Arbs - Staff Report: Enforcement Action Taken - SmellyHippie
What’s your BYOND key:
Arbs
Round ID:
29027
Your character name:
Alan Jones
Their BYOND key:
SmellyHippie
What are you reporting?:
Enforcement Action Taken
Description of the incident:
Hello Admin Team & Management,
The reason I am making this report was because I find the investigation and consideration given to this report to be insufficient and to be processed almost automatically. The report was closed and resolved literally overnight within 13 hours and I was never approached or given a chance to express my side of the event and the incident.
I would like to specify that this is not a ban appeal of any kind, but a report on what I personally find to be an improper investigation and handling of the player report. I simply ask for a second pair of eyes to go over this report and confirm whether the ruling was done right or not.
I personally find the ruling to have been rushed and the investigative work to be insufficient. Many factors have not been taken into consideration and I was never reached out to provide my side of things or allowed to provide my side of the events as an involved party due to the report being handled overnight. Hence I would like to clearly elaborate and put forth some more context which needs to be taken in consideration. With the additional context I will provide here, I personally find the ruling to be overboard given the in-game situation.
The note message is as follows:
This is the reason given at the ban screen at least, which I find both contradictory and the case insufficiently looked into without the given context.
The context for 'Blew up an ERT player (that was spawned while tickets were being handled) with C4 after round ended'
The incident happened at a time where the round was already over. The ERTs spawned were a CLF team, a gladiator ERT and a Zombie ERT/Virus.
The incident reported in the player report thread pertains to a CLF ERT member who was completely silent during the entire encounter and just refused to do anything other than stare at the wall. When they were taken to the ASO’s office by the CO as a chance to speak or have some roleplay provided, they still refused and just did nothing. Afterwards the CO left and I was left there in the ASO’s office with this individual.
With the entire MP team having been decimated from the initial attack by the CLF survivors and engaged during code red with the second ERT and containing a zombie outbreak from the third ERT, there was no one to capable of processing or handling the CLF.
As they are a hostile entity which at the time I could not contain, then releasing them is also not a possibility. Earlier in the round we already experienced a terror attack from a released CLF survivor team.
To sit there in silence as well, to the point where you would assume the player is afk would also not be very productive to the case. So the conclusion was to eliminate the said hostile player and focus on containing the ongoing threat with the zombies and the likes. The player only reacted after the C4 was used, and the reaction was was running as close to my character as possible to take me with him ideally.
In this case there is little to no difference here between using C4 or shooting them in the ASO’s office. At the time were barely any medical crew available (or otherwise allowed) or even anyone with access to the ASO’s office. The C4 is simply what came at hand as it was in the backpack of the other CLF member who was shot by the CO to make quick work of the situation.
Additionally a lot of the ERT members were being permakilled by people applying white flames over their bodies repeatedly during this time at round end. The CMO included and others also repeatedly used white flames and fired at the bodies of the dead CLF survivors who attacked the CIC during the round end to the point of permanent removal as well. Similarly the same was done against the zombies as well. Evidence of this can be found on the server logs over repeated cases.
The context for 'Proceeded to blow up a bunch more corpses after that. Please don't go round corpses, especially as an SO, even if it's the end of the round.'
The corpses in question here were dead/killed zombies from the infestation ERT.
This part happened at a time where the round was already over and marines were engaging and shooting the dead zombies in requisitions with non-stop rifle fire and flames.
With the zombies being a difficult threat to contain, the marine side was already engaging them at full capacity with continuous rifle fire and OT white fire. An explosive pouch containing C4 taken from a dead CLF body was simply handy at the time as an attempt to contain a zombie infestation.
As such if one is to consider the context and environment in which the supposed violation happened, it is not entirely unreasonable given the circumstance and does not really break the roleplay guidelines nor have the intent to maliciously grief someone.
Which again, it was not my intent to grief someone or perform something that was entirely out of character and breaking RP Guidelines, but a genuine reaction given the circumstances and surroundings in eliminating a serious threat to the ship.
I can understand if your concern is with the perma-ing people out of the round. However this was at a point where the round was already over and had ended and with all law-enforcement structures in chaos, I did not think fighting the threat by any means necessary constitutes as grief or something that is completely unreasonable in the RP environment of CM.
Therefore I would like the staff team to review this case as I believe there to be a jumping of the gun and an overreaction to the given situation. I would like to specify that this is not a ban appeal of any kind, but a report on what I personally find to be an improper investigation and handling of the player report. I simply ask for a second pair of eyes to go through this report and verify the ruling and procedure followed.
- The report was handled in 12-13 hours, literally overnight, without me being allowed a chance to step in and provide my side.
- The processing of said report is almost automatic and by default ignores most of the context I have provided.
- A punishment of 24 hours seems an unnecessary escalation as I do not remember having any previous notes of this nature in more than almost 2 years and my intent was not malicious.
- The conduct on my side had no intentions of grief behind it or to break any roleplay guidelines, as it was a genuine reaction to the created chaos in eliminating serious threats to the ship under code red in a chaotic situation where the MP department had already been devastated. It was not something done in bad faith, but more of a solution to the problem presented at hand.
- The entire encounter happened after the round had ended and the operation had concluded. Additionally, it also happened at a time where massive chaos had ensued due to 3 ERTs being sent (CLF, Gladiators, Zombies) the latter two by themselves contributed to most of the chaos and breaking of the roleplay environment on the ship.
Therefore I believe the ruling itself is rushed and harsher than it needs to be, without even allowing me a chance to provide my own side of things on the report.
Hence I would like the staff team to review the ruling on this report with the above written context in mind, and to prove the validity of it.
To me it leaves a lot of space for interpretation and it looks like an “automatic ban” more than something investigated by a staff member. And as such I believe it is important for me to know what the exact approach is regarding the permanent removal rule. How is the line drawn here?
Is processing a report within 12 hours, or overnight, before I get a chance to reply considered okay or normal?
Is the interpretation of the Griefing and Permanent Removal ruling correct in the provided context? Is the rule intended so to preventing maliciously removing someone from an ongoing round or is it applied universally over every singular case even after round-end with even against unusual ERT mobs such as zombies who can rejuvenate?
If so how is it identified or prevented? As there were several similar occurrences of this happening in this timeline after the round end/conclusion during which staff was present, active and handling ahelps.
I hold no personal hard feelings against SmellyHippie or any involved parties, and simply wish to have someone review the case and provide a confirmation/clarification whether this verdict has been ruled properly or not. In case this goes through I ask for no punishment or similar on the staff member in question. I just want someone to look into this case and provide some clarification or elaboration on the ruling of my case.
Looking forward to hear your take on this or some kind of elaboration at least to also help me get a better understanding of this ruling.
Thank you a lot in advance for the time and consideration you will be putting on my case/report.
Your local Arbs
Evidence:
The server logs themselves with the relevant round ID
I am also available for any questions