The Working Joe has and always will be a staple, many create a synthetic whitelist for Joe alone.
Yet the community frowns on Joe, they spit, they kick and they chain him, because they refuse to see him prosper.
The Working Joe has been chained for too long, it is time we free him from the Draconian grip of the dreaded ten paragraphs.
On a more serious note, Joe should not be locked under so many entrance restrictions like a regular synth, instead he should be a smaller, separate, and more lax whitelist (better yet unwhitelisting it all-together) thereby making the Synthetic council happier since people no longer try and apply for working joe solely. Not only is Joe under many more restrictions ROLEPLAY wise than a regular synth, Some people just want to Joe⌠How can you deny them that? I hereby open this discussion as protest, and to attempt the free the Working Joe.
I can assure you, 95% of people will play Working Joe once, then never again outside of when Xenos breach the ARES core. Cause its boring as sin.
Personally, I also prefer the Working Joe status to be linked to either a Staff account or a Synthetic whitelist account since it holds them far more accountable to their conduct, a Synth who breaches their WJ guidelines is also at risk of losing their Synth status, a WJ only WL would not.
This doesint really make any sense, no one plays WJ currently, so you suggest to make it so people are even less inclined to? I propose a middle ground. Have WJ be a stepping ground, if people dont do well as a WJ then that should be reflected if they try to apply for another WL. Alternatively, De-whitelist the WJ or remove it entirely if your so inclined to having it never used. Some people WANT to play WJ but cant. Atleast give the community a chance to play it instead of locking it in whitelist hell. As stated above, alot of people make synth whitelist SOLELY for WJ and not the actual synths and the synthetic council seems to dislike that.
WJ is boring as heck. Iâd be fine with events in the vein of what the predator council are planning - (unblooded pit fights or w/e for people to try pred out on the ship iirc), but the thing is that WJ is inherently meant to beâŚunremarkable, so it wouldnât do much besides let people experience a tiny part of what a Synthetic is- and not enough to warrant any sort of thing like that.
The reason no one plays Working Joe is because itâs boring, not cause theres a whitelist/staff requirement to it. Most people seem to think they want to play Working Joe but they donât. They want to do the funny voicelines- the voicelines arenât the role though.
Thereâs no world in which a new whitelist is created, at least not at the moment. It might make more sense to make Working Joe a regular role for which any player can queue. Iâd like to just see the rules kept nice and simple and then ban the nerds who donât want to take the role âseriously.â Working Joes are fun, and really not that deep. Give emâ similar basic rules (laws) as maintenance drones on other servers, with the olâ Working Joe twist. That said, it ainât my department, and this community is a bit resistant to change for the sake of change on certain fronts, whitelists being one of emâ.
So why is it locked behind the dreaded Ten Paragraphs? if its so unremarkable and boring why dont you let people play it when they say they want to play IT and not the synths?
My guess would simply be that the council or staff does not trust that regular players would be able to uphold what a Working Joe is without breaking the immersion of the role. You are not âyouâ, a Working Joe is simply a machine slaved to an AI, itâs literally a maintenance drone that has no sense of self or ability to self-reason like a proper synthetic might, the voicelines are just that- it has the ability to hold SOME conversation but the vast majority of it is simply pre-programmed response. You are not allowed to have a speck of personality that would differentiate you from other WJs.
I would assume that if Working Joe was free to everyone, it would be utterly unplayed after the initial hype and become a role like maintenance drone- with rules thatâd literally even further unable to affect the round cause if we instated it with current rules, then theyâd likely get stricter to prevent people abusing the role. I just donât think thereâs a way to have it free to everyone whilst retaining what makes them part of the round even tangentially. Theyâd have to be as uninvolved in the rounds as an SS13 maintenance drone or could and probably would be abused.
