Staff Report - Emerald Blood, Sir Lordington

[Emerald Blood]

This report is purely professional...

As I believe this was a isolated incident from what, and I quote other players, "Emeraldblood waking up on the wrong side of the bed" then I suggest they be warned and put on probation to ensure they don't wake up badly again.

Your whole report builds up to saying I should be put on probation to ensure I don't wake up poorly.

Also, I never said you asked what I put in quotes, it's an illusion to speech. You really grasp at the smallest things to take literal and complain about.

[NGGJamie]

I'll be posting a resolution here after work tonight. No more posts from here on out, please.

[NGGJamie]

This response is going to be quite long, so I'm going to break this up into the individual issues raised in this complaint. However, I will mention prior for the sake of transparency that I was in a Discord channel with Emerald, Lordington, and Grimcad around the time this happened. I was not in-game at the time as I was playing Enter the Gungeon, but much of the actions taken had some discussion in that channel during the time we were all together. This whole thing came off the heels of a management meeting we had concluded shortly prior. The meeting we finished was not necessarily all about sunshine and rainbows, but I would say that nobody present in the channel had "woken up on the wrong side of the bed," or anything of the sort. It was closer to a chipper winding-down from a serious talk.

Prior to continuing I will also ask that when posting a complaint, please do not edit the original complaint after replies have started. While it is easy to check edit history on a post, it requires extra effort on the part of the reviewing staff to determine what was changed afterward so we know exactly what to cover and why.

A. The Midis (Sir Lordington)

Tackling this first as it's the easiest, I don't have any issues with what I've heard of the midis that were played. Lordington stated afterward that the Curb Your Enthusiasm theme was a bit much and too loud, but the others weren't such a big deal that I feel he needs punishment for it. Salt and salt midis are a sort of CM tradition and always either directed at the ever-salty dchat, or OOC.

Given that the poster seems to agree they weren't really horrible, I'll call it safe to leave the midi matter at that. Emerald Blood did not play any midi files during or near this round.

B. The Xeno Being Ordered Up (Emerald Blood)

In analyzing the xeno being ordered to the Almayer, the primary factors I examined were the game balance according to the accounts I obtained, what impact the order had on the game overall, and the intent behind ordering them up. I will note here that I received a pair of testimonies in private, one from a xeno player, that I'm taking into account with my response. Since the individual came to me in private, I will leave them anonymous by default unless they would like to reveal themselves.

My conclusion regarding the effect of xenos being ordered to the Almayer is that, if it was carried out accordingly, would have had little to no effect on the game. I've seen the complainant put emphasis on the fact that they had a full HP tank, which would have been far less effective with good xeno play on the Almayer compared to on the ground. Had the xenos given quick chase, they would have been able to use the transit time to heal their wounds further and prepare inside. Then using the interior of the Almayer to play to their advantages with the marines' support crippled by the crash. Had the game played out with the marines re-deploying, I am fairly certain that the hardship the xenos faced would have been exacerbated by their relative readiness and tank maneuverability. The fact that marines tend to perform better on the Almayer is taken account in this, and is considered an equal tradeoff against limited tank mobility aboard. I am also acknowledging that there is not a 100% chance that I am correct in my assessment, as I can only base this off of what was described by those that were present, compounded with the whole "would've/could've/might've" nature of round post-assessment. The original call was made in-the-moment, and I have not seen sufficient evidence to definitively show that it did substantial harm.

The span of time that the xenos were on the ground after the marine evacuation was more than enough time to reasonably allow them to recover. Assuming the marines evacuated on the Alamo, it's final launch prior to the SubtlePM from Emerald was at 19:49:01, with the PM itself happening 13 minutes later, at 20:02:57. If the evacuation happened on DS2, I can see a DS2 launch happening 4 minutes prior, however, this does not line up to the evacuation order timing. It is common and expected for staff to encourage a side to make a move if the game is stagnant, and the xenos are not entitled to hold the ground endlessly in order to gain an advantage. Even after the subtlePM, the marines did not re-deploy on DS2 for an additional 7 minutes. Giving the round a total of 20 minutes' delay where nothing was happening except marines re-equipping. If the Xeno cannot recover enough to fight within this timespan, their round is already doomed regardless of action taken.

On this matter, I find no justification to hold Emerald's actions against protocol or general procedure.

C. The PMC ERT

I don't have a great deal to say about the PMCs being sent, so I'll keep this short. The decision that I came to regarding this was that with the state of the game as it was, I don't feel that the PMCs were especially necessary. However, deploying an ERT to shorten an already set-in-stone round is not unheard of, but I don't personally recommend it. The aforementioned delay that happened while the xenos recovered on the ground does help the case for an ERT to give a set of bored, dead players something to do. Further, by the nature of ERTs, they will always provide an advantage to one side or the other in every case, and is taken into account in my decision-making process.

On this matter I find that an ERT could have been integrated into the round more naturally, and provided recommendations for the future to use ERTs in a more organic way. I consider this matter to be neutral within the resolution of this complaint.

D. Unprofessionalism

This will address in-game behavior first, and behavior in this complaint second.

For the accusation of unprofessionalism in-game, I have not seen any indication of such in the logs. There is nothing extraordinary about the SubtleMessage or PMs that indicates a lack of professionalism to me, they are fairly standard fare. I will note that no one on staff is being paid, so they aren't held to the expectation of treating everyone like a customer all of the time. There is an expectation of general respect, but I see no reason to believe that was breached here.

Outside of the game, I agree that professionalism has been broken on this thread. The particular post which meets this criteria is Emerald's initial response. I find a good many things wrong with the response criticizing the complaint itself. As of this posting, we've already spent over an hour hashing out what is/not acceptable to say, and my stance on the matter has been made very clear to her. Further, I've also taken the liberty of re-establishing what constitutes a good, or unacceptable complaint. Since Emerald is directly involved in this complaint, it should go without saying that her statement regarding it's validity holds no ground beyond being her own opinion. It is not, by that measure, reflected by the rest of the team except those who may personally agree.

On this matter, I find that all in-game behavior exibited was perfectly normal and acceptable for a member of staff. Whereas behavior in this complaint is unacceptable and shall not see recurrence in the future.

Addendum. Player & Staff Duties Toward Complaints

As mentioned previously, with this complaint comes an official standard for distinguishing good complaints from bad ones. This is the standard that I have established as it currently stands, but it may change in the future. The spirit of it will not change.

Player Responsibilities When Making a Complaint:

1. Reports should establish basic facts and a particular event, presenting what they are able.
2. Written in good faith that a rule or protocol was broken, from the subjective view of the player. Players are not expected to know how a complaint will resolve when, or before making it. That is for staff to decide.
3. Written with an appropriate amount of respect towards all parties involved.

As long as these three criteria are maintained, a complaint is always valid, even if it is incorrect and the complainee did nothing wrong.

After writing this response for the past two hours, this is resolved.