I agree on that but stand on what I said about xenos. While Revolutionaries and Cult gives the ability to players to RP around the gamemode, Xenos leave nothing interesting right now
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Certainly, there are few things that are completely impossible. Hell, I once saw a xeno-queen RP as submitting to the station because a miner near-killed her, but then spared her. The queen was brought aboard the station and even interacted with sci and med.
My point is, that in the 1000 hours I’ve played on bee, I’ve seen that only once. And with Revs, in a thousand hours, I haven’t seen a single Rev round which had any amount of roleplay from the revs. Not even a single one. TDM modes having a possibility to RP is an exception, not a rule.
For that to change, there needs to be a change in the community as well as in the staff team. When staff routinely disregard rule breaks, LRP behavior, light griefing and light self-antag, it only encourages the community to engage in those behaviors further.
(Examples of this would be Aeder getting a free pass to virus murderbone as rev (And he’s an Admin, no less!), Megadd just recently giving a non antag CE permission to self-antag without any IC or OOC consequences, or Milly treating a sec-officer blatantly violating space-law and SOP without any repercussions from HoS/Captain as “an IC issue”)
In conclusion, it’s easy to say “be the change you want to see”, but when the core system itself is broken, there’s little you can do. TDM is here to stay. Admins who fail to enforce rules are not only not reprimanded, but are encouraged to continue doing so through the existence of Rule 0 which allows them to nullify any other rules their friends (or just people they find “funny”) break. All these things are part of BeeStation and are here to stay.
I can appreciate that the Staff says that Bee is an RP server. But there’s a huge difference between what they say and what is. Not that I think it’s malicious intent or outright lieing, but … It’s like a child who plays firefighter and may genuinely believe they are one. You can’t expect them to actually fight fires. Bee likes to call itself “RP” but Team Deathmatch antagonists are it’s highlight.
That lack of direction and identity is constant and at this point, so deeply ingrained into BeeStation, that you’d have to completely tear down the whole system to rebuild it anew. Obviously, the powers that be don’t want to change that, since that would mean that Staff would actually be held accountable and have consequences for their judgement. And the people who do want to work on that change get rejected and told “Clicking sprites without RP is funny. Cope.” which, again, is fine if that’s the direction Bee wants to take. But that direction is not RP.
I’d say, you’re expecting too much out of Bee. Ultimately, Bee has never moved past LRP and Golden. A sizeable part of the community is still LRP-oriented. Many of them genuinely do not understand why LRP is a bad fit for a server which pretends to be “RP”.
Same goes for the staff team. Aeder genuinely doesn’t understand why a deadly virus who killed half his own team as well as innocent bystanders is murderboning. The Staff who processed that ticket concur as well: Murdering half your team and innocent bystanders via deadly virus is acceptable. All you have to do is make sure it’s not airborne and that you’re a Rev. You’re not responsible for it if that virus kills half your team in the process.
Again, I wouldn’t say it’s out of malice. I highly doubt Aeder’s line of thought was “lul, I’mma kill everyone for the funniez”. Nor do I think Megadd was rubbing his hands as an evil overlord, delighted that he allowed some LRP self-antag action. But I do believe that if the Staff Team themselves are incapable of a streamlined RP standard, be it through malice, ignorance, incompetence, corruption or plain and simple protection of their own friends when they screw up, then there’s very little the community can do about it.
It’s easier to just visit proper roleplay servers when you actually want to RP and then play on Bee when you want some team death match action. Trying to make Bee into something it is not is only going to frustrate yourself further and potentially get the attention of the Administration team since we’re not a democracy and free-speech isn’t an actual right you have here. In fact … I wouldn’t be completely surprised if this happened:
(USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST)
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i’m currently working on a Revolution overhaul (more similar to a mix of bay’s and TG’s families). If the core system is broken (which i 100% agree on) we should fix it! we can fix it!
Coding or joining the staff team are the two best ways you can contribute to Bee!
As said, coding or joining the staff team will not help if that very staff team is at least in part the reason for the problems in the first place. Even if I somehow miraculously do get accepted to Staff for Bee (which won’t ever happen, because I have no intention of Staffing so long as rule 0 exists.) this doesn’t change the fact that the current existing staff members lack direction and discipline.
