DOC Lockdowns

[idgafashlee]

I want to preface this by saying that I genuinely do enjoy DOC (usually), it’s made bounds and leaps in my time on eclipse and it’s come a very long way in promoting enjoyable roleplay for those with multiple hour sentences. With that being said I’ve been noticing something that both I and others find extremely frustrating (and I’m uncertain if there’s any IC rules and regulations around it). Lockdowns are becoming increasingly more popular recently, these lockdowns are sometimes entirely necessary, and RPly well regulated, but with them occurring more frequently, poor RP promotion is evident within these scenarios. I’m going to touch on two points that I believe have room for major improvement, full DOC lockdowns and individual lock-ups. 
    Full DOC lockdowns: These majorly occur when some type of breach is suspected (example: A radio is missing and an inmate is suspected of having it, a prison riot has occurred, etc.), these lockdowns are necessary to search individuals, secure items that should not be in the cellblock, or perform routine cell maintenance. These lockdowns should not last longer than the time it takes to get everyone in cells and perform required tasks (whether that be searching inmates, etc.). I know getting a large crowd to disperse can sometimes be a task depending on the ratio of on duty guards to inmates, but these lockdowns can usually happen within 10-30 minutes. These are (typically) well executed and an enjoyable RP opportunity, but as of late, it seems like an easy way to throw everyone in cells and more or less leave them there. I’ve witnessed guards both leave everyone in cells for an extended period of time after completing whatever necessary tasks they’ve needed to do, AND leave specific individuals in cells after the lockdown (letting out others but just leaving select inmates) because they don’t feel like dealing with certain people and it’s clearly easier to just leave them in their cell.
    Individual lockups: This is mostly where my personal frustrations lie within the RP standard of DOC. I whole-heartedly agree there are various situations that warrant locking a specific person into an individual cell or solitary, but it feels extremely ridiculous to leave someone in their cell for the entirety of their multiple hour DOC sentence. People are often talked to about going AFK for extended periods of time within DOC because it doesn’t promote RP, but yet guards will throw individual inmates in cells, with no specified amount of time in mind, and proceed to leave them there as they beg to be put out of their misery of boredom. I have both seen and experienced situations where inmates are put into cells for a lock-up as they've done something a guard has deemed wrong, and then the guard will proceed to clock off shift and log out knowing fully well someone's been locked in a cell unwillingly and will remain there until god knows who clocks in next. Although the hope and goal of locking up an individual is to give them some time to calm down, find clarity, and potentially even reform from their recent wrong-doings; purposefully leaving inmates in cells for unreasonable lengths of time truly only fuels a bigger fire of anger and resentfulness in these situations.

I OOCly comprehend the reason why lockdowns are necessary, but despite asking, I don't believe I've ever had anyone explain to me ICly why lockdowns occur (other than, "you've done something bad, I'm locking you in here until I feel like letting you out"). To my understanding there’s a lockdown timer, I’m uncertain if it does not work or is simply unutilized, but I think utilization of this tool would be extremely beneficial. With that being said, any kind of regulations regarding lockdown times would also be both appreciated by criminals, and helpful in maintaining practices and procedures for guards. My suggestion! - Something like being locked down for a prison riot results in a 15 minute lockdown, murder of an inmate while in DOC = 20 minute lockdown, murder of a govt employee while in DOC = 25 minute lockdown, just being a general menace to society and total headache = 10 minute lockdown. Obviously the times for specified reasons are merely examples, but just leaving someone for hours on end is kind of ridiculous. Again, I love DOC, I truly enjoy all of the guards and the roleplay that has recently been promoted. Some of my absolute favorite RP scenarios have occurred in DOC, so it’s extremely disheartening to be tossed in a cell for well over an hour (or the entirety of a sentence) where little to no RP can occur. Similar arguments can be made for those who get locked outside (I’ve even seen instances where people get locked in the dog kennel outside and left out there alone for over 30 minutes), in regards to the lack of promotion of roleplay occurring in these situations. Other ideas pertaining to DOC lockdowns are very much welcome!

