Cyborg QoL - and feedback concerning #15759

[yellowlemons]

I know this is reiterating a lot on what others have said, but I agree that silicons shouldn't have these all removed. The features could be cherry-picked and re-added to some degree. At the very least silicons should retain the ability to use ladders(which they have according to earlier posts) as a portion of their engineering modules on Oshan requires them.
Removing items from boxes is just a nice thing to have, it hardly impacts how effective or reliant they are on humans but removing it does add an amount of arbitrary tediousness both for the silicon and whoever they're asking/is asking them to get said item.

Functionally silicons are already incredibly different in how they play and feel, retaining some of these features, even if they were unintended to begin with, isn't going to change that.

[jan.antilles]

Cherry-picking and readding features that developers want cyborgs to have has always been intended since the bug was fixed.

I understand it being frustrating to not be able to do something that you had previously been able to do, but asking for help in a multiplayer game is not "humiliating." Humans ask silicons for help all the time, including the infamous "AI DOOR," and there's nothing humiliating about it.

Need a wrench? Print one from the fabricator instead of getting a toolbox. Someone needs something in a medkit? Drag the medkit to them. You need clothing out of a box? Ask for help, literally anyone can help you with this, and I for one would love the opportunity to help a silicon. It gives me the opportunity to roleplay with someone who is usually just rolling away at lightspeed unless I need to be silently automendered and beeped at.

Personally I think that cyborgs as they have been up to this point are way too self-sufficient, and that interacting more with humans so that both humans AND silicons can help one another fill in for their respective weaknesses is something that makes this multiplayer roleplaying game better.

[durin]

Cherry-picking and readding features that developers want cyborgs to have has always been intended since the bug was fixed.

I understand it being frustrating to not be able to do something that you had previously been able to do, but asking for help in a multiplayer game is not "humiliating." Humans ask silicons for help all the time, including the infamous "AI DOOR," and there's nothing humiliating about it.

Need a wrench? Print one from the fabricator instead of getting a toolbox. Someone needs something in a medkit? Drag the medkit to them. You need clothing out of a box? Ask for help, literally anyone can help you with this, and I for one would love the opportunity to help a silicon. It gives me the opportunity to roleplay with someone who is usually just rolling away at lightspeed unless I need to be silently automendered and beeped at.

Personally I think that cyborgs as they have been up to this point are way too self-sufficient, and that interacting more with humans so that both humans AND silicons can help one another fill in for their respective weaknesses is something that makes this multiplayer roleplaying game better.

Let's talk about 'AI DOOR'.

That's often used for when a crewmember needs access to a part of the station they need to get to for a small reason, and have to wait, on an average, from 5 seconds up to even two minutes, depending on how busy the AI is. It's not a centerpiece of how humans interact with a station and the objects in it, even if it's probably the thing people tell AIs the most.

Getting something from a box is something that happens with a lot more frequency than a crewmember having to enter a place they don't have clearance for. The only way I could fairly compare the two is by saying the hypothetical crewmember doesn't have access to most hallway airlocks, the ones we don't have ID locks for, then telling the crewmember to just 'ask the AI' when they want to cross their way to the bar. And, you know, sometimes, the AI doesn't want to help you, because you asked too much already, or maybe the AI is too busy, so it might take you a minute or two to have the door opened for you. My point is, I don't think these two compare at all.

In my experience, it is humiliating not having cyborg accessibility in the same sense that playing Cogmap 1 with a wheelchair gets you flung off from stairs you *have* to cross every few minutes, depending on how much you have to move from place to place. It's a problem that shouldn't be there, but it is.

You offered some very good workarounds - but they're just workarounds. They don't address the bigger problem, which is QoL, something we're now lacking. 

I honestly have not seen any actual displays self-sufficiency so far. I've been having to ask for help for lots of things at least once a round for a long time now, from helping loading rods to the nuclear engine to basic things such as setting a table.

I wish there was a way I could convey this better. I can't overstate how frustrating it is not being able to do most things now. It's gotten to a point where I can't quite find the words for it.

