Make cluwne incurable

[Vitatroll]

In my case, 'empathy' meant less 'I care about this person' and more 'I don't want this person to be mad at me'. I don't buy most people actually caring. I'd sooner believe in the tooth fairy.


I run a hard face, but competent acting cluwnes got armed so they could attempt "cluwne's revenge" and if there was a roboticist they were usually very happy.

Ah well, I'm just a guy that doesn't play anymore. I'll just be the drunk naked guy in the bar talking about... Oh shit, so that's how it is, Bill.

[Wisecrack34]

Vitatroll is shitty bill confirmed

[OMJ]

I've always said the game's community is caught in a struggle between whether the game should be a game with objectives to try and complete or a sandbox with some code of conduct and suggestions sprinkled in. Or at least I thought I have. Have I actually ever said this on record?

This thread and the original decision to make it from uncurable to curable is a natural consequence of this struggle. The "game" side of this is that the Wizard is a round's primary antagonist and crew objective and him killing or turning people into cluwnes and such should have a strong and impactful consequence, at the "enemy" player's expense, in order to further his goals and create fun in the round through conflict. The "sandbox" side of this is basically "The wizard wants to do what he wants to do" and "The player wants to do what he wants to do" and the might not necessarily be opposed to eachother, so something the wizard does to them should be reversible so the other player can recover and continue what they want to do.

In the "game" side of culture, empathy is usually discard because you have an objective: stop the damn wizard. If he makes a cluwne you either ignore it and let someone else deal with it, loot the stuff from it's now useless form, and if the wizard is gone usually clobber it or shoot the damn idiot thing to death so it stops making noise and getting in the way, at least with it dead it can get dragged off and cloned into something useful.

In the "sandbox" side of culture, it's typically pushed that yeah, everyone else is a player like you, how would they feel? Players here are typically seeking fun from some self-driven activity or other bit rather than the round conflict. These can vary in scope and responsiveness to outside events, like a wizard cluwning someone nearby. Some botany nerd trying to create weed with a potency in the exponents probably wouldn't even react much to someone getting cluwned outside his window, much less go out and saw it to bits. He's busy gardening. Maybe if the cluwne came in and started honking and messing with his plants he'd exercise the "valid" status on the cluwne but unless roused usually these types interact little with the round conflict.

I'd say that old goon where cluwnes were beaten to death on first sight the culture was more 85% game/15% sandbox, antagonists were clearly annouced when found, security was common enough and would mobilize to fight them and the crew would be on the lookout with their paranoia ready to get a chance to fight someone or something while still goofing around during the slow periods/buildup.

Current culture since I last played I'd say was more 40% game/60% sandbox. It has been a few months as per usual with me so I don't know if it's shifted again, but most players seemed to play each round the same, with no regard to the station conflict usually unless it directly impacted them as a threat nearby or a threat to end the round prematurely. I personally think cracks start to show when higher concentrations treat the game in the more "sandbox" style, as many tasks on the station can be useless to learn/master as a non-antagonist. Pretty much any use of bombs save for an extremely late blob round or blowing yourself up in the asteroid field as a non-antag is going to get a ban, most useful chemicals are very easy and basic to make, while a majority of them murder the hell out of people, getting big numbers on the engine used to be more of this before the PTL, but even then it can run the stations even when running poorly and the main draw of hellburning it besides big numbers was hotwiring it and getting a lot of power in it for lethal doors/apcs/power gloves and ambient superheated air. I think botany got worse for this actually after updates let fruits be containers, so now botanists got exploding tomatos and bananabombs and such other nasties. Literally nothing good comes out of pathology.

tl;dr: Game is shifting away from a culture that treats it as a game with an objective and more like a bunch of individuals in a sandbox, many of the mechanics and activities end up ultimately useless if you're not using/playing it as a "game", empathy ensues, local scientist discovers QGP, has nothing to blow up but himself unless someone tries to kill him.

I'd say it's even more sandboxy than that! I don't know if that's a bad thing though. There's definitely too /much/ empathy in game now because of this. It's cool that people are nice but I've been bitched at multiple times as a ling by people who I ate when I could've just ate genetics monkeys to get 10 husks. Like what the fuck?

As for the cluwne- why is it curable? Fuck that. I've never once murdered a cluwne (or been murdered as one by the crew....and I've been cluwned a lot lol) so I feel like arguing it's validity is useless because even when the culture was more so geared towards Game cluwnes weren't really killed from what I've seen but it definitely should be WAY more debilitating.

[Sov]

Holding grudges over rounds isn’t allowed nor is it the traitors job to entertain the crew

If you’re a traitor you are completely in your right to kill anyone you want, gib their body, and delete their clone records.

