The Corporate Liason - 'Wey-Yu pls respond'

[Annie]

I would like to start out by saying this is NOT a jab at the admins, moderators, or anyone who can see and respond to faxes. This is merely someone who plays CL a lot pointing out the flaws and how unimpressive and overall disappointing that this job, which relies on RP to work, has little to no RP available.

Let me start by saying this- Maybe it's just been a bad week, maybe there was something changed from the faxes, or maybe it actually is this bad, but in five rounds of playing CL, I have gotten approximately one fax back from either of the companies you can send a message too. In a recent round, when there were three to four admins on at all times, and at least one or two moderators on, after sending out around ten faxes, I got.. Nothing. These weren't spammed back to back, but rather included VERY important information both about the current round and included some very legitimate IC and OOC concerns.

----For those curious, this next paragraph will explain the round and the scenario. If not, just skip ahead.----
Round starts, I spawn in as the CL. No big deal. I put in a confirmation message that the CL is here and ready, and.. Command channel is awful quiet. I walk to the bridge, and am greeted by two BO's, one of which is having to explain to the other EVERYTHING about being a BO and playing the game in general. This is very unfortunate, because the BO who knew what he was doing SSD's immediately, leaving the one who didn't understand the role nor the game to his own machinations. I heard someone yelling at the XO for going to a specialist armory and looting a bunch of shit from the vendor before bailing, and I also got word that he eventually went down to the planet where I lost all contact. He did not say a single word on comms, ever. I should also, at this point, mention that there is no CO, so the entire Bridge Staff is operated by.. A single BO, who has no idea what he's doing. I put in a fax or two, both to WY and USMC High Command that there is no way this is going to work and there were already talk of mutinies. Nothing.

I put in another fax after the BO tries to brief over comms but fails, and.. Nothing.

Marines getting slaughtered, I ask for a supply drop or some reinforcements. Nothing.

Let me be clear, I understand admins and mods are busy. I'm not trying to say that every single fax should have a response, and I'm not saying that ANY fax at all requires a response. What I AM saying is that while the CL is a very cool role in theory, it very, very rarely ever turns out to be. Within thirty faxes, I have gotten a grand total of one response, and it was for a single supply crate. That's cool, that's fine, it was what I asked for, but when something that is literally round-crippling like this comes up, and there is no response, it feels like the CL is absolutely useless. There's not even anything else for them to do if theres no responses, as they don't have any legitimate control over the Marines and assigning one to Overwatch or any other duty is damning, and I've seen CLs banned for less before.

This thread is more or less a discussion on the current way that CLs play and if they are, in fact, useful at all, or merely for fluff without having any meaning. In my experience, I love playing roles that interact this way, but CL just feels slow and boring, and after an hour and a half or not doing anything and not getting any responses, you really start to feel that you're absolutely useless and that this round was a complete waste. That's just my personal opinion, though.

Thoughts?

[SecretStamos (Joshuu)]

I can perhaps offer some perspective. As a staff member, CL faxes are cool at first, but can be a big hassle. In such, we feel heavily pressured to make them interesting, thought out and fun for the CL. That takes a lot of time and effort, which can be difficult to muster when handling server incidents. Responding to the CL's fax usually pins the responsibility to do so on you, so most staff are usually hesitant to do so, and it requires quite a bit of attention.

I do think the CL could do with a bit of a change. Perhaps something that gives them a clear direction to move in without staff upkeep.

[Annie]

I can perhaps offer some perspective. As a staff member, CL faxes are cool at first, but can be a big hassle. In such, we feel heavily pressured to make them interesting, thought out and fun for the CL. That takes a lot of time and effort, which can be difficult to muster when handling server incidents. Responding to the CL's fax usually pins the responsibility to do so on you, so most staff are usually hesitant to do so, and it requires quite a bit of attention.

I do think the CL could do with a bit of a change. Perhaps something that gives them a clear direction to move in without staff upkeep.

Ah, right, that's what I'm saying! I'm not trying to call out any staff for not responding because, trust me, I know how stressful having to constantly respond(especially with people like me who love to throw a million faxes outwards), but it's kind of immersion breaking and makes the job feel useless when there are no responses at all.

I completely agree that CL needs something to make it not completely useless in events that the staff are occupied, but I have no idea what.

[Bigchilly]

The pure fact that the CL completely relies on administration, Which as Josh said are lazy, is silly in the first place. I remember my first round of CL and i didn't get a single fax, and all of my fancy formatting going to waste. There should be some preset faxes + formats available to both mods and admins to easily respond to the CL, but not be dull and boring.

[Desolane900]

A creative Liason can make their own objectives. I've seen it done countless times where a Liason will ask marines to collect the Colonists bodies or minimize damage to the structures or ask marines to collect documents on the colony like the Intelicard or the notice board papers in Engineering OPB. The CLs normally even ask for survivors to come to them and stay with them, being a general sleezeball like the job should be played.

