Reflect changes of character flaws and non meta plans on the rules and CO COC

As Command players are being punished for doing non-meta plans and exhibiting character flaws such as egoistical, coward, etc…
I suggest to reflect these changes upon the Commanding Officer Code of Conduct and other rules so other players are not punished for doing these actions or roleplaying their characters that way even if they are currently not disallowed by the rules.

While I personally heavily disagree with these changes, if people are being punished for making their character different or doing plans that are different and the rules do not reflect that, people will be punished unfairly.

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The issue you’re describing isn’t one inherent to non-meta plans and antagonistic character flaws, but rather when someone’s actions are consistently and demonstrably detrimental to other players’ enjoyment of the game. You can very easily use Bob Cross as an example, someone who was incredibly controversial among the playerbase for his overtly antagonistic manner of roleplaying and consistent use of off-meta plans that resulted in rounds that often ended as soon as deployment did. Because of the way server rules are, the only action that could or would ever be taken against Cross as a player would be surrounding rulebreaks or actions so egregious that it’d warrant the attention of management.

The CO Whitelist is different. It is a role that has incredibly high expectations and a massive impact on the flow of a round and the entire server’s enjoyment of a round. Commanding Officers are expected to act in a way that creates fun, exciting, and interesting opportunities for other players.

Off-meta plans are not inherently unfun and can create very interesting and enjoyable rounds… in moderation. When a CO’s player or their character becomes known for spamming paradrops and similar such plans that usually result in 40 minute rounds that are fun for nobody, it grabs the attention of the Council. Antagonistic personalities aren’t inherently unfun, it can be interesting to roleplay as an aloof Commander whose marines would jump at the chance to frag… in moderation. When a CO’s player or their character is seen as absent from the operation and known to consistently run away and hide in the face of adversity, it grabs the attention of the Council.

To roleplay as an egotist and to order multi-FOB split drops is not the issue and it will never be. What is an issue is when a behavior becomes so consistent, egregious, and demonstrably detrimental to the round that it becomes indistinguishable from griefing.

“Remember: as the Commanding Officer you should ideally put your Marines before yourself. While deviations from this are permissible in character (i.e. if your CO character is a coward, egotistical, or other form of character trait or flaw), decisions should not positively affect yourself at the cost of the operation, the ship, or its people being harmed or negatively affected.”

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Be a shitty CO who intentionally makes a shitty plan that everyone knows is gonna end up in a marine wipe, unless xenos suck balls this round.

It is one thing to go off meta to test things out.
Yet it is another to do the same strat over and over and over and over.

Insert Vaas’sDefinitionOfInsanity.mp4

Let me guess, those “non-meta” plans are split drops and their varations, while those character flaws are literally lost twin, or a clone of Bob Cross.

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When someone’s actions consistently and demonstrably detrimental to other players’ enjoyment of the game
those “non-meta” plans are split drops and their varations
What is an issue is when a behavior becomes so consistent, egregious, and demonstrably detrimental to the round that it becomes indistinguishable from griefing.

If you had looked properly into the rounds I have been in, then you would know that not every one of them were paradrops or split drops. I have done several other strategies that could be classified as gimmicky such as mega FOB or two FOBs but still believing that off meta plans are griefing and detrimental just because they went wrong is odd. By that logic, if a Commander does a plan that follows the meta and goes horribly wrong, would they be punished too? Or does that only apply to non meta plans because they provide a different dynamic to rounds? Regardless it is a situation that requires deep analysis. You must have heard one half of the playerbase say that they did not have fun, but is that the general opinion? Have you heard everyone involved in these rounds or were you pressured by a high-ranking staff member?
I completely agree that 40 minute rounds are not fun but to say that they happened every round I was in would be incorrect as it would also be incorrect to say that they went wrong every time as some of my gimmick plans worked before.
Regardless I fail to see the reason why someone would be punished by doing these plans. While they have a high chance of failing because of the complexity of round flows, saying they are griefing is a big stretch.

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It is unironically a shame Bob Cross was banned. They did in fact make the game more fun, and they had unconventional strategies/tactics that actually did work astoundingly well too.
Also their RP was hillarious.

Look at the petition to unban them, or some of the stories in the “Rip XO Bob Cross” post.

