isnt the ERP cartoon aswell then, since its two 2d spess mans with no animations on top of each other?
also by your logic isnt something like original Doom not gory then?
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Let’s compare SS13 gore to similar cartoon/animated 2D games: Hotline Miami, Doom 2 and Mortal Kombat Advance are all rated Mature, for 17+ by ESRB. SS13 gore is not significantly different from any of them.
On top of that we have other elements which would earn it an adult rating such as drug use and strong language. But in contrast Bee is still being marketed to kids.
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Perma bans suck. Unappealable bans suck more.
While erp is pretty straight forward I don’t trust admins in declaring what and who is racist.
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That’s a strawman. SS13 can’t really be rated due to its online nature. If you were to rate the base it would most likely get a T/13-16 rating, although you could argue for M/18+. That being said, ratings for games are guidelines for parents. Not strict rulings on who can/can’t play.
For one, no SS13 server is officially ranked. For two, your belief that it carries over with the licenses shows how little you actually understand about software licensing. The licenses we’re obligated to follow don’t care about age ratings; for that matter, no license obligates the end-user/contributor to maintain unrelated policies. If that actually was a thing, no software project could exist separately from the original upstream (expanding out of SS13, such an oddball rule would mean things like MariaDB couldn’t exist since it’d be forced to comply with Oracle’s asinine policies).
Edit: To clarify, no mainstream license requires this. It’s technically possible for a custom license to exist that enforces such obtuse requirements; although, the legal validity of that would be questionable.
True, it’s online nature prevents a rating because the agencies understand that content changes often. However if we look at the content which has not changed in years and is unlikely to - the gore, drug use and strong language would indeed earn it a M/17+ rating if we compare it to 2D games with similar violence.
People are legally restricted from purchasing these games unless they meet the required age. Of course parents can allow their children to play by purchasing the games for them, but in a free-to-play online game like SS13 there’s no such parental oversight, and it’s up to the game hosts themselves to adequately warn children of the content they will be exposed to.
That is fair, I misspoke by saying it’s a legal requirement. But it is however arguably an ethical one, as every other popular server has an age restriction in order to protect children from being exposed to such explicit content. That Bee doesn’t have an age requirement at all let alone an adult rating seems like a glaring omission.
Actually you can clearly see on both rating boards that we’d easily fit within the lower rating. Our gore isn’t overly realistic and overall pretty minimal. There is an argument that can be made for 18, but I think it’s fair to say that an argument for Teen would be just as easy.
Sources:
ESRB - Xbox – ESRB Website
PEGI
Wrong. There are no laws (at least in the US) prohibiting minors from purchasing M or R rated media. There is pressure on companies to ensure that they don’t sell that sorta content to minors, but there’s nothing legally restricting them to do so. In fact, attempts to make such laws have been struck down as being unconstitutional in the past. Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association - Wikipedia
You can argue there is a moral obligation to restrict who can access our content, but that again conflicts with the fact that there is no official ranking on the game itself. With that being said, putting in a “don’t ask don’t tell” 18+ policy like you suggested would do nothing to fulfill that moral obligation. We all know it’d do nothing to stop minors from joining and it wouldn’t magically remove them from our community. If anything, it’d be worse since we’re actively pretending like the obvious isn’t happening. With all due respect, it’s a silly argument to make.
I respectfully disagree due to the points I made above this.
I’ll just reiterate an earlier point… Pretending like you’re actually 18+ when you do nothing to weed out minors and remove confirmed persons who are underage doesn’t grant you the moral/ethical high-ground. I’d argue that it puts you in a worse spot. On that note, we’re not the only server who doesn’t enforce an 18+ rule. We are the largest, but not the only one.
To summarize, an argument coming from, “Think of the children, make it 18+” is a bit silly since again, you can argue where the actual age rating should be. There’s a clear argument for both sides and without any official board ranking us (which wouldn’t be possible anyways due to the online interactions), it’s a bit of a pointless argument to make. It gets a bit worse when you’re suggesting to put in a policy that is actively deceptive in nature.
Having an 18+ “don’t ask don’t tell” policy is nothing but a CYA move, it does nothing to address the actual problems you’re presenting. Which, honestly, fair enough. I understand why people do it, and hell, we might even do it at some point. But pretending that it actually solves anything is just wrong.
This is all wildly off topic now. If you want to continue the discussion, I ask that you make a new topic. (I arguably should have done the same)
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No, the strong language doesn’t come from the content of the game, it comes from the on-line interactions so it wouldn’t factor into a hard rating. On top of that, all three of those were present in Oblivion which was given a T rating by the ESRB.
You aren’t legally restricted from purchasing them (at least in the United States) all of it is company policy. The ESRB isn’t even a government agency, it’s a private ratings board.
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Of all the topics that desperately need to be discussed, the ones specified by the thread title are not them. What about how roleplaying is never enforced on Sage, or the slippery censorship slope we’re headed down? Not that I’d want to discuss those ITT, but I see them as being far more critical issues.
Yes, ERP should stay banned. The goal (I believe) is to have a pair of servers which are engaging to players new to SS13. ERP is relatively niche, and doesn’t appeal to the vast majority of players.
