Posts: 87
Threads: 5
Joined: Jan 2021
BYOND Username: Momoberry
Character Name: Barnaxi Sibilant
(10-02-2021, 01:58 PM)Cal Wrote: I still can't get over the sound synthesizer comment. I should actually like it to be nerfed MORE because I'm tired of broborgs spamming the gunshot noise. Why do they even have a gunshot noise? Deception when emagged? "What is my purpose?" "You open doors." "Oh my god."
They have so little as it is, lol. Silicons in general are so bare-bones with what they're able to do, even their upgrade system is just "become obnoxious to fight, heal instantly, recharge instantly, get more slots to get more things to get obnoxious with, or get cool glasses that borgs should have inherently." They don't even have vox like the rest of the codebases, or any systems to manipulate the station. They drag plasma canisters and open them as their main response to being rogued, cause its all they can really do. Like, their main gameplay loop on goon is relying on people to change their laws. They don't really have much else to do. I'd rather just make it so sound doesn't travel as far, cause that would fix many issues beyond the one you're describing.
Zamujasa honestly went over basically all of my issues in general, especially how we treat players with repetitive gameplay styles that are causing issues to the point that features just get removed. Xeram also makes a good point that the station doesn't feel very cohesive and tied together, it's just different sandboxes and occasionally they throw sand into another persons sandpit or steal some and run off without actually interacting on classic. Like xeram said, I think it would be good to have a system where it is beneficial for people to work together as a fundamental goal for something. Maybe tied in with a reward system like spacebux, although I'm not a huge fan of spacebux as it is. Like there is nothing to work towards at all as a "Station". It's all individual, and the only "the station did good" we have is a % screen at the end of a round that is mostly there to poke fun at security or lag out from.
I think a legitimate chunk of my issue is that there is no real system of PvE content that is actually engaging or has replayability, we rely on becoming an antagonist or hunting down said antagonist for most of the excitement, and being dead after that sucks eggs. You're essentially forced into actively murdering and rampaging, else none of the crew have anything to do. But once you kill those people, they're gone unless they got clone-scanned. They don't really have many options, unlike other codebases. Even RP lets people respawn at least.
The npcs/mobs also just aren't very fun to fight, with some minor exceptions. Either they're so weak that you one shot them with a non combat tool while they slowly shamble up to you, or they're so fast and obnoxious and ignore most combat methods that just getting into range and hitting them is a chore, like xdrone. Most of it also requires a pod since it's almost always in space, and space movement is hell without a pod or jetpack, and jetpack literally removes your backpack as a storage option. Or you can carry it around, and only have one hand to do anything with and pray you don't get put sideways for even a second else you've dropped your things.
Sometimes we have fun admemes with enemies, or a disaster round once in a blue moon, and those are very fun. Occasionally we get antag critters.. Unfortunately most are so incredibly weak and valid, they just die because people have nothing else to do. See = half full foam pitchers tossed at a fire elemental.
Posts: 1,444
Threads: 44
Joined: Jun 2019
10-02-2021, 09:56 PM
(This post was last modified: 10-02-2021, 09:56 PM by Cal.)
its a game built on an engine from like 2001 im not sure what you want the coders to do about mobs unless you would like a turn based hp battle system
Posts: 465
Threads: 11
Joined: Nov 2019
BYOND Username: Leeanei
We have lots of content, but it's tough to expect to play for literally hundreds if not thousands of hours and not get bored of something.
PvE content is tough. For the number of hours people seem to expect to play, we'd basically need the variety of something like a roguelike. And it's counter productive to make good PvE content when this game, even on classic, is a roleplaying game and is at its strongest when people are interacting and weakest when people are hiding in their departments.
As for departments not working together, that's more a cultural issue. On RP, departments do work together and supply one another but somebody has to get that other department's attention and getting folks working together. I doubt it'd be too hard to make a research system, but I also think people would hate anything in any department being locked behind the efforts of another. Culture, again. People already favor maps with lots and lots of tools and equipment available to the general public, even though reducing those would be one of the easiest ways to make departments work together.
Posts: 154
Threads: 26
Joined: May 2019
BYOND Username: phyvo
10-03-2021, 09:49 AM
(This post was last modified: 10-03-2021, 10:01 AM by phyvo. Edited 7 times in total.)
I think a lot of good points are being made in this thread. I guess I will also weigh in.
