ASS DAY feedback, evolution, ideas. [Gimme Your Thinks]

[phyvo]

Is it? I know when I was more new I kinda joined in on ass day once, died, and decided it wasn't for me. I decided to give it a chance again recently and my impression was that newer players would probably not like it because it seemed like a playground for experienced people to rush items and murder everyone else. I never got to play when admins were doing any memes. But you probably know better than me.

That said I don't have much of a problem with it. I play enough on other days that having the day off is probably good for me. Admin scenarios, game modes, all that other stuff, all that sounds like lots of fun. But it doesn't sound like Ass Day, which I know is not designed for my tastes at all.

[warcrimes]

Notice that the frustration senior players feel in regard to drones on ass day (inescapable invulnerable death gremlins)
is the same frustration that new players feel in regard to "robust" senior players for the same reason.
My strongest hypothesis is that this is the real reason we see population dips.

24 hours of guaranteed deathmatch is not fun for anyone except the dorks with the fastest fingers.

[KikiMofo]

I mean if they really dont want to fight against "robust" people on Ass Day then they dont have to play on Ass Day. Its just one day out of the entire month.

[Tewf]

^ This 100%. There is the RP server, there is urs dungeon, and there is nothing stopping people[admins] from adding portals to other calm places to explore in peace during the chaos. Why not add a sanctuary zone like the nukie shuttle somewhere on each map, or just make space diner a sanctuary. Anyone that wants a break but still wants to be involved incase a good gimmick comes up can just hang out there.

[Ed Venture]

Okay then they got two options. Do something else for 24 hours, or learn how to fight in this game it’s really not that hard. I really don’t think the development of this game should carter to the people who complain about the combat being “””””””””too hard”””””””””” while never putting in any effort themselves. Changes like the pull nerf and disscussions like this make me feel like I’m being punished for investing my time in learning how to defend myself and being passionate about this game.

I learned the combat back when lag made the game almost unplayable and before any real changes to combat were made. If I can do it in those conditions then new players have it so much easier with the current conditions. Slowly but surely it seems everything around the chaos nature of this game/server is being stripped away for mundane samey rounds. Now we’re entertaining the idea of removing one of the only reasons for me to come back. (pc is dead and money is tight for me) it’s literally one day a month why can’t people like me who like totally chaos have one darn day to indulge in just that?

[UrsulaMejor]

My main issue with ass day is that "pure chaos" is often not what ends up happening.

What ends up happening is closer to "three or four robust people kill the entire station and then dick around for 50 minutes".

If the goal is pure chaos, ass day often fails at meeting that goal, because "everyone kills everyone" rapidly becomes "everyone is dead" with nothing happening.

If the goal is not to be boring and samey, ass day nearly always fails at that goal, too, without admin intervention.

I like the idea of ass day featuring a variety of different crazy game modes, with ass day classic being just one of those possible game modes. Battle royale is a fun twist on "everyone kills everyone" that deserves real development. I feel like we could use some more of those built into the game so that we're less reliant on moderator intervention to make the fun happen.

[Roomba]

I'm not really seeing a lot of 'ASS DAY SHOULD BE REMOVED WHOLESALE' comments in this thread. I am, however, seeing a lot of opinions simply disapproving of Ass Day in its current state or suggesting a way to improve it get shouted down by the same two or three people repeating the same talking point. That's not a great argument for keeping it exactly the same.

[Sundance]

^^^
You mean the whole "git gud" argument?

Yeah, it doesn't really stick when we're not discussing removing assday or bubblewrapping it to make it more palatable to newer players. Because out of all the posts, nobody actually suggested these.

What's being requested is modes that suit assday when admins aren't available. Fleshing out battle royal is one, or creating alternative battle royals is another (i.e team based). 
Another is designing nonsense maps which would frustrate on a normal round, but would be great for assday. One example I can provide here is to have two opposing ships (destiny is a good one) on different z levels and pit them against each other. 
Or delete the station in it's entirety, everyone spawns in the adventure zones.

My underlying point is that if "grief being turned off" is assday's identity, then we can work in modes/maps that suit that identity.

[Ed Venture]

More event days would benefit everyone if you ask me though.

