Complaint Development team, concerns regarding how Shelterfrogs are being handled

[BurgerWithButter]

I initially wanted this feedback post to be private, but after speaking with some others I've decided to post this publicly to allow other community members to speak and hear admin response. This post is not meant to spark any hate toward admins, simply to voice concern and get clarity.


To preface this, I've never played any shelterfrog characters, this change hasnt affected *me*, I moreso want to voice my thoughts on this on top of a few others i've heard over time with this change. I love you guys and the work you do, if any of this comes off as angry or aggressive I apologize, y'all are awesome <3

Ill start with how I personally viewed this: Sudden, unneeded and unorganized. I heard about this change from a friend in the community in discord, and after checking the discord I noticed other members of the community voicing concern and distain, meanwhile Jan.Antillies asked people to "please hold on" with no further information. It took an hour after this message until JORJ949 made a statement, then Jan.Antillies said "lemme see if we have pin room" before pinning the message to RP-Chat. 
   
What this comes off to me as is: The Devteam/a developer decided that the Shelterfrog mutanrace was becoming its own clique (or some other issue?), and merged the PR that effectively removes shelterfrog characters. This didn't seem communicated to admins as Jan couldn't give a statement, having to wait an hour before JORJ gave one. The only way this was communicated was a pinned message in discord and the PR itself hidden in the minor changelog. Whether or not this is what actually happened, its what it came across as to me.
   
With this PR directly effecting a (small) group of player's characters, I think they deserved to have either some better communication, or a solution in place rather than removing a key part of their characters. Preferably the latter. 


Now I'd like to quote some people in the community, I wont provide names so you'll have to take my word for these.

Player #1 (These are from the night of the instance, and they said themselves they were cranky in the moment because it was late. So sorry these sound so harsh)
 "this is just kinda fucked up if they're gonna toss out peoples characters for such a mundane reason
   this did not need to be a half assed pseudo-emergency change
    like, i was never gonna be a frog
     but 1, i like the frog players a lot and seeing them around brings me joy
       and 2, this just isnt fair to them
          snugglys been putting so much work into fleshing out the frog mutantrace"

Player #2
 "While they have valid concerns, a change like this being implemented BEFORE a solution has been found is incredibly short sighted and only hurts people who play shelterfrog characters"

Player #3
 "This it felt like they were pushing out a solution to a problem that not many people saw as one
     "I understand this isn't what they were trying to say, but the message it sent was 'if we find your character to be a problem we can and will get rid of it' "
          "The biggest problem is they didn't have a solution made, just 'sorry, we'll come up with something afterwards"
--Player #3 has directly said they haven't really felt like playing on Goonstation recently since this change, it hasn't affected them directly but the way the admins/devs handled this left a bad taste--

Player #4, you know them as Snugglycactus, Ribbert McFrogg, The "Dedicated Autist" for the amphibian mutantrace, who has more positive thoughts.
 
"So, first of all, I knew this was going to happen. I don't mean in a coping way, to try to soften the blow; I'd figured this out well in advance. I definitely knew the admins were considering it since early December, but hell, even on September 29th, I made the statement: 'Like, say the server had to remove the frog mutantrace because they were causing mass hysteria. I would be pretty upset. I would not take it out on the people around me, though. That’s ridiculous. …and for that example i’d probably just pivot to playing cow but i digress'. I do believe that's colored my view of this a fair amount, since I wasn't completely blindsided, but I did only pick it up through subtext from casual admin statements.

I also got the Contributor medal out of all of this as consolation, and the way the admins let me know was very gentle. I can't speak for others' experiences, especially having communicated with someone who was told in a manner I frankly find to be inappropriate (that's for them to discuss if they so desire, not me), but as far as just my experiences with the admins have been, it's all been very professional. This may be because I'm 'the frog guy', but I also made a concerted effort to be professional and positive about the change even if it stung. However, since I've also been treated so gently by the admins, this could be coloring my view of the overall change as well. I also might've gotten a bit more information than the public; I don't know if the rest of you are aware of the roundstart mutantrace talks or what.

I didn't mean for so many people to start playing frogs, but I wouldn't change a thing. I've made actual friends out of this, all bonding over goofing off together. I completely understand and agree with the barrier of it being behind a secret chemical serving as a problem, but it wasn't clique-y at all. We let everyone join the fun. I can't even pat myself on the back and say it was just me being friendly, either. It was a group effort."


