Goonhub
09-21-2021, 05:49 PM
ass day getting removed instead of retooled (especially now that we have proper respawn timers for rp) sucks. i get that it drove people away sometimes but so does any map that isn't cog 1. most of the worst problems with it (ghost drones) could just be disabled. having one day out of a month be a free-for-all is a nice change without having to hope you roll antag and the type of antag you need for certain things
most of the nerfs recently seem to be a case of trying to enforce a certain culture by game mechanics and not direct intervention. nitro too easy and too explosive? remove nitro entirely rather than going, hey, you are running this into the ground, find a new gimmick or you can take a vacation
a lot of the problems with "powergaming" in general seems to be centered on the idea that it should be "harder" to powergame. the problem is that the people who are going to powergame are just going to find new ways to do it, while people who casually enjoy stuff suffer because one or two ding dongs ran it into the ground.
i've been taking a break from goon to try out some other stuff, trip report:
- "mostly roleplayers": basically nobody on 1 roleplays at all, so i doubt this really matters. most of the nerfs are to stuff that, abused the way it is on main, would get you a talking to
- "not anyone who wants to play it like a game"
there are several mechanics that encourage playing it safe over being actively engaged in conflicts, from a crew perspective:
* death is often final. bodies rot incredibly quickly and are impossible* to revive outside of borging in that case. this means that it's often better to stay away from conflict rather than risk getting killed and sitting out the next 30-60 minutes.
** (on other servers, you can generally revive people who have died, cloning is typically a last resort; and cloning needs your head / some gibs / etc only, not an entire body. even if all of these fail, there are constant respawns, and not just antagonist ones -- new exploration events with "NPCs" that you can take control over, other roles off-station, sort of like the afterlife bar)
* spacebux rewards are based on surviving and escaping, especially paid rewards. dying means you lose whatever you have, and not escaping drops your payout by 75%. on top of this, spacebux payouts are further based on what job you're playing, which often has nothing to do with what you actually end up doing during a round.
** (other server: funds seem to be 300 for escaping, 200 for being alive, and 100 for playing, and you unlock items permanently when purchasing them, so you can equip whatever you've bought pre-round)
* general crew apathy. this ties into the above -- actively interfering with antags is a great way to become the next victim
** (other server: i don't have any real notes here, but there are a lot of mechanics that make antag hunting more interesting; the AI can photograph a 3x3 area and send those images via PDA to anyone, or upload them to 'newscasters', either as an alert or as a special "wanted" thing. these broadcasts ping every newscaster on the station and there are usually at least one per room, so this is a good way to do other interesting alerts too)
[sub]* yes i am aware there is a cloner upgrade out in fuckoff nowhere in space, it is retrieved and used about once a year[/sub]
no, there isn't. toxins is more or less there strictly for bomb making. there's nothing interesting you can do with it other than make bombs. that ties into the same "subsystems having value" thing -- the other server i've been playing on lately has a bunch of different gases that you can end up with, including one that causes hallucinations, one that acts like super-oxygen and requires a much smaller amount to be breathable, that sort of thing. here: you make bombs. ok great. even the engine doesn't care because the ideal mix for burning tends to just be POO and you don't need any fancy work to do that.
a lot of other things exist there that don't here. science has a bunch of research they can unlock that boosts the effectiveness of various tools around the station like sleepers, medbots, unlocks new, fancier things to build (super power cells, ultra-high capacity bags), and other stuff. chemistry has 'recording' rather than groups, so you can't just paste in fuck:1;shit:2;piss:5;hellfoam:69 and click a button to bomb everything, you have to actually at least spend time doing it the long way first (and they have a limit to how many reagents they can dispense that recharges over time); there's also atmos systems to keep places from just being vented permanently, chemistry factories with pipes and machines to automate mixing/smoking/creating pills, and all sorts of other shit
goon has interesting mechanics in some places, but most of them have little depth. most departments have no reason to interact with one another
on the note about players rejoining the round: one round on this server i was playing, someone (who used to be a goon regular) was on a mild killing spree with an army of golems. those golems? ai at first, but ghost players got a notification to join. so they'd kill people, and then build more golems, so the people that got killed could get back in the game. or sentience potions that let players control the various station pets. and so on and so forth
the only option if you're a dead player on goon is to either go fuck around in the afterlife, go murder dummies in vr, or be a useless ghost critter, unless you get lucky and get an antag respawn, in which case... you're an antag critter now. you can't rejoin as a normal, passive person, or even a force for good.
it's a huge difference in environment.
most of the nerfs recently seem to be a case of trying to enforce a certain culture by game mechanics and not direct intervention. nitro too easy and too explosive? remove nitro entirely rather than going, hey, you are running this into the ground, find a new gimmick or you can take a vacation
a lot of the problems with "powergaming" in general seems to be centered on the idea that it should be "harder" to powergame. the problem is that the people who are going to powergame are just going to find new ways to do it, while people who casually enjoy stuff suffer because one or two ding dongs ran it into the ground.
