Make cluwne incurable

[OMJ]

I've always said the game's community is caught in a struggle between whether the game should be a game with objectives to try and complete or a sandbox with some code of conduct and suggestions sprinkled in. Or at least I thought I have. Have I actually ever said this on record?

This thread and the original decision to make it from uncurable to curable is a natural consequence of this struggle. The "game" side of this is that the Wizard is a round's primary antagonist and crew objective and him killing or turning people into cluwnes and such should have a strong and impactful consequence, at the "enemy" player's expense, in order to further his goals and create fun in the round through conflict. The "sandbox" side of this is basically "The wizard wants to do what he wants to do" and "The player wants to do what he wants to do" and the might not necessarily be opposed to eachother, so something the wizard does to them should be reversible so the other player can recover and continue what they want to do.

In the "game" side of culture, empathy is usually discard because you have an objective: stop the damn wizard. If he makes a cluwne you either ignore it and let someone else deal with it, loot the stuff from it's now useless form, and if the wizard is gone usually clobber it or shoot the damn idiot thing to death so it stops making noise and getting in the way, at least with it dead it can get dragged off and cloned into something useful.

In the "sandbox" side of culture, it's typically pushed that yeah, everyone else is a player like you, how would they feel? Players here are typically seeking fun from some self-driven activity or other bit rather than the round conflict. These can vary in scope and responsiveness to outside events, like a wizard cluwning someone nearby. Some botany nerd trying to create weed with a potency in the exponents probably wouldn't even react much to someone getting cluwned outside his window, much less go out and saw it to bits. He's busy gardening. Maybe if the cluwne came in and started honking and messing with his plants he'd exercise the "valid" status on the cluwne but unless roused usually these types interact little with the round conflict.

I'd say that old goon where cluwnes were beaten to death on first sight the culture was more 85% game/15% sandbox, antagonists were clearly annouced when found, security was common enough and would mobilize to fight them and the crew would be on the lookout with their paranoia ready to get a chance to fight someone or something while still goofing around during the slow periods/buildup.

Current culture since I last played I'd say was more 40% game/60% sandbox. It has been a few months as per usual with me so I don't know if it's shifted again, but most players seemed to play each round the same, with no regard to the station conflict usually unless it directly impacted them as a threat nearby or a threat to end the round prematurely. I personally think cracks start to show when higher concentrations treat the game in the more "sandbox" style, as many tasks on the station can be useless to learn/master as a non-antagonist. Pretty much any use of bombs save for an extremely late blob round or blowing yourself up in the asteroid field as a non-antag is going to get a ban, most useful chemicals are very easy and basic to make, while a majority of them murder the hell out of people, getting big numbers on the engine used to be more of this before the PTL, but even then it can run the stations even when running poorly and the main draw of hellburning it besides big numbers was hotwiring it and getting a lot of power in it for lethal doors/apcs/power gloves and ambient superheated air. I think botany got worse for this actually after updates let fruits be containers, so now botanists got exploding tomatos and bananabombs and such other nasties. Literally nothing good comes out of pathology.

tl;dr: Game is shifting away from a culture that treats it as a game with an objective and more like a bunch of individuals in a sandbox, many of the mechanics and activities end up ultimately useless if you're not using/playing it as a "game", empathy ensues, local scientist discovers QGP, has nothing to blow up but himself unless someone tries to kill him.

I'd say it's even more sandboxy than that! I don't know if that's a bad thing though. There's definitely too /much/ empathy in game now because of this. It's cool that people are nice but I've been bitched at multiple times as a ling by people who I ate when I could've just ate genetics monkeys to get 10 husks. Like what the fuck?

As for the cluwne- why is it curable? Fuck that. I've never once murdered a cluwne (or been murdered as one by the crew....and I've been cluwned a lot lol) so I feel like arguing it's validity is useless because even when the culture was more so geared towards Game cluwnes weren't really killed from what I've seen but it definitely should be WAY more debilitating.