Player #5 
  "I understand the fear of having balance thrown off by the whole "non-human" aspect but all in all it's... negligible. Traits have far more of an impact on the round than being non-human. Things like Puritan, Cloner Defects, Hyperallergic, etc. have far more of an impact on the round on a regular basis."
  "I really feel like if they're worrying about balance being affected by not being a human, it would be far more prudent to examining OTHER things that can affect a rounds balance when applied to members of command. A puritan captain is FAR worse than a non-human captain, in my opinion"
   "The vast majority of silicons I know, while not required to listen to shelterfrogs, still choose to (laws permitting) because they're chill like that and the rounds are more fun with the frog folk. I've literally never experienced a situation where silicons were levied unfairly against a shelterfrog character by an antagonist"
   "The one thing I can understand from a admin perspective is precedent. In almost every situation, it's a no-no to rush secret content, and so I can understand why this would spark some alarms. What I don't agree with is that it's abusing anything seeing as shelterfrogs are almost universally worse... People play frogs cause it's fun to be a frog, not because they get any appreciable advantage."
    "Frankly It's such a huge overreaction for something maybe ten or so people even do? Ribbert and Amanita are the only frogs who play a frog basically every round, every other frog character does a few rounds then goes back to playing a normal race. This is such a non-issue it's crazy."


  From the people I've talked to, the main consensus seems to be that the Shelterfrog situation is being handled poorly. There is worry that shelterfrogs will be in indefinite development hell, theres worry that this is the beginning of an unneeded and unwanted crackdown on people's character design, and this whole thing has made an issue out of a non issue.

I personally ask that in the moment, don't leave the frogs behind in development hell. And in the future to be more wary about making a decision that directly affects a group of players. Especially if the impact is literally removing a group of characters.

[ZeWaka]

Quick reply just to head some stuff off, before others post a reply to everything else.
These are my own personal thoughts, don't read into this as some sort of administration statement.

...meanwhile Jan.Antillies asked people to "please hold on" with no further information.

You're cutting her off here. The full quote is:

[9:06 PM]Jan.antilles: please hold on
[9:06 PM]-snip-: -snip-
[9:07 PM]Jan.antilles: about making declarations about what we want to do with the idea

...then Jan.Antillies said "lemme see if we have pin room"...

Not really relevant to mention a throwaway comment? It was literally pinned a few seconds later.

...a developer decided...

Just to be clear, a majority of the entire administration team discussed this. There are no "rogue developers". There were literally 3 different devs who changed things related to this within the span of an hour.
You also seem to be separating admins and developers like they're different parties, when they're one and the same.
At Goonstation, unlike most servers/codebases, the maintainer team is not separate from the administration team.

[BurgerWithButter]

Apologies, tried to not cherry pick quotes. To quickly clarify, my point with quoting Jan was it felt somewhat disorganized. The bit on “lemme see if we have on room” came across as not having a place in mind to announce this before the PR was merged, which for a change that directly affects players in this way came off wrong.

As for cutting off the quote, that could be me misinterpreting Jan’s meaning, though that’s sort of why I made this post, to clear up mine and other’s thoughts.

[glowbold]

Admins and devs have been talking over concerns around this chemical and its more common use in rounds for at least three months, with increasing frequency in the past month.

Overall, there are several different problems regarding this transformation that need be accounted for and handled:

* Round-start character customization should not be gated behind a secret chemical, and any one secret chemical effect shouldn't be an every-round occurrence.

* We have received reports about meta gameplay based on how recognizable and easily sought out these players are. In addition, we've received ahelps asking about how to handle their non-human status, if frogs are non-human, etc.

* If it's common for people to make *themselves* non-human, even in command or security roles, the effect of antagonists changing laws to make people non-human is greatly reduced. On the flip side, silicon players are forced to care more about some types of non-human than another by culture alone, not through rules or play. We want non-human status to be a clear and important part of gameplay for silicons.

* We don't want to remove the effects from the chemical entirely as it's a unique poison. Permanent amphibian transformation was originally a punishing effect, either through self-abuse or antagonist action. Recent accent changes done to make them understandable have significantly reduced the negative impact. This is not to accuse any players of power-gaming the species change; just an acknowledgement they have no mechanical downsides outside of being nominally non-human at current.