Quote:To answer the thread title, I'd say "Not anyone who wants to play it like a game." or "Mostly roleplayers now."
i've been taking a break from goon to try out some other stuff, trip report:
- "mostly roleplayers": basically nobody on 1 roleplays at all, so i doubt this really matters. most of the nerfs are to stuff that, abused the way it is on main, would get you a talking to
- "not anyone who wants to play it like a game"
there are several mechanics that encourage playing it safe over being actively engaged in conflicts, from a crew perspective:
* death is often final. bodies rot incredibly quickly and are impossible* to revive outside of borging in that case. this means that it's often better to stay away from conflict rather than risk getting killed and sitting out the next 30-60 minutes.
** (on other servers, you can generally revive people who have died, cloning is typically a last resort; and cloning needs your head / some gibs / etc only, not an entire body. even if all of these fail, there are constant respawns, and not just antagonist ones -- new exploration events with "NPCs" that you can take control over, other roles off-station, sort of like the afterlife bar)
* spacebux rewards are based on surviving and escaping, especially paid rewards. dying means you lose whatever you have, and not escaping drops your payout by 75%. on top of this, spacebux payouts are further based on what job you're playing, which often has nothing to do with what you actually end up doing during a round.
** (other server: funds seem to be 300 for escaping, 200 for being alive, and 100 for playing, and you unlock items permanently when purchasing them, so you can equip whatever you've bought pre-round)
* general crew apathy. this ties into the above -- actively interfering with antags is a great way to become the next victim
** (other server: i don't have any real notes here, but there are a lot of mechanics that make antag hunting more interesting; the AI can photograph a 3x3 area and send those images via PDA to anyone, or upload them to 'newscasters', either as an alert or as a special "wanted" thing. these broadcasts ping every newscaster on the station and there are usually at least one per room, so this is a good way to do other interesting alerts too)
[sub]* yes i am aware there is a cloner upgrade out in fuckoff nowhere in space, it is retrieved and used about once a year[/sub]
Quote:Subsystems having actual interesting non-antagonistic value would help. (Is there ever a reason to not immediately get rid of the toxins part of research besides not being a meta-gaming shitheel?)
no, there isn't. toxins is more or less there strictly for bomb making. there's nothing interesting you can do with it other than make bombs. that ties into the same "subsystems having value" thing -- the other server i've been playing on lately has a bunch of different gases that you can end up with, including one that causes hallucinations, one that acts like super-oxygen and requires a much smaller amount to be breathable, that sort of thing. here: you make bombs. ok great. even the engine doesn't care because the ideal mix for burning tends to just be POO and you don't need any fancy work to do that.
a lot of other things exist there that don't here. science has a bunch of research they can unlock that boosts the effectiveness of various tools around the station like sleepers, medbots, unlocks new, fancier things to build (super power cells, ultra-high capacity bags), and other stuff. chemistry has 'recording' rather than groups, so you can't just paste in fuck:1;shit:2;piss:5;hellfoam:69 and click a button to bomb everything, you have to actually at least spend time doing it the long way first (and they have a limit to how many reagents they can dispense that recharges over time); there's also atmos systems to keep places from just being vented permanently, chemistry factories with pipes and machines to automate mixing/smoking/creating pills, and all sorts of other shit
goon has interesting mechanics in some places, but most of them have little depth. most departments have no reason to interact with one another
on the note about players rejoining the round: one round on this server i was playing, someone (who used to be a goon regular) was on a mild killing spree with an army of golems. those golems? ai at first, but ghost players got a notification to join. so they'd kill people, and then build more golems, so the people that got killed could get back in the game. or sentience potions that let players control the various station pets. and so on and so forth
the only option if you're a dead player on goon is to either go fuck around in the afterlife, go murder dummies in vr, or be a useless ghost critter, unless you get lucky and get an antag respawn, in which case... you're an antag critter now. you can't rejoin as a normal, passive person, or even a force for good.
it's a huge difference in environment.