Dark BCI/CPF: Metagame and OOC Bias

[Deleted member 1711]

Your Steam Name: BruceMahGoose
Your SteamID: STEAM_0:1:62574600

Their Steam Name(s): Dark
Their SteamID('s): STEAM_0:1:60709357
Do you know their Discord or Forum name(s)?: Dark, and Dark#9667
Why do you want them to be banned?:

I originally had asked Mullin who I should contact and he directed to me towards the ban request format, so I apologize if this a bit out of place from the usual.

OOC motivation/bias to target another player, and potential metagame. Essentially, there is a BCI inquiry into Betty Arbuckle that is specifically managed by Dark's Clandestine Operative, Yuri Zaya, and with crimes reported by Dark's Unit, VICTOR-2. I have put as much photographic evidence to back up my claims in the evidence section as possible, and it roughly follows the paragraph order of this report.

The issues arise from the root cause of this investigation - Dark's CP, VICTOR-2, had previously raided the storage in the Sunrise café, and confiscated what he claimed were an incredible number of illegal crafting materials from the store, and put a note that they would charged pending a BCI investigation. An investigation that he would lead on his other character. For the record, at this time, nothing within that closet was illegal; the Sunrise café was an approved recycler of computer and electronic hardware, as well as a coffee shop.

The problems continue. On his unit, he and VICTOR-9 also searched and confiscated a large number of legally acquired rations from Betty because they were marked as suspicious because of the BCI investigation that, again, he was leading. This lead to an OOC argument in which Betty demanded to know what the units' taglines was so that she could make a complaint. I have included logs from the console in the evidence section, if you would like to read more in-depth. I believe this incident is what specifically led to a significant OOC desire to punish Sagsworth, especially because he now had an incentive to benefit TWO of his characters for doing so.

He has also expressed an interest in ensuring that Sagsworth is PKed if they make "any more" mistakes, even though they have a grand total of 1 SC punishment on their record. Mind you - he means on his UNIT, which does NOT have access to the BCI investigation. BCI also does not have the ability to amputate players, so he's going to bypass faction restrictions to PK a character.

Finally, much of the evidence relating to the Sunrise is blatantly metagamed. Muho, who acts as Dark's informant, would have no way of knowing about a vent in the back of the Sunrise which is kept barricaded by the aforementioned storage closet. From what I have been told, he has also repeatedly tried to entrap them in crimes, but that's an IC matter and not an OOC one. Additionally, Goose had previously RPed as Maxine Lee's pet chumtoad, another manager of the Sunrise. Late yesterday, they were doing an event where Goose repeatedly used /itl for events, and drew a random CWU worker (I believe it was Fatma, as she was the Turkish one) from outside of the building. This means that they heard the chumtoad through three walls and then reported it to units. When units were told it was metagame, they did not care. I was actually physically present for this one and confirm that it was a load of bullshit. There really shouldn't have been a large-scale investigation with Clandestine Operatives into him to begin with.

If I had to summarize my evidence, it's as such:

1. Dark creates a potential charge worthy of investigating by the BCI on his unit.
2. His BCI officer picks up on the tip his unit made.
3. The BCI officer finds intel, generally metagamed by his informants, and reports it.
4. His unit acts on this to punish Sagsworth.
5. Repeat

How long do you think they should be banned for?:

Frankly, deciding the length isn't really something I can do, nor do I find it particularly pertinent. OOC targeting of a player does warrant a dewhitelist from the BCI faction at the very least, in my opinion; something may need to be done on his unit as well, but I don't think his behavior on his unit, when isolated, is particularly problematic. Corruption is ok for RP, but only when it's done to create RP. This was not the case here.

Additionally, if a rebel was essentially self-supplying intelligence by leaving themselves notes, they would likely be banned for metagame. Food for thought.

Evidence to support your reasoning (Evidence must be clear and it could be logs, pictures or video):

Here is a full SC/criminal record of Betty. Notice the two major incidents are BOTH by VICTOR-2.


