Goonhub
01-20-2013, 12:28 AM
WARNING: Fucking huge post incoming. See a tl;dr at the bottom.
I really like all of the ideas you just gave out, but I don't imagine many others do (as seen above). I think this would best be done if Goonstation ran another server with this new PvE mode and G3 and G4 running the regular "secret/mixed" PvP rotation.
This would be a great way to bring a third server back if we have the hardware for it, because this is a pretty big and bold new step for SS13 as far as having actual modes. Let's face it: The modes in SS13 don't vary a whole lot or affect people a whole lot. You might have a changeling running around killing people, or a vampire, or a traitor; but in the end it's just another player killing people for one reason or another.
I'm assuming this is a new "mode" that would be made, that would run on a separate server as the "mixed" mode.
About job preference. I fully support giving better* players preference over worse** players in selecting jobs, as long as there's still a chance at the worse** player being selected. Give the better* player a 10-15% increase in the likelihood of being selected, maybe.
* Player with more "points" or "experience" at the job
** Player with less "points" or "experience" at the job
About away missions. I'm going to be totally honest: It sounds fucking badass. A group of 4-5 guys in red suits being all tactical trying to navigate their way through an abandoned station or dangerous planet in search of an ancient artifact that would bolster the Science Team's efforts back at the main station? Count me in. The most fun I've ever had in SS13 was clearing out an old station with a few other guys, fighting off zombies with our eguns and AKs. It's great.
About general mode mechanics. First off: No antagonists. The whole point is for the crew to work together, and that's not going to happen if they're nervous that their coworker is going to bash their head in when they turn around. Plain and simple. Second: A whole new station layout might be needed. One that's economic and efficient; one that players will have a chance to survive in.
About the mode. It was mentioned above that "all this for a better meteor mode is a lot of work for little payoff." I interpreted this as not being a "meteor mode, but rather a whole new mode where a meteor shower hits, or a radiation wave, or an old station is on a collision course, or there's solar flares going on, or we're approaching a black hole, or a Gamma Ray Burst is coming right for us and if we don't dodge right the fuck now we're all dead. You see the point. It's like a "disaster" mode except there's a variation of disasters that can happen, and as Exadv1 said above they would happen more frequently as the round progresses. So every single round the meteor shield would be used, and every single round people might have to hide in radiation-sheltered areas to survive.
About people's reaction to such a big change. Like I said above, the reaction isn't going to be all that good. Many people who play SS13 just aren't appealed by the "work together, succeed together, die together" mentality this new mode would be bringing. But that's not to say this new mode doesn't appeal to anyone, not at all! This sounds and feels like a big step in the right direction for SS13 as a whole, to me at least. I think that the best way to do this, and I cannot stress this enough, is to bring back G5/dave running this new mode 24/7. We will lose players if we get rid of classic SS13 and replace it with this newfangled stuff, and chances are we won't ever get them back. This new mode would make SS13 appeal to a much wider audience, one that wants to play a more traditional game mode (that's just what it feels like to me, a game mode more in tune with what most games would have) instead of paranoia in space all the time. Personally I like it and I wouldn't be surprised if there's a few other people out there like me, but I think I'm in the minority here.
About cross-round progression. As long as the items are cosmetic and don't effect gameplay any more than "look that guy's jumpsuit has a big gold medal on it" then fine. But a special wrench for engineers or a new module for cyborgs or "unlocking" new jobs is a bad fit for SS13, I think. It's already hard to "pick up and play" as it is, and locking people to a few jobs or slower wall-building times or only a few chemicals only serves to increase the barrier to entry of the game. The idea of unlocking new disasters or away missions or other stuff based on how many "points" a few players have is a good one, because it adds a little "end-game" play for people who play a ton. It shouldn't be "one player has 1,000,000 points bring in the alien strike team," it should be more like "30% of this server has 1,000,000 points, so they can probably handle an alien strike team." This means that one experienced player can't completely screw over all the newbies in the server, and that the advanced challenges will only come to crews who can probably handle it.
