Could Lizard Nerfs please be stopped until there's a justified reason to nerf them?

[Drago156]

Oh boy what have I missed and where to start...

I'll start at the thread start and work down I guess, and to preface to those unfamiliar, I attempt to play as a lizard almost exclusively and have for close to a year or more now.

The next downside is that you now must spend a perk point to be a non-human. While this might be a touch better than paying points earned through playtime to be a lizard/nonhuman you still must spend a point that could otherwise give you a situational edge. (cat eyes and survivalist being some commonly picked positive perks) I feel like this should be more similar to accents where they cost 0 points considering there's no real buff you get from playing lizard.

Yea I'm not the biggest fan of this one, mostly because it's made me realize when I go to shift trait points around that there are a surprising amount of negative traits that probably don't give out what they should for the effect you get, making it hard to balance out trait points without dropping stuff, but I can understand why it's done.

Now onto the biggest (and in my opinion the most extreme and uncalled for nerf) the debuff to thermoregulation. While I do understand that lizards are cold-blooded in real life this game puts great emphasis on speed, dodging, and maneuverability. This and the fact that this game generally takes place in space where hull breaches are common causing significant drops in temperature mean that all lizard players are more commonly disadvantaged compared to all other species.

Yea, this is the one I dislike the most. Thermoregulation for lizards is at a terrible point right now, as in you can and will shiver randomly at room temp. That alone is a bit much, but worse being is when a station breach or some chemnerd causes you to freeze to an insane temperature, causing you to be stuck at that amount of cold for an incredible amount of time in most cases and stacking a constant 30 seconds of heavy shiver. As any combat role, this is absolutely a major negative. I'm not completely against lizard thermoregulation being different, but I think at its current state it's far too low and could use a slight lift, at least so lizards are shivering in basic room temp.

The final issue (and the most minor) is the inability to use many of the lawbringer settings due to the fact that your s's are multiplied causing your vocal commands to fail to the point of lizard hos's being a "meme"

Yea dunno what to tell you on this one. It absolutely is a meme and joke to me, doesn't stop me though. It is also still possible to set all the modes, just really difficult. That said you honestly don't need the modes you can't set, considering you can get some sort of alternative gun from security to replace the missing mode. I personally am going to say I'm against this being changed.

As for the specific "unfair" changes to lizards right now, I'm unfamiliar. But as a general design philosophy on player selectable choices at round start, we do not want to make things that give certain players a non-trivial advantage over the default character setup. So it's good to err on the side of caution when adding new things to a round start mutantrace and make it be less desirable from a competitive standpoint. Especially considering the fact that you don't have to play as a lizard.

If you wanted to make it so players didn't have access to a non-trivial advantage over the default setup, you've well already failed on that. Between current traits and spacebux items, there are some stand alone items as well as a number of combinations that certainly give a major boost. I would also argue that the eyes of a dev and eyes of a player are two vastly different things, so what one may view as balanced could be imbalanced to the other, and vice versa. That said I think ultimately a design choice should lean in favor of the player view, not the dev view, because without players you have no point in developing a game any further. Of course I say this not to just you specifically, Kyle, but rather the dev team as a whole. I rarely see devs active and playing on a server as a normal, stand alone crewmate just acting like any other person would, and that arguably ruins the player perspective that I think devs should have. I would also argue that it would be a good idea to ultimately have the mutantraces roughly equal in overall power/ability, otherwise you'll see something get zero use because it ultimately ruins a player's experience, which is not a good thing. Finally to close this part, your final statement here is rude, and the exact attitude I thought we were trying to be rid of on goon. This really isn't ok behaviour for any sort of authority figure, especially a dev, as you create a disconnection between the view of a developer and that of a player, and the further disconnected the two are, arguably the more tension will follow.

I'm starting to think that we should remove lizards and other mutantraces from round-start character selection and make them races that you can turn into over the course of the round like how we have werewolf serum and vampire serum. That should prevent people being so attached to a certain playable race and they can stop trying to use irl racism as an argument to get their way about game design.

Now this mess... removing or restricting access to something because of personal dislike of individuals is harmful ultimately to the community and just being spiteful. It's also notable to mention that both the WW and Vampire serum recipes are incredibly rare, have complicated and super secret recipes, and most importantly give antag powers and abilities to a crewmate, whether they're antag or not. Now, of course people are going to be attached to playable races in a RP setting, because it's an important part of their character, which can and often is a part of their identity or beliefs. That said it most certainly IS NOT excusable to go so petty as to involve racism in any fashion, in any way where it is truthfully and honestly not involved. It's dividing, insensitive, and honestly despicable, and has no place here. We're better than that, let's be better than that.

Soon, hopefully lizards should be able to regenerate limbs, which in it of itself is very powerfull.

It'll take quite a lot of convincing to get that through. That's quite a steep advantage, and lizards already have so many.

With the Arse Nath PR currently up to make it so tails don't just pop off with first use, I don't think I'm personally in favor of limb regen. It is an incredibly overpowered ability in any sense, and one that probably doesn't belong on any standard crewmate to start. I also could see potential bugs and stuff when combined with a changeling and its regen abilities. As for lizards having so many advantages, they really don't, at least not ones that in actual gameplay make any difference or can compare to what other mutantraces have, and especially contrasted with their cons. IR vision is handy, but it's niche, extremely niche. As for the ability to change scale colors, I would argue that again in actual gameplay, this makes no difference, as if someone was trying to hide their identity, they wouldn't have most of their scales showing to begin with, and that pure character appearance (just the character with zero items equipped) is a very terrible way of identifying people.

That was a lot holy damn.