Yes, racism should stay banned. I’d fight the existence of the word filter, but that’d be a pointless struggle - I instead advocate for using it more sanely. As above, so below - the idea behind banning certain words is to make the servers as inviting as possible, a goal I can respect.
Zero tolerance is pretty much the only thing worth discussing. I can see how it would have utility, but it’s on a case by case basis. If someone with an Account Age 0 plasma floods, then yeah, perma their ass. If there is a situation that has any degree of ambiguity - as I assume the thread leading to the creation of this thread did, I haven’t examined it - then there should be an equal amount of leeway in the applied ban.
No, nothing should be unappealable. Appeals can certainly be denied simply on the basis of repeated/extreme offenses though, with a note to get a voucher or wait 6 months before making another appeal. People change. This is a game. We want good players, and someone who is willing to wait all that time to rejoin our happy little tribes strikes me as having solid workings of a good player.
Another take on this would be that it somewhat scales with the offense and the actor in question. For example, if a player that has been generally positive for the overall community slipped up and did something that’s fairly minor in the grand scheme of things, they likely shouldn’t be prohibited from appealing. However, someone who has been historically toxic doing something far more egregious (e.g. IC rape and torture) would likely always have their appeals denied, effectively making their ban unappealable. That being said, even a positive player doing something so egregious would likely have all of their appeals denied in the future.
if a player that has been generally positive for the overall community slipped up and did something that’s fairly minor in the grand scheme of things, they likely shouldn’t be prohibited from appealing.
That being said, even a positive player doing something so egregious would likely have all of their appeals denied in the future.
I’d certainly hope not. I’m very wary of how you phrase that though. If someone breaks a rule - they’ve broken a rule. If they have a long, long history of notes and bans, it shouldn’t matter if they’re staff or have been a glowing beacon of positivity.
However, someone who has been historically toxic doing something far more egregious (e.g. IC rape and torture) would likely always have their appeals denied, effectively making their ban unappealable.
Again, pretty wary of your phrasing. I’d like to think of bans as being as apolitical as possible. Obviously, yeah, if someone rapes someone else - wham, bam, thank you ma’am - that’s a perma. Still, I stand by:
People change. This is a game. We want good players, and someone who is willing to wait all that time to rejoin our happy little tribes strikes me as having solid workings of a good player.
I assume there’s some kind of “thin-ice” policy in place for players returning after a long perma, or with a voucher. If not, there should be.
Zero tolerance isn’t case by case, it literally is what it says it is. Intolerable. Not tolerated. If you allow people back after they do something that you say you have “zero tolerance” for, you clearly are willing to tolerate it.
Hard and fast rules that automatically, permanently (with no chance of an appeal) eject someone from a community don’t strike me as a particularly good thing. I’ve noted it elsewhere, but goodness there are a myriad of interpretations of how a ban should be applied, based on specific scenarios, the banning admin, and the player involved. I interpret “Zero Tolerance” as meaning that a particular offense is cause for an instant perma-ban.
Correct. I’m not trying to suggest that their status in the community alters the status of their ban. I’m implying that it influences how their potential for appealing is treated. I later doubled back on this to say that even a positive player who did something extraordinarily egregious wouldn’t have any special treatment.
The point of that statement was to say that a more positive player is less likely to have a lot of bans/notes which means they’re also less likely to reoffend which is an important factor when considering an appeal.
A player’s history has a massive impact in how their appeal is treated. Their history is an important consideration when determining if they’re likely to reoffend or not. This is why we sometimes ask that they play on other servers and obtain a vouch from their respective administration.
It’s a case-by-case assessment.
You literally just described how just about every video game company hands out bans on MP games.
It’s not a perma-ban if it gets lifted. :^)
No complaints on those comments, agreed. It’s almost like the Host of the server has his head in the right place, or something 
I think it was just your wording in a couple spots that had me all “ehhhh”.
You literally just described how just about every video game company hands out bans on MP games.
Good thing we’re not an amorphous, uncaring sentient blob of manufactured evil, which dispenses bans on a nearly entirely automated basis in order to milk as much cash from their playerbase as they can then, right?
It’s not a perma-ban if it gets lifted. :^)
Again, it’s a definitions things. I define a perma-ban as a ban that has no specified end-date. I think what you’re talking about is more a “community ban”, I’ve seen that word thrown around a couple times in that context.
Debatable.
You can be community banned for a month. A permanent ban is a ban… that’s permanent. It’s no longer a permanent ban when it’s lifted after 3 months, it’s just a 3 month ban. See the difference?
You can be community banned for a month. A permanent ban is a ban… that’s permanent. It’s no longer a permanent ban when it’s lifted after 3 months, it’s just a 3 month ban. See the difference?
I suppose, yes. Not going to tangle with you over definitions. I assume by “perma-ban” you mean “unappealable perma-ban”. I don’t know what your point is, though.
I’ll make it easy, if ERP is “zero tolerance perma-ban” then unappealable is redundant. Unbanning people who did it shows that that isn’t the case. You ARE willing to tolerate it on a case-by-case basis and it ISN’T a perma-ban.
Aren’t some permabans handed out just to see whether or not the banned person would go through the trouble of going to the forums and making an appeal? You know, to see if they care 