Even if the staff don't fax you back, you can still play it in a way that makes sense and gives you and everyone else something to do.

[Warnipple]

I try to answer faxes as much as I can but they sometimes go unnoticed.

Also mods can't do much for you other than make MOTHER messages. We can't send you supply drops or PMC reinforcements. Only game admins do that. Sometimes a mod will ignore your fax rather than get you disappointed because we couldn't do anything.

Also PMCs are an iffy subject since most of the time, the numbers will favour marines so PMCs can't be sent to assist, lest it unbalance the game too much.

Oh and don't request for PMCs in every fax since that is really annoying.

[completelynewguy]

Just gonna shitpost here:

"B I L L C A R S O N M A J O R V I C T O R Y".

[Renomaki]

I myself tend to make up my own goals of possible, as long as they aren't antag objectives.

Really, the only time faxes are really important is if they have antag objectives for you to deal with. Otherwise, it is business as usual, with your main goal being to recover assets from the damaged colony, and if needed, possibly repair it and get it back online (as well as making sure no damaging information comes to light, since bad news is bad for Weyland's reputation, and that would be bad for business).

[Annie]

The 'making your own objectives' thing being brought up is fine and dandy, but still doesn't necessarily assist when playing CL as more than half of the time the Marines get slaughtered on the surface and you can't be down there to make sure it happened anyway. I'm not saying that faxes should be sent for everyone occasion or that PMCs/supplies/reinforcements should even be called for unless the situation is dire, but there is truly little a CL can do, even if they make their own goals.

This is less of a 'admins pls respond' thread and more of a 'CL is useless at least 80% of the time, what do' thread. I /could/ theoretically yell at the marines until I'm blue in the face to collect things from the surface or minimize damages, but the minute the CO or their overwatch or SL tells them to do something, I'm essentially overruled. That, and from your office and the rest of the Sulaco, you are painfully ill equipped to do anything except hope that someone is online and they aren't busy(and it's CM, let's be honest, they're busy. It's just the nature of the game.).

[Renomaki]

Honestly, this isn't totally unlike vanilla.

In Vanilla, there are quite a few RP heavy jobs that no one gives a crap about, being nothing more than glorified assistants more than anything, such as the priest, clown, atmostech, etc. A lot of jobs where you just kinda putter around and have to resort to lots of player interaction to keep you busy rather than some kind of activity.

Here, MPs, survivors and CLs really get it hard, and maybe arguably BOs as well, since all a BO does is sit on his ass watching a monitor and hoping the SL doesn't lose his helmet. While most jobs give a player something to do, these jobs are based a lot more on player interaction than action, and that can make for some dull rounds when there is no bar to relax at and all the marines are too busy fighting for idle chatter.

But in such cases, you just gotta do your best to role with it. It might be boring, sure, but it could also be part of the challenge of those roles: Putting on your makeup and going full-on actor for the players of the server, helping them get more immersed into the world and, if you do a good enough job, might make things memorable, even if it is only for a single person. I know I had some rewarding times as a survivor trying my best to roleplay, and sometimes it paid off quite nicely. Othertimes, eh... But hey, the attempt is what matters, righto?

In general, just try and make the most of it. If the admins won't respond to your messages, just find another way to keep busy (as long as it doesn't involve being an antag).

[apophis775]

I'll look into making a "fax verb" so that staff can mor easily track faxes for reaponding. Also, we are looking at giving cls objectives

[apophis775]

Fucking phone autocowreck

[Feweh]

Same boat as Josh said above, when you first get on staff you don't mind doing faxes.
However over-time they become a huge burden and a pain in the ass to follow through on.

I'll generally only answer them to well known players since I know I won't need to babysit them the entire round.
Likewise, you wouldn't really want to give an unknown player any serious or antaggy objectives since you can't really trust random players to not blow Sulaco up.

[dylanstrategie]

The main issue is delegation and shouldering the responsibility of ordering a CL around (if he does stupid shit you ordered him to do, you will be responsible)

Mods can't really do anything impactful, except give empty, PR-esque answers to faxes. They can't spawn items, they can only make command announcements
Coders could do impactful things, but we're not supposed to do this kind of stuff. If the CL does dumb shit, I don't want to get in trouble
Admins are the only ones left who can get the CL to do things that impact the round, but non-busy admins willing to handle a CL are rare

[lucashunter608]

CL job is quite cool, but you realy need admins or mods to make things interesting, i had a round where i received the task to take photos of the planet and one mod gave me 3 rewards to give the marines so they could be my body-guards, but i think the CLs should start with certain tasks and completing them would give you a reward (guns, PMCs and etc).

It would be cool if there was an objective to properly capture a larva and brand her with some kind of chip, after that some weyland admiral would come over sulaco and reward you for that.