The End of Round Grief rule has existed for over a decade, and its purpose is clear: to avoid flooding logs and making it harder for maintainers/admin to navigate, and to preserve the roleplay of the server. I believe that the rule has a place on this server, and that its continued enforcement serves a necessary function. However, the way the current rule is written is far too ridged and can lend itself to some uncharacteristically unfair punishments.
The Current Rule:
End of Round Grief (EORG)
End of Round Grief (EORG) is fighting and generating any combat logs with friendly players after the round ends and is an immediate 3-hour ban without warning. Exceptions are between normal enemies, such as Marines and Aliens, Marines and UPP, etc.
This includes suicide at the end of the round without a valid RP reason.
Suggested Amendment:
End of Round Grief (EORG)
End of Round Grief (EORG) is intentionally fighting against friendly players after the round ends, and is an immediate 3-hour ban without warning. Exceptions are between normal enemies, such as Marines and Aliens, Marines and UPP, etc.
This includes suicide at the end of the round without a valid RP reason.
The Purpose this Amendment Serves:
The wording of the current rule is ridged and lacks the flexibility intended in the spirit of the EORGâs purpose.
Example:
If a marine is in combat with xenos but accidentally fires upon his teammate through the course of engaging the xeno, the rules would dictate he is to be punished.
Furthermore the removal of the âand generating any combat logsâ simplifies the rules without changing the core message (and actually clarifies it).
Example:
A player dragging an SSD marine underneath the dropship landing pad would not necessarily be covered under EORG because of the conditional conjunction âandâ.
Closing:
All this is to say that rules 0 (for admin) and 0.1 generally cover the bases for the interpretation of rules, enforcement, and punishments. However, with a rule so frequently invoked, tread upon, and ultimately broken, it serves to reason that the rule should be made as absolutely inextricable as possible. The amendment suggested certainly does have âweaknessesâ in that it leaves room for disagreements between staff and players, however that is true for the entirety of the round and should not be made more ridged just because the round is drawing to a close. I understand that the end of the game is not the ideal time to be discussing a rule break with a player, hence why the rule is dealt with in such brevity, but there must be a solution in which players are not unjustly punished.
Colonial Marines has always stood a notch above the rest of the servers, not only in its development and community, but also in the way the staff interact with the player-base, and I feel that my suggestion is in line with this serverâs continued desire for outstanding administration and moderation.
The rule is already enforced the way you suggest. Investigation of EORG is very brief, but if youâre seen in combat with a xeno for instance, youâre not gonna get an EORG ban for hitting a friendly.
It is not being enforced how you say it is. Being banned for ACCIDENTLY shooting a friendly ONCE is getting people banned for 3 hours. This fix is for those who are not griefing.
It isnât always going to be noticed that it isnât EORG. We do a very brief investigation to prevent delays to the round. If youâre mistakenly banned, just contact the person who banned you and politely explain what happened.
For what it matters - and this has helped me avoid one of these bans for years - by the time that EORG would be in effect, the round was already won by one team or another. While it may not feel the best or may not seem like âHRPâ to people who donât often care about roleplay elsewhere: youâre losing nothing by just not shooting after the round-end is declared.
I have seen it said by staff multiple times that âwe do not investigate eorgâ.
There was a somewhat recent staff report where a staff member spawned a horde of zombies in fob for no reason and then a player got eorg banned by another staff member for fighting the zombies. Luckily that staff member owned up to it and agreed that the note should be removed and that they didnât notice the zombies (but literally how the fuck did they not notice the zombies, you would have had to be not looking at your screen or chat at allâŚ). The problem is Soldierâs reply to that thread implied that the player shouldnât have made that staff report and that if the staff member didnât kindly own up to it chances are no action would have been taken because âwe do not do any investigation with eorgâ.