Just incase it was glossed over or said I was arguing to keep it the same. Event days like new assday or classic assday or whatever name for what you’re looking for in assday.

Moving it to a new date like the first sunday of the month so the chance of admin fuckery is increased and adding new modes or new versions of game modes are good ideas. No one said to remove it wholesale yes, but the implication is strongly implied and that worries me.

If you hate playing on assday I recommend giving the RP server a go.

Hell I would love there to be a assday when we all roll wizard so we can have a magic showdown to find out who the best space wizard is.

[Drago156]

So, Ass Day doesn't have to be chaos, if people so choose, they could treat it like a normal round with elevates threats, and if someone starts getting out of hand, there's nothing like a mob and drugs to beat them down. People could also do some sort of gimmicky thing or so to at least make it interesting. (I like to pit two people to kill the other or be stuck in a room and it's interesting to see them refuse and work together to escape as AI.) But I personally haven't seen a lot of 'pure chaos' rounds in the last ass days I played, rather more of a normal round with people more likely to jump to violence when wronged. Ass day also allows an opportunity to test gimmicks or weapons or etc.

Ultimately, it's not Ass Day that's shit, it's the people that give up their consideration for others on that day that are shit.

[Mouse]

I mean if they really dont want to fight against "robust" people on Ass Day then they dont have to play on Ass Day. Its just one day out of the entire month.

This exact logic also applies to getting walled into rooms by ghost drones.

[Flaborized]

The idea isn't "remove the chaos from ass day", it's "add actual chaos to ass day instead of it being a slog if there's no admins on". In my experiences, just having ass day rules applied make rounds slow and sloggy and feel less chaotic than actual, normal rounds. This is because there's nobody trying to muster a legitimate response to antagonist stuff, for example, if someone decides to release plasma in medbay as a traitor on a normal round, that causes real gameplay implications where doctors have to do their healing somewhere else and that whole section of the map is disabled. On Ass Day, nobody really cares so it doesn't have any actual impact. Less reaction = less feeling of chaos, imo.

Admin gimmicks are the fun part of ass day, but it shouldn't be supported entirely by admin gimmicks alone. There's never going to be a consistent 24h stream of admins playing gimmicks, it takes a significant amount of energy and effort to run a gimmick that people find fun. The mentor gimmick idea has merit I think but it'd also depend on certain people being on who are able to run gimmicks. In fact, having no griefing rules makes some fun, chaotic gimmicks harder to run that normal, and feels somewhat limiting sometimes. Anything that admins do now for ass day, they could do the same or better with these changes.

By letting people people vote from a selection of batshit insane modes instead of having it just be "low effort grief day where admins have to work to actually make it fun", you'd maintain the chaotic energy of ass day, still hopefully appealing to those people who never play the game and only pop on for a round or two on ass day, while also not driving a large part of the core playerbase away like it does now. Giving the players agency to choose "I don't want an Ass Day Classic, I want a (this is just an example) vampire gang hell round" is flatly good in my eyes, players can still choose to do things the old way if they actually want to, and if they don't and think that's kind of stale they can do something equally chaotic (actually more chaotic in my eyes) that they'd prefer. Gives the playerbase what they want instead of making them leave!

My whole idea here is "Keep the chaotic energy and 'what people like about ass day', but without driving away a large chunk of our playerbase." I really don't emphasize with "If you don't like it, don't play it!" when people are suggesting ways to hopefully make the event more fun without actually driving away anyone. I don't see why we need to have a day where a large chunk of our playerbase packs it up and plays on RP or some other server instead, that just seems like catering to a specific type of player instead of trying to make a more widely enjoyable experience.

[Tewf]

It just feels like a large amount of you are just repeating the assday classic idea and glossing over the fact of what happens when someone late joins. Its a gang-vampire round you all are knee-deep in gimmick so the chance you'll see a prayer from them is slim to none, They join and arent greeted with assday rules, instead they are told its a gang vampire round, having just joined they are neither. Now their options seeing as assday rules are altered or limited to assday classic seem to be A.) Sit around and wait hoping someone can get to them and recruit not just murder on sight (super fun right) or B.) Just leave, because what fun is it fighting vampires and getting killed 35 seconds in because you spawned as a vanilla staff assistant thinking you could get your ass on and go make some hallway lube.


