[Reach the highest number without an admin posting]

9 minutes ago, Benjaminfallout said:

holy shit this have been going on four ever. You guys think this one will ever die out?

Back on my Neverwinter Night's server I made a post like this, but it was "Last Post Contest" where the last person to post there would win. It was actually the second incarnation of the post, the first died out when we migrated to new forums.

The post was made on January 22, 2006, 01:02:00 AM.  The last reply, so far, was on November 22, 2018, 11:50:43 PM.  Yes, the thread has been going for  just shy of 12 years. 

http://lotn.info/index.php/topic,16.0.html?PHPSESSID=s5oo1uo211autmo3sceanjn4i7

(Sakes is a much older internet handle I don't use anymore.)

 

P.S:  Zero.

 

 

[Jazz's Guide to Xenobiology]

The only thing I'd add is the importance of station goals. For the DNA vault, Xenobio should breed gold slimes and inject with blood or water to create a bunch of unique animal DNA samples.  For the BSA, they'll want to make a bunch of bluespace crystals out of bluespace slimes as it might be hard for mining to come up with the 20 needed for the BSA.  It also takes Quad Caps to build both which generally require yellow cores, but as you point out, Xenobio should be making yellow cores anyway.

[Screenshot thread!]

You ever had just one of those days?

 

[Getting IAAs to do their job]

I think Norwest brings up some good points. To add the two problems he states (Being Hated, Having no authority) I think there is a third major problem:  The IAA isn't any more likely to know Space Law and SoP than anyone else is. 

IAAs are a non-whitelist, non-karma job anyone can play. There's no way to know the IAA actually knows space law or SoP at all, let alone better than security or the various departments do.  This in turn is why they have no authority, because we don't trust them to have any authority.  So why should we assume anyone else is going to trust them to be right? 

 

 

[Thoughts on an x-ray nerf?]

SoP restrictions isn't going to work because ultimately SoP is enforced by security, so it's asking security to police themselves. The initial response to that might be "No, security doesn't enforce SoP, they enforce space law!"

Okay, so who does enforce SoP?

Let's say someone is breaking SoP.  The department head tells them to knock it off. They tell them to go hell.  So the head says they're demoted. They tell the head to go to hell and keep working.  So, what happens? Security has to step in to enforce the demotion.  Without security's use of force, there's no ability to actually enforce SoP and thus, at the end of the day, it's security, or at least the threat of security, who is enforcing it.   So ultimately if a geneticist is breaking SoP and giving X-ray to security, it's up to security to stop it. Security often doesn't want to bother with enforcing demotions in general, let alone when they have a significant vested interest in not doing it. And even if they do, do you really think all those sec officers who now have X-ray illegally are going to willingly remove it from themselves?

We need a change in mechanics, not SoP.

[Reach the highest number without an admin posting]

Spoiler

 

[Encyclopedia Medicina]

Thanks, should be fixed!

[Thoughts on an x-ray nerf?]

47 minutes ago, ZN23X said:

Also @EvadableMoxie do you honestly think most people give themself an advantage for RP purposes cuz IC its irrational to do otherwise or do you think they are just treating this like another video game they are trying to win?

I don't know, I can't tell you what someone else's motivations are.  I can tell you that it doesn't matter, though.  It doesn't matter to the people who had a round that was no fun at all what my motivations are, the outcome for them is identical either way.

 

53 minutes ago, ZN23X said:

As security I actually get more annoyed by antags doing the same boring stuff over and over again rather than my round ending. And I'm not stupid enough to beleive that Xray is the one thing that is holding antags back from doing something different from thier repetitive safe routines at nauseum.

You're right, it won't.  What will is actually changing things.

If we want cheese on both sides fixed, then we need to actually do something about it. Removing X-ray means one less cheese tactic.  It's a step in the right direction. We all seem to agree X-ray is powergamey, right?  And we all seem to agree powergamey mechanics are bad, right? You yourself say you rarely take advantage of it even when available so that suggest to me that you on some level at least agree it's not really a good thing. So where does this suddenly 180 to fight tooth and nail to protect powergamey mechanics that are bad come from?