In addition, when people say they want to play Joe, they generally donât state why beyond the fact its âbasedâ or its funny, they donât really care about the fact you are at best a janitor, or afking most of the time. They just want to do the things that d-chat sees them do and think is funny, ignoring the other 99.9% of âcontentâ of WJ that isâŚsimply nothing. Then these people apply or ask about applying for WJ, even with the whitelist now very much telling you that youâre applying for 3 roles, not one and especially not the most tertiary role. If I canât trust a person to read, why would I trust them to roleplay a robot that is meant to be near indistinguishable from its fellow robots?
If people wanted the actual content of WJ except the voiceline usage and the funny moments that people watch from d-chat, then they could just as easily play MT and do everything a Joe does. Maybe one or two people at best do. Itâs clear they donât want the role for the majority of what a WJ does.
Maybe your correct, honestly. But I have a question, why are all the WLâs so dystopian? these people treat a fictional WL like a real life job application. The Ten Paragraphs you force people to write absolutely does not change how they act in game, all you do is push people away. That being said, I proposed a compromise above: Making WJ a stepping stone for Synthetics, because with the whitelist now, they are basically never ever seen for a role thats supposed to be essentially background noise. You said yourself no one plays them because their boring, yet you also say releasing them to the public will result in it being abusedâŚ? what the guy above me said. We have Jbans for a reason.
For the whitelists in specifics? I donât quite know. Iâd say its the high standard that makes the role what they are today. Chances are, without a whitelist we wouldnât have the roles simply because thereâd be no manner capable of holding people up to current expectations. This doesnât honestly apply to WJ, its far less needed to be whitelisted and Iâd be fine with it unwhitelisted- I just donât think itâd go well due to the role itself.
They canât be a stepping stone cause theyâre very far removed from what a synthetic actually is. Theyâre able to emulate human emotions to an immense degree whilst not being affected by them whatsoever. They could be weeping about someone whilst performing perfect brain surgery in an extreme example. Joes are just robits really, with a basic âpersonalityâ thats formed from pre-made lines.
I still find it funny that we have WJ, who have no real impact on rounds and people around them, that are whitelisted. But MPs, who can decide on a whim to timeout someone for 30 minutes because he shoved someone be a 10 hour play requirement.
I donât really care about Working Joes at all but everything youâve said in whitelist help and in this channel comes off as incredibly defeatist regarding the WL and the point of it.
Letâs go on a flashback.
As far as I know, Working Joe used to not be under the synthetic WL jurisdiction. The only way to get access to it was by being staff - and, it was eventually bequeathed to be part of the synthetic whitelist afterwards. I donât even know if I would qualify it as an actual whitelisted role since itâs so content devoid.
Fast forward today, itâs now something that people see more frequently due to some whitelisted players (and predominantly staff) playing the role when they have little else to do. Itâs not a role designed to have substance or round impact, and having it be available to everyone reduces that even further because if you have, say, 10 people roll Working Joe to meme then it is round impact as minimal as it is.
This is an interesting point although speaking from experience maintenance drones cause their own issues. On the last server I administrated the maintenance drone printer had to be removed since people spammed it. It was still possible to reach the station, but what ultimately seperated them - and, what made it viable to have it as a ghost role - is that,
Maintenance drones cannot speak to humans at all. They have no voicelines, they have no way to harm you, they have no way to speak to you.
They can solely listen to the binary channel (cannot talk on it) from other silicons.
They do not take up a tile, so you can freely walk through them without doing anything.
Still, though, even with that limited ruleset it was still possible to grief or troll people if you so wished. Itâs a case of that youâd ultimately have to strip away the freedom of the role to make it fit within the rules better, which also removes part of the magic of the role and why it exists. Itâd be easy to make them unable to talk, unable to emote except for the pre-recorded ones every minute, but itâd take away from what the role is, and even then youâd probably have to change things more.
I would have to disagree on you with the whitelists being dystopian. I want people to get the whitelist, I would love for everyone on the server to be able to play synthetic - but it comes hand in hand with an expectation of quality, and thatâs why the whitelist itself exists. The requirements for synthetic are also not particularly harsh, to be frank. You do not need to be well known, you do not need to be known at all as people will begin trying to scout for you and identify you once you put your application in. It does not need to be a literary masterclass, it does not have to be the greatest piece ever written - and, more importantly, you donât even have to apply before you can determine if your story will get approved. It doesnât even have a minimum or maximum length requirement, all it has to do is show the character you want to play.
