change/remove emagging phones

[Snoid]

  on goon 1, no one uses phones because most everyone assumes if a phones ringing that means its gonna explode on you. its not a particularly fun thing to emag because usually no one picks up in order for an explosion to even happen, and its not fun for crew because it means if they wanna call someone then no ones gonna answer. i would say maybe changing the emag to be automated calls or prank calls would be funny, but then the same thing would happen where no one picks them up anyway, but at least it would be less punishing to figure out if its an actual person calling you or not.

[JOELED]

I would love if this got changed, it's a shame how hard it is to actually get someone to pick up the phone on classic (and even sometimes on 3) because of the paranoia that it's going to cause a breach

[Lord_earthfire]

Well, good thing not every feature is done for classic.

[JOELED]

Well, good thing not every feature is done for classic.

This is very dismissive, I said already that this negatively effects 3 as well where I've had players discourage me from picking up ringing phones in rounds where no emagging has happened even though in character they haven't been able to justify why I shouldn't.  It's not just on classic where the current implementation of phone emag has lead to phones being a less used feature than they would be otherwise, which feels like Not what emag effects are meant to do -- I can't think of any others that do that.  People still use the reclaimer every round even though the emag effects are pretty rough, and no one's disabling secbots in advance on the off chance a tot shows up with an emag.  I feel like this is a fair concept to discuss and I don't understand the mentality that it shouldn't be even if it WAS a classic only problem.

[Mouse]

I feel like emagging phones would be frowned upon by RP's rp rules given that it's sudden explosions out of nowhere.  "It's not made for classic" is a pisspoor excuse when it's not made for RP either.

[Lord_earthfire]

I feel like emagging phones would be frowned upon by RP's rp rules given that it's sudden explosions out of nowhere.  "It's not made for classic" is a pisspoor excuse when it's not made for RP either.

The phone in itself is a mostly RP-feature, with coms, PDA-message-groups and PDA-messages existing. Emagging the phone is only a interaction with it. And, like the detomatix, it is rarely frowned upon in RP if employed within the escalation rules.

So when peoples come around with "in classic, this [RP-Feature] is not used because the only reason to use it in general is to set you up for a trap" is a very poor argument. It won't change the fact that there is no reason to use it except for fluff/RP. Besides, there are still other methods to weaponize the phones, so it won't change anything about the arguments structure.

The point is: i don't see any gain from removing the emag interaction because i don't think it will increase the use of the phone to a noticeable effect on classic. It will just be another feature removal for the servers where the phones are generally used, which are the RP-ones.

This is very dismissive, I said already that this negatively effects 3 as well where I've had players discourage me from picking up ringing phones in rounds where no emagging has happened even though in character they haven't been able to justify why I shouldn't.

My former answer was dismissive and a bit poorly phrased. I think in the first part of this reply i phrased my opinion better.

Also, I would seriously consider ahelping someone who tries to discourage you from engaging in RP because of metaknowledge about niche-interactions. This behaviour shouldn't fly at all.

[Snoid]

I feel like emagging phones would be frowned upon by RP's rp rules given that it's sudden explosions out of nowhere.  "It's not made for classic" is a pisspoor excuse when it's not made for RP either.

The phone in itself is a mostly RP-feature, with coms, PDA-message-groups and PDA-messages existing. Emagging the phone is only a interaction with it. And, like the detomatix, it is rarely frowned upon in RP if employed within the escalation rules.

So when peoples come around with "in classic, this [RP-Feature] is not used because the only reason to use it in general is to set you up for a trap" is a very poor argument. It won't change the fact that there is no reason to use it except for fluff/RP. Besides, there are still other methods to weaponize the phones, so it won't change anything about the arguments structure.

The point is: i don't see any gain from removing the emag interaction because i don't think it will increase the use of the phone to a noticeable effect on classic. It will just be another feature removal for the servers where the phones are generally used, which are the RP-ones.

This is very dismissive, I said already that this negatively effects 3 as well where I've had players discourage me from picking up ringing phones in rounds where no emagging has happened even though in character they haven't been able to justify why I shouldn't.

My former answer was dismissive and a bit poorly phrased. I think in the first part of this reply i phrased my opinion better.

