TRL'S Ban Appeal

[TRL]

STEAM NAME: TRL

STEAM ID: STEAM_0:0:128354744

Name of Admin You Were Banned By: @Neonity

How long was the ban for?: 43,200 Minutes

The reason you were banned?: The stated reason is "Confirmed Involvment in Heavy Metagame."

Why do you wish to be unbanned?: The reason is twofold:

First, the length and duration of the punishment is extraordinarily high for the actual impact it had on the server. Any sort of communications done were simply to facilitate roleplay with friends that I have prior met through roleplay, and have interacted with on a daily basis. The fact that I was banned for 30 days for that is both absurd and completely unwarranted.

Secondly, I didn't metagame. While the prior appeal that was closed stated that research was done and a verdict was made, the evidence presented mentioned:

- Requests to roleplay
- Stating areas of where I was, to others, in order to facilitate roleplay
- Requests to VC
- Telling a friend to pick up their phone
- And a vague statement referencing the "ITS HAPPENING" gif.

While it was stated that there are many instances of metagaming, I'm only going to be able to go over the instances directly given to me by @Neonity in this report.

Firstly, in all my years of roleplaying on various servers, none have actually made the action of coordinating roleplay through server-provided channels as something warranting a ban. I'm not a Willard native here, but never in my life have I been banned, kicked, or even warned from any roleplaying server, whether it be on Garry's Mod, DayZ, FiveM, Minecraft, SS13 (or hell even old school MUDs) for using an game-provided OOC personal message system to coordinate roleplay. The action of me informing another person to meet me at a spot to conduct roleplay is metagame in the same way showing up to an eventsite would be metagaming. The argument works only on a technicality that the server itself doesn't actually conduct itself too.

Secondly, regarding what I view as the most valid case of metagaming, the radio pm. In this message, I was seen messaging iTimsky about setting their radio channel to a specific frequency so that we could test if the system actually worked. This would be metagame, and I wouldn't argue against a ban for it, if we were not actively roleplaying together at that time, and were literally not but 5 feet apart, roleplaying the radio test together. The only reason I pmed him is because LOOC has a 15 second timer. It wasn't at all me providing IC info OOC, it was me trying to talk about something that was literally happening between us at that very moment. Proof of this can be given by simply checking chat logs involving both of our characters about 1 - 2 minutes before and after that pm was sent.

Thirdly, regarding requests to VC: I like to talk to my friends, and you calling it "metagame" that I asked them to VC when you have absolutely no evidence as to what was said, if anything said was metagameable, and if those VCs EVEN HAPPENED is zero. I can actually prove without a shadow of a doubt that any VC between myself and Andre never occured, as he was sick and was unable to speak for a considerable period of time. A VC between me and Tim did occur, in which we introduced each other and talked about our home countries. Nothing in that vc discussed anything server related at all.

Fourthly, regarding telling a friend to pick up their phone: I was trying to call them. As far as I'm aware, calling a friend does not constitute metagaming.

Fifthly, regarding "ITS HAPPENING": Well, it was happening. I'm sorry that you found that as particularly incrimminating.
I think in short my problem is that this entire idea of metagaming is involving the actual existence of trying to roleplay and plan out a story being vilified and made against the rules, when in reality planning out plots, ideas, and character motivations are all entirely in the spirit of roleplaying, and shouldn't be discouraged and fought against. If the metagame was malicious, and was used to actively detriment characters, avoid IC consequences, or even just make it so that the server didn't get roleplay, I'd get it. However, all of the actions done were meant in the spirit of roleplaying, not trying to avoid it. It'd be metagame to make a group everyone is agreeable with OOC if you talked about it over discord, it currently IS metagame to try and organize any sort of RP encounter, regardless of the potential issue of time differences, being AFK, and so on. It's metagame to send info given immediately before IC for the sake of clarity. It's absurd, and it's not helpful to anyone. The way this rule is enforced is completely backwards, and helps nobody. It doesn't help the server, it doesn't make life easier for players, and it provides more work for staff by having to now go through 4-5 different appeal processes. It just doesn't make sense for anyone involved.

Do you have any picture or video evidence to support your reason?:
No.


Were there any witnesses who can help in this appeal?:
No.

 

[TRL]

Edited the following closing statement in:


Fifthly, regarding "ITS HAPPENING": Well, it was happening. I'm sorry that you found that as particularly incrimminating.
I think in short my problem is that this entire idea of metagaming is involving the actual existence of trying to roleplay and plan out a story being vilified and made against the rules, when in reality planning out plots, ideas, and character motivations are all entirely in the spirit of roleplaying, and shouldn't be discouraged and fought against. If the metagame was malicious, and was used to actively detriment characters, avoid IC consequences, or even just make it so that the server didn't get roleplay, I'd get it. However, all of the actions done were meant in the spirit of roleplaying, not trying to avoid it. It'd be metagame to make a group everyone is agreeable with OOC if you talked about it over discord, it currently IS metagame to try and organize any sort of RP encounter, regardless of the potential issue of time differences, being AFK, and so on. It's metagame to send info given immediately before IC for the sake of clarity. It's absurd, and it's not helpful to anyone. The way this rule is enforced is completely backwards, and helps nobody. It doesn't help the server, it doesn't make life easier for players, and it provides more work for staff by having to now go through 4-5 different appeal processes. It just doesn't make sense for anyone involved.

 

[Neonity]

The action of me informing another person to meet me at a spot to conduct roleplay is metagame in the same way showing up to an eventsite would be metagaming.

Correct. I'm glad you realize this.

I do not care one bit what kind of justification you can think of to excuse metagaming as "providing roleplay", because it just isn't. Willard is a serious RP enviroment through and through and all OOC communication shouldn't be used to affect IC characters. In short, Willard provides the IC tools you can work towards and gain which your character can use to communicate with other characters to arrange meetups, deals, etc. These in-character methods can also be seen and potentially be intercepted by other characters with their own motivations. Doing this process through OOC completely negates any other character's ability to do so and gives you a massive advantage.

I'll let the ban managers give the final verdict, but there's my take on the situation.

 

[Kappatalist]

Really, this appeal should not have been allowed because it had already been denied. However we have taken a look at your ban in particular again, and I'm willing to reduce it to 3 weeks on the basis that this is your first ban and what you had done is not equivalent to the other person who also got a months ban.

Other than that, it's clear to us that you group, and yourself, broke the rules by metagaming. As pointed out, it was quite literally the textbook example of doing so.