Cyborg QoL - and feedback concerning #15759

[Paai]

It gives me the opportunity to roleplay with someone who is usually just rolling away at lightspeed unless I need to be silently automendered and beeped at.

I don't think that's really a fair justification for arbitrarily restricting something-- in my experience, forced interaction in that way (something that will need to be done at least once a round, every round, and is arbitrary for one player but physically impossible for the asker) never ever gives good roleplay or interaction.
It's not an exact comparison, but partswaps are silently getting your parts replaced 95% of the time, because it's something that has to happen EVERY. ROUND. and everyone involved in it just wants it overwith so they can get on with their day. Not to say partswaps CAN'T have rp- but most of the time they don't, because again, it has to be done every single round and past a point it gets tiring to draw out any more than neccecary.
(Partswaps are of course restricted to human interaction for very real mechanical and balance reasons, and are human-only for a very good reason-- unlike taking things out of boxes and similar, which have no balance implications whatsoever-- as evidenced by this bug having been in the game for literal years, and not once having been used for a gameplay advantage.)

Experiences with borgs being "automender into speed upgrade and leaving before you can get a word in edgewise" are far from universal, and not really a fair assessment- I play borg almost exclusively, and I spend a good most of my rounds doing nothing but chatting with people already. By that reasoning, most of my interactions with humans are straight up being ignored in the hallway. Should we make humans unable to open doors to FORCE them to talk to borgs? No, because that would be arbitrary, irritating for all players involved, and wouldn't even give good interactions.

I'm entirely in favour of distincting borg gameplay from humans-- and I'd say it already IS pretty distinct! I don't think having the most basic degree of autonomy in interacting with non-electronic devices (read: being able to take items out of boxes, being able to ring service bells) is going to change that. Because, ultimately, either way, they still don't have HAAAANDS, and they still have LAAAWS, and they still have all the other things that make cyborgs unique from humans.

playing a borg in this game is a choice, for the most part.

it's really easy to just flavor a human character like an android if you want to play as a robot but think the more intentional clunk that comes with borgs is that embarrassing or w/e

With this in particular-- I play borg because I like the differences between it and human! I like the laws, I like the no hands, I like the myriad things cyborgs have or don't have, the restrictions it has.

But the REASON I like those things is because in most cases it's a tradeoff! Sure, borgs can't do a lot of things humans can, but humans can't do a lot of things borgs can either. And everything borgs are restricted from doing makes sense, more or less, from a game perspective.
Saying 'Just play human if you don't want to have to ask someone for help opening a fucking egg carton every time you want to cook' is kind of silly to me? It's missing the point.

It feels sort of like a "Don't like us cutting your abilities left and right? L bozo, just play something else." (Even though that something else doesn't have what I liked about the first thing)
Which I know wasn't the intent-- but when I keep hearing it, it starts to feel it. Because in this instance, it's not a matter of intentional clunk - it's a matter of it being arbitrary and frustrating for the player to not be able to do it, and actively takes away from the borg experience for no good reason.
Borgs shouldn't be a downgrade- more of a sidegrade. They're a job like any other.