Scheveningen

I understand what you mean, but I'm not of the same mind as the bay developers to disable things just because I don't like them. I want to disable it because it is fundamentally broken as-is and there's a major power and purpose disparity when you compare it to other antagonists. Changeling has no real teeth to defend itself with unless you somehow manage to get 5 kills without being caught. And when you do get caught, not if, you will be caught behaving like a changeling eventually and it is not exactly subtle; you'll be swarmed by the rest of the crew and either permanently imprisoned in an isolation cell/xenobiology for the rest of the round or the crew's going to go for your head. If you actually manage to get death sting it's more likely you were on lowpop, and people who play lowpop changeling like they're on high pop are the kinds of players nobody likes talking about. Ling is not often played to start with (exactly 10 changeling rounds in the past month according to game status, not including mid-round crashes), so with its playtime at the moment, it will not feel as if it it will be sorely missed if it is disabled. Current ling is already dead. Those that still support it are essentially keeping it on life support. Lemme provide you a situation, too, after I ask the question "When is it too much". If Kaed's implementation gets rejected because it "isn't good enough", or it does get implemented but doesn't fix anything about changeling, what are we supposed to do about it? Do we wait yet another few months for the next thread arrive to remove it and repeat this dance of arguing and debating for and against the merits of changeling? I wouldn't care if vampire were the best RP game mode and it had facets to it that made playing as it and against it literally unplayable. If it was broken and nobody wanted to fix it, I'd want it disabled too. I don't care what RP each antag offers you because I'm not arguing for it or against it. The gameplay loop for changeling is not functional in its current state. It has been broken for an incredible amount of time and it takes this thread just to motivate only one person to try and fix it? Really? Come on. We need to stop expecting a magical unicorn to come along to solve all our problems while we do nothing for the benefit of the changeling game mode.

Disabled from being in the secret rotation, not outright removed, that's what I want. It's not really fair for people who play secret that want to play actually functional antagonist types like wizard or vampire, to be forced to play ling. I've seen 1/3rd of lings in every round actually cryo instead of playing ling. It'd essentially be removed from gameplay (short of actually voting changeling in but who actually does that) but admins can spawn them in if they like.

Using TTV explosives to do anything other than catastrophically cripple the station is outright impossible right now. Did you know the armory is right below arrivals? Did you know the cargo dock is roughly right above R&D and xenobotany? The only thing you can bomb at the moment without inadvertently taking out another part of the station is the Vault and the north part of the main level bridge at the moment. My only suggestion to solve this quandary is to adjust the formula so that the z-levels above and below of the ground zero site always use half the explosive force in addition to what other restrictions are added to TTVs at the moment. It feels really bad to use something so crucial to the mercenary game-type that will likely end up you getting adminhelped for bombing arrivals and the armory at the same time.

Oh, I know what you're referring to, because I was the HoS that round. Nah, the issue was the detective requisitioned ammunition without telling me. Not the only thing they did either, they tried to buy a saber SMG with rubber ammunition as well in the same round and I eventually demoted them because as soon as I pulled them into my office they made excuses, shifted blame and never took responsibility. Average detective player, anyway.

And that's fine! But I'm saying we've been at this junction of an idea phase before. We deliberated for days and made a lot of posts and pages about how ling could be better before. Devs had better things to do at the time. The discussion died and then ling remained still relatively shit despite being given arm blades and shields. And, clearly, if 'rework ling to be better', one of the most SS13-identifiable game modes in the game's history, isn't on developer agenda, why do we even have this broken mess of a game mode around still? I feel like if we just keep hoping for this magical unicorn of a contributor to come around that wants to put effort into ling to make it better while not mentioning that something needs to be done about ling, we're really just setting people up who try to play ling up for failure and only assisting them in wasting their time and effort. The idea phase can start over again when someone actually is assigned to rework ling. Allow people the chance to play real game modes in the meantime to enjoy ourselves in absence of ling for a bit.

