Peppermint

Nobody is forcing anyone to play a character with one. If people don't want to use them they can just...not. Some people are fine with the headaches however, as seen by playing with the color blind modes not that rare. I'm not sure I remember when helping design them much worry around ooc play; it was more to do with IC realism with a little about impact on other, which I have considered when presenting which jobs should change. Especially when a lot of what I want you can already do, just with an odd job spread that I would like to see changed. However that is why I have suggested changes mostly to the civilian areas, of which the original post was agreed with by the person who told me to put this up to begin with which is why I'm replying to this still. At the end of the day, I seriously doubt many people will play these traits but how restrictive it is in certain areas just feels a bit much - especially civilian, which isn't going to really bother anyone all too much round to round.

Yeah, this is a good summary of what I mean, just explained a bit better. The current stance of disabilities being so limited kind of sucks, so fingers crossed something comes of it - it's been a while though so also being told to just leave it would also be fine, as not sure if I'm supposed to be arguing the point some more or just leaving it for now.

1. I'm not sure how to better explain myself when other people in this topic have understood what I've said. People have pushed back against constant big, canon events with loads of explosions and violence, ect, ect, so doubling down on it for the average round is a strange decision to me. It has nothing to do with it being canon or not. 2. Yes. It is. However 4 mercs have a lot less of an impact than 75% of the crew being forced down to an expedition every round. The novelty of which I think will wear off quite quickly. I'm not sure what else you're trying to say here, sorry. 3. That's how these things go. Give people a big new, shiny gun, they will use the big, new, shiny gun. It happened on dynamic. It happened on the old secret test mode. It happened with events, ship guns, crew armory to start with, ect. I'm not sure how to further this discussion if you think the odyssey round was similar to the average secret round in intensity. But like I said, maybe this is just what's better for aurora longer term, though it does essentially make it a new server with different goals. And that's fine, if there's no other option to go forward with. Personally it's not really for me, and that's okay. You can see people are generally more excited than not. I think playing actors will be fun and the very occasional character round might be nice too, but it's certainly not what attracted me here to begin with and I think being both a little sad about that and wary that I don't think people have really considered the wider impact is understandable. A lot of these issues are dampened by focusing on the ship rather than the ground-side missions.

I didn't play but I watched a bit so hopefully it's still fine to give feedback. I've given the positives of my opinion in the other thread so by focusing on my concerns/the negatives here, I do hope it doesn't come across as too whiny. Nonetheless I think Aurora really needs to figure out what kind of RP it wants to offer because Odyssey is going to move the server even further down the militarization and explosive side where the video game section is going to become increasingly focused on. At the same time it is also going to see a sharp decrease to the comfy RP Aurora has always offered, as well as the more character and lore driven side taking hits. The events themselves are going to be the main push and the focus will shift from intercharacter relationship building and similar to big set pieces and missions. It's pretty much guaranteed and you can see it in how differently people play events. Much more like cogs in a machine, people staying in their own group for whatever task, which generally means less RP but more macro stuff. I also find it a bit hypocritical that there's been a lot of negative feedback surrounding big, explosive events really pushing the envelope of believable happenings to the point lore arcs now need head staff permission and justification for the high intensity stuff that it's now going to be an every round thing. I'm sure someone will point out that people can run calmer, more gentle events, but the history of gamemodes like the dynamic modes, the creep of events, how rare peaceful antag stuff is ect generally shows people will opt for the high intensity stuff. So that's blow one vs more casual/cosy 'I'm just doing my job' stuff as well as focuses on characters. I think the second is going to be the push for stuff to be planet side. I still think that focusing on the ship itself is much more interesting as everyone is much more tightly packed so will likely get more interdepartmental stuff, but that's a whole other thing I'll touch on later. When people are spread out across a big planet map, they're going to interact with folks outside their bubble less. Likewise you're going to be much harder pressed to find time for the character driven stuff that I'd argue has been Aurora's main strength for a while, though this has been eroded away at. People will have a role, and they'll go do it. They're probably not going to sit down and bicker around the pros/cons of Elyra, or complain about the tajara factions, or discuss if biesel has any freedom. Which given the majority of the lore is seen through the lens of the cultural melting pot and how they interact,is also probably going to become less important. I'm sure people will run lore based events, but I doubt they'll be common (again, see how people could already do this with merc if they want to, but often don't) due to how maps will need to be used for different things + the actor pool is going to be similar to the antag pool. Third, a whole bunch of jobs are going to be made much less relevant. There are the arguments 'ok but they weren't any way' and maybe that's a sacrifice that's worth it, but I personally think not. The main way they will be used is through gimmick events, but I think some of them would have to be entirely retooled or just removed. - Investigator. - Psychiatrist/Psychologist - Chaplain - Bartender - Chef - Corp rep/liason - Corp consular - Executive officer is in an even weirder spot, I'd argue. - Physician is going to be even more useless - Miners, unless the gimmick is specifically built with them in mind to have something to do. Again I'm sure people will build entire missions around these roles, but it won't happen often and the average, day to day round is probably not going to find much use for them. Using merc as an example, you sometimes get the odd' force the chefs to make us dinner' gimmick but they're rare (and I'd argue rare for a reason lol) and with the map stuff thrown in, people will have less time to interact with these roles. Assuming people will vote extended here and there is naive at best. The last big issue is that making these types of rounds more common is going to axe a lot of character concepts even more so than the move to the Horizon did. I'm not going to list every way how as I think it's quite obvious how leaning further into a mission based existence will, but it's a big shame and will see another big loss of lore. Especially as characters are going to have less time to interact with one another, so origins and similar will probably mean less. Okay, done whining peppermint? Now, the thing is, maybe this is just where Aurora wants to go. Over the years it feels like we've already lost a lot of the comfy, relationship driven RP and I'm a bitter vet wanting the server to be something it's just not any more. And that's fine. It might be what Aurora offers just isn't really for me any more and given my dwindling play time, there's a lot of truth to that. But I also think people aren't really considering what kind of shifts are going to happen unless there's a lot more rules and railings around what kind of Odyssey missions are run and by whom. It's a new, shiny toy that offers what people have wanted for ages - events and similar - but it feels there's a lot of rose tinted glasses going on for what a big shift like this will actually mean. Likewise given the time investments of going planet side, I know I don't have 4 spare hours an evening to invest in Aurora any more - and longer round times are almost ensured. I think that to get a alance, the only real way is to focus on the ship itself. Still have the big expeditions, but make them rarer and have it more as things happening/coming to the horizon, with the current gamemodes just with a helping hand of the storyteller to add some spice. Maybe like, 2 ship - 1 expediiton - 1 extended would be the perfect blend as whilst it's all shiny and fresh now, will those sacrifices still be worth it still be a month from today when people are doing the same map they saw 2 rounds ago and folks have burnt out of playing GM/actor? I think the mode has potential, a lot, actually, but it's a bit too loose on how it's going to work, what kind of ideas there are, and I feel people are too caught up in exciting new thing syndrome.

