is this change actually going live?

[Dolth]

I'm colourblind and i couldn't tell the diference between Charlie and Delta colours so i used squad pref to help me stick with my squad.

Same with me. It's a pain, I feel you buddy.

[GibbyPoizon]

This is a terrible idea, as has been discussed in length for 8 pages now.
That is all.

[Build_R_]

I'm seeing the pros and cons of this and they're very nearly even in my opinion, cons definitely outweighing the pros by a bit though.

[KingPhilipIII]

I'm rather indifferent to the change, I personally think watching squad interactions is hilarious but I see the need to handle meta and trying different avenues of attack for it.

[Combine]

I never really did mind it, but it's funny how you'd just notice certain squad reputations over time - whether intended or not.

I'd see potential pros in keeping the preferences if command usually assigns the same squads to the same duties (on the same maps), meaning that if you had FOB focused squads you'd have a safer bet what to pick if you wanted that, to give an example.

[Dolth]

Honestly,

This is maybe on of the first time you warn players about an upcoming change and ask for their opinion, so... That's already a great enhancement, and just for that I'd be glad to have the squad pref going off for a bit.

Anyway it's not like I follow SL and shit.

[KingKire]

So, after reading through all this, heres my own weigh in:

All in all, disbanding the squad preferences will be more of a deterioration to the game.


- Less RP:
squad of 12 marines, instead of 3-4 mute marines, you have 6+. leftover comms chatter are between ~5 people, and the comm is filled with salt chatter from mute marines. Unless someone reinstates general comms, its gonna be a whole lot less fucks givin all around, which is sad.


- Rounds will become more random, with more steamrolls:
Instead of consistent squad performance, people will play more individually => more alien wins created by soloing marines => nerf aliens/ buff marines => marines lose hard most of the time, or win stupidly hard if they scrape two brain cells together.


- marines still shit on MP's:
Meta buddies meta buddy no matter what. It existed before the



Whats the real issue then?

MP's are being way too aggressive in certain cases, and there needs to be a better way/ escalation path to "punish" players who screw up, without knocking them out of the game for 30+ minutes.

People get pissed when you tell them to stop playing a game. No matter if they did or didn't do something bad, the discipline needs to be either a full measure kick from the game completely, or have them do something constructively punishing (i.e, force them to strip naked and fight the aliens alone, or some other interactive punishment)

Its fucked up to force people to be non-active. Either sack up and kick them, or work out a way to solve the issue with them. Prison sentences don't work against misdemeanors in real life, and it doesn't work in the virtual world either.


TLDR:
lack of squad choices will mean more "randoms", which means less balance, which means unbalancing nerfs/buffs/ which leaves us in a more fucked up spot then before. Solve the core issue, Punishment needs to be revamped so players either get banned outright for stupid stuff, or the punishment fits the crime better.

[Szunti]

One good thing. I generally like obedient mates who look after each other and not afraid to stop to wait for others or tell a couple sentences. Now I have to choose between the ultra aggressive charlie and delta or high chance of doing nothing (aka FOB duty). With random squads, there is a chance to play with a more calm squad on offense.

[AmazinglyAmazing]

Can't remember if I ever gave my two cents on this topic so, here I go I guess...

Honestly, this idea and change isn't the worst thing I've heard, and I believe it can bring some good to the server once put into place and tested.

First off: squad compositions. No longer will we see the SAME usual people with the SAME usual squad. Instead of seeing all the Charlie Mains in- well, Charlie, they'll be spread out. There won't have to be a concern of Alpha being all entirely new people or meta-buddies being together the entire time (though that issue will still exist, more on that in a moment), and marines will be forced to work with people when they slowly realize ignoring the people they don't know or don't like will cause the marine/xeno rate to shift significantly. We may see a higher level of competence from this (though I expect it to be low once this test starts). However, this may not go well. People may very well be sour as hell if they don't like their squad and either run off to find their meta-buddies, which depending on their role or the situation could cripple their squad, or refuse to communicate. This can become a living hell real quick if this issue were to happen. Also, we may see a drop in the effectiveness in the marines in the first few rounds of this test, as like I said before, people who are used to being in the same squad will be separated, and teamwork and communication, and even trust, will fly out the window.

