A serious discussion about the state of monkeys

[Lord_earthfire]

kind of weird stance, these are still players regardless. going into an interaction with that mindset is very bad vibes to me
if a monkey player Is griefing you should ahelp it, as you should with a human player griefing

on another note i do agree that their downsides are part of what differentiate them, though i can see why people fond of playing monkey dislike the downsides being more qol focused than mechanic focused. op is very heavy leaning on the rp aspect of this, which honestly gives more room for a monkey player to charades their way through convos in the event they need to be using internals

there isnt much to say about them being a roundstart trait that hasnt been said sooo, ill leave it at that

I can see how this can be percepted this way. It sounds more harshly than i mean it. In reality, even a little thing like a waving emote signals me that they are most likely nice and it makes me interact with them. But i also had situations, for example yesterday, where a waiter got beaten up by a monkey and i intervened, just to realize after the beating that this was in fact a player monkey (post round, it was revealed to a antag i believe). Even if they weren't antag, i recognize this as valid IC solution to this situation.

I mean, we explicitely got monkeys all around the station as unwilling test subjects, entertainment, mascots or a freaking source of meat. They are not considered human by AI or space law. And we all know how npc monkeys get treated. Even the monkey role is clearly called "test subject". If someone chooses to be a monkey, like with picking AI, borg, puritan or, a more extreme example, breeding cluwne chickens to get cluwnefied, they explicitely consented to the repercussions of this choice. For the monkey, this means being third class-crewmember, right behind staff assisstants.

Last but not least, i don't think any if this is QOL. These are serious repercussions, like being unable to talk without a translator. We don't call the mimes vow of silence a QOL-issue. Like with the mime, the monkey translator is central to the RP of a monkey and needs to be played around. The best monkey rounds i had where the ones where i chosen to have no translator and communicated with emotes, chimpers and screams.