Obviously there is a decent chunk of the playerbase that did find their rounds enjoyable, crucifying them as an example of an antagonistic player is unfair and inaccurate.

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I think it’s a grey area that’s not totally black and white- “Off-meta” plans (let’s be real here, these are paradrops and split drops, sometimes both at once), are not inherently griefing, but everyone and their mother knows that these “off-meta” plans have a much higher % of a full-blown wipe where everyone dies instantaneously. As such, there’s a blurry area between it being a cool meme, and literally legal griefing. Where the actual line is, depends on each person.

Do people enjoy it? Every once in a while, sure. If CO McDouble is a well known guy who people like (due to running many genuinely good rounds), and proclaims he is the God-Emperor, and that we must gloriously paradrop into a hostile, surrounded area with no support to die in 30 seconds, I will worship the ground he walks on until I die (exactly 30 seconds later).

Will people despise it if it’s done too often? Yeah. If CO McDouble’s evil twin, CO McChungus has done the funny paradrop 30-second wipe 75% of the rounds he’s on, I’m mutinying his ass or disobeying, because it seems to me that this guy isn’t trying to have his occasional “haha funny off-meta drop guys, okay now let’s have 8 good rounds with me”, he’s going “I’m enjoying wasting everyone’s time by forcing them to spend 90% of each round getting prepped just to die and then suffer through a 0-marine hijack, and I’ll keep doing it.” Obviously it depends on how it’s done- Bob Cross made awful plans, but somehow everyone still loves him because he managed to play a funny character that made the round enjoyable in some way, and not pure slop.

But even some people just hate it unconditionally- And in my opinion, you can’t really blame them. Some people roll spec for the first time in 3 days, and then they get fucked by an off-meta drop where they’ll probably die instantly without firing a shot. Some people come back home after work, are exhausted, and their one round of CM ends up being literal slop because some guy thought it would be cool and enjoyable. Even if they had good intentions (or bad), it doesn’t really matter to them- Their one round was a waste of time because of it.

Overall, I personally think off meta drops are fine if you don’t go overboard. But there are going to be some people who’d rather they just get axed completely and I can see where they’re coming from, even if it seems a bit too extreme.

I don’t think @Harrysno is necessarily disagreeing with you, @Axyinious - Harry said that the issue was people doing those plans over and over, not the plans themselves- Which is probably the majority opinion, and it also falls in line with what you said.

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nobody should be immune to the rules, he broke rule 2 5 separate times which is why he was banned (from command roles)

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I agree with what you said but what pisses me off is being punished for something that isn’t even present in a form of OOC rules or IC guidelines.
What was forwarded to me was that I was punished for off-meta plans and for evacuating in a pod. The second “issue” apparently pissed off the host or a head staff because they were in the round but this staff member failed to see that the shipside hold was not forced on anyone else as evacuation was called. The hold was completely optional.
I’m fine with playing a perfect character with no flaws or gimmicks other than being a generic ass NPC officer but it gets boring in long term. Having a gimmick can make roleplaying your character consistently more fun.

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ironically more than half the people that want him unbanned as well as the ‘petition’ are actually xeno mains

there are a decent chunk of marines that like him sure, but more often than not it was just known to be a soul crushing loss for the marines

and now for a super spicy opinion: Xeno mains just want him unbanned because its some of the freest fucking wins on the server disguised as “sovul gameprayu”

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In my opinion, I believe anyone who wants to play under Bill Carson likely never had to play a round under their direct command.

Being powerless to watch as your Commander or Staff Officer issue the most contradictory or terrible orders possible and being near helpless to stop what you know is going to be terrible is a bad feeling. I still recall a round of Carson the SO issuing an insane amount of misleading and contradicting orders.

Who can forget the, “we’re winning, keep charging!” announcements as 75% of the marines lay dead in a field and the remaining Marines have no idea what is going on.