No more goddamn fighting between squads: I won't go too much into detail about this, since there's already a thread about this topic essentially. I can't name anyone, but there are people who will go out of their way to start shit, and whether it's just for light-hearted fun or flat out low-rp, we can all agree there's been WAY too much hostility between squads, and the situations usually involve the same individuals and result in a complete mess (such as when I woke up from SSD as CO, to find out Charlie and Delta fought so much they got into a firefight and multiple people got memed. Horribly). Will this completely end this issue? Of course not. Will it improve it? Possibly. With people having their squads mixed up, they can't work together to cause issues like this (as much).

My only issue with this test? This isn't going to help with the MP problem- like, at all. Meta-buddies will still hop into arrest and other situations. Hell, randoms will hop in. The issue itself is marines doing stupid shit in general, or the MPs acting like they have a stick up their ass and going out of their way to find a reason to arrest a marine when they've done little to no wrong. It gives both sides a headache, and more complex and different steps need to be taken to fix that problem rather than just saying 'Oh well if people don't know each other they won't try to fight back against MPs'. MPs have a bad reputation as it is, and I feel like it might get worse during the testing period.

But what do I know? I'm just some dumb 'Charlie main'. (Though I have only been playing shipside roles for the past two weeks...)

[Dolth]

We can't figure out what will happen until the test starts. Theory won't bring us far.

[FGRSentinel]

One major issue that's come up recently is that there's quite a few rules that would need to be adjusted for this to have any real non-negative impact on rounds. A quick list:

1. As I said above, this removes the Marines' only defense against Command/MP metabuddying without addressing how destructive it is for a round where it comes up.

2. It doesn't actually address the true cause of the MP's bad reputation: many MP/CMP players are notorious rules lawyers to the point that some can find a way to justify that almost any action they take (no matter how excessive it is) isn't against the rules at all until they have so many reports and notes against them that the staff decide to jobban them anyways.

3. The current Mutiny Rules require the mutineers to work together to have any hope of "winning" the mutiny and they have to trust that the MPs and Command Staff are graceful enough in defeat to not drag the mutiny on forever in such a way the MPs look more like mutineers. There's no defined way for a mutiny to end in the mutineer's favor as they can't permakill anyone without breaking the rules... But there's more than a few MPs that have far less issue with permakilling mutineers or breaking other parts of the Mutiny rules. Getting rid of Squad Preference will tip the balance further in the MP/CO's favor in the event of a mutiny when they have every advantage already.

[Bloodl1ke]

Oh man, just when I was starting to know the Deltards...

[Troika]

If you want to at least put a start to dealing with metabus, how about banning anyone with an admin position from also playing normally. You get the buttons or you get to play, not both.

[Dolth]

If you want to at least put a start to dealing with metabus, how about banning anyone with an admin position from also playing normally. You get the buttons or you get to play, not both.

As much as I dislike most of the staff.

Uhhh... No? What the hell? They are trusted as staff members to follow their own rules DUH you're going to prevent someone administrating his shit from playing at it.

Just... Wow'ish.

[Emeraldblood]

Now that Rahl has stepped down, this plan is officially scrapped and Squad Prefs are not being removed. Why is this getting removed when Rahl said it was our idea? Well, one of the big reasons was that we needed to come up with some way to deal with MP without actually being able to fix MP's directly, as Rahl was the guy who didn't want MP to be 100% bound to Marine Law and we saw this as a problem. This isn't saying Rahl was the sole issue for everything and I'll take the blame where maybe I should have pushed back harder on telling him MP needed to be following Marine Law 100% of the time if we've transitioned into them policing the server. We also see that a lot of people don't want this, which we imagined, and because of the most likely minor returns at best, we don't believe this is a good plan to enact in this forum. I'll leave this open for a bit longer if anyone wants to discuss this topic and the cancelation of it.

[Lorem123]

The easiest way to solve this problem with MPs would have been to target the immense number of BAD MP players.

[TheMaskedMan2]

Well there we go then, I was kinda interested in trying it out to be honest. Then again, I never considered squad prefs a huge problem besides certain squads being big memes.