- I think players these days have a much lower tolerance for damage to the station. Surviving to the point where you can get onto the shuttle is actually much easier than it used to be even if you spend the whole round wandering around hoping to bump into something murderous. Medical used to blow up all the time, now it does not. The nerfs to powergaming and abuse have made the rounds less interesting overall on Classic because nothing has been added that really fills that vacuum.
- Midround antags really suck. That is why, aside from fire elementals and the occasional flexing timberdoodle, they all act friendly. Their players want to play the game, being a ghost is boring, and they've learned from getting bashed in all the time that they can't actually do anything fun. I guess the gunbots tend to actually shoot people too but then they tend to instantly die to flashes.
- Most changes in the changelog are pretty darn small. The only major gameplay feature or system added to the game while I was on my haitus was the Rancher, which is literally 1 job position a round and is very insular. Since then Arcfiend was added but it's still a work in progress... and I haven't seen arcfiends accomplish all that much, yet.
- Flock mode was mentioned in the changelog last spring but now it's on the shelf again and Flock remains admin-only. Makes me very very sad. I just want weird teal birds to run around stunning people and turning them and their chairs into gnesis.
Minor opinions: - Flamer rework was very ehh and has its own kind of weird jank with the way it makes floor containers. You can set the temperature high and spraying people won't burn them from the temperature, so you have to pre-heat your chems to do that damage. It is also just flat out bugged. Why can I shoot through windows and glass walls? Because the code does a simple check for opacity and nothing else.
- I have come back around to my original opinion that secret chems are not good for the simple reason that the way you discover them is just not fun. Recipe hints are an improvement but get worse and worse the more you already know.
- Adventures are too hard to get into.
- Blobs need more hotkeys and some streamlining, also an easy accessible viewport button. They're just a very complicated antag with a very high skill floor that very few people get to practice.
- I used to like helping the medical department from chemistry. Now medical can do everything themselves, sometimes better.
In short, the net effect of all the changes in the past-year plus has been a game where rounds are less chaotic, but not many actually new features have been added. I wish I had more time and energy so that I could contribute more to development, unfortunately I have my own problems right now. v_v
Posts: 72
Threads: 2
Joined: Mar 2021
BYOND Username: Tiresoup
Character Name: Slithers And Slides, Barks At People, Welds The Metal
(10-02-2021, 07:59 PM)MomoBerry Wrote: (10-02-2021, 01:58 PM)Cal Wrote: I still can't get over the sound synthesizer comment. I should actually like it to be nerfed MORE because I'm tired of broborgs spamming the gunshot noise. Why do they even have a gunshot noise? Deception when emagged? "What is my purpose?" "You open doors." "Oh my god."
They have so little as it is, lol. Silicons in general are so bare-bones with what they're able to do, even their upgrade system is just "become obnoxious to fight, heal instantly, recharge instantly, get more slots to get more things to get obnoxious with, or get cool glasses that borgs should have inherently." They don't even have vox like the rest of the codebases, or any systems to manipulate the station. They drag plasma canisters and open them as their main response to being rogued, cause its all they can really do. Like, their main gameplay loop on goon is relying on people to change their laws. They don't really have much else to do. I'd rather just make it so sound doesn't travel as far, cause that would fix many issues beyond the one you're describing.
Zamujasa honestly went over basically all of my issues in general, especially how we treat players with repetitive gameplay styles that are causing issues to the point that features just get removed. Xeram also makes a good point that the station doesn't feel very cohesive and tied together, it's just different sandboxes and occasionally they throw sand into another persons sandpit or steal some and run off without actually interacting on classic. Like xeram said, I think it would be good to have a system where it is beneficial for people to work together as a fundamental goal for something. Maybe tied in with a reward system like spacebux, although I'm not a huge fan of spacebux as it is. Like there is nothing to work towards at all as a "Station". It's all individual, and the only "the station did good" we have is a % screen at the end of a round that is mostly there to poke fun at security or lag out from.
I think a legitimate chunk of my issue is that there is no real system of PvE content that is actually engaging or has replayability, we rely on becoming an antagonist or hunting down said antagonist for most of the excitement, and being dead after that sucks eggs. You're essentially forced into actively murdering and rampaging, else none of the crew have anything to do. But once you kill those people, they're gone unless they got clone-scanned. They don't really have many options, unlike other codebases. Even RP lets people respawn at least.