The simple reason is that it's boring and prohibits a lot of different character archetypes people might find fun. Nothing I've listed here makes people unable to do their job. I agree with you that the kind of thing you mention would likely happen if our setting was more grounded, but it isn't. Especially not when the number of different character types that can be hired is so big, including unathi pirates, terrorist exiles from multiple different factions, free IPCs, ect. The flip side of this is also that characters who have something wrong joining one of those schemes and having to deal with the consequences of their implants being straight up owned by a corp who can rip them out at any time is a cool, interesting, and flavorful thing to do. There is the argument of 'okay but then they should have been hired with them', that axes a ton of concepts right off the bat and for a set-up like we have, essentially relegates it all to background info. My main 'thing' here is that yes whilst allowing any disability in megacorp hell is probably not going to happen, neither would the vast, vast majority of characters we see day to day. The disability changes I've put here would all be entirely doable for said individual and how people with said problems exist in the setting, with the issues it faces, is much more interesting imo than a 'yeah they wouldn't exist here' kind of take. The realism ship sailed a long time ago and instead it feels we have more vague believably, which is fine - it works much better for a video game and I'm not suggesting we have blind security officers or deaf captains; just a few more options in the civilian sections specifically, all of which can be justified. 'I struggled for a job due to my disabilities/being too poor to fix it/am way overqualified but this is all I could get' is much more appealing and adds a lot more RP to nobody's detriment than 'yeah no disabled people here, they wouldn't get hired' and there are plenty of ways to ICly justify it that wouldn't create plot holes. Dropping the psych one would be fine, but the rest have plenty of potential with minimal issue to other people and given the sheer amount of concepts we allow, people have always been trusted to justify why their character is how they are. Skrell/tajara also have a bunch of lore related disabilities. People can have a load of fluff medical conditions via medical records and are trusted to not go overboard with them. Consulars have also recently gotten permission to have missing limbs and similar. Plus we already have disability options for civilian roles, this just widens the option - if the chaplain can be blind, why can't the bartender? My main reason for arguing all this all over again though is that policy suggestions tend to just go nowhere. Matt has said he agreed with some of these, but I don't know if that means I can go ahead and make character with some of them, or if I can't. If it's in discussion, or it isn't, ect.

Return alt-titles and get rid of physician entirely, like we used to have, at least before the whataboutism from like 2 problem players caught on. For an RP server, Aurora is so terrified of actually allowing for meaningful character RP, but that's such a different problem I don't ever see fixed. Otherwise what about allowing people to add fluff sicknesses or whatever to their character via the organ tab or something, then have these show up in a scan? I don't think these should really be mechanically backed up though, at least for now, simply because I don't know who would code it as that'd require quite a lot of work. People could come in with their fluff cold or whatever and not just have the intern tell you "Omg ur fine, the scan says so??" The return of virology could also happen I guess, but that one was kind of annoying to deal with. Edit: Oh wait someone already suggested the same thing lol, my bad for not reading properly. Agree with that take, would be cool.

