disagreements about some recent balance changes

[millichips]

If you're gonna rehash your other thread here by copy pasting critiques from it, you might as well also copy paste the responses you got instead of pretending you were ignored:

- meth isnt spliceable with food now cause ipecac makes you puke (and also its gn16 instead of gn3). "shrug" says tonedeaf anonymous 1.

As for my "tone deaf response" to the meth thing, you also conveniently ignored that I gave you an alternate solution to your problem:



puking up stomach contents doesn't affect blunts.

Also, you're giving me whiplash, here:

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Also, if you're gonna quote me several times in one thread, You prolly should have made an admin complaint instead of dragging this through general discussion. Real class act, that.

1- there is already histamine in omega weed, omega weed takes 19 minutes to obtain on its own, and i don't even know which secret recipe contains histamine, its obviously not in the chemicals list, nor have i seen anyone farming or growing quivering contusine at all since the change.

quivering contusine was a poison plant, curare was a poison, we got a poison removed, low genome hotboxes lost a poison, a poison is gone, there is no poison, histamine is not a poison. when someone tried to re-add a different less lethal poison the pr got outright rejected with no further explanation.

2- again, lighting a cig and putting it on a crit patient's pocket is a very difficult method of distribution compared to just feeding them, i can see this working if it was solely for the stimulants, but that still doesn't let you carry 50 of them in a bag that is ready to use by left clicking the bag and then left clicking the person.

3- i appreciate that you're working in this, i really do, i'm just not in very much agreement with what has been done, but i'm very happy that its being worked on and that you're open to listen for critique.

4- this is not an admin complaint i love you wtf, i do get really pissed at the analogues of "just dont play botanist anymore" replies though, taking that from someone who's developing the department's features is very disheartening, but i'll just assume you didn't mean any harm and i'll continue trying.

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That thread here is a big OOF then.

O O F,...

peanut gallery is that way pal ->

[UrsulaMejor]

I understand that you don't agree with my responses to the feedback you provided, and I'm not interested in rehashing that conversation for you again at this time.

My primary point is that this thread was designed in such a way as to portray me as as "tone deaf", and leaves out the responses, alternative strategies, and elaborations you received.

peanut gallery is that way pal kitty face ->

When you post in general, you are inviting the peanut gallery. If you want a conversation to give feedback to the admin team, without people chiming in, then we have a protected forum for exactly that purpose.

[millichips]

I understand that you don't agree with my responses to the feedback you provided, and I'm not interested in rehashing that conversation for you again at this time.

My primary point is that this thread was designed in such a way as to portray me as as "tone deaf", and leaves out the responses, alternative strategies, and elaborations you received.

that was the tone deaf part. the alternative strategies proposed are inconvenient at best, and i think playing botany from time to time might help give you a new perspective on what exactly are our time limitations and things that can be done, to avoid answers such as "its useful to farm for histamine!" or "burning commol does the same!" which i SHOULD not explain why they are outworldly answers but i have had to. also in the previous thread whenever gnomo addressed the solutions you proposed, there was no further conversation, other posters agreed too even! but then it was just dust under the carpet.

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peanut gallery is that way pal kitty face ->

When you post in general, you are inviting the peanut gallery. If you want a conversation to give feedback to the admin team, without people chiming in, then we have a protected forum for exactly that purpose.

also you're right mb.

[KikiMofo]

I disagree

[UrsulaMejor]

Yea, im taking a break. Yea, it has everything to do with recent changes. Ive been playing goon for about a year, and up until 2021, there was just constant new features, new things, new content. However, since, well, it feels like since the original atmos agent b nerf, was that in march? Nothing new, content wise has been started, and the only thing finished, was podwars. Yea, theres tons of small minor things, but nothing new since chickens. 


[...]

but trying to do things how the old team did stuff when theres a completely new team is just not working. Im not here to complain about the admin team, I think all of you are amazing. However, theres no direction for goonstation, no plan. The old team also had a bit more structure. Wizards, had more say, and were older admins.

[...]

You guys say you're being more transparent then ever, and thats true, but your completely different people then before, the "structure" is gone, and you have the community submitting PR's too.