[Waffleloffle]

In my experience, it is humiliating not having cyborg accessibility in the same sense that playing Cogmap 1 with a wheelchair gets you flung off from stairs you *have* to cross every few minutes, depending on how much you have to move from place to place. It's a problem that shouldn't be there, but it is.

hey, I've sort of just been watching this thread from the sidelines, as I'm not really a silicon main at all and think there are people who are both more informed and more opinionated on the matters brought up than I am. but, uh, this take really rubs me the wrong way. I don't know if I'm just particularly irked at it because I'm physically disabled in real life, or because I play a character in a wheelchair pretty often (and personally don't have much of an issue with stair fling), or if I'm just frustrated at the rhetoric employed, but this strikes me as a very tunnel-visioned assessment.

playing a borg in this game is a choice, for the most part. even if someone's forcibly borged, they can simply eject their brain if they don't want to be one. to frame the minor limitations of being a borg as a shameful flaw, rather than A Part Of Their Design Philosophy. strikes me as either somewhat disingenuous or really misguided. comparing them to a disability is similarly irritating, since you can literally just... not play as a borg. and, hell, plenty of non-silicons on station ask for help for all sorts of minor stuff all the time! I don't see why it's so humiliating to ask someone to unpack some cheese hunks onto a table to help you out. this is a game, and unlike real life, requiring assistance is very much something you have the power to opt into and out of as you see fit. and a game without small problems (that can easily be overcome with the right solutions, mind you) is, well, not really a game, at the end of the day

I don't know, sorry if I'm like going off the rails here. it just kinda irks me when people compare long-standing silicon design philosophy to things like disability, especially since it's really easy to just flavor a human character like an android if you want to play as a robot but think the more intentional clunk that comes with borgs is that embarrassing or w/e

[Paai]

It gives me the opportunity to roleplay with someone who is usually just rolling away at lightspeed unless I need to be silently automendered and beeped at.

I don't think that's really a fair justification for arbitrarily restricting something-- in my experience, forced interaction in that way (something that will need to be done at least once a round, every round, and is arbitrary for one player but physically impossible for the asker) never ever gives good roleplay or interaction.
It's not an exact comparison, but partswaps are silently getting your parts replaced 95% of the time, because it's something that has to happen EVERY. ROUND. and everyone involved in it just wants it overwith so they can get on with their day. Not to say partswaps CAN'T have rp- but most of the time they don't, because again, it has to be done every single round and past a point it gets tiring to draw out any more than neccecary.
(Partswaps are of course restricted to human interaction for very real mechanical and balance reasons, and are human-only for a very good reason-- unlike taking things out of boxes and similar, which have no balance implications whatsoever-- as evidenced by this bug having been in the game for literal years, and not once having been used for a gameplay advantage.)

Experiences with borgs being "automender into speed upgrade and leaving before you can get a word in edgewise" are far from universal, and not really a fair assessment- I play borg almost exclusively, and I spend a good most of my rounds doing nothing but chatting with people already. By that reasoning, most of my interactions with humans are straight up being ignored in the hallway. Should we make humans unable to open doors to FORCE them to talk to borgs? No, because that would be arbitrary, irritating for all players involved, and wouldn't even give good interactions.

I'm entirely in favour of distincting borg gameplay from humans-- and I'd say it already IS pretty distinct! I don't think having the most basic degree of autonomy in interacting with non-electronic devices (read: being able to take items out of boxes, being able to ring service bells) is going to change that. Because, ultimately, either way, they still don't have HAAAANDS, and they still have LAAAWS, and they still have all the other things that make cyborgs unique from humans.

playing a borg in this game is a choice, for the most part.

it's really easy to just flavor a human character like an android if you want to play as a robot but think the more intentional clunk that comes with borgs is that embarrassing or w/e

With this in particular-- I play borg because I like the differences between it and human! I like the laws, I like the no hands, I like the myriad things cyborgs have or don't have, the restrictions it has.

But the REASON I like those things is because in most cases it's a tradeoff! Sure, borgs can't do a lot of things humans can, but humans can't do a lot of things borgs can either. And everything borgs are restricted from doing makes sense, more or less, from a game perspective.
Saying 'Just play human if you don't want to have to ask someone for help opening a fucking egg carton every time you want to cook' is kind of silly to me? It's missing the point.

It feels sort of like a "Don't like us cutting your abilities left and right? L bozo, just play something else." (Even though that something else doesn't have what I liked about the first thing)
Which I know wasn't the intent-- but when I keep hearing it, it starts to feel it. Because in this instance, it's not a matter of intentional clunk - it's a matter of it being arbitrary and frustrating for the player to not be able to do it, and actively takes away from the borg experience for no good reason.
Borgs shouldn't be a downgrade- more of a sidegrade. They're a job like any other.