About the proposed points system. I support it. It would be great. But usually when something like this is brought up nothing is ever done because there's just so much stuff to do in SS13. Should an engineer get points for building a lattice and a floor and adding the tile? What if he removes a tile right after to farm points? What if he has someone remove the tile for him and he sits there "boosting" for the whole round? You see the point. However, I think with this new PvE mode most of these problems are avoided. Security teams get Security Points for killing hostile mobs, completing away missions, and nabbing an artifact. Science teams get Science Points for research, development, and distribution/deployment of new technologies. Mining teams get Mining Points for how much ore they gather, and how rare/valuable that ore was. Engineering teams get Engineering Points for how much damage caused by meteors/black hole/other round-based phenomena they fix, and how many meteors were deflected, etc. The difference is, now that round has an actual goal for every department, you can very easily dish out the points to players for simply doing their jobs. Engineers can't boost because the damage they fix has to be caused by a round-based thing, and other jobs have very clear goals to fulfill to gain their points. I think you, sir, may have finally found out how to grade a player's performance in a round.
About round-ending criteria. I don't think it's really all that necessary to force a round to end. The round should end when some percentage of the crew is dead from the different disasters, or a percentage of the station is non-functioning. This means that a scientist can keep doing science until the bitter end, or a few really dedicated engineers might actually be able to pull the station out from the brink of failure. It also means that when a round ends, it ends in a fun way: With the station destroyed/overrun.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Now that my dissemination of the finer points is done (what a long post, damn), some general talk. This is going to be a huge project, I hope you know. I know you're good at BYOND shit and that we have some similarly-skilled people here, but this is still a big undertaking. But it could change the face of SS13 forever, so there's a bright side to all the work.
Again, I cannot stress enough that I think this should be run on a third server to prevent playersfrom migrating to other servers en masse. I would also like to re-iterate that I think this mode would work best without player antagonists, for a host of different reasons.
This could be SS13's "big break." Or it could fail, crash, and burn miserably as our server population migrates to a new server. Or it could never even get started; shot down by people right here on the forums. But I think that this is a step in the right direction. Each crewmember starts with a tangible goal: This mode wouldn't be for dicking around. But it sounds like more fun that you can have in a round right now, so I support this chance 100%.
tl;dr: Most of this is directed at Exadv1/other people working with this project, but feel free to read this massive post and dissect it/provide feedback. Basically this should be a new mode and not put into "mixed," there should be no antagonists, and it should be run like G5/dave (separate from G3 and G4). And a ton of specific stuff that you can read above.
I really like all of the ideas you just gave out, but I don't imagine many others do (as seen above). I think this would best be done if Goonstation ran another server with this new PvE mode and G3 and G4 running the regular "secret/mixed" PvP rotation.
This would be a great way to bring a third server back if we have the hardware for it, because this is a pretty big and bold new step for SS13 as far as having actual modes. Let's face it: The modes in SS13 don't vary a whole lot or affect people a whole lot. You might have a changeling running around killing people, or a vampire, or a traitor; but in the end it's just another player killing people for one reason or another.
I'm assuming this is a new "mode" that would be made, that would run on a separate server as the "mixed" mode.
About job preference. I fully support giving better* players preference over worse** players in selecting jobs, as long as there's still a chance at the worse** player being selected. Give the better* player a 10-15% increase in the likelihood of being selected, maybe.
* Player with more "points" or "experience" at the job
** Player with less "points" or "experience" at the job
About away missions. I'm going to be totally honest: It sounds fucking badass. A group of 4-5 guys in red suits being all tactical trying to navigate their way through an abandoned station or dangerous planet in search of an ancient artifact that would bolster the Science Team's efforts back at the main station? Count me in. The most fun I've ever had in SS13 was clearing out an old station with a few other guys, fighting off zombies with our eguns and AKs. It's great.
About general mode mechanics. First off: No antagonists. The whole point is for the crew to work together, and that's not going to happen if they're nervous that their coworker is going to bash their head in when they turn around. Plain and simple. Second: A whole new station layout might be needed. One that's economic and efficient; one that players will have a chance to survive in.
About the mode. It was mentioned above that "all this for a better meteor mode is a lot of work for little payoff." I interpreted this as not being a "meteor mode, but rather a whole new mode where a meteor shower hits, or a radiation wave, or an old station is on a collision course, or there's solar flares going on, or we're approaching a black hole, or a Gamma Ray Burst is coming right for us and if we don't dodge right the fuck now we're all dead. You see the point. It's like a "disaster" mode except there's a variation of disasters that can happen, and as Exadv1 said above they would happen more frequently as the round progresses. So every single round the meteor shield would be used, and every single round people might have to hide in radiation-sheltered areas to survive.