I love you guys, I do. But, there needs to be a plan, a direction that goons heading.

The fact that you've only been playing a year is the direct cause for why you think these things. As someone who has been here nearly 10 years, let me clarify a few things:

First, there's a reason why they're called dev "cycles"; the nature of life, development, game design, and goonstation is not constant. Goon has always had expansion and contraction cycles. Generally, goon goes through an expansion cycle towards the end of the year, as people get off or start school, start holiday season, etc. In late 2019 there was new stuff being added almost daily in December. 2020 was similar. 2021 will likely also be similar.

Personally, I work in an industry that sees its most work happen in the spring and summer. I'm too busy to add significant things this time of year. Chickens, for example, were started in October and finished by the end of last year. The case is similar for a lot of people in our community.

Also, there's a ton of stuff that's been added that you're neglecting. Just scrolling through the changelog I see: hairbows, several new space prefabs, golden peas plant mutation, mechanics can edit airlock access now, new bar drinks, the ability to eject and share traitor uplink telecrystals, a ton of new chef bakery stuff, new QGP, new character faces, a ton of monkey clothing items, player-constructable vending machines, 5 MORE bar drinks... You can call them "minor things", but that's only the changes from the last month, and the game you see today is built up on these minor things. Nearly 20 whole years of them. That's 240 months.

Oh, and let's not forget the new Human sprite, which represented several hundred hours of collective work??? That happened only recently! That was HUGE.

Second, the Goonstation team is always changing. This isn't a matter of something that's happened since open source; as people burn out, the admin team cycles. As people rediscover the game, admins from ye olden days sometimes cycle back in. This is how teams work. It's normal.

As far as the wizards go, they didn't represent any more structure for the development team. They didn't make any those sorts of decisions, and the devs operate mostly the same now as they did back then; the only difference is now players can see it.

Also, most of the team is still the same team as before. Just scrolling through the list of active admins, over half of them have been here since before 2018 at least. Many of them are names I recognize from when I first started back in 2011.


Third, admins can't merge changes. Only developers can. (They're the pink names on discord)

Finally, goon has never had a plan. Not once. not ever. You get used to it; you really do. Trust me.

[Chayot]

I dunno much about botany--a lot of NERFS/balances have been made in SEC, as well as additions which may be considered minor or "reverted."
Overall I'm quite happy with it, idc if it's old stuff or whatever. It feels good, I like it, I can only say that things have gotten better and not worse.

I don't want to drone on about it too long, I think there have been a lot of additions made to the game.
Not entire game-modes or antagonists, but game-changing balances like items around the station being more effective as weapons, Stamina rework being added.
All of that felt really good. It still feels great knowing I have to conserve my stamina when fighting against or using weapons I may go down.

I don't think admins haven't been listening to players.
As I've seen it, they listen and take feedback into consideration, but, rightfully so, shouldn't be swayed by the opinion of a few players in disagreement.
As I see it, they make things harder to achieve or different. You should relish and enjoy taking your knowledge to new heights. Keep at it and get better.

It was talked about in another thread, regarding the Admin/Dev ability to merge things without "polling" the community.
They have earned that ability by merit of hard work, good behavior and trustworthiness.
I would only say that we continue to entrust them with what they're owed, as befits their position.

I'm not certain if this is merely "popcorn posting"...I'm not here to merely jeer or find entertainment.
I think this was a little mean overall, calling certain members of the team "tone-deaf" or implying they're dismissive because they don't do what you want them to.
They'd have probably worked toward finding a better balance, had you simply spoken to them on it more.

And that whole "go play chemistry" bit seems to have been directed playfully, at a fellow DEV. Not at you.
And yet here, you're trying to portray it as having been personally directed at you for merely opinionating yourself on the changes.
But I'm certain you knew that when you made this.

[Souricelle]

Honestly OP your tone sucks so it makes me automatically inclined to disagree with you.

edit: also didn't you just make this thread like 2 weeks ago? why do it again?