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i cant believe i went to work and missed this in the time i was gone lol

i mean it’s two things:

  1. making complicated split drop plans that result in failure 90% of the time is, i know this will sound so wild of me, a failing of marine players on the whole. the stuff you do could be doable if every single element of the plan goes right, but the more complicated a plan is leads to more chances for errors that lead to the unravelling of complex plans; no one drops a sig flare for half the force and they miss a whole cycle? scout supposed to laze the drop site ends up being the first marine capped? (these are, incidentally the two primary reasons why i’ve seen yours and others’ split drops fail to spectacular effect).
    also oddly? ungaball meta strat isn’t inherently contradictory to unique rounds or having “fun”. there’s a highly predictable sequence of events and clear and practiced tasks people do in that sort of scenario, and practice makes perfect. people have fun showing off the fullest extent of their capabilities; it just so happens that boring meta ungaball also oftentimes provides the best stability for those opportunities, you know? if i’m the greatest fobbit to ever fobbit, having three squads holding a full front so i get more than 30 minutes to build my fob to rival beijing makes me feel good at the end when i look back at it and see i used 2,000 metal and all of req’s budget and the QM is screaming at me that i’m a lazy expensive asshole but that’s his problem, i’m too busy taking screenshots

  2. when you do this multiple rounds in a day, it gets attention-catching, not in a good way for a lot of people, if they feel they’ve been shorted round after round after round. and again, like, it’s not your fault for wanting to play multiple CO rounds in a day, or even wanting to play CO and do complex plans more than once in a day, it’s just sort of a growing trainwreck of things. and if you don’t roll it back-to-back, there’s at least one other CO who also does split drop schemes pretty much every time they’re on and it becomes that players feel over-saturated with doomed-to-fail operations. if you walk in to a round with that sensation, it’s very difficult to find any of the “fun” in that matter. and if someone gets to play 3 rounds a day and they’re all this type of round, it can be unbelievably frustrating for them.

i like liars, i like cheats, i like corpos, i like cowards, i play as some of these (as characters, of course), but maybe i don’t need to see them or be them every round. on a productive suggestion, this would be the perfect intercession if you wanted to make a new sort of character and then alternate between the two: one that’s more predictable and stodgy, and corpo coward trying to get his pension payout.

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I think without people doing these “off-meta” plans, the meta will never shift. This is because marines do not practice something unless you force them to. Thus, the idea that they are ineffective should be axed. It’s not that they’re inherently ineffective, it’s that marines are inherently nooby when faced with these extremely aggressive situations.

The more that marines are put in very unusual situations, the better marines they will become. And I believe that is a long-term benefit, compared to the short-term “i ded wtf command!!”.

After all, no matter what you do you should learn how to escape and survive from any situation if you want to live a long time in a round.

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I mean i get that but in a tdm-styled shooter like this, splitting the force while innovative and certainly something that marines can get good at will never be tthe best chance for them to perform because xenos dont have any reason to split the bulk of their force. And why wouldnt xenos take a free wipe on a squad to cut marine capacity by 25% or more?

Maybe being unique adds something in marine to marine RP but this is structurally TDM and whether you’re RPing the most complex reenactment of a military invasion ever or not, xenos are still going to kill you.

Part of doing your best and feeling good about it is imo a relative dispersion of tasks or pressure or whatever, too. The team in tdm matters; alpha holding the front gives me more time to do my business as bravo and do better

But moreover, like. The meta wont ever shift. It’s structural to the game for above reasons. Doing “off-meta” is an exercise in futility. It’s fun from time to time but the fundamentals arent changing to accomodate it.

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Honestly, I liked Bill Carson not because I enjoyed him being the worst commander in the history of CM, but because it was really funny mutinying him for the 200th time and watching people parade his decapitated body across CIC.

He was the most enjoyable aCO to mutiny, because everyone wanted to mutiny him immediately. It’s a shame mutinies got cucked into oblivion, no more instant delta mutinies and 2 hour long staff investigations… UNSOULFUL…

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This is basically saying not to roleplay the same person every time, no? How does that work?

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Humans hate change in general.
Before dropping LZ2 in LV was considered “griefing” until the community actually started getting used to the layout.
Before LZ2 in solaris was a bad choice then people started getting used to the layout too.

My suggestion is that we should get a random LZ from time to time so that players are forced to learn the layout. Same with the hive.
Its so fucking tiring going LZ1 solaris and hive SE caves. Get people out of their comfort zones.

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Alright, lets make a thought experiment:

Imagine you are a grieffer CO. You want to grief as many people as possible, but you don’t want to immediately get caught, ideally never. What you would do?

Coincidentally it is those favoured “off-meta” strategies.