Persistence and consistence is largely what I think should be valued here, Kaed. It's a bit defeatist to deflate when "no" is said the first time. Persistent people who argue in good faith are generally the kinds of people that have made Aurora the way it is, either through development or in other methods. If I wasn't persistent (or annoying, whatever you call it) myself, then I would've essentially admitted defeat anytime my PRs were opposed in the slightest. Not to give myself undue credit or anything, I have no intention of comparing myself to other contributors here. I'm just saying, you notice the small things add up over time especially when I was persistent about pushing the most of them through. The ones that didn't -- I ended up realizing they were bad ideas anyway. I'm not persistent just to be annoying, though. If this gets declined when I will make a post next month if nothing changes to try and disable changeling again, and again, and again, if nothing changes to ling. Why? Because it's particularly insidious to leave changeling as neglected as it is right now. It's horrible to leave such a gamemode in the state that it is in with no intent to overhaul it to be more fun. Did you know vampire used to be a whole lot more useless before its rework? It was really bad. I was here long enough to remember how much of a joke of a game mode vampire was. I'm so glad it's as respected, feared and reviled as it is now. It is actually compelling to play and interesting to hear what people have to say about that game mode. I was expecting you to comment as I know you liked ling a lot, so I wasn't going to go so far as something as silly as putting up a PR that is only removing hundreds of lines of code to totally neuter the possibility of changeling ever appearing on Aurora again. However, if this continues later down the line I feel like it'll be the only choice. Much as I'd love to see a re-work myself, there hasn't been a single hint of any kind of changeling rework, and ling as-is is sort of in a really decrepit state where it is non-functional compared to other antagonists. And we've been around this bend of proposing reworks but the threads died each time. Essentially, this frustrated me, and I came to the realization that Fowl likely once came to when he 'attempted' to remove Skrell. And honestly if this goes on for another 3 months without consideration to the changeling game-mode in a wider scale format than giving changelings stun immunity, then I'll go that route myself to try and emulate in its entirety. I hate to think that it is only anger that motivates this community to make meaningful changes, but all things considered, most people would probably be pissed off at things they don't like anyway, especially if they remain the same and exist for so long in the sorry states that they do. Ultimately this thread is here for the proposition outlined. Temporary removal, not permanent, but until someone decides to be motivated enough to fix ling and make people enjoy it as much as some enjoy playing vampire. So I'll say something bold, something that cannot be refuted no matter how hard anyone will try. In its current state, there's no reason to defend the way changeling is right now. If there is no intention to change it into something better, functional and enjoyable, then it should be removed.

"I don't get how people could get angry at getting instantly stunned in and then getting dragged into a small room where they're silently removed from the game permanently because if someone finds the body the changelings disguise would be useless." "It's useless anyways because it takes too long to change and everyone wears so much shit changing clothes is a nightmare." I regret to inform everyone that short of totally removing changeling from the codebase (which itself is probably a terrible idea given the nature of reverting commits and then building new framework upon the old again), the only possible, short-term solution at the moment is to remove changeling from being able to be a played game-mode (and this is up to the head staff to consider because they are the ones with config access). There has been next to zero real development in regards to the changeling game mode and it honestly surprises me that the antagonist type has been left in such a sorry, horribly weak and non-RP-conducive state for such a long time. Changeling effectively behaves like an unfinished antagonist with all of the claws removed from them. Their method of progressing and getting stronger with their progressive system is extremely demanding of individual player skill and waiting for the proper 'right' situation to be able to kill someone and then absorb them undisturbed while quietly disposing of the body to ensure nobody finds it. If a ling gets identified before they're strong enough to defend themselves, they have to either go into hiding or they're fucked if they try to defend themselves. It's really rare to see lings help other lings as well because there's no "genepoint-sharing" mechanic to motivate this. The difficulty regarding changeling is that it is not an antagonist that can effectively defend itself without a lot of kills underneath its belt. And when it does have a lot of kills underneath its belt (in the extremely rare occurrence in which it happens), it is still not as lethal as most other antagonists with a lot of tools and equipment to do the job. The nature of having to permanently attempt to remove other players from the round on purpose essentially counters the purpose of being an antagonist in the first place: to avoid removing players unless it without a doubt drives a better story for the overall round. Much like communism, changeling works well on paper and in theory. In its actual execution, however, it proves itself a very weak concept and doesn't hold a candle to much stronger elements that exist in the environment. When it becomes too much effort for too little gain just to accomplish things as a changeling, the game mode itself needs addressed at the baseline level. And hopefully overhauled from scratch to better suit the heavy RP nature of this server. Unrestricted gankbots tend to have greater livelihoods on lower RP servers without as much requirement for interaction or any need for roleplay at all. Changelings are predominantly more mechanically motivated than IC motivated (generally, it is not to create a story as a result of their background, but to grow stronger through removing people from the round) which creates its own issues. Until someone can step up to the plate and rework the formerly beloved genestealing antagonist into something that holds the namesake well and manages to be able to get its claws out and make fun stories for others involved, I don't think it's good for the server to keep the changeling gamemode (and its associated game modes in the mixed GM rotations) with a "1" in the config. It is a mechanically weak antagonist, it is a narratively weak antagonist and it is not a very fun antagonist to play as or against either. Ling has an insane level of difficulty to actually playing it considering the guidelines regarding roleplay and when to gank and when not to gank someone. Not to mention avoiding getting caught and how difficult that is, since getting caught ends a round for a ling with no defensive solutions. It shouldn't feel as shitty as it does to grab someone and suck their genes dry and ditch the character's body in maintenance where they won't be found, and it shouldn't feel as shitty as it does to be on the point end of that pike. I don't think we should permanently remove changeling but I seriously think we should disable it for a time, hopefully to motivate someone who cares about ling enough to step up to the plate and try to fix it. @Garnascus @Arrow768@Skull132@ShameOnTurtles