[Melody Frey]

+1, but I'm gonna offer some criticism as well. I very obviously believe that this is somewhat of a leaking IC issue into OOC because it's very frustrating, and I've even had small playful fistfights with other inmates and had a guard flat out tell me "Enjoy this cell for the next three years. I'm clocking off." and quite literally just... had to endure that. DOC can be a very fun environment given the right circumstances and with the changes given to be able to make money, but I do feel like lockdown could use some more scripted help.

Plz don't throw me in solitary :c

[MrTimbsy]

+1 I think a lockdown timer would be a really good script to implement. Something like a /lockdown #minutes would be nice because if for example if the last DOC guard clocks off, you are just left in a cell due to a lockdown for the rest of your sentence.

[Chunder]

Thank you for the suggestion.
There's not really much I can discuss here due to lockdowns being completely IC but yes, we're very aware that lockdowns prohibit possible RP for inmates however IC repercussions happen when players decide to roleplay their character as badly behaving inmates. Obviously we're fine with this but if you decide you want to beat up a guard or two then yeah, you're gonna find your way into a cell very quickly.
We try and keep lockdowns, cell time and solitary to a minimum unless it makes total RP sense.

We do have a faction guideline where if you're the last one on duty and you need to clock off then you need to unlock the cells. This isn't done 100% of the time and isn't very easy to enforce because well, it only happens when no one is around.

There is a lockdown command. It just hasn't worked in two and a half years.

It is currently on the SADOC Improvement Thread. Hopefully we can get it back one day!

I'd love to read further thoughts on the matter here or you can alternatively reach out to me over discord.

[Rage.]

+1, fix /lockdown or add something like the solitary script!!!

Edited July 10, 2023 by Nicholas Valentine

[Arnis]

+1

[Herbo]

-1...Don't worry I'll explain | I'm also prefacing this with I'm gonna try to go into as much detail as I can without MG any knowledge I have from me being a member of the SADOC Faction.

7 hours ago, Chunder said:

There is a lockdown command. It just hasn't worked in two and a half years.

I do hope this gets fixed but I'm gonna focus on the main points Kira made.

10 hours ago, idgafashlee said:

Lockdowns are becoming increasingly more popular recently, these lockdowns are sometimes entirely necessary, and RPly well regulated, but with them occurring more frequently, poor RP promotion is evident within these scenarios.

Lockdowns are probably about 75% of the time a reactive thing. People are rarely just thrown in and kept in a cell if they genuinely did not do anything. When people are placed into cells it's always because of either. 

1. They did something that warranted it.

2. Someone did something that we need to investigate and putting everyone into cells quickly to establish order needs to happen.

There's obviously more to it then that, but that's the basic. This is where I feel the Poor RP Promotion is evident, and I personally feel it's on the side of the inmates. I've been at DOC for a little over a month, and I can't think of 1 single time where we attempted to put people into cells/lockdown where everyone just went compliantly. Every time people run away, ignore RP, doing RP of resisting, etc etc. This is where I feel the Poor RP Promotion comes from. These people continuously resist in an IC way, we respond ICly putting them into cells due to their resistance along with any other issues they've caused, then we get messages in /pm and /b complaining about our roleplay and how it's anti-rp. 

10 hours ago, idgafashlee said:

but it feels extremely ridiculous to leave someone in their cell for the entirety of their multiple hour DOC sentence.

I agree that this is an issue and people shouldn't be in their cells for a long time, but the biggest issue with this is it's so on the border of IC and OOC, it's kinda hard to make that change. But on the other hand, what goes into people being put into these cells for so long, is there IC Actions. Seeing as you're a member of UG, I'll use UG as an example. (I'll preface this by saying I really enjoy the RP UG provides at DOC), but, members of UG are very known criminals who are known for attacking guards, starting fights in the cellblock, running, being a general pain in the ass, etc. When you come in and then boom you're already getting into fights or verbal confrontation with people, putting you into a cell to prevent it from escalating is the right IC Course you should take. 

