Vocal translator, but you can breathe with it.

[Kotlol]

As for mime, c'mon, really? You literally play mime not to talk. Zero people play monkeys to have to juggle with PDA beeps in vacuum.

I don't play a non deaf players so I can use the radio to report things, but when I play security and a deaf player joins security... I am forced to use the PDA to reach them. Now I am being punished for a player who chose not to have radio chatter....
Before you say.. but they can't hear you so what?

Well if they are my other only security in a small shift and I am being stunned, I can't PDA em, thus I can only send a radio chatter and hope anyone hears it before I am silenced...

Of course very situational.

Also I am 100% fine if I as a roach player may have to resort to vocal translators too. Though I wish i would spawn with one then cause I got the mutation from the start... but eh.. 
After all I chose this life. I am no hypocrit after all.

Eitherway... some design choices are there to inconvience and if you chose it.. you gotta live with it.

[Mouse]

The assertion that you're not supposed to want to play a playable playerrace is silly. They exist to play. A role lets you play them. This is a game where the point is to have fun. Why would you add something to not be fun? If we ascribed to that thought process, Clown would still be a punishment role, not the people we know, love and want to strangle.

Ah yes, clowns, the role that famously can use stun weapons, wear internals, perform self-surgery, and walk without falling over.

[Love]

Eitherway... some design choices are there to inconvience and if you chose it.. you gotta live with it.

By that logic, we should rollback the change that allows mutantraces with speech changes to use the Lawbringer.

Nothing can be changed, because it was deemed to be properly annoying, and that must be preserved forevermore. Because deal with it, you chose to be that mutantrace.

I don't get the logic.

It can be changed. Nothing prevents it. People who play the race don't like it because it gets in the way of playing.
There is nothing sacred about it. Yet every time monkey players ask for it, which grows ever more common as more and more people main monkey characters, at least on RP, they just get a chorus of non-monkey players chiming in with:
SUFFER

And it just gets left there until it falls off the page for the next time people ask for it, to get told 'you deserve to not enjoy playing a monke'.

We'll just be back here again in a few months. And history will repeat.

Ah yes, clowns, the role that famously can use stun weapons, wear internals, perform self-surgery, and walk without falling over.

I mean, I could do with less falling every two steps. Maybe every four instead.

The rest, however, is peak clown comedy.
If you don't accidentally handcuff yourself playing clownsec, you are doing something wrong.




One day I will get the quote system to function. But today is not that day.

[Kotlol]

One day I will get the quote system to function. But today is not that day.

Just use reply and delete everything.

Speaking of wich, I said before that mutantraces were fine to be inconvienced too and I would accept that.

BUUUUTTT.... let's get back on track why this QoL thing is being pushed back despite it being easy to implement.
And what needs to change to get it persay.

1: Races like Pugs are ment to be a super hard mode, similiarly Monkeys are not able to be picked from the start (see 3 for more info)

2: Blindness, nearsightness and deafness prevent certain tools to be used by these players (goggles, radio headset)
Especially deafness where it forces a NON DEAF PLAYER to contact someone with their PDA who is DEAF cause they can't talk on the radio with them. (So now I a non deaf player have to keep grabbing my PDA to say to them: "Suspect is in South Maintance")

3: Being a monkey is suppose to be an inconvience. We at Goon changed the fact that sentient monkeys are human as well as mutantraces.
But originally (and in other servers) being a monkey is being a non human, but with the side effect of being able to crawl and jump tables.

4: In the past, people turned monkey and start causing issues cause they can mail themselves and flip over tables, infact it is still a minor problem these days with some monkey players. However it is increasingly rare.

5: Some people wanna play birds or frogs or cats all shift (mostly science nerds) but they can talk freely but are inconvienced by not being able to carry much.
They CHOSE the critter life similiarly as the monkeys CHOSE their monkey life. I seen bird players litterly setup a bird shop. And again.. sentient critters are considered human too.... but again an example of: "They don't have QoL and they chose it" despite it being secret chems...

6: You can also chose to have no limbs or no legs at the start of a shift. They are wheelchair bound all shift cause you can't give em legs. Another "choice" for a harder mode.

7: Frogperson and Squidpeople aren't a selectable race either, but if they come onto the station, GUARDBUDDIES WILL ASSAULT EM!
They fall under same mutation problem as Monkeys, cept monkeys are unlocked from the start at genetics.

So what needs to change for most of the community to allow the monkeys to have a QoL like this?
A: Have a mutantrace for monkeys, but make it different from the "primal" mutation. So they don't have the annoying mailing themselves aspect or table flipping. (and maybe other pluses and minuses, like having a vocal translator from the start that can be put into masks)
B: Remove either table flipping or mailing themselves from Monkeys.
C: Remove the test subject job all together as it's a job only for a monkey...or change it so it can be anything at random (like ambassador)

So simply put, make monkeys be seen as a normal race to play but remove some of the things that makes them griefy or annoying or make a new race out of it.
But as we stand now... Monkeys are suppose to be "An option you don't want"
Similiarly how you "don't want" to be turned into a bird, cat, frog, squid person or frog person.

Until the design philosophy around that is changed by the whole community, people will push back.
If the monkey is less annoying, people won't care, but they don't want to give an inch of QoL to monkey players , because it might entice others to pick them and start being a nuisance.

[Mouse]

Hi, person who plays Test Subject literally every time I see it here.

Monkeys not talking is fine.  Pointing and screaming and using custom emotes is way more fun anyways.

[kyle2143]

Monkey's inability to speak English is a core design choice behind monkeys. The vocal translator sorta negated that and buffing the translator would basically remove any of the communication hindrances that are intrinsic to monkeys.

