I am uncomfortable with the line of reasoning that insists that any sensitivity to people's feelings is pandering to the oversensitive.
It isn't that the staff doesn't care about their feelings. It's that they aren't in the business of making decisions for the entire playerbase based on being sensitive to the feelings of specific groups.
They have a goal. To run the game efficiently.
This decision was about the staff's workload. Emotional sensitivity to specific groups was never taken into consideration as part of this decision, because this isn't a move to PG13, or a move to making the game more "feeling friendly (also known as PG13)".
It's not that I don't care about people's feelings.
It's just that everyone bringing up that point in this thread repeatedly is doing nothing to add to the conversation, because their point was never even considered.
All it is conducive to is making the "morally just" group feel vindicated, and the "morally judged" group angry and flamey.
So why do it?
Because people can't control themselves. *sigh*
If your point in this thread is, "We need this because of morals/feelings." You have no point.
Zalanthan morals are the only morals that matter for this discussion, and the staff's workload is the only RL issue that is being considered.
I already debunked this opinion, but got pagerolled. Check Adhira's post on the first page of the thread, and you'll find that, in fact, RL feelings about such plotlines were indeed a consideration.
After checking the post I see where Adhira stated as a fact that people did get hurt feelings over the issue of rape. That is was a very controversial topic for some players and it was determined that some players couldn't and shouldn't have to handle being put into those situations.
But, I do not see anywhere that it was stated this decision was made or came about to protect those players.
I do see repeatedly where it was stated that staff workload was the factor that brought about this change, not the consideration of the RL feelings of others.
Now, I will agree with you that the RL feelings of a few players and their repeated requests DID contribute to the staff workload issue in question, so the only way to fix the problem would be to get rid of those players, or put in a rule to keep them from complaining further.
It was decided to put in a rule, to keep them from complaining, for the PURPOSE of decreasing the staff workload. Not for the purpose of protecting their feelings. Protecting their feelings is collateral at best and if we could have kept rape and reduced the staff workload, we would have let their feelings continue to be hurt.
It is a fine distinction, but an important distinction.
The reason it is important is because Armageddon IS NOT pushing to become a PG13 setting.
If this decision was made for any other purpose, even peripheral in sense, than decreasing staff workload, then it is a push to make the game "safer" for certain players, and more "friendly to all", which is exactly the purpose of a PG13 setting.
Since staff said repeatedly the goal was not to make the game more PG13 friendly, and that the only purpose was the decrease in staff workload, I am going to choose to believe them and assume people's feelings and a safer environment were not considered.
You can't have it both ways.
Either the only factor considered was staff workload, or moral considerations and "empathy" played a part, and that is a direct push for a PG13 environment.