Here is the strange note that Dark left for himself to use on his BCI investigator. This investigation was SPECIFICALLY put in his control.


Here, in a Discord log from today, he claims they had 30 stacks of materials.


The following 4 screenshots come directly from Sagsworth; I realize it may violate faction rules to bring this up with a member outside of it, but I would much rather be punished for ensuring a player is treated fairly than to not report anything. I had noticed all of this smelled real funky, and wanted some more primary sources to get a clearer picture of what was happening.

Here is the actual content of the closet that was raided for "illegal materials," at the time just before the raid. Notice the distinct lack of "30 stacks of materials," and how all of this was legal at the time of the raid; up to that point, you were allowed to store more than 8 of crafting materials in stores, just not on your person. From what I can tell, the rule was changed as a direct RESULT of this incident.


Here is a series of logs from console that Sagsworth provided to me when I requested them, related to the tagline OOC argument.





We care less about the actual event in this case and more the introduction of potential continued OOC bias, but please view Rule 18 from the civil protection guide:
18. You are required to share your tagline if someone asks for it OOC'ly (no, not via F3 or IC'ly).

Obviously, they eventually did share their taglines, but they clearly reacted with great hostility for doing so.


Logs related to his desire to amputate Betty. Mind you, he is one of the two corrupted units. Remember, their "record" has a total of ONE violation that HE put there. The claims that he is also toxic IC and OOC are because of the tagline incident mentioned before. I apologize for the cutoff text above the third image - they are statements that are not directly related to this report, but you can view them in the BCI discord if you so wish.





Names of witnesses that can provide extra feedback on this case?:
Obviously, Sagsworth is the victim here - I think it would be necessary to ask him any further questions. I've provided as much I can with my access to BCI subforums/discord channels and with the Combine PDA.

Goose RPed as Maxine's chumtoad, and overall has been continually causing the Sunrise problems with Xen-related events and failure to be discreet with his /its and /mes; I don't believe any of his actions are malicious, but they are relevant because they often lead to metagame or act as metabait. That said, that incident is not DIRECTLY related to this report, and is more of a side-effect.

From what I can tell, theHandgun is investigating Dark's unit IC for corruption on his BCI member as well, but I'm not sure to what extent.



POSTNOTE:
I may also end up including more evidence in comments following this, as I reached the maximum allotted image cap of 10.

 

[Robert]

Will respond tomorrow.

Got some info to clear this up for you and point out a few things which puts dark in a grey area of not being ban worthy.

Not saying its denied, just got a few points to make since i was partly involved during the times dark performed such actions which would help to clear some things up as well as clarify some grey areas we have found via this post.

 

[Deleted member 1711]

I also don't particularly think it's ban-worthy, but I do think it's a rather clear-cut case of OOC bias and whitelist abuse.

I seemed to have left out the fact that Hiros has also stated Clandestine Services is discouraged from having informants (which I admittedly find a bit silly).

 

[Goose]

Goose RPed as Maxine's chumtoad, and overall has been continually causing the Sunrise problems with Xen-related events and failure to be discreet with his /its and /mes; I don't believe any of his actions are malicious, but they are relevant because they often lead to metagame or act as metabait. That said, that incident is not DIRECTLY related to this report, and is more of a side-effect.

Yes, my apologies. Normally when I'm in the middle of the RP I don't think to do /mec or /itc. I should be doing that and will fix it in the future if said chumtoad makes a return.

 

[Robert]

Hello,

So yes, as I said above, none of this is actually ban-worthy due to well it seemingly being minor and some points here sit within the grey area of the rules.