Roughly the same. Rubber ammunition has always been relatively potent.

In case people still don't get it; The lethal detective weapon essentially pressures the detective to not use it unless absolutely necessary. The non-lethal detective weapon enables the detective to use it in much more cases than what they'd normally be allowed to do in terms of in-character justification. They can do it with minimal consequences and not so bad of a result, so they will. And will likely get away with that justification. "But it's rubber bullets, it's not the same!" detectives have cried in the past when criticized for hunting and chasing antagonists with rubber rounds. Would y'all rather have detectives not have any weapon at all? I can facilitate this if we wish to be totally unreasonable about this.

A few issues. 1. I have a concern about making the map any bigger than it currently is. 2. I have a concern about adding more to a portion of the medical map that honestly is not even used by the majority of medical players because its function is not practical. 3. I have a concern about tacking on more disability mechanics until mental traumas are either reworked or totally substituted for a better system, given I hold the belief that they have been the worst influence on medical gameplay and on the overall community interest of actually playing medical in the first place. The difficulty of dealing with traumas rendered to a person surviving the damage and those that come out of post-cloning has not led to gameplay depth as the developer implementing it said it would, instead it added a heavy degree of tedium and unfun nature to fixing an even wider array of problems inherent to being sneezed on by an antagonist. As Burger has said, players have actually started to clone less due to being totally ill-equipped to deal with the heavy-handed consequences of cloning both from a roleplay perspective and a mechanical perspective. This is not so much a problem for me personally as I know how to avoid my characters from dying outright, but when I do die, I forego the idea of being cloned at all because of how horrible it is to roleplay the forced defects, if one is able to even speak, see or hear at all given the random dice-roll nature of post-cloning traumas. I can't imagine how awful it is for players that have a greater tendency to die while playing on the server.

I had observed for the majority of this round and most of what just happened... happened, really. I hate to say that I gave this person advice on how to best make this complaint, but I was in VC at the time when the OP made mention of it and how they had mixed feelings about it. It's within my opinion that characters are allowed to be moral relativists in dodgy kinds of situations. Especially if it's in yet another awkward confrontation with an antagonist while there is no organized security force to speak of and everyone is out for themselves. Especially when the very person who has antagonized has a sniper rifle and the possibility to get antsy if their demands aren't directly met. I didn't think it was fair either, based on what the OP recounted about the round, that the OP was essentially handed a punishment out for their actions in which they couldn't have reasonably made any other decision that would've been in their best interest, given the unpredictable nature of an antagonist that gets told they can't get what they want. That's all I essentially have to say, though.

Please make this more tasteful. Please.

But by voting secret in this manner, you join the round expecting antagonists and never the chance of it actually being extended (by merit of Check-Round-Info). Essentially this enables metagamers voting secret just as much as voting a game mode like cult or malfunction, right?

I mean, honestly, secret exists so that the game mode that comes up is a surprise. It's not so much that you vote it just for antagonists, considering how for the past 4 years it's always been like this for the sake of surprising people and cutting out the very notion of metagamey behavior from the get-go. It's necessary to have a default game mode in cases where nobody during secret actually readies up for antagonist. If it can be made so that it will always roll a game mode if the minimum amount of people ready up for antagonist to start the game mode, it should force any array of game mode with those minimum requirements over extended. I personally think that is the saner solution than removing extended from secret. I agree that it shouldn't be rolled over other game modes when people readied up for antag, so I personally think that's how it should be.