The npcs/mobs also just aren't very fun to fight, with some minor exceptions. Either they're so weak that you one shot them with a non combat tool while they slowly shamble up to you, or they're so fast and obnoxious and ignore most combat methods that just getting into range and hitting them is a chore, like xdrone. Most of it also requires a pod since it's almost always in space, and space movement is hell without a pod or jetpack, and jetpack literally removes your backpack as a storage option. Or you can carry it around, and only have one hand to do anything with and pray you don't get put sideways for even a second else you've dropped your things.
Sometimes we have fun admemes with enemies, or a disaster round once in a blue moon, and those are very fun. Occasionally we get antag critters.. Unfortunately most are so incredibly weak and valid, they just die because people have nothing else to do. See = half full foam pitchers tossed at a fire elemental. A lot of this is simply comparing Goon to other codebases. As someone who plays other codebases, I can't find one good thing vox adds other than the occasional "SUPERMATTER-IS-ON-FUCKING-FIRE" or insulting the captain. Furthermore, I do agree with you about how lackluster station interaction can be, but there are definitely avenues to perform this kind of stuff, at least in my experience on roleplay. On the topic of PVE, personally I've never been a fan of PVE, and this really brushes over interaction with antagonists as unenjoyable, despite them being one of the primary drivers of a round.
Posts: 91
Threads: 10
Joined: Mar 2021
BYOND Username: AmazingDragons
Character Name: Ben Wyatt, Honky the Syndicate Agent, Friend Computer
(10-03-2021, 07:59 AM)Leeanei Wrote: We have lots of content, but it's tough to expect to play for literally hundreds if not thousands of hours and not get bored of something.
PvE content is tough. For the number of hours people seem to expect to play, we'd basically need the variety of something like a roguelike. And it's counter productive to make good PvE content when this game, even on classic, is a roleplaying game and is at its strongest when people are interacting and weakest when people are hiding in their departments.
As for departments not working together, that's more a cultural issue. On RP, departments do work together and supply one another but somebody has to get that other department's attention and getting folks working together. I doubt it'd be too hard to make a research system, but I also think people would hate anything in any department being locked behind the efforts of another. Culture, again. People already favor maps with lots and lots of tools and equipment available to the general public, even though reducing those would be one of the easiest ways to make departments work together. I think you hit the nail on the head, so to speak. Every time someone suggests making a change that would require departments to work together, it gets shot down because absolutely no one in that department wants to rely on another department for things. So instead, we add the content, but make it so that departments can get it for themselves or we modify things to make the departments get easier access to it themselves. One example is the fact that medbay is equipped with pretty much a fully functioning chemistry lab, so they never need to do anything with science.
Whether or not this is good is entirely debatable, since it can both hinder and help rp. I can say from experience that it is really fucking frustrating to try and do something but be limited because you can't find someone else who is interested in helping you and you want to stay in your lane. On the other hand, when cooperation is forced and works well, it is so damn satisfying. It also aids rp when people aren't just staring at their own screens and avoiding all interaction!
Quote:Phyrox
I think a lot of good points are being made in this thread. I guess I will also weigh in.
I think players these days have a much lower tolerance for damage to the station. Surviving to the point where you can get onto the shuttle is actually much easier than it used to be even if you spend the whole round wandering around hoping to bump into something murderous. Medical used to blow up all the time, now it does not. The nerfs to powergaming and abuse have made the rounds less interesting overall on Classic because nothing has been added that really fills that vacuum.
Midround antags really suck. That is why, aside from fire elementals and the occasional flexing timberdoodle, they all act friendly. Their players want to play the game, being a ghost is boring, and they've learned from getting bashed in all the time that they can't actually do anything fun. I guess the gunbots tend to actually shoot people too but then they tend to instantly die to flashes.
Most changes in the changelog are pretty darn small. The only major gameplay feature or system added to the game while I was on my haitus was the Rancher, which is literally 1 job position a round and is very insular. Since then Arcfiend was added but it's still a work in progress... and I haven't seen arcfiends accomplish all that much, yet.
Flock mode was mentioned in the changelog last spring but now it's on the shelf again and Flock remains admin-only. Makes me very very sad. I just want weird teal birds to run around stunning people and turning them and their chairs into gnesis.