Also, I would seriously consider ahelping someone who tries to discourage you from engaging in RP because of metaknowledge about niche-interactions. This behaviour shouldn't fly at all.

i only play goon 1 and ive seen countless people try and use phones, and whenever someone notices a phone is ringing, they opt to not answer mostly because theyre worried about the explosion. this happens to me too, i WANT to answer phones but i dont want to get an explosion in the face. im kinda uncertain why youre arguing for keeping the emagging of them because it seems to me that goon 3 players arent even allowed to emag them, so this is an issue that near solely effects goon 1. wizards love calling the crew, nukies sometimes call the crew, clowns love prank calling people, radio show hosts love getting calls, etc. 

we arent as barbaric as you might think, we love having our fun little moments and scenarios the same as you, i just dont like having to pretend im someone im not.

[Petey]

I've seen plenty of phones that explode on RP and those that don't. I'm genuinely not sure where you're getting the 'goon 3 players aren't allowed to emag them' from?
How is this any different from people using PDA bombs? Because those have less interaction than a ringing phone and can be found on RP too.

[Snoid]

I've seen plenty of phones that explode on RP and those that don't. I'm genuinely not sure where you're getting the 'goon 3 players aren't allowed to emag them' from?
How is this any different from people using PDA bombs? Because those have less interaction than a ringing phone and can be found on RP too.

i said that because the people who play on rp posted that so i just assumed they were right because they play on the server i dont

[Emimiyu]

I am neutral about phones emags, but seeing people bringing up about how the feature existing is "good" on RP, I will say this, EMAG phones feels it is not "escalation friendly". There are usually no roleplay build up to it. I don't think I have ever seen escalation that led up into picking a phone that damages you very bad and breach the whole room. Yet we know that if someone just throw a frag grenade into a room with no build up, it is not "good RP". EMAGging phones don't sound like an "RP feature" at all and things that encourage heisenbee players to interact and roleplay is good.

Maybe it would be nice if phone emag has more interaction than just "boom, room is breached, phone is gone!".

Also, classic players interact and roleplay. Saying that "Classic people just need to accept they won't have to use roleplay features much" feels not constructive.

[Fuppy]

I'll be honest, I can probably count on one hand the amount of times a phone has exploded on me when I picked up. I answer them pretty regularly both on RP and classic... probably even more-so on classic since I'll answer in departments that aren't my own as well. I didn't know this was a meta thing that people played into but, me personally, I dash for the phone and pick it up every chance I get.

I really haven't noticed anyone hesitant to pick up a phone. I'll give the benefit of the doubt and say it probably happens a bit on classic, I usually tune out a lot of things when I play on goon 1. But I've never seen anyone hesitate to pick up the phone on goon 3, usually I get an answer when I call.

[Mouse]

Personally my opinion on this may be colored by the fact that I found phones ringing endlessly until you smashed them with whatever was handy to be significantly funnier than phones that exploded.

[ju45he]

Instead of emagging, it should be putting your own explosives into it, like pipebombs, grenades, and beakerbombs.
Beakerbombs can get pretty good gimmicks, like being a clown putting harmless beakerbombs onto every phone on the station, being a vampire putting anesthetic gas into beakerbombs and draining people silently, being a spy using a more powerful pipebomb in order to take off limbs and use them for their objectives.
Emags shouldn't just give you free bombs for tapping them against a phone.

[Rmeaper]

Instead of emagging, it should be putting your own explosives into it, like pipebombs, grenades, and beakerbombs.
Beakerbombs can get pretty good gimmicks, like being a clown putting harmless beakerbombs onto every phone on the station, being a vampire putting anesthetic gas into beakerbombs and draining people silently, being a spy using a more powerful pipebomb in order to take off limbs and use them for their objectives.
Emags shouldn't just give you free bombs for tapping them against a phone.

Mousetrap bombs could work.

[Frank_Stein]

Make the sound from the phone louder. So when the person speaks on the other end, their text comes out gigantic on the emagged phones receiver.

Maybe if you call the emagged phone and then use an instrument like a whistle or something, it'll deafen them on the other end? That way it can still be weaponized