Killing cluwnes is not like killing monkey players. You can kill me as a cluwne and you should, because I’d kill you too. I won’t be mad, it’s expected. I’ll just respawn as a ghost drone and go around fixing things. There are more activities for dead players than ever, so really I’d expect guilt over murder to be at a low point

[Flaborized]

Anyone who gets upset at you for killing them when they are a cluwne right now has a sort of reasonable point. It's trivial to un-cluwne someone so like, why would you even bother with murder when you could get them un-cluwned very quickly? I'm not advocating metagrudging or people getting upset because they were a cluwne and got murdered, it's just that it's easy to see why they think it's dumb to do right now.

Cluwnes getting murdered for existing is a big joke. Everyone knows that you can murder them assuming they read the first rule because the very first rule in the list of Goonstation rules includes the word "Cluwne" twice, both in reference to how the rules about grief does not apply to them. Killing a cluwne isn't about ruining someone else's fun or griefing other people for the sake of it, it's about perpetuating the joke that murdering cluwnes is funny so that when cluwnes actually avoid getting murdered through sheer luck it's an exciting occurrence. You never see angry cluwne mobs running to bash in the wizard who cursed them because getting cluwned means that you'll be slightly clumsy for the rest of the round at worst. Wizards rarely bring the spell because it lacks the powerful effect that it should, they could always just take (whatever murder spells) and just kill everyone, why even bother with cluwne if it's not even permanent? Gibbing people into skeletons is a permanent consequence and I see wizards take that much more often than cluwne.

It's a fun spell. Getting cluwned is funny but only if the joke of cluwnes being widely hated by everyone is perpetuated and if getting cluwned isn't just a "until I get this really common medical chem" thing. The joke that cluwnes are so terrible that you can just murder them on sight is so ingrained into Goon that it's literally mentioned in the very first rule and I think it's funny enough to continue to act on that. What's even the point of allowing us to kill cluwnes if it's so easy to fix that getting cluwned is hardly a setback?

Maybe my sense of humor is just really bad, but I think cluwnes should be what we think of cluwnes as rather than something for medical to treat with a trivial autoinjector. They're supposed to be twitching, honking nightmare sadclowns that everyone wants to kill because their mere existence is an insult to the natural spaceworld.

[Frank_Stein]

Idea: Make it so the cluwne can cure themselves, but only by giving their curse to someone else. Killing a cluwne becomes a matter of self defense

[Zamujasa]

Curing cluwnes should be possible but involve murdering them and then cloning them.

[KikiMofo]

I agree to make it incurable. The only cure for a cluwne should be DEATH.

[somepotato]

if cluwnes can be cured with spaceacillin, then that's unintended; I made them fully curable via chaplains only (the bible whacking should be a relatively low chance and they should still accrue brain damage if it fails), and half curable with just a reagent. I'm against making them incurable entirely, but am up for making it harder to do so (lest we get shocking grasp 1.0 again)

[Technature]

Spaceacillin makes you able to communicate again and forces the cursed clothing off of you, and it kills the noises cluwnes make, but you're forever stuck with the clumsiness all cluwnes have.

It's not ideal in comparison to the chaplain but it's possible.

[somepotato]

Spaceacillin makes you able to communicate again and forces the cursed clothing off of you, and it kills the noises cluwnes make, but you're forever stuck with the clumsiness all cluwnes have.

It's not ideal in comparison to the chaplain but it's possible.

that's not supposed to happen

[Technature]

Sounds like we found a ""Feature""!

("Feature" implies a bug is an unintentional effect due to a programming error that is welcomed by the consumers who enjoy the product.)

(""Feature"" implies someone thinks a bug is a "Feature" but is actually full of shit.)

Anywho, I'll make a quick bug report then.

[Berrik]

Cluwnes should gib into a bunch of cluwnespiders after a set amount of time.

[Flaborized]

if cluwnes can be cured with spaceacillin, then that's unintended; I made them fully curable via chaplains only (the bible whacking should be a relatively low chance and they should still accrue brain damage if it fails), and half curable with just a reagent. I'm against making them incurable entirely, but am up for making it harder to do so (lest we get shocking grasp 1.0 again)

If making it only curable through death makes it shocking grasp 1.0 doesn't that mean polymorph is that? Because polymorph ranges from "slightly debilitating but still funny" to "less interactive than a ghost critter" depending on what you randomly get when hit by it and the only way to cure it is to kill the polymorph and then cut their brain out. It's got a longer cooldown but the effects are far, far stronger than cluwne, especially considering two of the polymorphs don't have any limbs at all.