"ah so you've anecdotally seen MPs bad at their job (which is exclusive to MP, as I'm sure you know) and you've also anecdotally seen rounds where any crimes commited weren't blatantly obvious and potentially gotten away with, that's great"
Ive played now I think 180 total rounds. Probably far less then a lot of players here but I figure its enough for me to get experience in a large scale of roles and develop opinions on things. Sadly all I can offer you is anecdotal evidence. I have never seen on this forum a study, or a meta study. I dont want to be the first person here to ever create a meta study so instead im just going to tell you my experience as a part of the community and do it anecdotally like every other person whos offered an opinion here has done.
"(which is exclusive to MP, as I'm sure you know)"
This is a little dishonest, everyone is aware that any role can have bad players. What is different and why its being mentioned by me is because they are the only role that can ban a player from a round. This is a significant power to hold over other players and incredibly so in a nonwhite listed position. Im sure anyone with player experience can tell you that what mps choose to do however is wildly different person to person. IE stacked charges for swearing.
"I don't see how it's relevant to anything though"
I think its relevent here because the mechanic directly relates to this. Normally a CO could issue pardons over comms and the prisoner would be released. Now for anyone who has ever played a staff,XO, or CO role knows, cic can be incredibly hectic. Such to the point that a large or controlling portion of pardons already got ignored on comms. Now that this mechanic makes it even more challenging to pardon a player, it may simply not ever be used at all. Now this removes a power check from mps mini banning players over truely trivial events.
From a very high RP perspective, A captain has lost half of his men to giant terrifying space aliens. Hes millions of miles from earth and in deep shit. He screams over comms to the mps to release the 3 deltas from brig to rejoin the fight. The mp responds "Sorry sir I cant do that, I know half of our men are dead and the colony is destroyed and on fire, but these glass winows hold more value then human lives so Im going to need you to follow proper procedure and leave command of the alien invasion to come do this in person" A high rp captain would promptly shoot that person in the head because they are actively harming an operation where half of the people we live with have been brutally murdered.
Low RP or TDM perspective as most players refer to cmss13 now, Its created a mechanic that will no longer let captains instant pardon. So for the players that came here to tdm(which I hear is a large ammount) It serves to only harm the reason they play here by adding a new mechanic that can only possibly serve to reduce play time.
OOC, its hard to beleive that a dev would create this and not know that virtually all pardons will end up ignored now because by nature they have so much other important shit to do. Its simply a hand forcing mechanic.
"Mps HAVE to arrest any non minor crimes they witness, though, so if they don't then they're literally breaking OOC rules. I agree that mps SHOULD let some minor crimes slide for the good of the operation, but we do have them for a reason. Also if you do spot any power abusing, rule breaking, etc MPs then make a player complaint, if it was found that they didn't do anything wrong, then either the entirety of the staff team is wrong, or you are."
My experience has been that most mp players are good players and seem to be good people. Likewise I have had thus far only good interactions with the staff even on times when I didnt agree with things. The issue is with mechanics and some rules not that staff are forced to follow them or mps are forced to follow rules. Rules by nature stifle creativity. If it keeps up we really will just have a TDM game and nothing left.
Editted for formatting