Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo

[Jumpscare]

I was going to let Eddie’s story go ignored so as to not dogpile, but I have to respectfully disagree with you, @Pavel. What Eddie described is typical “nice guy” behavior.

I’m going to quote the full story again, because it’s worded in a rather roundabout way. Then I’ll unravel it.

@eddie said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

I was mislead into believing that my rp would equate to something of a strong story between one character and my own, for instance, and devoted a lot of time and effort into the development of that narrative. That included in-game currency, assets you have to travel around, find and buy, and modifications to make those assets function more efficiently when they are used.
I invested those things into the person I was playing opposite of only to have them pit me against another player to compete for their attention. Not just the intimate rp, but story we had spent hours developing and writing out. It all got thrown away in an instant, and the assets I invested with walked away with no ROI because I refused to compete, on an OOC level, with another player for something I felt I had earned and put the time into to warrant.

Here’s the story according to Eddie:

• Eddie worked with another player to plot out a storyline for their characters that involved some degree of romance or ERP. Eddie gave a lot of in-game stuff to this other character in support of this. Cool.
• A third character assumedly did the same thing with the same goal. Cool.
• The player of the character in the middle decided to resolve who would get their RP spoons via an OOC competition of some sort. What this entails is vague, and there’s not enough information to determine whether it’s ok. But, for the sake of argument, let’s assume whatever method used was manipulative and not ok.
• Eddie decided not to engage in this and walked away. Cool. Good for Eddie.
• Except…
• Eddie complained to us that the investment of pretend assets didn’t pay out for Eddie in the form of additional romance/ERP and storyline, directly referencing those things as a continued return on his investment. Not cool. Just because consent for intimate RP was given once, that doesn’t promise consent for future intimate RP. This is the typical creepy “nice guy” behavior. It’s like the kind of guy who offers to buy you dinner and expects sex in return for his “investment,” but on a smaller stakes scale. That doesn’t make it any less creepy behavior.

It’s that last bullet point that turns this story from something that sucked for Eddie into a larger issue of Eddie subscribing to a transactional method of entitlement towards someone’s availability to engage in story RP and intimate RP with Eddie.

Regardless of whether the other two people in this story are also in the wrong, Eddie’s expectation of what he was owed from the player in the middle isn’t cool.

He may have never voiced this expectation to the other parties, but he’s voicing it to us, and that’s what matters in this situation.

[Pavel]

@Jumpscare said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

What Eddie described is typical “nice guy” behavior.

Yes. I know.

And I’m aware I’m being, perhaps, exceptionally generous. But I’m going to assume good faith until proven otherwise.

[Jumpscare]

Originally, that sentence you quoted wasn’t at the top of my post. I added it at the end of composing my reply so that I wouldn’t bury the lede. I was, however, worried you’d read that line and stop there. You may not have intended it to come off that way, but quoting the introductory sentence comes off as if you hadn’t read the rest. Eddie provided his own proof, and that post was my effort to show you such.

Regardless, I don’t fault you for that, nor do I fault you for your exceptional generosity.

[Pavel]

@Jumpscare I did read the whole thing. While I know it wasn’t your intention, it did come across to me and me alone as somewhat condescending and/or patronising. I can read, interpret, and understand what someone writes without someone else having to explain it to me.

[Ashen-Shugar]

@Warma-Sheen said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

@mangosplitz said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

The sorts of people who need to get Red Flagged are also generally the sort of people who are VERY good at manipulating, and so they will have counter receipts anyway and sometimes those are more damaging than the initial offense. So receipts are a very tricky subject.

As Jethro Gibbs would say, “trust but verify”. It doesn’t have to be public to all, but if games don’t substantiate claims, it will allow accusations to be weaponized for any type of grievance. It only takes one false accusation to be acted on to break down the trust of an entire community in all directions and destroy the environment.

Trust but verify.

This.

This is the reason why RhostMUSH has @snoop.

Yes, it can be abused.
Yes, it can be an invasion of privacy.
But system logs are the end all be all of truth.

No more ‘he said, she said.’
No more ‘it was misinterpreted.’
No more ‘s(he) is just emotional and taking it out of proporton.’
No more ‘they’re just emo and are jealous.’
No more.

Player logs can be modfied, and again goes to a he says, she says.
System logs can’t. Sure, the system admins can be douchebags and modify them themselves, but if that’s the case it’s a mud waving a red flag on ‘don’t play here’.

To be blunt, I wish more codebases had @snoop.

[GoodInnit]

This post is deleted!

[Pavel]

@Ashen-Shugar said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

To be blunt, I wish more codebases had @snoop.

Penn and TinyMUX have similar capacity, at least, with the SUSPECT flag. Assuming logs are configured suitably in the latter’s case.

[Ashen-Shugar]

@Pavel said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

@Ashen-Shugar said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

To be blunt, I wish more codebases had @snoop.

Penn and TinyMUX have similar capacity, at least, with the SUSPECT flag. Assuming logs are configured suitably in the latter’s case.

Correct.

However, the SUSPECT flag tends to send all suspects to a singular log, @snoop is unique in that it lets you do logs by dbref# so it allows separation which makes it easier to review.

Well, ‘unique’ in feature. To be honest LPMud and DikuMUD’s had it before we did.

[GoodInnit]

@Ashen-Shugar said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

To be blunt, I wish more codebases had @snoop.

I know Penn has a command to do something to that effect. The catch is that on Age of Alliances it requires Cujo to do something about problems, and that is anathema to him. His preferred method is to avoid problems at all costs and his inaction enables the abusers. You don’t need to dole out consequences if you refuse to look at the problem.