I feels like every single time anyone tries to fix anything the conversation goes like this:

"So, X is really cheesy and lame right?"

"Yup."

"And we'd all be better off if people didn't do it, right?"

"Yup."

"So, we should nerf or remove X, right?"

"Nope."

 

[Thoughts on an x-ray nerf?]

1 minute ago, ZN23X said:

I think player behavior leads to things being unfair more than anything, and you cannot correct that regardless of how many features you add or remove.

Adding and removing features will never result in perfect behavior, no, but it certainly can improve behavior. Changing rules or mechanics are the only meaningful way to change player behavior.

I agree with you that players should be more okay with their characters dying.  I think that's great advice and I wish more people would take it instead of being salty. But to me that's really more about them reacting to being randomly killed, rather than expecting them to act differently in ways that are more likely to result in them being killed.

The reason for that is roleplay. I like making rounds interesting, but I want to do that in a way that is internally consistent with the universe. I'm not afraid of my character dying, but my character certainly is afraid of death.  Would any rational person with a fear of death turn down X-ray? As long as X-ray is in the game, whenever I'm offered it, I have to choose between roleplaying a rational character with a fear of death who would absolutely take X-ray every time, versus my own desire to make the round interesting.  I don't like being placed in that position.  I'd rather my character just didn't have that option.

[Thoughts on an x-ray nerf?]

21 minutes ago, ZN23X said:

My original post I said was people need to get better at losing and dying. Everyone dies sometimes. Everyone loses sometimes. And its sometimes unfair. If you removed everything that led to people dying and losing unfairly the game wouldn't exist as is so...yea I guess its a good thing that it happens?

I'm just really interested in trying to understand your mindset because it seems really contradictory. I mean, I've seen you argue against security officers taping their boots or even traveling in pairs, but you want them to have X-ray? Why are you applying the idea of being okay with dying randomly to antags, but not to security? Because security are far less likely to die in ways they can't see coming if they have X-ray.  The same argument you're making to keep X-ray because antags need to be more comfortable with dying could be reversed to argue it should be removed because security needs to be more comfortable with dying.

[Thoughts on an x-ray nerf?]

7 minutes ago, ZN23X said:

We all die and have our rounds ended unfairly regularly. We all can give a list of habits, strategies, or equipment other players use that we don't find fun. Thats just how this game is.

 

Are you arguing that's a good thing? I'm not sure what your point is here.

 

[Reach the highest number without an admin posting]

You haven't one yet!

[Guide to securing DA FUKEN DISC]

12 hours ago, Pokebro2000 said:

Now I want to know if it fits in a syndicate storage implant

 

It does not.

[Genetics rework ideas]

My main main concern is that if the system becomes something akin to say, virology, you're going to have geneticists who master it and then are handing out X-ray every round 15 minutes into the round, the same way that a Virologist who has mastered Virology can produce a min/maxed virus in the first 15 minutes.

[Grimes]

[Reach the highest number without an admin posting]

Three as a bird now.

[Guide to securing DA FUKEN DISC]

3 hours ago, McRamon said:

Thats.... should be bannable

 

I'm pretty sure I remember someone being banned for something similar to this. 

 

[Reach the highest number without an admin posting]

22 minutes ago, TheClosetMailman said:

Three clowns got BSAed

Four ass faxing CC. 

[So why exactly did IPCs have to be nerfed massively?]

The question asked by the poster was "Why exactly did IPCS have to be nerfed massively."  I agree with Necaladun that this is not a massive nerf to IPCs, so let me rephrase a question into what I'd consider a fairer and more relevant one:

Why did IPCs need Oil?

Well, the answer given by Necaladun is this:

On 10/24/2018 at 7:24 PM, necaladun said:

A large reason was to stop them being stuck in hardcrit in limbo. 

This PR introduced a change that makes non-breathing races take Brute damage when in hard critical. Which means, even if oil hadn't been added, IPC would not have been stuck in hard critical after this PR was merged. On top of that, we have the Succumb verb for exactly this reason. Yes, you can succumb as an IPC.  You can even succumb as a Borg. So again... why did this change have to happen?