You changing how revs work, won’t change the fact that Aeder not only murderboned as an admin but got away with it. It won’t change the fact that Megadd Rule 0’d a self antagging CE out of trouble as well as completely ignored Head of Staff Conduct and SOP breaches committed by the other members of command. It won’t change the fact that a sizeable part of the community on bee’s first priority is making sprites horizontal and nothing else.
It doesn’t make any of the people involved bad people, but it does mean that your efforts are ultimately moot until the root of the problem is fixed, which coding and adding rookie staff won’t fix. You can give this server as many tools as you want, but ultimately until roleplay standards get enforced, until Rule 0 is removed to promote Staff Accountability and until those changes actually disinsentivize TDM, it won’t change.
“Be the change you want to see” is impossible without fixing the broken parts. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying you’re wasting your time. Any amount of work done by volunteers is to be respected and appreciated. But … It’s like slapping a band-aid on a ripped open, deep wound. You may have covered it up, but it’s still rotting and festering inside, at it’s core.
No matter how many rules and changes you make … If Admins are going to respond to LRP, light-grief and light self-antag with “Rule 0. He’s allowed to.” then regardless of the content you add, it will incentivize such behavior. And bee community isn’t particularly known for going out of it’s way to self-moderate when it comes to funni sprite clicking.
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ok so… should i not bother helping out however i can just because you disagree with other admin’s rulings? i mean i don’t think you are right
How do we do that? i’m genuinely interested, i’d like to help
It’s not the only problem. But it is part of it. Staff ignoring their own rules is what causes people to feel like it’s okay to ignore those rules, too. Staff is a LARGE part of the problem, but not the only one. As mentioned before, there are other problems such as:
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Bee never getting rid of it’s LRP origins and reputation. Golden-only players still occasionally play Sage like it’s Golden.
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Bee actively using modes which are anti-thesis to RP, on a very large scale. Fixing revs won’t fix Nukies, won’t fix Benos, won’t fix Cult, won’t fix wizard, won’t fix Heretic … You’d need to completely rework over half of the antagonists.
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Bee actively encouraging combat for non-combat roles via the existence of: Martyr/Hijack traitors, Murderbone/Doomsday antags, murderbone specific weapons (His Grace). It’s indirect, but once there’s an actual murderboning antag, it almost inevitably ends with parts of the crew trying to validhunt them before being killed themselves. Indiscriminate/Murderboning antags are bound to provoke the crew into defending themselves beyond just calling security. It incentivizes arcadiness and disincentivizes RP.
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Bee actively DISCOURGAGING immersion and RP in some instances: Meme jobs such as clown/mime whose stated purpose is to entertain the crew, but de-facto purpose is light-grief (Clowns who are actually funny are few and far between. Most just engage in light scuffles, tiding and overall think that being annoying = being funny). Gimmicky and arcadey mechanics, which make perfect sense mechanically but not from an RP perspective (such as for example mint gibbing overweight people, for some reason. Or your entire body being shredded and torn to pieces being fixable completely and instantly with a mere bruise pack, which incentivizes carelessness and combat for roles which aren’t supposed to)
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The staff team being actually incapable of comprehending the above points. Aeder was given a free pass, despite his virus murdering both memebers of his own team and uninvolved 3rd parties. And it wasn’t called murderbone because the virus wasn’t airbone. Not a single consequence for his actions. Fortunately, I believe that the reason Aeder didn’t take any consequences is because of Rule 0 and staff covering for each other, so if someone who actually isn’t protected by it does the same thing as Aeder does, they’ll probably be punished appropriately. But that in itself is a huge problem already.
I’m not saying that you shouldn’t do anything at all. And I’m not saying that I’m ungrateful and your work is completely useless. I’m saying that your work won’t be enough to do one specific thing: Fix RP standards. Because at the core of it, Staff do not prioritize RP over funny gimmicks. You can give a kettle a new paintjob, but it’s not going to become a pot before you completely reforge it. So, in this instance, you can try to improve elements of Bee, but if as a whole it’s designed around arcadey gimmicks, it’s still not going to become an RP server.
We don’t, because you won’t. Because … Well. It doesn’t seem to be the direction that Staff wants to take the server in the first place. Staff doesn’t want to be accountable. Staff doesn’t want to enforce anti-LRP rules. Staff doesn’t want to remove incentives to TDM/Light-Grief.
It’s … Not inherently wrong. Because I get it. These things can be fun for some people. But these things ARE what creates this dissonance between Bee calling itself RP while actually being TDM whenever one of the above mentionned antagonists are present.