* The amphibian mutantrace needs substantial work to be considered a roundstart mutantrace. New sprites, sound design, uniqueness, balance, technical implementation, and other work would need to be done, which leads into a problem with the extremely limited at best way to add character customization options.

* Separately, and not publicly noted until now, there was an exploit related to the permanent mutantrace changes of the overdose effect.

Given all of these concerns, and others I've sure I've forgotten, the team as a whole decided to remove the permanent effect of one secret chemical for now. We iterated on several other courses of action, but any one other change still left a part of the problem unsolved:

* Make the chemical non-secret: Doesn't address round-start character customization concerns, powerful poison easily shared.
* Make them a round-start mutantrace: Needs too much technical work to do in a reasonable time-frame (months of work at a volunteer pace, minimum)
* Nerf the mutantrace for balance concerns: Doesn't address the round-start/secret issues
* Make amphibians human: Cannot be used as a poison to de-human someone

There may be a solution we didn't think of, but given the technical limitations in place we went with a solution that minimized the overall impact to the game.

Making large announcements for changes brings a big spotlight onto those players where it is not justified, and so there was originally no announcement planned. To re-iterate: we don't think anyone who was doing this did anything wrong, but the design of that feature compromises other aspects of the game as discussed above. Generally speaking, we have not done major announcements for changes that affect a handful of players; especially those changes with which we reached out to affected players directly. The delay in getting a statement together was because we had to talk about what exactly to say in an Official Announcement post.

[jan.antilles]

 To quickly clarify, my point with quoting Jan was it felt somewhat disorganized. The bit on “lemme see if we have on room” came across as not having a place in mind to announce this before the PR was merged, which for a change that directly affects players in this way came off wrong.

Every change directly affects players. Our intent was to say something in RP chat that players could refer to. Pinning it wasn't part of the initial plan, but was something I was happy to do once I made sure we had enough room in the pins, since the pin list is everything from announcements to fanart.

I apologize if it "came off wrong" to you or anyone else.

[SnugglyCactus]

The amphibian mutantrace needs substantial work to be considered a roundstart mutantrace. New sprites, sound design, uniqueness, balance, technical implementation, and other work would need to be done, which leads into a problem with the extremely limited at best way to add character customization options.

What sprites need to be made? I, and possibly other players, would love to help out with the labor if you decide to take this path.

[Emimiyu]

Unsure if this is peanut posting, but this is my perspective as player who is not involved with people who play shelterfrog.

I have seen a lot of sillicon talking on the radio about how they can harm amphibians because their non human status because one of the character is "ICly bulliable". It is getting uncomfortable as passerby hearing insults and IC harrassment from silicon roundstarr because they can. In some cases, as AI, I would also watch players to rush to human themselves, while picking a trait that make them non human. As someone who is not part of this "bullying", this feel odd. Do you have to tell silicon to stop being mean towards a character, do you have to resolve it IC and just tune it out of your system because it is a small clique thing?

Another thing to add, one of goon appeal is that fantasy racism is not allowed. I feel as a player, shelterfrog non human status is used to find a leeway to this rule. To the point, I have seen people talking about how ugly and horrible these things are and silicon stating a lot about how killable they are before any event in round happens. In some cases, I've keep hearing how people will drag them to sec as "torture methods" because how ugly and horrible looking they are or kidnapping them for being a disgusting creature, even as pseudo sheltesfrog. This feels uncomfortable for players who feels welcome in goon for strict rules against "spacism"

Also, adding to this, in the past, there were some monkey captains and monkey security. I think there were also same issues related to being non-human and command/sec, but from my perspective, I have not seen these players always ending up with silicon on roundstart radio talking about how they want to kill and harm these characters for not being non human. Though, monkey-ing a player also involve not so secret way.

I think the change is expected. It involves two things, secret and being "non human". This means you need a longterm project around the mechanic. Also, it is an unavoidable change if a decision of a player who is done in long term, ended up showing some holes related how stuff are designed and rules related to it. I have nothing against players who plays amphibian characters the same way as monkey players, I would love new stuff to roundstart mutantrace. Though, the same as some mechanics of the game, at one point, if it becomes too meta, something needs to be toned or changed. Temporary measure also exist I assume because how much time need to be put for a voluntary project, not out of disorganization