I'm not trying to pick on Necaladun here by only quoting them, it's just that they're the only one to have even attempted to provide any sort of answer to the question of why this had to happen. He did say it was a large reason, not the only reason.  Which implies there are other reasons.  What are they? Why did the maintainers think this was a good idea?  We don't know. We may never know.

How can feedback be provided when we don't even know why a change was made in the first place? If the change was made because the maintainers think it's thematic, I could point out that I disagree, that it makes little sense to me to assume that highly advanced computers 500 years in the future are going to run on Oil of all things.  But, if this was a balance change, then there's no point in making that argument, is there?  What if it was changed due to reasons I haven't thought of?  How can I provide feedback when I don't have the original reasoning? It isn't a conversation when only one side is talking.

Before I'm accused of saying every single PR needs to be brought to the community ahead of time, I'm obviously not saying that. This PR was highly controversial, and included a lot of different things that aren't inherently linked. It never should have all been on a single PR in the first place.  Additionally, given it was so controversial and involved a nerf to two separate races (and arguably a nerf to every single non-breathing race), the maintainers certainly could have foreseen it being an unpopular change.  

I don't particularly like the changes, but I won't agree with every PR that gets merged, so that's fine. It's really the lack of communication and what I feel is a disconnect between the maintainers and players that is far more concerning to me. 

[Syndicate Item Purchase Stats]

I can't seem to find the Standard Encryption Key on the list? I'd be really curious to see how often it's purchased given the recent rule change.

[On the topic of Encryption Keys]

Thanks for the insight regarding the timing of the change.  I can understand how reverting it now only to change it later might cause confusion.  That said, given how the PR's operate, there is no guarantee a PR will ever be made to change the syndicate key, and no guarantee it would be accepted even if it is.  This is especially true due to the feature freeze.  Given that, I feel it would be better to revert this change now rather than just hope eventually it gets solved down the line.  That is, assuming you agree with me that the change, given the current circumstances, is not a good one for the server.

Assuming that we still disagree on that... I don't wanna split hairs on if we call it realism or enforcement or whatever.  My main argument is that there are a ton of things security is not allowed to do that doesn't make much sense for them not to be allowed to do from an in character perspective. Why is using syndicate keys specifically an issue and the rest of them aren't? If anything it sticks out to me more to make a single exception to the contraband rules when really there's no reason for any restrictions to exist on security's use of contraband if we want to go by what NanoTrasen would realistically do.

We have a ton of out of character rules that govern in character behavior that we all agree to in order to make things fun for everyone.  A lot of them mean you don't play to win, you do things sub-optimally to give the other side a chance and make things interesting.  This applies to both security and antags.  Not using syndie comms to just bust every syndicate using them and turn the round into extended has always been once such rule, one I felt both sides considered to be perfectly reasonable.

[On the topic of Encryption Keys]

Okay, so have read the reasons, let me explain why I disagree with them.

Realism - It doesn't make sense that NanoTrasen wouldn't allow security to use the headsets.

In general, 'realism' isn't a good argument for any change in a video game, outside of a very specific group of games which SS13 is firmly outside of. The way almost every type of security works is just completely unrealistic. There is simply no way any corporation would run security like this.  Doors leading to highly sensitive areas that can be hacked in 2 seconds. All authorizations done with a single factor of authorization that can easily be stolen or misplaced. The inability to deactivate lost or stolen credentials remotely. Doors that open with a crowbar in the event of a routine power grid check. It's worse than the dumbest action movie. 

We're playing a game where you might get attacked by a Space Wizard who will make you shit out your appendix and then turn you into a mutated clown causing you get eaten by a Laughter demon who just wants to hug and tickle you and also can materialize from blood. Realism was killed and replaced by a changeling before it arrived on the station.

Enforcement - It feels too jarring to have to tell people they can't do it when it's such an obvious thing to do.