Minor opinions:
Flamer rework was very ehh and has its own kind of weird jank with the way it makes floor containers. You can set the temperature high and spraying people won't burn them from the temperature, so you have to pre-heat your chems to do that damage. It is also just flat out bugged. Why can I shoot through windows and glass walls? Because the code does a simple check for opacity and nothing else.
I have come back around to my original opinion that secret chems are not good for the simple reason that the way you discover them is just not fun. Recipe hints are an improvement but get worse and worse the more you already know.
Adventures are too hard to get into.
Blobs need more hotkeys and some streamlining, also an easy accessible viewport button. They're just a very complicated antag with a very high skill floor that very few people get to practice.
I used to like helping the medical department from chemistry. Now medical can do everything themselves, sometimes better.
In short, the net effect of all the changes in the past-year plus has been a game where rounds are less chaotic, but not many actually new features have been added. I wish I had more time and energy so that I could contribute more to development, unfortunately I have my own problems right now. v_v
As per this, I think you're expecting a whole lot from coders. I've bolded your last paragraph to make the point that just about everyone who codes for goonstation has the exact same dilemma where they have a life and responsibilities outside of coding for us, which means they aren't going to be able to roll out updates the same way massive game studios can. They work like fucking crazy, so to expect that the game is basically fully overturned every update is really a bit much. A new role and a new antag is a lot, plus they've accomplished a lot more! Pod wars was added, the human resprite project, huge balance tweaks, lots of new sprites, and more! I'm not sure how long your hiatus was, but they've done a whole lot in that time. Be nice to coders, they do a lot for us! :)
Posts: 154
Threads: 26
Joined: May 2019
BYOND Username: phyvo
10-03-2021, 07:06 PM
(This post was last modified: 10-03-2021, 07:16 PM by phyvo. Edited 1 time in total.)
I respect the coders and spriters, I've made some very small contributions to those things myself. I've also spent hours of code diving trying to figure out how I would fix flamethrowers and how to make GUIs and stuff. It's not easy. If it was I would have submitted PRs already.
That said, let me maybe refine my larger point. The base game that gets played 99% of the time has gameplay that isn't affected by pod wars (admin-only game mode) or new sprites (not a gameplay element). On the other hand the slew of balance changes greatly influence every round in ways that stuff like Rancher and Arcfiend just can't.
So when I see month after month after month of nerfs *generally* and few buffs or additions of cool/weird tools *generally* it just makes me think that we've overdone it with the nerf bat. It's what is making the rounds less chaotic than they used to be. And that in turn prompts the question that inspired this thread.
Posts: 1,324
Threads: 57
Joined: Jul 2016
BYOND Username: Mordent
(10-03-2021, 07:06 PM)phyvo Wrote: So when I see month after month after month of nerfs *generally* and few buffs or additions of cool/weird tools *generally* it just makes me think that we've overdone it with the nerf bat. It's what is making the rounds less chaotic than they used to be. And that in turn prompts the question that inspired this thread.
Can you provide specific examples of nerfs that have lowered the chaos that you're after rather than just covering them all with a blanket "month after month after month" approach?
Posts: 1,283
Threads: 91
Joined: Sep 2013
10-04-2021, 03:22 AM
(This post was last modified: 10-04-2021, 03:38 AM by Zamujasa. Edited 2 times in total.
Edit Reason: fart
)
hell i will:
- hulk being able to punch out r-walls
- nitro being outright removed
- hellburning and other buggy things being "fixed"
- things like the food synth being removed because one of its items gave you a buff
- ai law boards having tighter limits so you can't creatively write around them
- the entire genetics rework (though a lot of that was mitigated)
there are a few other things that i thought were funny that got "fixed", like having a full reagent container in you blocking things like ling stings
Quote:I think players these days have a much lower tolerance for damage to the station. Surviving to the point where you can get onto the shuttle is actually much easier than it used to be even if you spend the whole round wandering around hoping to bump into something murderous. Medical used to blow up all the time, now it does not. The nerfs to powergaming and abuse have made the rounds less interesting overall on Classic because nothing has been added that really fills that vacuum.