That said, the vocal translator was added because of a need; because monkeys sending PDA messages and writing on papers to communicate was not very engaging and most people just ignored them because those were very easy things to ignore.

My suggestion:
- Let monkey's be understood by humans if they speak a single word or phrase under, let's say, 10 characters. Interspaced with "Ook"s, "ah"s, and other monkey onomotopoeia.
- Add something that prevents monkeys from spamming those short words too fast, like a 0.5-1 second delay between each time their talk will be translated to English.
- Remove the vocal translator, or have the vocal translator increase the amount of characters that monkeys can translate to english. Like to 15 or 20 characters.

[Love]

One day I will get the quote system to function. But today is not that day.

Just use reply and delete everything.

I can't get rid of the nested text boxes, like above!
They will not delete.

One day I'll have to sit down and try to get Goon forums to actually properly load on Firefox, my primary browser, and maybe I won't have these issues. But I can only assume my ten million adblocking and security tools is causing the forums to never load properly on it.

Anyway!

I suspect we will never agree. Since I seem to be in the minority of thinking annoying QoL hindrance is a poor thing to balance mechanical advantages like mailing and tableflipping. While others seem to find it perfectly valid.

I'm likewise seemingly at odds with people in that I want clowns and mimes to be able to use both their masks and internals simultaneously. Because having to take off part of your core identity in order to cross a room with a hole in it is irritating. But is likewise not something that has any mechanical effect besides lowering the morale of the player. Which I am generally fundamentally against in any game, Goon or not.

For my part, I'll bail on the topic. It's a pointless hill to die on, since it never changes, and it's a minor issue about player engagement, and not something gamebreaking. Besides, I hate arguing online. It makes me all jittery and feel horrible, even when the argument is friendly enough.

I'll leave it to the next group who will remake this thread next business quarter.

[Mouse]

Monkey's inability to speak English is a core design choice behind monkeys. The vocal translator sorta negated that and buffing the translator would basically remove any of the communication hindrances that are intrinsic to monkeys.

That said, the vocal translator was added because of a need; because monkeys sending PDA messages and writing on papers to communicate was not very engaging and most people just ignored them because those were very easy things to ignore.

My suggestion:
- Let monkey's be understood by humans if they speak a single word or phrase under, let's say, 10 characters. Interspaced with "Ook"s, "ah"s, and other monkey onomotopoeia.
- Add something that prevents monkeys from spamming those short words too fast, like a 0.5-1 second delay between each time their talk will be translated to English.
- Remove the vocal translator, or have the vocal translator increase the amount of characters that monkeys can translate to english. Like to 15 or 20 characters.

Dumb idea: add some sort of *sign command to let them communicate in sign language.  Monkeys, borgs, people with the deaf trait, and uh... mimes? would understand it naturally, but other people would need an interpreter or some sort.

Or just slightly loosen the rules on using custom emotes to say things for monkeys and let the other players decide whether or not they understand sign language.

Or move the vocal translator to the gloves slot and prevent them from speaking unless they have both hands existing and empty.  Like that one movie.

edit: a monkey that can communicate fine with anyone near them but can only chimper over the radio sounds funny to me

[DioChasek]

So last night we were doing some some medical crimes on MOPSY lopping off his head reattaching his head to a monkey, you know standard fare. When all of a sudden it dawned on us to try and do something silly what if we impanted the vocal translator into his chest surely that would allow him to talk.

While that portion of the experiment failed it did make all parties involved go why can't we surgically implant a vocal translator to solve the monkey speak issue, or barring that a specialized rare monkey speak translator either from debris field, a merchant, or ugh a hacked manufacturer?

[Glamurio]

Hi, I'd love to chime in from the perspective of an RP player.

Like many people have rightfully pointed out, people absolutely "want to be a monkey", including myself. Being a monkey isn't really "hard mode" anymore, I believe it's an antiquated viewpoint. Many people, especially on RP servers, play monkey characters. The way the system works is super scuffed and is clearly begging for a rework, monkey characters have to shuffle over to genetics every round before they can properly start to RP and it's not very user-friendly. A trait is clearly needed.

That being said, vocal translators have their place, I don't think you should detract from the fact that monkeys have a separate speech as it's part of their identity, but what could be improved is the way vocal translators are implemented. There's honestly no downside in flavor by letting monkeys tinker with mask items to implement a vocal translator in a skull mask. As an RP player, this is just something that allows people to express themselves with their character without being forced not to wear a mask item or suffer the even worse consequence of not speaking. If you find tinkering with vocal translators and masks too strange, then there are other avenues, too. What about allowing vocal translators to be carried in a pocket slot, sort of like how headsets function? You still "nerf" them by taking a slot away, but it's not impacting RP at all.

There's also the route of genetics, a rare genetic mutation called "Monkeyspeak" allows you to speak like a monkey, why not have that mutation work both ways and allow monkeys with that mutation to understand human speech? Or alternatively, just add a "Humanspeak" mutation. Either way, one need not take away the fact that monkeys speak differently to make it more fun and engaging for players. There's a variety of ways to improve the monkey experience and it seems like the only genuine arguments against this are out of tradition or past negative experiences; none that may even be relevant anymore today.

[Frank_Stein]

Would love if the Clown could understand Monkey as a job trait. Have them be the interpreter.

[CalliopeSoups]

Chiming in to say this idea is perfect actually.

(Edit, replying to frank.)

[DioChasek]

Would love if the Clown could understand Monkey as a job trait. Have them be the interpreter.

How dare you suggest we give a buff to the clown. I like to be completely miserable and have no purpose.
I would take it a step further and also make him understand things like the martian diplomat as well.

[Cal]

yea thats perfect

[DioChasek]

And just think when half the crew turns monkey and starts tiding the captain can bring in the heavy hitter to negotiate, the clown.