[PR] Contributor Rewards accessible to all

[mintyphresh]

Is this still about the contributor medal or just the skin colors because I'm confused now.

As with most forum conversations, we've gotten pulled in multiple directions a little. The conversation here is mostly about the skin tones themselves; I don't think many people would want Contributor if there were other ways to get these skin tones round-start. One mentor (I think GallowsCalibrator?) mentioned that they valued the medal as a badge of honor, a symbol of the hard work they've done for the codebase rather than a carrot on a stick for them to chase. Frankly, that's the way I think Contributor should be, and I love the suggestions Mordent posted on page 1 for alternative rewards, like the mug and pen.
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Because I think we've gotten sidetracked a little, I'd like to summarize my understanding of, and opinions on, the conversation as it exists right now. This involves restating what other people have already said, sorry.


Immersion in the Setting

I don't think the problem people have with roundstart skin color customization (RSCC) is really about breaking immersion or breaking setting, although those are the terms being used. I've said this before, but in the long run players will naturally try to fit themselves into the setting, because being part of that setting makes RP easier and better. I'm not sure concerns about immersion or setting can even be brought up for classic, though I'm not a terribly confident voice on that matter.

RSCC also doesn't break the setting from a lore perspective. SS13 is a world where wizards, demons, and eldritch gods are real, people can shapeshift just by touching you, and inter-dimensional travel is commonplace; there's a plethora of lore-friendly ways for someone to have an unusual skin tone. But above all else, getting your skin color changed at genetics is fast, painless, and has no effect on your genetic stability; the equipment required to do this can be bought for only 6000 credits, and can be easily transported in a backpack. Even if it's not commonplace in the rest of the world, as NT employees it's not unreasonable to say that a character would have easy access to genetic services.

Style & Characters

I don't think adding RSCC is about helping with visual distinction, either. As Mordent said, there's more than enough options already, especially with how robust the three-layered hair system is. The only mutrace I have trouble telling apart is pugs, because they can't access wigs and have only four body colors.

Being able to fake Gamma Ray Exposure is another big issue with this PR, but unlike the visual style complaints, it's fixable. I intend to mess around with the sliders some more and see if I can prevent that from happening; maybe a future PR can change what visual effects Gamma Ray Exposure gives so that the restriction can be removed.

Lizards' Uniqueness in Skin Color

Solenoid made an excellent point regarding this by comparing it to wigs on non-human mutraces. Humans are the only mutrace that naturally grows hair on their heads; I'm getting tired and have much to write, so please look at this excerpt from their post:

Firstly, on giving other mutantraces the ability to get colorful skin, I don't see the problem personally on taking the "unique" thing of lizards and giving it to others. Wigs are pretty much identical to this, the "unique" thing of humans(hair) was given to other mutantraces at roundstart via a trait. I don't think we've ever seen any human players complain about this though, because it's clearly just a way to increase customization and personalization that would otherwise require an awkward IC exchange. Realistically, we could've had wigs be a "go talk to a human and convince them to lop off their hair at roundstart" thing, but it was recognized that this felt bad and required a lot of convincing and in-round time to make work.

In-round skin color changes

I don't really get why gating stuff behind tedium is such an accepted practice here, outside of "because it needs to be gated somehow." Sure, yes, forcing players to bug Genetics for their custom skin tones will dramatically reduce the number of players with custom skin tones, but this is because you are forcing players to take a major inconvenience to receive a minor benefit.

Stuff like becoming a monkey, getting a clone scan, or preparing extra oil in chemlab, all make sense to be balanced by time costs -- since they afford the player tangible benefits -- but with how unimpactful skin color is on gameplay, it isn't worth it whatsoever to spend your time, and genetics' time, every round to get that modification. I know of at least 2-3 "monkey characters" that get changed roundstart, and I've even seen a "dwarfism character" that would specifically request the dwarfism gene be researched, but I'm not aware of a single character that goes to genetics for an unusual skin tone every round. Compare this to a clone scan, which takes way less time than a skin color change, affords a huge advantage to the player doing it, and is simple for a newbee to perform, but there's still rarely see more than 10% of the crew scanned in unless an announcement's gone out.