med still blows up plenty often in my experience
it's easier to survive in general for a few reasons. it's 4 10 in the morning and i should sleep but:
- crit on most servers instantly incapacitates you or makes you only able to crawl (no speaking or using anything)
- crit here often lets you stand up and move around, even in 'deep crit', based purely on rng. there are times you can be knocked down forever or get extremely lucky and stay upright
- atmos is a slow, laggy piece of shit that is nigh-impossible to fix in-game, necessitating it being relatively survivable for how easy it is to cause
re: "powergaming" being fixed, thats part of the problem imo. there are rounds where some stupid nutty level of chaos is cool and good, but the problem is there are certain people who run it into the ground. "how fast can i speedrun canbombs" or "what if i made a ttv every round juuuust in case" type shit. then the action is usually to remove the fast method or make them worse / less useful, rather than coercing (or forcing) the problem people to stop doing it constantly
-----------
tbh i think a big part of it is also just a lack of things to do if you're dead. like i get that this is supposed to be a game about treachery and murder, but if you're dead (or god forbid, observe) you're likely just out in general.
i've been spending time on bee code lately and it's wild how much shit comes up constantly if people are competent. forget late join borgs, try ghost borgs. items that make station pets sentient, or even random events. imagine if george just suddenly became player-controlled and could speak. or other roles out in adventure areas or debris spawns
as an example, one round i died or observed or whatever. later, the exploration crew got a mission to retrieve a vip from a derelict station. ghosts could choose to play as that vip (it was otherwise an idle npc). a good chance to invent some quick backstory and get into the role of someone getting rescued that, ideally, doesn't diminish whoever killed the player's original character
like afterlife botany is neat, but there one of the derelicts spawns with a handful of inactive botanists, in the real actual not-vr round, and they can even be found if the mining team stumbles across it. that sort of thing is utterly foreign to goon but it does so much to keep the "welp i'm dead, time to log off" or "i should play super safe/boring because otherwise if i die i'm done for" thing from happening
idk. it's been a very eye opening experience to see how the environments and behaviors differ. some of it i definitely disilke (old-style crit) but a lot of things just improve the game for everyone
and re: "departments working together", it's not even really a contest. pretty much any department on goon could evaporate and nobody would notice other than maybe cargo. on beecode you really feel it if science, mining, or cargo aren't functional, and even the basic mood system gives the bar/chef/botanist a good reason to exist
to make another reply that will probably get merged, the main thing i've noticed is that goon doesnt really have a lot of depth. there are so many things that are simply impossible to construct or replicate
- atmos piping (not that you can really use it given FEA)
- conveyor belt systems (no corner pieces also hurts)
- solar panels
- smes units
- firelocks
- airlocks (other than rcd/mech scan)
- many other things that are only buildable if scanned by mechanics
i guess the biggest thing is that departments do not augment one another, they replace one another. there is absolutely nothing cargo can do to make e.g. robotics or medical's lives better other than supplying more medkits/chems/materials. there is nothing science can do for anyone other than make bombs, a handful of wacky heal chems, or (with luck) find a cool artifact. there is nothing mining can do other than provide ores, which generally never get used anywhere other than mining, and the critical materials (glass, metal, wire) can be bought cheaply anyway
meanwhile on other code science is constantly researching and enabling upgrades that improve the efficiency of other things, mining's ores are basically immediately available in any fab when brought back to the station, and cargo has specific bounties from most departments that give a ton of cash for buying stuff. chemistry can set up literal factories that produce smoke or pills. science can create nanites which can do all sorts of shit based on how much people use them
there's just no contest in depth, and that's before you get to the recent additions of fully constructible shuttles with fully-working done-at-runtime docking and randomly-generated derelict missions
e3: also power actually mattering. goonstation power is horrendously fucked up right now to the degree it largely doesn't matter at all
edit 2: and like, i get it, part of the reason is goon has always been about the classic experience where rp is fully optional and everyone is expected to be a drunken idiot who knows nothing about how their job works at best.
Posts: 92
Threads: 2
Joined: Oct 2021
BYOND Username: Myco
Character Name: Yellow#0267
10-04-2021, 09:49 PM
(This post was last modified: 10-04-2021, 09:53 PM by Yellow.)
I agree with Ley in this scenario. Too many selfish and apathetic players shoot down any changes that will require the minimum amount of interdepartmental cooperation. This is a social game, if you want to have the best and most efficient stuff, you shouldn’t just sit silently at a workspace for 60 minutes, you should talk to other crew members and work together!!