Chasing after a burglar that stole something from your shop that is already insured just to coldly plug two hunks of metal into their back is a scenario in which it is more likely for a mall ninja to fantasize about than for a real life person to ever want to happen even in defense of their own property. It is a very extreme minority of Americans that actively try to kill people as part of their 2nd amendment right. This is, ultimately, an isolated corporate environment. This is no different from corporate compounds all the way out into the rural areas of American society. They rarely call the cops first, they call the on-site security force to internally deal with any issues that happens on-site. Most businesses on the spectrum of "large and in-charge" do not permit non-security staff to have firearms or weapons. If you are convinced to believe otherwise, you are probably a deluded mall ninja wanting an excuse to reactively murder someone else in the workplace while also actively attempting to excuse yourself from carrying a weapon 24/7.

They do follow those standards, Paradox. But antagonists are not beholden to the same guidelines of having to follow regulations in-character, so why should people follow horrifically bad, forced gimmicks? Perfect example of what I'm talking about. I will not sacrifice my own immersion just to play along with an objectively low effort gimmick.

Sometimes there's brilliance in horrific ideas that everyone would actually love, and this is one of them. +1. For flavor reasons, my only suggestion would be to name the lesser ninjas "Acolytes" instead, to rank them as lower on the Spider Clan pecking order and to justify their lack of mobility, but more intensified specialization in other areas. 'Lesser Ninja' just doesn't have the impact of rolling off the tongue per se, only qualm I hold there. ..Probably also makes room for Spider Clan lore later on but that's for another thread.

It's nice, but I'd prefer cloaks to stay, because fashion options like this are possible currently: I'll post more after Christmas so I can get snippets of my various characters using the cloaks.

The premise in which you've made that cloaks somehow cross some line of egregiousness is not something that has been collectively agreed on, though, the very notion that this is still being argued over and brought into question under contentiousness proves that this issue is not as simple as, "This is our position, therefore our justification for throwing it out the door headfirst, must be justified and true." You have had people who agreed with you in insisting it isn't professional and that they don't like it, sure, but you've had individuals like me and I'm sure plenty of others say they're perfectly fine. How is it fair to decide it's in the best interest of those you disagree with to remove the cloaks that those same people liked as a feature? It's no small number of people that have voiced their opinion on this matter for both sides, as well. The PR is the only present example of any work done to address the matter of cloaks, and as-is, it's slated to remove them. There is no compromise that has been remotely entertained beyond theory at the moment. And that is the position the PR author and I assume also you are taking. There isn't a second PR up open on this matter to discuss whether or not one implementation or another is better than the other. It stands to reason that the main OP reflects exactly what is going to be done at this given time until the PR is changed to prove otherwise. There is no "work in progress" tag on it right now, it's the holy trinity of "it's essentially done except for no changelog." It stands to reason that I can be led to assume that this is final. "Just use X instead" is not really an effective compromise (it seems much more like a smug, self-assured backhand rather than a respectful attempt to compromise given the tone you're taking) to pose to someone especially when the existing xenocloaks don't befit human characters in the slightest (you'll get extremely odd looks wearing a Vaurca hivecloak, whereas you won't get much of a second blink wearing the current cloakponchos). The hivecloaks do not seem to share the same item path behavior that the cloaks do presently, because they are essentially attachable ponchos. Case in point, you can either attach them to a uniform or to a coat/jacket/exosuit/whatever else. My argument sums up to; "I liked using these and I don't think there's anything wrong with them, why do they need removed at all?" I'll wait for the sprites JB has to show but I still won't be very happy to see cloaks go given I was a very avid user of them even with human characters. But I really hope we don't see the above often.

Yes, the PR is indeed exactly within the paradigm shift that I described in what it intends. Wholesale removal from general acquisition, because you think it's offensive. The PR in question wants to remove them from the loadout entirely (and ergo from the game, because it is the only known place to find them in). Short of possessing admin perms, the PR outright intends to remove them from being acquired entirely, which may as well be removed from the game in terms of how it is relevant to us, the players, without the comfy nature of having the spawn function. Such as Kaed has already said here in the PR: https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/5504#issuecomment-436709813 This is not like the other suggestions which have asked for a compromise in the form of, "Just keep the colors but de-brand them from being a uniform piece", "Limit it to the xenowear format", etc. As is, the proposition has not changed in terms of what the PR is currently modelled to do, and it is what I am ultimately arguing against. This is what I am opposed to because the current method of dealing with the matter is removing them instead of fixing it. Until the PR changes its direction (and it hasn't been updated still based off of what you have said or what Arrow has said), I won't stop criticizing what it intends to do. It has not changed since it was first posted, so my arguments will remain much of the same. As-is the PR is not suitable and essentially hasn't taken into account any feedback made yet. It's been over a month, so either you're going to let it sit for yet another month for this to be discussed again or you'll merge it as the majority of people that enjoyed wearing cloaks have to groan because you decided your subjective opinion on what you think uniformity is ultimately more important than what most people have already suggested would be a better compromise.

