Warning for Death-Station: An Example of a Rule as a Forced Playstyle

Every rule does this, in it's own way, and on their own you wouldn't really notice or care, but they add up. SGM is getting more and more of these little nuanced rules, which sounds great on paper, until you end up with a server that forces you to play exactly how it wants, not how you want.

And the fact you now have to call out before shooting or activating a potential deathstation, or risk a warning or ban if it kills innocents, is one of the rules that I just think goes to far. Is it a big impact? No. But it's a clear and measurable one, if you stop for a moment to think about it.

It detracts entirely from the potency of the Deathstation. A portable, plantable T-trap designed to trick people into a sense of safety near a very potent explosion, be it if you are activating, or just running by the box on the ground. While not crippling, it's just not the same experience if the server itself forces you to be cautious about it.
Yes, it saves innocent lives (Sometimes, kind of), but it also reduces the sense of danger, of "Oh shit, I can die at any moment", because it forces other people to be cautious instead of you.


Two years back, someone shoots you in the back with a shotgun and you were allowed to spin around and cap them in the head. Today? If you see someone walking out of a closed vent with a c4 planted on the other end, you aren't allowed do anything more than call for a Detective and hopes you knows how to use a DNA scanner. 100% certainty is a fine rule, it's what defines the server. But it kills fast-paced gameplay, and when you go beyond that, when you go beyond that, start forcing people to make a checklist before they can do anything, it kills the game itself.

In my entire Gmod carrier, of over 1400 hours, there has been exactly one time where I have RDM and left. On a server where I was slain for killing a guy who was shooting a third person fleeing while holstered, seemingly out of nowhere, because I was told "I should have let them ID the body". While that might be a bit of a jump from the current state of our server's ruleset, it's a jump that shrinks with every rule like the one described above.

SGM's appeal lies in quality staff, strictly enforced rules, and fluid gameplay. Lets try to keep that in mind when making/altering the rules.

 

Moved

 

Double post wee woo

I'm unsure of the situation as you describe it? A player fires at a suspected death station, it blows up and kills a/some nearby players?

 

Its specifically in the rules that an innocent blowing up a death station is not responsible for the explosion, the traitor who planted it is.

The only time you need to warn for a deathstation is if you are a T and throw it into a crowd and potentially if activated quickly harms another traitor. As you said it would essentially be a walking T trap or a grenade so it requires a warning in that situation just so other Ts dont get cheated out of their T round.

 

It's more for people who place down deathstations and then immediately shoot it, which could be akin to something like a frag grenade being tossed at people (which may include your t buddy in that group).

 

@wink, sorry for the tag, but could you explain what this is about? I think you can better than I.

Until then, no. There are people being banned or warned for shooting or clicking on a deathstation, either with the intent to kill innocents, or apparently so. Even when doing it intentionally, that's something that T's know is going to happen sometimes. It's quite a part of why the deathstation is used, especially in say, a crowd.

 

Nay. It's not something I've seen often, but innocents are getting the slay's/bans. I think @Hyper ✿ was the one who someone mentioned in the SB today that sponsored this conversation. (Sorry for the awkward tagging. I remember seeing the appeal someone made, but it was a month or two ago, and we all know how buried that is)

 

And to clarify, I'm in the position that innocents who intentionally detonate DeathStations should remain untouched, even if they are doing it to kill people.

 

Discord context(could be out of order, pretty much out the door rn)
http://prntscr.com/itxjid
http://prntscr.com/itxj7o
http://prntscr.com/itxipy

I agree it wouldn't/shouldn't/couldn't be classified as RDM, more or less potential could be toxic gameplay depending on the complete circumstances of the situation at hand; I personally wouldn't persue warning/punishment unless there was clear malicous intent behind whatever was going down.

 

For most part, innocents shouldn't worry about getting slain/punished for shooting the deathstations.
However, it's possible that an administrator can see some situations as toxic gameplay (again, it depends on circumstances surrounding that event/is case by case thing).

 

Agent A's response here is fully correct. To an innocent, they have no idea if it's a death station or a health station, and do not need to warn before using it and any kills associated with it is placed on the traitor.

If an innocent knowingly destroys a death station and kills surrounding teammates, full well knowing that it's a death station, then they can be punished for toxic gameplay.

 

The closest thing I can remember is a situation in this report against me:
https://www.seriousgmod.com/threads...-barbarian-staff-snowflake.47327/#post-487323
Refer to Spoiler 2):

The issue with allowing that behaviour is that it's essentially letting players kill at random by proxy. Which is (refer to highlighted note) not RDM - but it is toxic gameplay.
I'm of the opinion that we should not ignore innocent players deliberately blowing up death stations in order to kill the people near it, despite having no reason to kill the players nearby. In this instance, the player denied having done so knowingly, however it looked questionable all the same so I had a chat with the player about it. But as a single instance, there was no reason to pursue any kind of punishment for it.

EDIT: Regarding the argument that it's what traitors want: yes. But an innocent player should not, if given reasonable doubt or indeed knowing that it's a death station, blow it up with potential teammates nearby. That is not playing for the innocent objective as you're vastly more likely to hit allies in such an attempt than traitors.

 

I won't touch on the death station thing, but I do want to comment on this.

I hate this rule change the most out of any of the other ones.

I've just learnt to accept that I cannot kill the super-obvious traitor that just planted a C4, when I didn't quite physically see them arm it. Most of the time they'll shoot me when I say "Hey! Why'd you plant that C4?" but the other times when they either know the rules or are incompetent traitors, it's really tedious and extremely annoying that I can't do anything about it.

In general, rules that rarely affect innocents and kill a large amount of traitors for pretty "traitor-like" actions should be fine and remain unchanged. Before the change, I don't think I ever saw an innocent get killed for not calling out a C4 (obviously it's only my experience, but I'm sure a lot of people share this statement). The times when people kill for it are when it's obviously a traitor running away from a C4 that they just armed.

Thankfully C4 is not that commonly used, at least in my experience, but I still highly dislike this rule.

 

The only thing I really agree with here is the amount of "little nuanced rules"
Staff used to joke about how "if there's a rule for everything, the rules would be cluttered", but now they're literally making a rule for everything. Every situation, every item, every map.
When I used to play in 2014, anyone could join the server and after 1-2 slays know the premise of what should and shouldn't be done
Now, our servers are completely non-new user friendly. Nobody is gonna read the thesis that is the fuckin extended rules as soon as they join the server, and that's likely why the servers are dying: no new players, and old members are leaving
As soon as a situation arises that the upper staff weren't aware of, they immediately make a rule to combat it. Eventually, the rules began to contradict each other.

P.S.: The current extended rules contains 9,598 words, excluding changelog. For reference, this is about 1/8th the length of the average novela. It's fucking insane.

 

Idk what you are talking about but two years ago the rules were much more firm on what was and wasn't allowed. Nowadays the rules are more fleshed out, but really a lot of the stuff that is actually written down in the rules nowadays is to close up loopholes that inevitably pop up. I always wondered why the admins create new rules instead of just punishing the people who find ways to loophole it so much like they use to. It isn't the rules that have changed, it is the people that are enforcing them.

 

I agree. The server's rules don't let you put two and two together unless you actually see and it most of the abstract is lost. The rules don't account for reflexes, detective work (he dropped his weapon after someone was shot with said weapon) and most situations where DNA is needed is lost out

 

And this is how it has been for a long time; before my tenure as staff ended.

I didn't agree with the C4 rule, however, common sense also comes into play with it; one entrance room, just started to beep, eyes on C4, one person in room.

 

I think you may have over analyzed this one a tad. @TomCat™

 

I got warned for moving a death station around.