In the past Pred whitelist rules were very loose and for example you could run invisible around xenos on the front and just wait for some random bullet to hit you, so you can merc a marine who had no idea you were there in the first place. Rules had to be changed because of that, because predators did that at the time.
Same with COs. Shitlers found a way to grieff without it technically being grieff and now there is an outcry. If that was only one CO that is specifcally mentioned here then that would be fine. But he gave birth to dozen of copycats and grieffers.

So again, the thought experiment. The only thing that you need to do before pressing your great “off-meta” strategy. Would you go with this plan if you wanted to grief marines? If the answer is yes, then don’t do it dummy.
LV for example, I will use my autismo non-whitelisted CO power and I will come up with grand strategy, LZ2 drop where colony is ignored besides north LZ and robotics comms. We cade and create a corridor from west of LZ2 to the beach, going trough west edge of the map. Intention is to create a long stretch of cades to neuter backliners.
Does it grief marines? After fog lifts intel gatheres will have a bit harder time, but now it is completly safe to move from beach to LZ, unlike during meta strat of going from beach to Hydro/Med and then from there, with two big chances for backliner xenos.

On the other hand making delta the FoB squad and Bravo is sent to the frontlines. Off-meta? Yes.
Grieffing marines? Yes, bravo packed things for FoB as per usuall, delta did not.

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I don’t think that this is a test that works in general, because “griefing” within this context is not a very precise thing.

Lets say my name is PFC McShitface. It’s a LV round. Command is ordering a push on the Central caves. I go “command, fuck off”, on the radio, because hell no, I’m not listening to command. Then I proceed to push the West caves with 1-2 other randoms. Xenos rotate and we get capped or killed. Now how is that command’s actions were not griefing in this case? They obviously were supposed to shut up and send everyone wherever it is that I go.

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I fail to see how it is not clear that it is not command’s fault that somebody disobeyed orders.
It is shitty orders that marines pretty much have to obey that can be deemed grieffing.

That is some strawman of an argument that even my autism can’t comprehend.

What we are arguing here is CO’s which repeated actions directly and obviously lead to unfun marine wipe.
Not that they have to be always correct, or to be a glorified EVA just to do callouts where Queen is and whatever.

In your scenario Command has some kind of play, orders that plan to be executed and PFC McShitface doesn’t obey. Where is a grieffing here? One would argue PFC is grieffing command via disobeying orders.
But if in this scenario Command had a great idea to send half a squad of randoms for some stupid hivediving flank that everyone knows is gonna be a certain suicide and PFC McShitface follows SL McLe’Pro because SL is bound by rules to listen to Command, then that is grieffing.

If you played a couple of marine and xeno rounds you more, or less know exactly what strategies are stupid and don’t work. Spliting marines like it is a Scooby-Doo episode with guest character Xenomorph is one of them.

It is that easy. Even preds have something like “spirit of a whitelist” where one has to use common sense not to bend the rules just to be technically kosher. Why would COs not be bound to simillar thing?

Simply ask yourself: “Would I make such order if I wanted to grieff marines?”

It is not about punishing going off-meta too. Sure, test your new strategies and stuff, but have some restraint, think them over and consider other players.
I said it multiple times, I know CIC main’s mindset. They want to be those grand strategist where their clever plans are the sole reason for marines winning the game. But they fail over and over and over, so they turn into fucking Zapp Brannigan because they are bored and want to see how much they can grieff marines for funnies and memes.

CO can be reasonably flawed, cowardly, hell even during hijacks he can just aim mouth, help intent click himself with his mateba as long as he ordered evac beforehand.
But for Kane’s sake, don’t be another Bob Cross clone, or another Zapp Brannigan.

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Post all round IDs of rounds you deem that a CO’s or Command’s actions directly led to a marine wipe. Or are you going off the top of your head on one or two rounds that you deem were identical to several others?

If you are claiming that someone bend the rules just to grief, prove it. Or are you also supposing things?

When Command sends a squad or two to flank, it is because they completely trust in the SLs and the squad marines performing this action. If a flank goes wrong, would you blame it entirely on Command because they ordered it or would you consider the several other factors that directly influence the battle groundside?

If a strategy works before and it fails after, would you consider it inoperable or circunstancial?

You are supposing what other people are not thinking at all by claiming they do strategies just to grief marines. If you think such way, I’d suggest you to back that up with evidence beforehand.

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