[LeahTheTech]

The shift click behaviour was a bug, I played cyborg/AI for years fine without ever knowing about it. If you choose to play silicons then you're choosing to play the game in a very different way, almost more like a part of the station than a member of its crew, and central to that identity is the restrictions on how you interact with the world. Borgs aren't a downgrade, but there are supposed to be some things they just can't do as a tradeoff for all the things they can do that humans can't.

[444explorer]

The shift click behaviour was a bug, I played cyborg/AI for years fine without ever knowing about it. If you choose to play silicons then you're choosing to play the game in a very different way, almost more like a part of the station than a member of its crew, and central to that identity is the restrictions on how you interact with the world. Borgs aren't a downgrade, but there are supposed to be some things they just can't do as a tradeoff for all the things they can do that humans can't.

Yeah! The original post does have some good examples of what I think should be implemented, like taking objects out of boxes (see, MDir is busy when chems/medbay and i quickly ask them for the winter coat because its nearby and looks good), quickly moving items about and petting critters (i joke, but, petting stuff is nice) though.

[Mordent]

Playing a cyborg is a fundamentally different experience to playing a human crewmember, comparing their abilities/limitations is comparing apples to grandfather clocks.

Relying on a bug for QoL and getting used to it means it feels like something is being taken away. I do not believe those 'features' were intended to be given to cyborgs in the first place, it being an oversight for a good while doesn't mean it's immune to fixing. The bug was fixed recently, one of the interactions that has been deemed to be important to intentionally include (climbing ladders) has been reintroduced since, please try to refrain from catastrophizing as this being a conscious cyborg nerf or that people don't care about QoL.

That said, I vehemently disagree that literally any of the items listed in the first post are even remotely required to have a fun cyborg round. The limitations of your metal frame meaning you can't do a range of things that would be trivial if you have hands is, to me, a design choice. It defines cyborgs as specialists who are limited in working outside of the narrow scope of their selected role and who, despite having incredible access, immunity to a range of hazards, and are uniquely proficient at many tasks, are not human.

I agree that the interactions between cyborgs and roboticists are incredibly limited in scope, and am working to change that by making human involvement required for some advanced options that will be available to cyborgs as the round progresses. Including in some more bespoke tools that fill what are deemed as functionality gaps is a viable option here, as then if you really want to do some of these things you will be able to.

[Glamurio]

It gives me the opportunity to roleplay with someone who is usually just rolling away at lightspeed unless I need to be silently automendered and beeped at.

I don't think that's really a fair justification for arbitrarily restricting something-- in my experience, forced interaction in that way (something that will need to be done at least once a round, every round, and is arbitrary for one player but physically impossible for the asker) never ever gives good roleplay or interaction.

This is something I'd like to highlight again as well. I have briefly discussed this when arguing in favor for clothing booths being inoperatable by cyborgs (which I think is astronomically silly), to which the response was "just ask a human to do it" as well. It's honestly a really, genuinely bad choice to force people to have to roleplay something routinely. Because they won't, ever.

Is it cute to have to ask someone to help you out with someone, every once a while, through emergent gameplay? Such as an Engineer for repairs, or a Scientist for chems? Absolutely. Is it fun to have to do this every round, oftentimes at the same time, with the same people? No. It gets monotonous really quickly. Oh, hey, here's a borg dragging a box behind them, I wonder if they'll ask me to remove an item from it so they can put on their clothes to actually start their RP properly.

What usually turns into a cool roleplay session with someone, is now reduced to a mindless activity, of where everybody doesn't even bother talking, because people kind of know already what everyone wants. Even the idea behind "You have to roleplay with your roboticist to change parts" has been reduced to "Alright, you know the drill, everybody print your parts and form your piles". And this isn't a knock on the people, mind you, like I said, everyone's trying their best to make due with what you have to put up with.

People will roleplay when they want to, god knows the game has enough opportunities for this. I genuinely don't think we need to arbitrarily increase the amount of forced interaction, especially on minute, low-effort tasks like this. The cyborg design philosophy may have started as "cyborgs need humans for everything", but if a lot of cyborg players, as in, the people actually consistently having to put up with these decisions don't like it, I don't understand why they can't be tossed a bone.

When humans have to deal with a weird, annoying feature, someone makes a new tool/machine or patches it in a way where everyone's glad that we have streamlined it, but for some reason when it comes to cyborgs, this is often treated as gospel to leave it as an inconvenience.