[Ashen-Shugar]

@GoodInnit said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

@Ashen-Shugar said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

To be blunt, I wish more codebases had @snoop.

I know Penn has a command to do something to that effect. The catch is that on Age of Alliances it requires Cujo to do something about problems, and that is anathema to him. His preferred method is to avoid problems at all costs and his inaction enables the abusers. You don’t need to dole out consequences if you refuse to look at the problem.

Reminds me a lot of places ran by Elsa/Zero.

Pity that.

[Jennkryst]

@GoodInnit said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

@Ashen-Shugar said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

To be blunt, I wish more codebases had @snoop.

I know Penn has a command to do something to that effect. The catch is that on Age of Alliances it requires Cujo to do something about problems, and that is anathema to him. His preferred method is to avoid problems at all costs and his inaction enables the abusers. You don’t need to dole out consequences if you refuse to look at the problem.

This is why I quoted their +policy in one of my posts above. By Cujo’s own rules, he is required to investigate. Players have to agree to +policy to play. The fact that he doesn’t should be a red flag to every player on the game, because it means all rules can now be violated.

[GF]

@Ashen-Shugar said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

No more ‘it was misinterpreted.’
No more ‘s(he) is just emotional and taking it out of proportion.’
No more ‘they’re just emo and are jealous.’

I get what you’re saying but this seems overly optimistic, in my experience.

[Pavel]

@GF said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

@Ashen-Shugar said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

No more ‘it was misinterpreted.’
No more ‘s(he) is just emotional and taking it out of proportion.’
No more ‘they’re just emo and are jealous.’

I get what you’re saying but this seems overly optimistic, in my experience.

Yup. You could be looking right at it live, and two people would have four opinions on what’s going on.

And it’s all moot when the headstaffer won’t do anything, or worse is actively engaged in the activity itself.

[Roadspike]

@Pavel I get that you’re trying to take the most generous interpretation, and I was too – until I got to the talk about ROI. I completely understand being disappointed that a storyline didn’t work out how I wanted it to, how I planned for it to. I get that, it’s happened to me, and it’s sucked.

But, unless there was some specific agreement, no one should be talking about return on investment in interpersonal relations unless it’s some version of Prue Leith’s “It’s not worth the calories” where you’re deciding that the other person isn’t worth your time and so you’re disengaging yourself.

To expect a particular return on your investment from the other person, particularly where romantic RP/TS is involved… that’s way too close to “I bought her dinner and drinks, I deserve sex” for my comfort.

As for the other situation that @eddie mentioned – I really feel for them about that one. That sounds like an uncomfortable situation, and a boundary that they set properly and which was then crossed by another player. That’s not cool at all.

[Jennkryst]

And I going to have to come up with fucking LLC rules, so players who invest in a ship get a percentage of profits?!?

eta: just me pretending they were talking about IC money and stuff, and not lewds

[Pavel]

@Roadspike said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

To expect a particular return on your investment from the other person, particularly where romantic RP/TS is involved… that’s way too close to “I bought her dinner and drinks, I deserve sex” for my comfort.

Ordinarily, I’d agree with you. I’m opting, instead, to assume that it was a poorly chosen series of words meant to express dissatisfaction at having their time wasted - I imagine gathering the pretend IC assets required took time, given the description of travel and alteration and so forth.

So yes, the instant reaction is to be weirded out about it at best and alarmed at worst, but I’m choosing to believe it was simply a linguistic cock-up until they come and either explain more or post more.

I feel that the immediate “jump on them like they’re Satan the minute they say something we don’t like” needs to have its edge dulled somewhat. People who are dicks invariably show their dickishness, so let them hang themselves; we don’t need to do it for them.

[IoleRae]

@Pavel said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

People who are dicks invariably show their dickishness, so let them hang themselves; we don’t need to do it for them.

Yeah, they did. With their first few posts. I’m not sure why that evidence is being excluded from consideration.

When someone comes out the gate swinging, it’s neither weird nor problematic to react to them as if they came out of the gate swinging. They did that, not the people reacting to it.

Pushing people to react as if someone is discussing in good faith, when that person is demonstrably not engaging in good faith, is a problem.

[Pavel]

@IoleRae I certainly didn’t mean to imply that people reacting how they have is inexplicable or weird.

I just disagree with it.

Throw bottles, light fires, whatever you like. I’m simply explaining my own reasoning, not demanding everyone kow tows.

[Jumpscare]

At the risk of being interpreted by Pavel as somewhat condescending and/or patronising again, I’m making one more post to this thread.

Pavel, your reasoning excludes the part where Eddie wanted continued intimate RP in exchange for said IC assets, which is the only part of Eddie’s stories that’s under fire. If you don’t want to address that part of the post, fine, but leave Satan out of this.

[Pavel]

@Jumpscare said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

At the risk of being interpreted by Pavel as somewhat condescending and/or patronising again, I’m making one more post to this thread.

Pavel, your reasoning excludes the part where Eddie wanted continued intimate RP in exchange for said IC assets, which is the only part of Eddie’s stories that’s under fire. If you don’t want to address that part of the post, fine, but leave Satan out of this.

Not at all. My reasoning includes that it was mentioned, but that it was not the apparent focus. I’m assuming that

@eddie said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

I was mislead into believing that my rp would equate to something of a strong story between one character and my own

isn’t speaking just about intimate RP, my basis for this generous belief is this:

@eddie said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

Not just the intimate rp, but story we had spent hours developing and writing out.

It appears to me that the intimate RP was not the focus.

I wouldn’t be surprised if it was, and thus that all my talk has been foolish, but I’m not jumping to the same conclusion you are.