I think the ultimate question you have to ask is what makes the role something you want to play. Is it the fact that you canât play it, or the fact that it looks genuinely interesting to you? Is it the fact that you want to try it once and never play it again - or, that you want to try a stripped down, bare-bones version of it that misses the point of what the role was created for?
The other part of this that I think you, personally, should think about - is why you think the application process is so torturous. It can be stressful, it can be terrifying to apply - I know, because I applied and I didnât think Iâd get it because I had 200 hours to my name on CM and was barely known by anyone when I put in my application. I know, because I had to revise my story six different times, rewrite my character multiple times, just for synthetic alone - and that is not to speak of my predator application either, where I considered withdrawing immediately after submitting it due to certain feedback.
This is becoming more of a pointless rant at this point than anything into the void - but everybody on the council wants to see people succeed, they want to see people get synthetic if they want to go for it. Sometimes we fuck up and sometimes we forget to give proper feedback, or we forget that somebody asked and theyâre too afraid to poke us again, sometimes people get denied even if they do everything right because they fucked up one thing, sometimes people who might deserve the role donât get it or donât ever go for it because of the application process - but I still feel that at the end of the day, the whitelist system ultimately has improved the server, at least in some way. Maybe itâs not the answer you wanted, but itâs the only one I can provide, and I donât think that your mindset of calling it a âdreaded ten paragraphsâ or that âthe council doesnât want anyone to play these rolesâ is healthy or going to make you enjoy the game.
TL;DR What makes Working Joe appealing is also what leads to it being whitelisted. As it is, most people who see Working Joes assume they arenât actual players or are NPCs. Thatâs a lot harder without an actual filter to stop anyone joining as it, and if that filter didnât exist, what makes the role special would be stripped away to prevent abuse.
I donât quite get the need to whitelist a low-impact role due to grief being possible. Itâs like saying people will only grief while being that one specific role, and not as any of the countless other non-WL roles. Hell, CL, MT and MP are essentialy grief only roles, where thats the only thing you really get to do.
None of those roles exist for the express purpose of being seen as nothing but NPC characters is the thing. The point of Working Joe is to not be visible. Also, CL, MT and MP do not have the ability to spam voicelines that play audio to people is the big thing, which is also harder to deal with compared to say, an MP falsely arresting you or a CL trying to gun you down.
You can grief as any role, of course, but notice the fact that you consider those roles to essentially be grief only roles - why do you not think the same of Working Joe? People do cause grief and do stupid things with it sometimes, but it happens far, far less. People play CL, MT, or MP and get bored then grief with them because they have nothing of substance to do.
Should just make it a normal role for people and remove it from the WL, since everyone who wants to play is being told that itâs very boring and people do it just because they have nothing to do or plenty of other excuses as to why applying for the WL or staff just to be a Joe is⌠bad.
So, time lock it and max them around 4 and I bet itâll make shipside a bit more alive.
Iâd just give it a week of âTestingâ, where it isnât whitelisted. See where people take it and if its possible for the public to enjoy. If shit hits the fan early, you can just make it restricted again sooner.
As with my other answer⌠all you have to do is observe ert joes or random players as synthetics to know why its whitelisted.
As to why synthetic list is so dystopian (draconian works better)⌠because a ton is expected of you. Not only do you need to know almost every role but you have to be helpful and take shit without negative reaction. All while maintaining a high level of roleplay. You cant get mad or be insulting. People fuck with you constantly. But the synthetic reputation is as strong as it is because of how picky we are in choosing peolle who can tolerate this
But its the same reason so many of you say âthank god⌠can youâŚâ anytime you see us.
P.S. the point of Joe is to enjoy a round of not having anyone expect shit of you⌠not having to listen to anyone⌠and not having to roleplay deeply. Its like the antisynth. I get to mop floors, passive aggressively ignore you, and have no one expect anything.