It does seem like a surprise and suddenly erroneous! And I have reasons to think that way. The situation so far is that we got here from a string of smaller contributions that added up to a larger foundation of belief that being able to customize one's character and their aesthetic helped certain character concepts stick out from others. This facilitates a feeling that no two characters are the same at all especially given the wide variance of customization options. We've had all these items added up over time and a "Yes" written off on them by either yourself or Arrow when merged into the live state of the game, and roughly all for the same reason: to add a larger variance of aesthetic items for characters to wear and eventually have that aesthetic be defined by it. Play enough time and you'll start to recognize some character's preferred outfit(s) and it becomes very easy to pick any one of them out in a crowd of spessmen without having to mouse over them and Shift-click. When cloaks were added, there was absolutely no difference between their implementation and something like the even more ostentatious items that would violate uniform, such as sundresses or even the evening gowns in the loadout now. Despite this, cloaks were picked out among the myriad of items that could much more easily be viewed as "offensive", and yet were still labelled as equally offensive. The perception that "this is too much" only seems to be so because of the already massive variance of loadout items that exist right now, not because of cloaks being the defining nail in the coffin when we address this issue. Given that concepts of fashion and aesthetic evolve over time, I can only imagine that our loadout item options will likely expand into potentially 500 to 600 individual items by the end of next year if we keep going this route. Which I think is fine, ultimately, short of a few issues such as whether or not additional loadout items later down the line are merely cosmetic or they offer mechanical advantages. But I really do not think cloaks are so bad as, say, if someone were to implement something as genuinely distasteful as those weird leather-and-spike suits as you see in FNV's Gomorrah. Because I would think that is the line one should draw against "offensive attire" being as part of the loadout for when your character goes to work like any other. It just seems strange to look at this one instance where fashion items were implemented and decide "this, among all others, was a mistake" while glossing over the 'possible offensiveness' that other items likely possess in larger leaps and bounds than cloaks do by themselves. It seems more likely that there's specific bias in that decision, because there's no reasonable explanation why only cloaks are being gone after now and nothing else was.

That is until the forums are once again dead set on the next 'fashion revert' PR with one side trying to beat it into the opposition that 'violations of the aforementioned viewpoint' cannot be established in any meaningful objective metric and is based around people's opinion in how the game should be developed, and the other side colorfully restating how important setting precedent is. Precedent is important, is it not? The concept that if something changes, it's going to be chased after as the new norm? Reject that it'll happen all you like, but that'd also be ignoring how the community's development has operated for 4 or so years now. Merry Christmas.

There's another concern which is how certain jobs (HOS, RD, HOP, captain, most glaring examples) have variations of the standard jumpsuit, whether it is simply just a jumpskirt variation for RD/HOP/captain or something as extreme as the HOS having a few jumpsuit variations quite distinct from one another, in addition to either being able to wear a vest or an armored trenchcoat. And since that's been a thing for as long as most of us can remember in terms of Aurora's history (blue sec, really), we're basically been breaking the rule on uniformity for a pretty long time. To the point where I think reversing all of that work just to remove potential variations of what is considered to be an identifiable uniform to a department is potentially a pointless endeavor (two parts pointless, really, rendering the initial effort pointless and any other cosmetic item that follows a similar example of it being integrated into the game because it's fun aesthetic stuff), because removing cloaks ends up being step 1 of removing all 'optional' department-oriented fashion that could compliment the standard uniforms. Essentially, people will use this as an excuse to remove all other fashion items from the workplace to further denigrate any concept of individual style. As a very massive megacorporation, you would think NanoTrasen would enforce uniform guidelines only on certain components of the company's hierarchy. I think it's a counter-intuitive way to go about things to decide everyone who isn't a security officer must also obey the same boring regulations because "muh immersion" was brought up, despite that any one person's sense of immersion will differ from another person's.

This already exists in policy. The staff do not have a habit of banning people for reacting to antagonists by killing them, but they're much more likely to do so if someone's execution in killing an antagonist was far more proactive (and thus is usually inherent to metagamey behavior.)

Considering implementing this, but rather to give scientists the supply channel in addition to the science one. This is so that miners don't nose around in science's business, but scientists can do the opposite. Because science privilege. Only general scientists/the RD will have this access to behave as go-betweens. If this ends up a bad feature it can be reverted.