This is why I believe adding more in-round ways to change your skin color is NOT an adequate way of addressing the desires of people who wanna play as a blue guy. Unless it's similarly easy-to-use and convenient as the clothing booth, it won't be worth the effort to change your skin color that way.

In conclusion, going to get yourself changed at genetics every round gets old quick, and isn't fun. And as Reggie Fils-Aimé once said, "If it's not fun, why bother?"

(If the intent is to prevent Genetics from becoming a roundstart customization hub (which I would strongly support), requiring some sort of progression or resource investment to unlock those paths would probably be an appropriate change.)

Identity of the Game

The best argument against this PR was made by Flaborized in page 2, regarding the visual identity of the game. I've truncated the post a bit to try and keep the post size small... You can find the full text by clicking on the arrow next to the start of the quote (though I don't think I took out anything important, promise!)

I do not particularly like letting all humans pick whatever colors they want. Color ranges are part of the visual identity of many species in the game and I think letting people (or roaches) have the full range diminishes this aesthetic quality a lot. Lizards can have technicolor skin because they're chameleon-like; if we added this more generally to generic people, we'd be somewhat taking away from this Cool Thing lizards have that makes them stand out as unique. 

The Boring Basic skin-tones also, for lack of better phrasing, make them look Human. Blue skin looks like an alien because humans don't have blue skin. Other mutantraces in the game unfortunately do not exist in real life so we can imagine them looking however we want without it being Weird, but I think there's still some value in having a cohesive look for them, at least on roundstart.

I don't really have an qualms with people using genetics or the tanning booth to achieve these looks since then they're uncommon, but if everyone could have them as a trait I think it'd worsen the look of the game.

To fully explain my interpretation of the point she makes, I'd like to relate the situation to that of another game with a similar, but far more egregious and exaggerated, problem: Team Fortress 2. At launch, TF2's art design was meticulous in setting, gameplay, and tone, to give each mercenary a unique look and feel that fits in with the backdrop of the maps TF2 takes place in. As time went on, and more cosmetics were released, it became easier to make loadouts not adherent to this artstyle.

16 years later, TF2 videos have thumbnails like this.


I'm not trying to say that Flaborized's concerns are that this one PR will cause SS13 to be as stylistically dissonant as TF2-- there have been thousands of cosmetics added to TF2 since its release, so this has been a slow drift away from the game's original style --  but the line of reasoning, as I see it, is similar. Making custom skin tones convenient enough to be worth getting will undoubtedly change the way the game looks and feels. But I don't think that making RSCC available to everyone walks down the path that TF2 did with its cosmetics, for these reasons:

1. Stronger lore basis. Unlike the TF2 cosmetics, which can be out-of period for the 1960s or the product of magic & curses that aren't really part of the gameplay outside Halloween, SS13 is a scifi setting where the implements that can achieve RSCC are real, physical objects that are used every shift. It's set in a world with plenty of other ways to get strange skin tones, too, like radiation blasts, wizards, and the like. See the section on "Immersion in the Setting" for more elaboration on this point.

2. Fewer gameplay implications. While not synonymous with "visual identity," visual distinguishability is an important aspect for gameplay; In TF2, the high number of cosmetic and color options can let you disguise yourself with colors that look like the other team's, which can cause much confusion. In SS13, if you can't tell mutraces apart, such as telling skeletons from humans (this one is hard when you're in a hurry!), you could end up making a mistake when treating them. Being able to tell mutraces apart at a glance has a ton of value. Below, I've put a neon purple saurian next to a human of the same color (note that I did not check that these colors were allowed by the saturation limits mentioned earlier):



I don't think mistaking one for the other is very easy.

None of these bullet points, however, account for personal taste. Flaborized's argument against RSCC is, well, about flavor. The retrofuturist world that SS13 lives in allows for a wide interpretation of what should be possible, and what things should look like. Rickety-looking Soviet spacecraft and landline phones live alongside beverage replicators, phasers, and spaceships powered by black holes.

I personally think that the viewpoint of humans having to have "normal" skin tones is too biased towards the "retro" part of SS13's visual style, but I also think that full, unrestricted skin colors is too biased towards the futuristic, semi-magical part of SS13's flavor-- which is why I'm such a strong supporter of the "clamped" values I posted here earlier.