For me I think there is a few issues that need to be mentioned first:

1. BCI has no guidelines for its members, meaning its agents are at times left in the dark of how to act, behave or generally operate.
   1. This is a cause of concern since, without said guidelines, all Dark could do in this case was do what BCI does and send info about a potential suspect/criminal to Civil Protection via IC means
   2. This is also combined with how BCI has a bit of a up and down in activity with its agents needing auths to pretty much do anything... causing it to be quite a hard and sorta broken job in a sense.
2. Metagame is not what I would define Dark's actions as. In the end, the information he got as a CP from BCI, even if it was himself, was passed via IC means through the datapad which as a CP you can't really ignore.
   1. I think this means that if you have the CP whitelist, you can't be BCI on another character to avoid this situation happening.
   2. The info about the vent of the store came from an informant of Dark's, but not Dark himself. No way to tell if the vent was meta'd or not on Dark's side of things. He is relying on the info given to him by his informant.
3. The arguments/threats in LOOC are a bit iffy, but nothing too incriminating as long as they don't actually go ahead and target the character ICly afterwards due to OOC info and statements.
4. We have had a few cases of meta from other BCI agents in the past who we had to kill off and PK, removing them from BCI. It is a shame really but I think this is due to the structure of BCI which may not be working out for its members. May suggest reform is required.
5. Reading the provided evidence, I think the behaviour is a bit off on both ends and its seems both sides were inherently annoyed at one another due to the situation that had occurred.
   1. The 30 stacks of materials part is an exaggeration but suffice to say I don't think it causes much harm as long as it literally isn't used to cause OOC bias towards the store in a IC manner because of the magical but non-existent 30 stacks.

I think this can be narrowed down to communication errors, metagame by a third-party source and some internal issues. On top of the rules sitting in a grey area on top of this. We will need to speak with BCI, CPs and staff to gain any form of conclusion on this as well as clarify the rulesets we currently have to make everything much clearer in the future and avoid this happening again.

 

[Ruffian]

Maybe I shouldn't butt in here, but I was involved to an extent. VICTOR-2 and VICTOR-9 called me over to report that Sagsworth was 'OOCly' harassing them. To an extent, I thought this was true (at the time). The logs did show an extensive OOC argument, and I can admit Sagsworth was less than savory in this treatment of the units on an OOC level (posting logs in OOC in an attempt to stir drama, etc). That being said, I had verbally warned both parties to cut the toxicity and informed the units that giving their taglines was a non-negotiable rule. I had apologized to Sagsworth on the units' behalf and informed them to give out their taglines next time:

[27/07/21 22:04:55] C24/Disp:AI-23 used command '/PM STEAM_0:1:79742951 You have their taglines now. I apologize on their behalf for the initial refusal, I told them not to do it again.'.

[27/07/21 22:07:11] C24/Disp:AI-23 used command '/PM VICTOR-2 The initial refusal is the problem. When someone asks, give the tagline. I spoke with them, I spoke with you. The situation is sorted now.'.

However, now that I've had a chance to examine the situation I'll just give my two cents on it. I believe that leaving IC notes for your own character to discover is at the very least, extremely scummy. It creates an extremely unfair advantage to you, as you have all the resources of a Civil Protection Officer and all the access of a disguised BCI agent to constantly harass the person. Whether this was the intent or not, I don't know- but it definitely was the effect.

I'd argue that it counts as ruleplay, at the very least. Specifically abusing loopholes in the rules about sharing IC knowledge between your characters, to leave IC notes for your other characters to find.

While I don't think a ban is necessary, a rule clarification and possible repercussions for the ruleplay may be pertinent.

 

[Hiros]

BCI has no guidelines for its members, meaning its agents are at times left in the dark of how to act, behave or generally operate.

1. This is a cause of concern since, without said guidelines, all Dark could do in this case was do what BCI does and send info about a potential suspect/criminal to Civil Protection via IC means
2. This is also combined with how BCI has a bit of a up and down in activity with its agents needing auths to pretty much do anything... causing it to be quite a hard and sorta broken job in a sense.

Unfortunately, Yes. I will write something today.

But when it comes to Dark's case he shouldn't have got info on his BCI then report it basically to his CP to fuck someone over. I will add rules regarding this.