The only way I see that this problem will be fixed, is changes so radical that nobody will ever accept them. Here are some examples:
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Remove Rule 0 in it’s entirety and hold staff accountable for every verdict they issue. Hold staff like Aeder, Megadd and Not_A_Shark accountable for failing to enforce LRP/Grief rules. They’re not bad people, and I don’t want to see them punished, but being lenient about these things is a large part what creates LRP/Grief incentive.
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Actually have a 0 tolerance policy for LRP/Grief. Don’t let Aeder off with a pat on the back if his virus actually murderboned, just because it wasn’t airborne and he’s an admin. Don’t be lenient on people who do funny self-antag, borderline griefing. Even if it’s Green alert. Especially not to people who play command. Again, it’s not that those are bad people, but if you’re going to be lenient about it, it IS going to incentivize LRP and Team Deathmatch behavior.
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Completely remove ALL murderbone clauses for ALL antags except nukies. Make it so unrestrained LRP style combat happens as little as possible. That should actually help incentivize players who want to RP to join, and players who don’t to leave. In this instance, that would be: Revs HAVE to convert and can’t actually kill anyone permanently without the intent to revive and convert. Same for benos: They HAVE to convert and can’t just kill. Force Heretic to kill ONLY his targets and remove incentives to murderbone by giving evolution points ONLY through targets. So on, so forth.
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Have a much harsher policy for validhunting/valid identifying. There’s very little RP explanation for which a random Assistant, upon seeing someone getting flashed, immediately knows Revolutionnaries are taking over the station. Run of the mill crew are not only not supposed to fight antags, but a lot of the time, the actual character isn’t even supposed to KNOW what’s going on in the first place, yet because it makes sense mechanically, they do.
This list is non-exhaustive, but you can already see, none of it will ever be done. Bee simply is not a server which is capable of giving up LRP fun for quality roleplay. Which … Is fine in and of itself. But it’s sad, considering that Bee tries to call itself an RP server while it isn’t exactly that (points for trying though).
Ultimately, my suggestion would be … Either accept your own identity, stop pretending to be an RP server and focus on what you’re actually good at: LRP arcadey gameplay with limited depth … Or actually do what you say you’re doing: Put RP quality above gimmicks and memes and actually enforce that.
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yeah i try to be more strict with older players (with lotsa notes) since they already know the rules, but i get what you mean yeah. They’ll stop once banned, or they’ll probably move to other servers (i hope, this has sort of been the case)
I have something in mind for nukies, but yeah i hate all these other modes. maybe if they were waaaaay more rare they’d be fine (not heretic, but you can probably do something with it)
I wish all murderbone antags were gone, yeah, along with being able to kill sec without any escalation, both these absolutely suck.
i don’t agree with you here. Yes, they are meme jobs, but i believe they have potential for a lot of funny light hearted humour. Yes they do get used to grief, but they will get punished by admins.
Also medbay needs fixing, but someone is already on it. it will take some time of course, but it’s being worked on.
The direction has been decided: Roleplay. Yes we are not there yet, but i think we can move closer to a proper roleplay server (most players are on board. the tiders are a somewhat small minority). We just need the actual game to encourage RP.
What i think should be done to encourage RP:
rework gamemodes
rework/kill dynamic (PLEASE MAINTS :C every dynamic round i’ve played turns into 0RP, or is just greenshift but with 1 traitor)
remove murderbone objectives (better yet, remove objectives completely)
rework economy (this is prob going to be the hardest)
rework medbay (it’s being done, but it’s hard)
rework exploration and mining (least RP friendly jobs, i believe they could be merged into something cool and unique)
these are the changes i’d like to see in an ideal world.
i’m just not experienced enough to suggest policy changes 
EDIT: sorry for bad formatting but i’m very sleepy
Yeah, I keep hearing and reading that. It’s been announced multiple times. But as mentioned above, aside from the gameplay and mechanical problems, the staff team’s way of treating it is also a huge problem (Something you didn’t adress in your post. And something you probably can’t address without more senior staff sewing your mouth shut for it).
To be quite honest, if I didn’t know better, I’d simply think the staff is either trolling or lieing. We keep being told that the desired direction is roleplay but … Those very same admins then go-on and completely ignore a-helps with light-grief because “IC issue” or start murderboning themselves. Sure, I can only provide Aeder, Megadd and Not_A_Shark as an example right now, but something tells me they’re far from the only ones responsible for it. I’m just not paying attention enough to call more of these situations out.