[Gannets]

I don't intend to dogpile and I stand behind everything Emily has said here fully.
But as a former wizard and fellow member of the "been here nearly a decade" club, I wanted to confirm that there has never been any overarching direction or plan for the game and no executive control over what commits can or can't be merged.
Goonstation is the result of every passion project built with the combined effort of every person we've trusted with unrestricted repo access. Our success is measured in decades not months and judging us on such a short time scale feels dishonest.

[Wire]

if your concern is that the lack of a wizard structure contributes to a lack of game direction then i can assuage you by saying that as the technically highest "ranking" member of staff, i have provided precisely zero game direction and will continue not to

death 2 wizards

[Ikea]

Im not saying this change in particular needs to be reverted, but when engineering has had a major change, with lots of flaws after, and those don't get fixed, and its been.. 4? 5? months?.. thats not good.

Okay this comment pisses me the fuck off. The amount of experimentation and trying new things recently is insane. Not only that, but the crystals themselves just underwent a massive buff with a lot of QoL. Engineering previously was pretty damn boring, want to know how to get a pretty damn nice hellburn that can instagib people? Literally just set the computer to 66/33, open up the combustion chamber, and pop holes under canisters. All the while the rest of the station succumbs to hellfire. Thats it, im sorry but thats a boring as hell way to get millions of credits reliably. You want to know what happened yesterday, someone got over a pw of power. They made over a million total. Guess what, they didnt even fucking use the crystals. I could write paragraphs describing the various pipeburns techiques that allow you to perform these feats but to keep it short, theres a lot. 

Not only fucking that, but as someone who plays a fair bit of engineering, the amount of love engineering has got recently is insane. Singulo size change, red oxygen grenades which are such a fucking godsend for repairs, or hell, back to the teg, blowers are such an amazing qol if you want to focus on repairs and not babysit a charburn for your whole shift. So uhh yeah this is rambly and pretty aggressive but this just annoys me, especially after I and many others have spent many many hours coding new features.

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I like this take of “botany nerfs but chem????”, especially considering the fact that chem has gone through massive nerfs. I also like the often sister take of “acid got nerfed bad!!!” While acid was easily one of the strongest tools chem had, being able to kill people by tossing at most 4 pitchers at them and at least 2. It just seems odd to complain about chem not getting nerfed (which it has a lot, nitro and aerosol were two massive changes for example) and not only that but also complain about nerfs to chem.

[Frank_Stein]

I disagree

[millichips]

Honestly OP your tone sucks so it makes me automatically inclined to disagree with you.

edit: also didn't you just make this thread like 2 weeks ago? why do it again?

fair i guess

also yes, because it got ignored, and if you dont get listened to just speak louder.

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I like this take of “botany nerfs but chem????”, especially considering the fact that chem has gone through massive nerfs. I also like the often sister take of “acid got nerfed bad!!!” While acid was easily one of the strongest tools chem had, being able to kill people by tossing at most 4 pitchers at them and at least 2. It just seems odd to complain about chem not getting nerfed (which it has a lot, nitro and aerosol were two massive changes for example) and not only that but also complain about nerfs to chem.

agree with the acid part, maybe we need some other new mechanic to fight wizards.

also what the fuck are you trying to say with the rest of this message, its a huge non-argument to what my original post's points are.

[UrsulaMejor]

You weren't ignored. Hours of conversation happened on the forums and on the discord. Then, people lost interest in the conversation and stopped replying. That's why I chastised you earlier about cutting off the responses you got in the OP; this thread, as it stands, pushes the incredibly weak narrative that you were ignored, when you demonstrably weren't. It's not a good look.

[millichips]

You weren't ignored. Hours of conversation happened on the forums and on the discord. Then, people lost interest in the conversation and stopped replying. That's why I chastised you earlier about cutting off the responses you got in the OP; this thread, as it stands, pushes the incredibly weak narrative that you were ignored, when you demonstrably weren't. It's not a good look.

great! then don't stop replying this time please!

is anything going to be done about any of our ... disagreements as stated in the OP?

[Cal]

People aren't replying because while it is nice for them to listen to you they aren't obligated to cave in to your demands and readd poisons to botany