About people's reaction to such a big change. Like I said above, the reaction isn't going to be all that good. Many people who play SS13 just aren't appealed by the "work together, succeed together, die together" mentality this new mode would be bringing. But that's not to say this new mode doesn't appeal to anyone, not at all! This sounds and feels like a big step in the right direction for SS13 as a whole, to me at least. I think that the best way to do this, and I cannot stress this enough, is to bring back G5/dave running this new mode 24/7. We will lose players if we get rid of classic SS13 and replace it with this newfangled stuff, and chances are we won't ever get them back. This new mode would make SS13 appeal to a much wider audience, one that wants to play a more traditional game mode (that's just what it feels like to me, a game mode more in tune with what most games would have) instead of paranoia in space all the time. Personally I like it and I wouldn't be surprised if there's a few other people out there like me, but I think I'm in the minority here.
About cross-round progression. As long as the items are cosmetic and don't effect gameplay any more than "look that guy's jumpsuit has a big gold medal on it" then fine. But a special wrench for engineers or a new module for cyborgs or "unlocking" new jobs is a bad fit for SS13, I think. It's already hard to "pick up and play" as it is, and locking people to a few jobs or slower wall-building times or only a few chemicals only serves to increase the barrier to entry of the game. The idea of unlocking new disasters or away missions or other stuff based on how many "points" a few players have is a good one, because it adds a little "end-game" play for people who play a ton. It shouldn't be "one player has 1,000,000 points bring in the alien strike team," it should be more like "30% of this server has 1,000,000 points, so they can probably handle an alien strike team." This means that one experienced player can't completely screw over all the newbies in the server, and that the advanced challenges will only come to crews who can probably handle it.
About the proposed points system. I support it. It would be great. But usually when something like this is brought up nothing is ever done because there's just so much stuff to do in SS13. Should an engineer get points for building a lattice and a floor and adding the tile? What if he removes a tile right after to farm points? What if he has someone remove the tile for him and he sits there "boosting" for the whole round? You see the point. However, I think with this new PvE mode most of these problems are avoided. Security teams get Security Points for killing hostile mobs, completing away missions, and nabbing an artifact. Science teams get Science Points for research, development, and distribution/deployment of new technologies. Mining teams get Mining Points for how much ore they gather, and how rare/valuable that ore was. Engineering teams get Engineering Points for how much damage caused by meteors/black hole/other round-based phenomena they fix, and how many meteors were deflected, etc. The difference is, now that round has an actual goal for every department, you can very easily dish out the points to players for simply doing their jobs. Engineers can't boost because the damage they fix has to be caused by a round-based thing, and other jobs have very clear goals to fulfill to gain their points. I think you, sir, may have finally found out how to grade a player's performance in a round.
About round-ending criteria. I don't think it's really all that necessary to force a round to end. The round should end when some percentage of the crew is dead from the different disasters, or a percentage of the station is non-functioning. This means that a scientist can keep doing science until the bitter end, or a few really dedicated engineers might actually be able to pull the station out from the brink of failure. It also means that when a round ends, it ends in a fun way: With the station destroyed/overrun.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Now that my dissemination of the finer points is done (what a long post, damn), some general talk. This is going to be a huge project, I hope you know. I know you're good at BYOND shit and that we have some similarly-skilled people here, but this is still a big undertaking. But it could change the face of SS13 forever, so there's a bright side to all the work.
Again, I cannot stress enough that I think this should be run on a third server to prevent playersfrom migrating to other servers en masse. I would also like to re-iterate that I think this mode would work best without player antagonists, for a host of different reasons.
This could be SS13's "big break." Or it could fail, crash, and burn miserably as our server population migrates to a new server. Or it could never even get started; shot down by people right here on the forums. But I think that this is a step in the right direction. Each crewmember starts with a tangible goal: This mode wouldn't be for dicking around. But it sounds like more fun that you can have in a round right now, so I support this chance 100%.
tl;dr: Most of this is directed at Exadv1/other people working with this project, but feel free to read this massive post and dissect it/provide feedback. Basically this should be a new mode and not put into "mixed," there should be no antagonists, and it should be run like G5/dave (separate from G3 and G4). And a ton of specific stuff that you can read above.