And again, I’m not saying they’re bad people or doing it out of malice. I feel like Aeder genuinely doesn’t understand why releasing a virus which ended up killing his own team-mates is not a good roleplay standard. And looking at how the report was treated, I feel like the rest of the staff team doesn’t want to slap him harshly for that.
For Megadd and Not_A_Shark, I don’t think they’re trying to be malicious about being lenient. If anything, it’s the opposite. They see a guy doing light grief or LRP, and they try to downplay it because they don’t want to be the asshole who’s going to ban someone a week for a funni lrp gimmick they shouldn’t have done. I get why it is like that.
Hell, didn’t CrossedFall actually REVERT a fix to mining? Something about Frank having extreme amounts of HP and miners using that to bait megafauna into fighting frank and then potshotting the fauna to death. That is not only antithesis to RP, but it’s anthitesis to even gameplay…
But the problem is, these kinds of things is what incentivized that behavior. Rule 0 is what incentivizes that behavior. I understand trying to be a clement and fair staff team, and giving as much leeway as possible, but outright ignoring your own rules is not going to help you achieve your stated goals, and having Rule 0 as a get-out-of-jail free card when you don’t want to enforce those specific rules only diminishes the legitimacy of those rules in the first place.
If the community as a whole knows, that some light grifing can be occasionally overlooked … They’ll keep doing it. You want to be nice and relaxed, you want to have some fun-light-hearted fun. I get it. But that exact desire is what creates LRP incentives. Believe it or not, RP actually requires some effort.
Coming up with a character, and really getting into that character, thinking like them, all of it requires quite a lot of work, whereas clicking a sprite until it’s horizontal is, indeed, easy, light-hearted, occasionally good natured fun. The problem is that, that easy, light-hearted, good natured fun is what gets in the way of roleplay in the first place.
For instance. Let’s say you’re a security member. You’re supposed to be a well-trained professional. Yet, at the very same time, you’re supposed to allow a clown to slip you. Something that an actual, well-trained law-enforcement officer on duty would actually respond to by dogpiling the perpetrator and keeping them locked up. Hell, even slipping a civilian would be liable to have charged pressed against you for assault.
Similarly, we’re supposed to roleplay corporate employees. Professional, skilled and down to earth specialists in their field. Yet for some inane reason, that professional and skilled labor force includes a clown, whose only purpose is to make weird noises and being annoying. Yes, it does make sense mechanically. And yes, it’s good light hearted fun. But it so arcadey and meme’y, that there’s simply no way I can have enough suspension of disbelief to actually immerse myself enough to roleplay properly. I can never, for a second, actually immerse myself into my character. Become them. Because I’m constantly reminded: “HEY! This is a video game! HEY! This is a clown! HEY! It’s funny! It doesn’t make sense? IT DOESN"T HAVE TO! I TOLD YOU IT’S FUNNY! AHAHAHAHAHAHA11!1!one11!1!eleventyonehundredone11!!111”
It’s like … Imagine you’re watching a documentary. It’s straight and to the point. Informative. Maybe has a quip or two in there, but it’s overall purpose is to be a functional piece of information. And now, imaging that for some reason, every minute, there’s a honking sound in that documentary. Who’d ever be able to take it seriously? Hell, even simple. Who would be stupid enough to purposefully sabotage what is supposed to be serious work with random memes?
Memes and Arcadiness shouldn’t have a place in anything beyond LRP. Because … Well … It doesn’t make sense. No company would be conducting any form of serious work, yet at the same time ensure that that same work is constantly interrupted by a one dimensional walking meme whose only purpose is to “robust” you with a soapbar.
TL;DR: The stated direction is roleplay. But the actions of the staff team show otherwise. Maybe I’m a little bit too cynical but … Well if someone tells me one thing, but then keeps doing the radically opposite, I wouldn’t believe for a second that their stated goal is anything more than an empty statement. Again, I get it, it’s complex, and it’s not necessarily lies or malice … But it doesn’t change the fact that the stated goal, and the actual actions of the staff team are diametrically opposed.
EDIT: To get back to what you were saying, PLEASE do rework revs. I just observed a rev round which was over under 10 minutes …
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