It’s like when people complain about player apathy. Apathy is a player issue, and those players aren’t playing the same game and should be punished for it. Don’t want to interact with literally anyone, alright, you’ll just be at a disadvantage. Make jobs rely on others, we have a HoP, if they don’t want to help you out, get a card upgrade and bring a coworker
Also food synth was removed because it completely invalidated the Chef job, especially on RP where you need to eat.
Why go to the kitchen where the chef is putting in hella effort making amazing food when your hunger drops to 5% when instead you can just spawn 410,048,392 burgers because you have spacebux and devour them, leaving the chef with 0 player interaction and wanting to cryo because they have tables full of food but no customers
Posts: 1,283
Threads: 91
Joined: Sep 2013
(10-04-2021, 09:49 PM)Yellow Wrote: Also food synth was removed because it completely invalidated the Chef job, especially on RP where you need to eat.
Why go to the kitchen where the chef is putting in hella effort making amazing food when your hunger drops to 5% when instead you can just spawn 410,048,392 burgers because you have spacebux and devour them, leaving the chef with 0 player interaction and wanting to cryo because they have tables full of food but no customers
news to me, i was told it was because it dispensed cheeseburgers that gave you excellent buffs for the low low price of absolutely free
and i hate to break it to you but it doesn't make much of a difference; many vending machines have food that will pay back as much as or more than chef meals do for your hunger motive, but a single warm donk pocket will fill your meater (heh) by 150%
Posts: 3,074
Threads: 272
Joined: Dec 2012
The food synth let you heal from near crit to full health anywhere you wanted at any time using the survivalist trait, infinitely.
It was the "meta" option that very directly gave you tangible numerical advantage over the crew, which isn't in line with the "fun bonus item" feeling the spacebux purchases were going for
Posts: 663
Threads: 50
Joined: Jan 2017
BYOND Username: Sovexe
10-05-2021, 07:47 AM
(This post was last modified: 10-05-2021, 07:53 AM by Sov. Edited 3 times in total.)
It was power gamer gear slipped into a system meant for cosmetic purposes
I don’t know that motives were really all that much of a concern when it was taken out. Motives aren’t really a problem to any player willing to spend 30 seconds every half hour to address them.
A few dollars can buy you a happy elf chocolate that acts as a drink, a food, a stamina regen buff, raises your body temperature, removes Freeze from you, grants a 6% resist to weaken, stun, and paralyze, and a 4% chance to get free epinephrine each tick of life
If it was readded it would need to have food incapable of healing and providing buffs to be in line with other spacebux purchases which are meant to be entirely costmetic, or so niche that their benefits are irrelevant
Posts: 87
Threads: 5
Joined: Jan 2021
BYOND Username: Momoberry
Character Name: Barnaxi Sibilant
(10-05-2021, 07:47 AM)Sov Wrote: It was power gamer gear slipped into a system meant for cosmetic purposes
I don’t know that motives were really all that much of a concern when it was taken out. Motives aren’t really a problem to any player willing to spend 30 seconds every half hour to address them.
A few dollars can buy you a happy elf chocolate that acts as a drink, a food, a stamina regen buff, raises your body temperature, removes Freeze from you, grants a 6% resist to weaken, stun, and paralyze, and a 4% chance to get free epinephrine each tick of life
If it was readded it would need to have food incapable of healing and providing buffs to be in line with other spacebux purchases which are meant to be entirely costmetic, or so niche that their benefits are irrelevant Could we not have just punished players for abusing it, though? I agree that I don't think it mattered for motives that much, getting enough to fill your bars is easy. (Although my issue is more the delay of it filling up and the visual aspect for motives) I know goon has made it a staple that they are still LRP and don't require any roleplay or focus on the station/job for the classic server, but it's been noted several times already above that a small minority of people are constantly abusing things with no self control, every single round to the detriment of the majority of players.
There are things that have become 2nd nature to players, like grabbing gear so you don't get instantly demolished by a common feature. Magboots for space throws/grinders and welding helmet for flashes/vamp as examples, and I feel it's because those have never really been stopped from being free pickups. Welding mask overlay can just casually be disabled in settings, as an example. We've seen a ton of features removed because half a dozen people were abusing it constantly to gain an edge on people so they could win. Not talking about welding masks either, or small things like it. I'm talking like 2 TTVs, 3 pitchers of deathmixes, making chem mixes to survive anything round start, running and grabbing ak/shrinkray/scanner/etc, all while not knowing the antag type or just hopping to it at the start of the round because it's "their routine"... It's just very.... unpleasant? (I truly miss shrinkray, honestly. Device analyzer as well, SO many gimmicks were killed when it was removed.) It also forces people to play in a reactionary way or else they'll get dumpstered, murdered and be out of the round for the rest of the shift. Hell, one of the responses I got to what to do when you die is to not play the game anymore, and go watch tv or something lol.