What bothers me is the hypocrisy from staff. Not only have I witnessed that case of staff spawning zombies in fob for no reason but I have also seen staff spam flinging someone across the halls of the almayer until they went crit (or died? canât remember) from wall collision damage, and on a different occasion staff spamming like 30 explosions in a random area for seemingly no reason and continuing to do so even after someone wandered over to investigate and got caught in the blast. If a player accidentally shoots an ally they are instantly banned with no investigation and no way to appeal for the sake of âmaintaining immersionâ yet staff can do stuff like that that blatantly destroys immersion.
Right so I think its a good thing to clarify how EORG is actually enforced right now, since not everyone seems to be on the same page regarding that. But TLDR Grim is right.
EORG enforcement can pretty cleanly be seperated in how it USED TO be enforced and how itâs enforced now.
It USED TO be the case that if you generated Friendly Fire logs a staff member would instantly ban you with an EORG ban.
I cant remember exactly when but a pretty long time ago it was decided to change that policy since it seemed a bit harsh. NOW if you generate FF logs staff will jump over to your location. There will be a tiny investigation that takes about 5-20 seconds. Staff will look around, see if there are enemies nearby and maybe even look at your combat logs to see if you were actually fighting someone in a properly escalated fight.
If none of that stuff seems to be the case the staff member will slap you with an EORG ban.
The reality of the situation is that if every EORG situation was investigated thoroughly rounds can easily get delayed even more than they already sometimes are when staff is handling stuff. This is why a compromise was made regarding EORG stuff.
EORG bans do not take into account player notes at all, and they dont count towards any form of escalation either. They arenât taken into account for anything really. That way because there are very little consequences for the player staff can be pretty liberal with enforcement.
Now when soldier said that âwe do not do any investigation with eorgâ he was referring to staff reports/ban appeals for EORG.
The situation with EORG bans is that they dont count towards your record at all and are only ever going to prevent you from playing the game for three hours.
When you make a staff report about it you need to take the time to write it. A staff member that issued the EORG ban usually would need to respond to it to give their reasoning. An uninvolved staff member needs to be available to pull the logs and then someone in management needs to read through it all and come to a decision. Thats a lot of work for a 3 hour ban that doesnt even matter for your record.
Its especially a lot of work if there are only two outcomes:
The ban was justified and nothing happens. The ban timer already long ran out by the time the report got resolved and the note doesnt count towards your permanent record in any way.
The staff member was in wrong. But since its been so long removing the ban is irrelevant. And since its pretty easy to overlook something when only investigating it for about 10 seconds the staff member wont be punished for it. The only thing that happens is the note regarding EORG gets removed, but that doesnt really matter anyways since EORG notes arenât really used for anything.
Because of all the stuff thatâs involved with a staff report/appeal staff opted for a simpler system. You can just appeal it to the staff member that banned you directly. If you make a good case they can just decide to accept the appeal, lifting the ban. Or if they arenât convinced it can stay in place and youâll be able to play again like nothing happened in three hours.
There might be some merit in rewriting the rule a tiny bit to trim away the rough edges, for example like you pointed out it doesnt even mention griefing that doesnt generate combat logs in there at all.
And mentioning in there somewhere that you can appeal it to the staff member that issued it would be nice.
While I get the desire to want to add âintentionallyâ on there I personally dont think thats a good idea. You can still grief unintentionally (think of a stray few bullets killing someone who was just peacefully talking just outside of vision range) and it just opens the whole rule up to a lot more discussion and needing to investigate the âintentâ of EORG before issuing it. And there really just isnt time at roundend to do that for a ban that in the grand scheme of things doesnt matter that much.
Hello, i was the staff member in question. Hereâs what happened. At the closing 2 seconds of the round, i saw massive combat logs relating to the explosion of ammo crates of FOB. Not knowing that a staff member spawned zombies at the FOB, i thought that the player in question had thrown a nade at round end to EORG without any conquences, so i banned them the next round.
I had zero time to jump to them but it seemed pretty clear cut to me at the time. When the staff report came out i felt bad so i said what i said. Thankfully the note was removed, even the ban is âmeaninglessâ i still would feel bad to have that in their record.