[Soleil]

Chiming in as someone who started out on Goon by primarily playing Cyborg for months before even going fleshy, I spent over a year without knowing about the shift+click bug. Expressing affection without hugs and pats, conveying disapproval and confusion without eyebrows, and finding creative ways to work without hands added to the fun and made for great roleplaying. While most shift+click behaviors are non-essential, discovering the bug was a significant QoL improvement for two specific cases. 

The most notable improvements were with ladders and handling items like eggs and wire boxes. I spent a year having to sit out fun ladder adventures, such as creating secret ladder hideouts on Oshan or following along on adventure zones, but the misery of being unable to restock Robotics with wire from boxes or retrieve eggs from cartons were the most noticeable. In theory it leads to more interaction and roleplay, but it merely became a mundane chore over hundreds of rounds that in the vast majority of cases went like "Hello human please do this" "okay!" "Thank you human" "no problem, anytime". About as significant as asking Roboticists to insert empty modules into the module rewriter. However, I am still against letting Cyborgs use boxes without issues.

With ladder functionality thankfully restored, I'd suggest reintroducing some form of inefficient item box emptying. This could involve violently shaking item boxes to occasionally fling random items everywhere or some other destructive or dumb way of getting contents if you truly have no other alternative. This would add an element of fun and roleplay potential. Picture a chef entering the kitchen to find broken eggs all over the floor or a Roboticist seeing a mess of single strand wires in their workplace -- these moments could lead to interesting interactions while still encouraging Cyborgs to ask for help to quickly empty a box or carefully get things. Additionally Cyborgs can still refuse to touch boxes and bother humans for it, because we have the right to annoy you for mundane tasks and gosh darn if I'm not going to use it.

[Cal]

Oh, hey, here's a borg dragging a box behind them, I wonder if they'll ask me to remove an item from it so they can put on their clothes to actually start their RP properly.

I'm a bit confused and mildly annoyed by the idea that you NEED X or Y clothing to 'start' your RP properly.

You can RP anytime, any clothing. Your desire to HAVE TO HAVE your clothes immediately or whatever does not block you from roleplaying. When I random name a borg I simply play them naked, and I get plenty of roleplay.

What usually turns into a cool roleplay session with someone, is now reduced to a mindless activity, of where everybody doesn't even bother talking, because people kind of know already what everyone wants ... everyone's trying their best to make due with what you have to put up with.

The implication that people are SO, SO single-minded as to not even speak and just print out parts or whatever is vexing, and I feel like you're putting this onto people as it's something that personally bothers you, or a routine you've gotten into rather than it actually be a thing that happens often.

If you can't take a minute and go "Hello roboticist! I'd like X parts replaced with Y!" then you should take a moment and learn a little patience. The round's an hour and a half long, slightly longer with shuttle time!


Cyborgs have these limitations because they have unrestricted access to the station's electronics. That is the upside - You can go anywhere, anytime and only have to follow orders (if even that, oftentimes I've had higher ranking people override my order in order to be 'nice' to the cyborg, and no other reason!)

I'd suggest reintroducing some form of inefficient item box emptying. This could involve violently shaking item boxes to occasionally fling random items everywhere or some other destructive or dumb way of getting contents if you truly have no other alternative. This would add an element of fun and roleplay potential.

I love that idea, it's inefficient but funny.

Additionally Cyborgs can still refuse to touch boxes and bother humans for it, because we have the right to annoy you for mundane tasks and gosh darn if I'm not going to use it.

The spirit of roleplay. Communication. If a borg asked me to do something, i'd chuckle and do it. I'm here to interact and hang out after all.

[Paai]

I'm a bit confused and mildly annoyed by the idea that you NEED X or Y clothing to 'start' your RP properly.

I don't think it's a need as much as it is nice to have? It's not a situation of 'I NEED this', it's one of 'I want this, and it's dumb to gate me from it until I ask someone.'

If you can't take a minute and go "Hello roboticist! I'd like X parts replaced with Y!" then you should take a moment and learn a little patience. The round's an hour and a half long, slightly longer with shuttle time!

Yeah, I wouldn't constitute 'Hello roboticist! I want parts swapped!' as interesting or very detailed interaction- I think the 'NO TALKING AT ALL' was more of an exaggeration, but that's mostly, more or less, what we get. "Hello, please swap my head for a screenhead!" "Okay, thank you!"
Because ultimately, yeah, everyone just wants it overwith, everyone knows the drill, and you can't swap parts when you're typing. So it's an exchange of the most base pleasantries, and then they do the thing, and everyone moves on.

If a borg asked me to do something, i'd chuckle and do it. I'm here to interact and hang out after all.

