ThiccFucc - Whitelist Report: Ikar Nhon, Yautja Honor Code, Spirit of the Whitelist
What’s your BYOND key?
ThiccFucc
Round ID:
24664
Your character name:
Elder Crusher (X-23-Y)
Accused BYOND key:
I don’t know
Accused character name:
Ikar Nhon
What rule(s) were broken?:
Yautja Honor Code, Spirit of the Whitelist
Whitelist in question:
Predator
Description of the incident:
- The Rulebreak
Upon the death of a hive member, a warrior and I made our way south of the temple to find the predator responsible and avenge our sister. During this time the warrior began fighting the predator one-on-one, and I mostly just stood there occasionally interjecting with a ground stomp, tailstab or slash when the warrior started to get low. 1-2 other predators were also standing by watching this fight unfold.
When the pred we were fighting got low and began to retreat from the warrior, I said “dishonor” to taunt them for the cowardly display, something I have done a plethora of times in numerous games.
I followed the warrior and pred north towards the temple, when one of the spectating predators (Ikar Nhon) began attacking me unprovoked. I had not attacked this predator at all or provoked them in any way whatsoever aside from a brief exchange of words a hot minute before he started attacking me. I told them “my fight isnt with you” and didn’t retaliate at all; I made several attempts to disengage, but being a fatass crusher there was literally nothing I could do as this person ran me down and beat me to death unprovoked.
This led to an exchange between myself and staff, who put me in touch with a WL member who happened to be online at the time (coincidentally it was the warrior I was fighting with), but nobody could give me a clear answer as to how this was allowed. Now up to this point, I admittedly haven’t actually read the honor code. The most I’ve gleaned about pred conduct is from WL holders in dchat from former rounds telling players how to avoid getting killed by them - namely, that if you don’t start a fight with a predator, they can’t attack you unprovoked.
The only possible exception to this is being dishonorable, which is categorized as such:
None of these circumstances applied to the situation in question to warrant such a hostile reaction from the unprovoked predator.
However, there is a second category:
Under this category, there is the point:
Which, from what I gleaned from my PMs with staff and the WL holder, is the reason I was attacked. However, you will note the term temporarily. Assuming I qualified as temporarily dishonorable, at the time the one-sided engagement began, there was a brief period where I managed to disengage and put some distance between us. The engagement briefly ended. At that point, I should no longer have been considered dishonorable; I no longer still qualified as dishonorable, I didn’t utter “dishonorable” or anything else pertinent to the YHC in that time. Despite this, the predator continued to pursue the conflict and chased me all the way to the SE cave just west of the temple, where I died without provocation. This is a direct violation of the temporary dishonor rule.
Not to mention even placing the status of “temporarily dishonorable” on me was questionable at best, since
a) I wasn’t LRP or meta towards the pred that killed me
b) I wasn’t even being meta. The definition of “dishonorable” is “a state of shame or disgrace.” This is the context I was using the word in, referring to the slaughter of our first sister and the retreat of the murderer when we were fighting them. I was not making any meta referrals to the actual honor code, since as I’ve just outlined above, I’ve never even READ the honor code before filing this report.
- The Problem
This section is a bit of an aside, partly sparked because I saw Stalkerino had made a post a while ago asking for feedback on predators. I hadn’t written anything at the time, but I feel compelled to now. Consider it my 2 cents, if nothing else comes from this report, I hope at the very least the council would take some of these things into consideration to help this WL fit into the community overall. This addresses issues that go well beyond this particular instance.
a) The disconnect between staff and the council is a bit of an isssue. If there is a rulebreak or violation, someone is told to come here and report it. But that rarely leads to anything, and in my case, it won’t give me back the hour I had been waiting since the previous round to play. It only takes more time out of my day to chase a likely fruitless endeavor. Most people don’t bother coming to the forum, or even know what the forum is. This just leads to someone getting perma’d unfairly, complaining to staff and basically getting the message “sucks to suck, but our hands are tied.” It gives players the impression WL holders are untouchable, and generally creates a negative outlook on the WL from the rest of the community, even if the WL holder was in the right. Which brings me to my second point, the rules themselves:
b) I think situations like this could be improved if there was more clarity to the rules. The rules are obscure from the standpoint that nobody but people applying for the WL will most likely ever read them. For the average player who constantly sees predators monologuing about “honor” and “the hunt”, or “self destructing to protect their honor”, how are they supposed to know they cannot use the word “honor”, or any connotation of it around a predator (even when they’re using the LITERAL WORD and not referring to the honor CODE)? The rules themselves are vague in that regard. I can’t say “honor” even if I’m using it in the context of calling someone a coward?
Hell I don’t think even the WL holders themselves have a clear grasp on all the rules, from what I gleaned during my conversation with the staff.
I had used connotations of “dishonor” earlier during this interaction as well, which elicited no reaction from any of the preds. I have used “DISHONOR” or various connotations of it numerous times over these past months, and never has it directly elicited such violent repercussions; I’ve never been informed by any staff whatsoever that referring to the honor code was meta, and if it is, that is an OOC issue I would expect staff to handle, not WL preds to handle ICly by taking me out of the round.
Overall, I’ve generally had pretty good experiences with most of the predators up to this point; there’s a lot of awesome WL holders who are super cool to interact with in game and are generally very chill. It is sad to see one person come along and create such an overwhelmingly negative interaction that it reflects poorly on the entire WL. This truly felt like a case of someone nitpicking words looking for any reason to beat me to death unprovoked. And even if The Council decides it is well within that predator’s right, please be aware of what kind of message that sends to the rest of the community. I don’t think people applying for a roleplay whitelist to take someone who’s been waiting an hour to play out of a round before it’s even begun is in the spirit of the WL.
And when people start to realize they very well run the risk of getting instakilled by a powertripper with an OP weapon and being permanently taken out of the round just for EXISTING around a predator, for reasons they can’t understand because of some obscure rules they’ve never been told they needed to read, it will likely put off many players from interacting with this faction at all. Which I think is already the case, and has been for some time now. I guess I’ve just been lucky enough to not have such a horrid experience myself until now.
Evidence:
Going to post them after, as I can’t seem to put anything into the actual report format