This is a different argument from realism, and falls more in line with intuitiveness and enforcement of the rules than trying to make things realistic. I'm not an admin, so I'm at a bit of a disadvantage here. I don't know how often Admins have to bwoink security for using confiscated headsets, and so I cannot say with any certainty that it is or isn't a problem.  I can tell you from my observations as a player, I've rarely seen it happen, but if an admin tells me it's a problem, of course I will believe them since they would know more than I would.

But let me just address this idea of arbitrary things you aren't allowed to do because of rules that an evil mega-corporation would not have, yet inexplicably does.  Like with realism, this is cherry picking one specific instance of it while ignoring all the others.  Why wouldn't you just card the AI at the start of every shift to check if it has a Law 0? Why wouldn't you, in fact, move the core to the Upload on the bridge so you have easy access if it gets subverted? Why doesn't security round up all the high value items traitors might want to steal and secure them? Why doesn't security start randomly dragging people into the chapel when there are vampires? Why doesn't the Captain just immediately fire the head of personnel and replace them with someone from security who is mind-shielded? Why doesn't security just perma every civilian since they don't actually do anything?

In fact, why do any rules against using contraband exist at all? What's the downside for NanoTrasen, exactly?

This isn't whataboutism by pointing out other bad rules. Rather, the point is to show that these rules, while not what one would expect a soulless evil mega corporation to have, are good things that make the game more fun and curtail potential abuses by security and command. I would submit that while it makes sense NT would let security use the key from an IC perspective, from an OOC perspective it's unfun and unsporting and a rule against it makes the server a better place, just like the rules preventing all of the above do.

Risk - There's no risk associated with the item.

There absolutely is risk associated with this item. If anyone is on the same tile as you and a message comes into your headset from any channel, not just the traitor channel, they now know you have a key. This can happen when you slip in the hall and they slip on the same tile, or just when someone pushes past you at the perfect moment. Additionally, anytime you deal with your fellow traitors you're taking a risk.  They might have you as a target, or you might have the same steal objective and they plan to kill you to steal it or eliminate the competition.  And even if security can't use the key to ID you, your fellow traitors will know who you are, and might just sell you out to try to get better treatment (It never works, but I've seen traitors try).

Additionally, I disagree with the premise that every item must have an inherent risk. A lot of items do not, like for example the Camera Bug, fully loaded toolbox, no-slip shoes or adrenals.

It's too good - The item needed a nerf because it was too powerful.

It's really difficult to say anything in Space Station 13 is over powered or under powered when something like water spray or soap could be the difference between an antag being caught in the first 5 minutes or destroying the entire station. I just never got the impression this item was overpowered.  I've seen people complain about Gloves of the North Star, d-swords, tele-science, science in general, Sleeping Carp... I can't recall anyone in deadchat ever salting about Syndicate Encryption keys. For me personally, this nerf feels like it's out of the blue.

I don't see traitors consistently taking the syndicate key.  I especially don't see powergamers taking it.  Every murderbone powergamer I've seen have one thing in common: They work alone. They rarely talk to anyone at all except to gloat to security and command, and they especially don't spend TC to talk to people. 

If a traitor is grabbing the key for all comms, this change doesn't change anything. It's only specifically the traitors who try to communicate with and cooperate with their fellow traitors who will be hurt by this rule change.  Isn't that the demographic we should be least interested in hurting?

 

So, that's my rebuttal for the reasons for it changing.  As for why I feel it should stay the same?

It creates opportunity for traitors to do more than just Stun -> Cuff -> Drag to maintenance.  It allows for the use of complex strategies and fun interactions.  There's a reason heist movies always have a crew of different and wacky people who don't entirely trust each-other but are forced to work together. Because that's interesting.

Changing it in this way won't create new opportunities for security. It's just going to kill the item by making even less people take it, and making the people who do take it never talk on it.  Less interaction is not a good thing. Less options is not a good thing.

I agree with Necaladun that things like obfuscated names would be good, and would make this change much more reasonable.  And that's why it shouldn't be changed now.  Change it once you have those improvements in place.  Don't break it now because it might get fixed later.