Yeah! You'd chuckle and do it, and then the borg would run off, and.. great interaction out of that. I'm really glad I had that experience, rather than talking to you for actual reasons or purposes that'll take more than 10 seconds and didn't contextually require me to have an immidiate task that I'll need to run off again to perform once I get what I need out of you.

Human players interact with each other all the time- even those in the same department with no mechanical benifit to it. There's no good justification to HARDWIRE interaction into the mechanics for no reason other than itself, as I'd said earlier. It never gives good RP.

Yeah, borgs have unrestricted access to the station's electronics-- but they also don't have HANDS, or the ability to use clothing booths, or run the nuclear reactor, or the siphon, or perform self-defence, and are instakilled by anyone with a flash, and-- all of those things have mechanical reasonings. Restricting boxes... doesn't, really. It's just frustrating and a waste of people's time.

but if a lot of cyborg players, as in, the people actually consistently having to put up with these decisions don't like it, I don't understand why they can't be tossed a bone.

When humans have to deal with a weird, annoying feature, someone makes a new tool/machine or patches it in a way where everyone's glad that we have streamlined it, but for some reason when it comes to cyborgs, this is often treated as gospel to leave it as an inconvenience.

I think this point from Glamaurio sums it up well.
It may have been a bug, but it's one so convenient, longstanding, and consistently-used by most regular borg players that I don't understand why it can't be reintegrated and codified as a feature, instead of being removed on the grounds of 'bugs should be fixed, borg should need human operators for literally even the most arbitrary things'.

[Cal]

The "convenience" part has been addressed. Ladders.

In my opinion, anything else would be a luxury, including boxes.

Having said that, I'd still be fine with borgs being able to use boxes.

As for the booth, I don't really care.

[Lord_earthfire]

Yeah, I wouldn't constitute 'Hello roboticist! I want parts swapped!' as interesting or very detailed interaction- I think the 'NO TALKING AT ALL' was more of an exaggeration, but that's mostly, more or less, what we get. "Hello, please swap my head for a screenhead!" "Okay, thank you!"
Because ultimately, yeah, everyone just wants it overwith, everyone knows the drill, and you can't swap parts when you're typing. So it's an exchange of the most base pleasantries, and then they do the thing, and everyone moves on.

Sorry, but at that point thats on you for not using the opportunity. Like with surgery or gene scans at the geneticist, the need to walk to another person (who is most likely not a metafriend) is what gives you the opportunity to talk with them.

We were talking about the game mechanics enabling RP, and robotocist or medical doctor treating/modifying other characters is creating opportunities. The mechanics bring you two, the borg and robotocist, in one place and even gives a goddamn reason why you are there.

These interactions are exactly why interdepartmental cooperation is pushed within RP. That is the same reason many people want to nerf doctoring so it takes longer. To make the interaction meaningfull and people TALK while it is happening. It doesnt need to be for everything, but its the robotocist job to take care of the borgs, so it should be in their hand.

[Paai]

The mechanics bring you two, the borg and robotocist, in one place and even gives a goddamn reason why you are there.

Sure! That's great, in theory. I agree!
It's less great in practice. Because people get tired of roleplaying out the exact same interaction every single shift. You can advocate it all you like, and say that it's a missed opprotunity, but the reality of it is noone roleplays it out in-depth, because everyone and their mother has already roleplayed it in-depth thirty thousand times, and they're sick of it. It doesn't matter how nice it is in theory if it doesn't work in practice.

(who is most likely not a metafriend)

I don't appreciate the insinuation that you think my issue with this is that I have to talk to people I don't know. I do that every round, without needing to be forced into it by an arbitrary game mechanic.



And-- besides, as I had said in an earlier post, the partswap comparison is imperfect. There are actual mechanical reasonings for partswaps being human-exclusive-- and, it, even if just in THEORY, has the potential for interesting RP.
What interesting RP am I going to get out of not being able to take things out of boxes? What mechanical reason is there for this to be the way of things?
This won't even be a case of people getting sick of reruns, it'll be a case of there's nothing more to it.
"Hey, can you take this out of the box for me?" "Sure."
That's not interesting RP, that doesn't encourage interaction-- it's a two-sentence exchange that ends in the borg running off to do whatever the hell it is they needed to do with the thing that was in the box, because what other reason would they have to ask you to take a thing out of a box.

Either way, I think I'm going to just end up reiterating points that have already been made if I keep replying to this thread, so.