There's obviously been things that were too high maintenance, and I can totally understand that. Say nitro, I'm told it was a mess and had to be visited every other week. I'm sure some of that is because a nerd would find a way to abuse it constantly, even if just a little. But like I visited above, some of the things that caused the station to be less "chaotic" would be all the azone changes, like syndicate scanner, shrink ray, an entire threads list of chemistry and botany changes, some fair and some a little confusing. There's also the engine, but I was new to ss13 in general when those changes had been put through. Unfortunately those changes have basically killed canbombs to my knowledge, and engineering is in REAL rough shape as a department. Cargo has also been the (often unintended side effects being fair) target of a lot of changes that remove selling options, and they're honestly limited as it is.
Although one area of changes that haven't been mentioned above are the escape shuttle itself. There's a consistent line of changes that just removed more and more features from functioning on the shuttle, to the point that its literally just a box that people macro in, toss people out of windows, or weld themselves in and ignore the entire purpose of the game. It's the worst "period" of a round for me, hands down. There are some bright moments when there's a custom shuttle one of the admemes have worked on get used and it changes up how it functions somewhat. But its still the same framework, with so many things being disabled on it that its literally hard-mode for SOME antags when the shuttle comes and they have to get on. Aside from that, there were also "bugs" that never really needed to be fixed, cause they were goofy fun and enjoyable. Off the top of my head, deconstructing sleepers and carrying someone around, etc. Many niche interactions like that have been patched out. Obviously if they are actively detrimental, it makes sense. I just don't think all of the changes were.
I guess it just feels like the majority have been punished by restricting a lot of their goofy options, and sometimes rampaging options because a tiny minority of people would constantly do them every shift they played, probably because the rules have no issue with it generally.
And I know, i hear the play RP thing every time a conversation comes up regarding some of the issues, but i just don't enjoy the massive gameplay differences between classic and RP on a code basis. I enjoy Roleplaying, I'm not a huge fan of getting a bunch of antags cut out cause they aren't as RP friendly as others. But there's also the fact that there's actually not really that many jobs that have a purpose or even a direction/task to engage with. You kind of have to "make up" your job for many slots, if that makes sense. Most of the heads of staff come to mind for that, but some jobs like chaplain, engineering, scientist and mechanic also pop up. Engi and science have jobs by technicality, but they don't really influence much at all. Hell, just solars powers the stations for the most part, and many stations can run for an hour without dropping power without any input from the engine. (Mechanic has a metric shit ton to do, but they have no JOB. Nothing to do, and yet just tinkering around they often end up doing other departments jobs better than they ever could.
Zamu goes over a lot of my issues with the lack of modular stuff with building and how power is..crusty (and almost all of it that can be built is mechanics). But it also honestly made me happy that they went out and played the servers for a bit to see what they were doing, and got accustomed to them and looked at the features and how their gameplay happens and brought back ideas and examples. I'll be honest, it kind of feels like a portion of the coders absolutely hate the idea of even touching other servers, or label them with (racist, shithole, etc) without ever actually playing on them for more than an hour. I'm not focusing on any group here either, its pretty split among every role. I've had racist interactions on goonstation, even though goon is like a fucking fortress of equality and representation, because you just can't stop everything from happening. Admittedly, i've played bee/para to a good amount and a bit of fulp. So i haven't delved into some of the more questionable ones.
Sorry for these long ass posts lmao.
Posts: 465
Threads: 11
Joined: Nov 2019
BYOND Username: Leeanei
It sucks to constantly deal with something as a rules issue when it's just available in game, tbh. Nobody likes the conversation. Not the understandably confused azone rusher who is just playing the game as designed and certainly not the admin trying to explain the game isn't meant to be played that way even though we advertise Classic as LRP chaos.
On RP, obviously, this stuff just has to be dealt with as a rules issue.
|