Sorry for the wall of text, and thank you for taking the time to read it.  I don't play traitor much, but one of the few draws for me was always being able to get a key and cooperate with other traitors. Seeing that effectively taken away is sad for me personally, so I just really needed to share my thoughts and concerns on it.

I would urge the Admin staff to please reconsider this rule change. 

[Let's talk about shadowlings]

 

So, I'll just repost what I said the last time this got brought up:

On 4/26/2018 at 3:07 PM, EvadableMoxie said:

Balance doesn't matter.

I know, crazy, right? Give me 5 minutes of your time and I'll prove it to you. 

Nuke Ops is not a balanced game mode. A well executed Blitz is basically impossible for the crew to counter.  Blitzes fail only because the nukies make mistakes, not due to the actions of the crew.   And yet... Nukies don't always blitz.  A lot of the time they declare war, even though war isn't the optimal path to victory and they know it. Sometimes they even stealth or do gimmicks, even though, again, doing so is not optimal.  Ideally, we'd balance the game so that there isn't one optimal path, but that's a whole different discussion. The take away is this:

When you give players multiple viable paths to victory, they will not always choose the optimal one. 

Which means that balance isn't really all THAT important.  It's better to have balance than not have balance, but imbalanced game modes can work because we have players who are not just interested in greentext.

So what does this have to do with shadowlings?

The main problem with shadowlings isn't that the mode is imbalanced (although it is), it's that there is only one path to victory.  There are no alternative viable paths to victory that are sub-optimal for the shadowlings to take. As a shadowling, you do the same. thing. every. round.  You know the meme rounds where operatives decide to try to pose as NAD inspectors? There is no shadowling equivalent to that. Shadowlings can't do that type of stuff.  The mechanics force them to bulldoze towards greentext, the exact behavior that is shunned by the community in every other type of antag. No one blames shadowlings for doing it because they have no choice but to do it. 

So even if things were balanced it would be a bad game mode. Sure, it would be better if it was more balanced, and balancing it isn't a bad thing, but it's not the thing that is going to ever fix the issues with the round. What shadowlings need is to be able to actually use different tactics like other antags can, rather than being forced into the same thing over and over.  If shadowlings had many viable paths to victory, they wouldn't need to always pick the optimal one.  The best part is we don't even really need to worry about balancing those paths to make them equally strong as the way things shadowlings do things now. Even if the other paths were objectively non-optimal, players would still choose to use them. 

 

To summarize: The problem isn't so much that it's too easy or too hard to win, because that really depends on the skill level of the players, and there is a huge gap there. The problem is that the high skill players don't have sub-optimal paths to challenge themselves with.

You'll never balance shadowlings because the difference between a new player and an experienced player is way too wide.  If you balance for the newbie, the experienced player always wins.  Balance for the experienced player, the newbie has no chance.  So instead, give multiple paths to victory and what happens is the experienced players will challenge themselves.  This is how basically all other antags work.  Except shadowlings.  For shadowlings, experienced players snowball to a quick victory because there's literally no other way to play shadowling. 

 

Oh, and one easy way to improve the mode I think would be to end it as soon as a shadowling ascends.  If any antag doesn't deserve a 5 minute gloating murderbone victory lap, it's shadowlings. 

[Antag Greentext rates]

I'm not sure how useful the data would be, given that both sides aren't usually playing to win on a lot of game modes.

[why something like a reasonance cascade could only happen on LRP servers.]

That sort of thing does happen, though. There are rounds where Xenos or terror spiders get out of control and most of the station is dead, in addition to adminbus rounds where things just go to shit for various reasons.  Generally this is fine because new Xenos and spiders are playable by ghost roles, and there are ERTs and the like to bring players back into the game.  A fair amount of people do complain in dead chat, especially if the disaster was an adminbus, but they can and do happen. 

I will say that your complaint about limited antag interaction is a valid one, and how exclusive (In that they exclude people) some of the rounds are is one of the things I dislike about rounds like Cult.  I really wish there were more ways to get involved outside of directly fighting antags as security.  For the problems Shadowlings has as a round one thing it gets right is that there is something for pretty much every department to do.