But I agree that people shouldn't be in their cells for so long because it promotes poor RP and negative RP, but it's so hard to enforce on an OOC Level and IC Level because of the fact it borders both them so hard. 

LET ME GIVE YOU AN EXAMPLE TO MAKE IT MORE CLEAR WHAT I MEAN

So lets say Jerald comes into DOC and he has a 5-hour sentence, he gets processed and boom right off he's out picking fights with inmates and everything, we try to put him into a cell, he resists he runs away, he attacks us, etc. We finally get him into a cell and we leave him in there for 30 minutes and he APPEARS to have calmed down. We let him out and then boom he goes right back to what he was doing, attacking people, picking fights, etc. We put him back into the cell this time for an hour. He shows signs of improvement again so we let him out once again and what does he do, goes right back to attacking people and being a pain in the ass. At that point he has 3 hours left on his sentence and he's been put in his cell and let out twice where's done the same thing that got him put in a cell. If there's an OOC Enforcement on how long someone can spend in a cell, we just have to keep letting him out and letting him attack people and repeating it, even tho his IC Actions show fully he deserves to spend those 3 hours in the cell. 

I hope this example I gave gives you more understanding of my POV of the situation/problem and why it's so difficult to counter.

7 hours ago, Chunder said:

We do have a faction guideline where if you're the last one on duty and you need to clock off then you need to unlock the cells. This isn't done 100% of the time and isn't very easy to enforce because well, it only happens when no one is around.

This is my first time ever hearing about this guideline because it's not listed anywhere or told to anyone.

[DontSniffSugar]

+1

 

While I do understand that being thrown in a cell for your actions are IC repercussions for your actions, and I’m not saying or suggesting that they be completely removed, I believe that there should be stricter guidelines regarding putting people into their cells. There has been countless times where I have been put into a cell for my actions (90% of the time I probably deserved it) and have spent my entire sentence in there. While it’s completely realistic to do that, I believe it forms a form of hatred so to say on an Out of Character level. Hatred my not be the correct word for this, but I believe people reading will understand.

 

I believe that solitary confinement does nothing but promote people not wishing to RP at all and just alt tabbing to do other stuff. As an example that I frequently see, players will do silly things and get put into solitary, and then begin to shout, and be met with a /pm or an OOC message stating that people would not be able to hear you. I believe that utilizing solitary just completely revokes all possible RP from being had with others, and should only be utilized whenever all other possible countermeasures show to not work. Without going into too much detail to for possible metagaming, there is a maximum time that is allowed without approval by supervisors, and guards will typically throw them in for the max possible time through their IC protocols. Being a previous member of the SADOC faction, I can say that there are guidelines regarding utilizing solitary. 
 

There have been times personally that I’ve been thrown into my cell for my IC actions that I most likely did deserve and have spent my entire 3+ hours sentences inside of that cell, and multiple times I’ve witnessed the same guard while being the only one on shift go off of faction duty just minutes after doing so. 
 

I do not wish for this to appear slanderous or anything of that nature, I really believe that Chunder is leading the SADOC very well and I’ve had lots of fun RP while serving my prison sentence, but I believe this is the best place to put this.

[Netlok]

Every scenario where i have been locked up for an extended time recently has been due to a DoC guard antagonizing prisoners for long periods of time till the prisoner decides to react. DoC guards will then over react with force when you deal with the one person who was harrassing you, lock you up for an extended period and then come harrass you in the cell. It often feels like a form of crim baiting when im in those scenarios. I dont feel like guards should be antagozing prisoners, especially ones known for killing cops. And if they do they should expect a reaction, I feel like its an OOC punishment to lock them up for the rest of the sentence for "killing one of ours" even if the guard started the fight.

Edited July 10, 2023 by Netlok

[TheOwl]

It's hard to tell players that they should always go for the RP first and learn to take the L but then justify locking them in a cell for hours.

 

Obviously everything is situational but I can totally understand where the frustration sets in for players that primarily play as a criminal and find the mentality very contradicting.