Another thing I mentioned that is getting ignored (possibly the reason people are repeating it, shocker I know.) Is that when 20 people hop on thinking its assday, and are told no even though its assday you have to play by these very specific rules still, you are going to be met with people leaving, and people that just dont care , its assday, they are gonna ass. And personally I feel time that would be spent doing fun gimmicks and contributing to the assday will instead be spent dealing with the 20 people that just broke one small rule particular to that game mode.

That is why I keep saying I am 100% for game modes, more admin involvement , but the solution isnt alter the assday rules, or restrict it to one game mode.

[Adhara In Space]

i dont think anyones suggesting removing ass day seriously. it sounds like some people are getting defensive on its behalf because it seems like that, and then people are replying to them and its getting messy. i think whats being suggested is to like... expand ass day so its not just the same honk honk griff robust masters every round for 24 hours, but has more unique stuff going on (like crappy maps, silly patches, admin events, dungeons, etc.)

i do think that the "just leave if u dont like being robusted lol" or the "just learn to click on people" attitude is kinda ass though. that might just be me though, since i dont really like some things other people seem to be fond of (like noob traps in the gameplay, which is part of the reason i wanted to be a mentor !!). the reason i dont agree with or like that attitude is that, like, it kinda goes against the goonstation that i know? like, ever since ive been a part of goon its been a welcoming and relatively hospitable environment that hasn't been rude or awful to me for not knowing things, or not being mechanically good or "robust". this whole "if you dont like getting ganked by the ass day ultra-robusters then dont play" is very dismissive and fails to address the actual issues that cause it by making a sort of fake issue, almost, by making it seem unreasonable to want change if youre dissatisfied with something.

its also a sort of, well, idk. i dont want to say toxic because it isnt like, wholly toxic, but it is something you sort in other communities, like in the soulsborne games. those communities are famous for being very hostile to new players, or players who are struggling because its a rite of passage in the context of those games' cultures. so instead of offering genuine advice or helping new players, theyre left to fend for themselves and throw their heads against a wall over and over again until they pass the obstacle. and you can debate whether or not thats good for the community or the developer's vision of the games some other time, i just wanted to give an example of someplace where the "git gud" mentality is common. i dont think that mentality is healthy/befits the game or this community, even if it is only commonplace once a month.

tl;dr "git gud" attitude bad adhara good suppoort my patches today

[SageAcrin]

My personal ass day thoughts;

I think ass day could work with a new rule set, but without one 100% hammered out, it's hard to give a solid opinion on it. In lieu of that, lemme give you some thoughts on what we could do with what we've got.

Step 1: Respawn. Well, we got that.
Step 2: Up antagonist spawn amounts, optimally(may not be possible). Give all other characters something. Abilities, a piece of traitor gear, something. Spawning literally the entire station with a X amount of TC off the surplus crate list wouldn't be the worst thing, if it was a low value.

As is said, part of the problem is right now, Ass Day is partially about the fastest fingers-but really it's about the biggest highest gear nerd and their big bad route through space to get all the goodies. This hamstrings their ability to slaughter everything reliably-a few grenades slows things down, let alone three people frantically lobbing an entire box at them. And this is much funnier than what happens now. And devolves into chaos much faster but hey! It's ass day. If we're keeping these rules, embrace it.

Even better; give ghosts some abilities. Ha ha I killed that guy-fuck his corpse rose as a skeleton, he's lucky he got that ability.

C: Sanctuary zones. Not perfect but bar/arrivals should really have this. Optimally, there should also be some place people can mellow out for a rest during ass day-maybe an ass day sanctuary on Afterlife Bar where paradoxically it's the only safe place there is, or one over the non-combat areas of VR. Even more optimally, it should be a large area with a few basic things you can do and can reach easily from the station but I don't know how you manage that.

D: Blow the fucking ghost drone factory up during ass day. Sorry guys, it's been fun but ghost drones and sanctuary zones don't mix for one, and for another ghost drones are just fucking obnoxious. I say this as someone who has constantly come back to make my killer's life a living hell as ghost drone. It's because we don't have these other ways to manage the problems the day has with one person just gearing to high hell as favorite captain nerd.

These are just some thoughts for the current mode, obviously, with no rules. Take 'em as you will.