 

[Deleted member 1711]

Here's my steaming hot take on this:

If a White Dove had been dropping notes from a CWU character they had for their Rebel to use, would they have been banned for metagame? This is essentially the same situation if you ask me.

I also think the Discord logs provide pretty clear-cut examples of his OOC desire to target Sagsworth on both characters, including using one of them to amputate his character, which his BCI agent can't do. He's also created an investigation on his CP for his BCI agent to use - there's conflict of interest there, because, as Ruffian said, it is at the very least an abuse of a loophole, something explicitly prohibited by the BCI guidelines.


Frankly, the BCI was on already shaky ground to begin with, and this isn't helping.

 

[Maroon]

@Dark

 

[Maroon]

Here's my steaming hot take on this:

If a White Dove had been dropping notes from a CWU character they had for their Rebel to use, would they have been banned for metagame? This is essentially the same situation if you ask me.

I also think the Discord logs provide pretty clear-cut examples of his OOC desire to target Sagsworth on both characters, including using one of them to amputate his character, which his BCI agent can't do. He's also created an investigation on his CP for his BCI agent to use - there's conflict of interest there, because, as Ruffian said, it is at the very least an abuse of a loophole, something explicitly prohibited by the BCI guidelines.


Frankly, the BCI was on already shaky ground to begin with, and this isn't helping.

I agree with this. Assuming this situation really went down as described in this thread (would still like to see Dark's retort first) then that is very problematic, and very much a transgression of the metagame rule. The fact that this is considered a 'Grey line' is a little baffling to me. Paired with the logs from Discord, the assumption that there is some sort of OOC intent is not too far fetched. Having a consistent ruleset is good, but at some point, all of the context should be taken in account and a verdict should be based off that. A tap on the wrist seems ridiculously lenient at that point, and people have been dewhitelisted - banned even - for less.

 

[Ruffian]

I think there is enough evidence for a de-whitelist. Not a ban, but this sort of behaviour shouldn't be acceptable. A ban definitely isn't called for, if this is a first-time offense, but no player should be able to abuse their whitelists to create such an unfair advantage for themselves, as I previously stated. Now, this could all be a lie and I could be a total idiot, but the evidence is fairly clear-cut in regards to the fact IC knowledge was definitely transferred between characters.

 

[Maroon]

Can he even see this thread btw?

 

[Ruffian]

I don't think so, it's privated.

 

[Robert]

The reason I call this a grey area is that atm, the meta rules have exceptions for factions when it comes to this sort of stuff which technically this could fall into. I have updated the metagaming section now to make it clearer but before it was seemingly allowing faction members to use IC info transfers to another character. That is no longer the case with the update.

To me, Dark shouldn't be banned at all for a rule that was vague for factions and granted him some leeway. Not only that, but he did mention it to me beforehand and I didn't exactly say no when he first asked, but did not know what extent he was going to use the info for. Looking at the provided images, I don't really see any clear targeting approach but both sides here are aggressive towards one another. Not entirely the CPs fault.

In the end, I am just in the opinion that this is a minor mishap that can easily be resolved. BCI is getting a reform now anyway, but I think the rule of not allowing to be in BCI while being a CP should be a thing. May block people out from choosing multiple factions, but hey ho, some times need to choose the harsh restrictions for the sake of roleplay integrity.

So I believe the verdict to be this:

Overall DENIED (Not set in stone yet) but Dark will be told not to do this again with the rules updated and more clarified to cover this scenario. This also comes with BCI reform to change the structure, meaning Dark is currently no longer a part of the BCI. This is due to Dark not really be at fault since in the end he did check with me first and did also have a few issues with processes and rules which made it unclear. This is also a first-time offence, so no ban issued.

You may continue to respond for now if you wish to dispute. Will move and lock in 2 days. Also yes, this thread is private so @Dark can't actually respond at this time.

 

[Deleted member 1711]

I think the end result of this is essentially the punishment I was going towards anyways - a dewhitelist from the BCI faction.

 

[Ruffian]

I'm good with the denial too.