Just gonna go ahead and ping this again before I forget (again). Checking if this means these things are an option then, or something that'll be looked at, ect? Just before I go ahead and make something and get executed. <3/

I suppose my point mostly is that I hope the old cultural issues are less likely any more and that these above suggestions wouldn't allow them back. I don't really know tho as not staff any more. but just my perspective from playing a bit more. I was part of the discussion at the time and iirc, we were all just extremely damn tired of dealing with people who would last out the albeism word whenever they got told their mute captain or w/e wasn't the plan. For psych, I think it's the main one I've listed that can go either way. Depends how much of a focus they should have on treating people. Like, it is doable but it would definitely be more difficult - I mostly think that trade off is fine as they're the emergency back-up option any way and shouldn't be doing medical stuff unless there's nobody else. Plus like, being in that situation at all would generate RP in whomever has dragged the poor guy in. If he's got minor wounds, sorting him out will be fine - same with triaging. If he's got anything more serious, the blindness is the least of their worries and he's likely dead. I think it'd be cool and add for some flavorful RP, but I do understand the worries about this one. For hanger tech however, my point is that you can already play a mute hangar tech which seems weird - I think they'll have been just not been in after the gun changes, but right now the disability lists mutism as being fine. Not sure if I'm just getting confused ^^. In the same way bridgecrew I think should go up, as right now they're listed as flawed. That said, I really don't want this to turn into one of those conversations where staff feel pushed into a corner due to ideas getting support. Y'all will have a better finger on the pulse as it were for what is currently viable community wise.

Agree with stances like this more and more. But my general thoughts here is that more character options are good. None of these are implausible in the average day to day round and they'd all add RP.

Which is why I didn't include physicians in the list, despite it being a thing whilst I was researching. That and it'd be a big mechanical pain.

Yeah I remember, I helped write one of the iterations of it and remember the misery of the response by some people. I agree with the majority of what was implemented, I just think (and hope) the last bit you've mentioned here in allowing for interesting characters whilst not being a problem to others or general believably is what I'm suggesting for these roles. I hope any way lol.

I'm not super following on the bridge crew, as I'm wanting them given more restrictions, not less. Corporate/Liason I think is fine for the reasons I've given. We're also not in a corpy-dystopia setting and unless massive staff/server changes push it, it's not really reflected on ship. Don't agree with reporter. You can absolutely just take the story down via PDA or something. it's such an unused job that it wouldn't really affect anything, same way a blind psych isn't going to negatively impact anyone. Likewise as I said, it's one of those medial roles you do get blind being doing given doctoring is generally not as doable (there are examples, but I feel those are too unique to really warrant a change on the ship too). If a telecientist without limbs in a chair does dumb things, I'd argue it's the same as them doing it without a voidsuit - probs an ahelp.

I understand your pov here, I have some thoughts on them though. Consulars/Reps needing to write is a good point, but my main issue here is that faxes are kind of just an ss-13ism that have persisted. It doesn't make much universal sense so I do not think it should be based around. This is also the kind of thing you could get away with using fluff augments and whilst there's an argument that it would not work due to people in general abusing it, this is a whitelisted role so someone being silly is likely to get slapped. It's one of those 'the RP is beyond the mechanical drawbacks' for me, especially with the goon role able to support it and I'm generally not a fan of 'what about realism' on things like this because they're only the way they are due to how SS13 as a game was developed. I agree on the eye patch. It's a strange grey area that gets brought up due to the depth of vision thing. I don't think anyone has actually been told off for it, but I'm also pretty sure it's rare because of that wording. A degree between (where consulars could then also go) would be nice. I have the same thoughts for hearing but tbh it's less needed as it's less prevalent. For bridgecrew the pilot thing might be a bad comparison then, but ACT would be a better one. Which you also need perfect vision for as best I understand - it's less that 'nobody could ever do this job' and more than on average, having someone fly and land big shuttles with eyesight issues is a muuuuch bigger risk than a lot of my other suggestions would be.

Asked to make a post about this when mentioning it to matt, so here is said post! I feel a lot of the disability requirements were too heavy-handed and a reaction to a server culture that was very different to what it is today, There are a whole bunch of reasons for that but it can be kind of summed up as back then, we had things like deaf security officers and mute engineers -which were both a little bit silly and a massive pain in the ass to play around in departments that really just didn't work in that regard. We also had people doing too many 'sexy' disabilities as if being mute/having communication issues isn't massively isolating from everything from every day life to just hanging out with friends online. I think the server culture is better now and people are, to be blunt, less stupid/desperate to be snowflakes in offensive ways. It didn't help that the community reaction when the guidelines were brought out was really nasty and in a shocking turn of events, being mean to people does not make them want to listen. I also think the whole 'the SCC is a dystopia, disable people won't be allowed a job!' arguments are a mix of dumb (the average round has no dystopia stuff tbh, I wish we'd just remove this shit) and silly because a disabled character making do within this structure would be much more interesting than not. There are some other issues I have with it as well, but I'm going to try and break it down to each disability category on the wiki for easier reading as this got quite long. In general role I think a lot of these have the 'worst player ever' in mind and I don't think it's a good approach. The average person on Aurora can be trusted and the problems were going to do something dumb regardless. There is a lot of RP and character diversity to be had by relaxing some of these I think, balanced by mostly focusing on departments that have no or limited mechanical requirements. Eyesight Hearing/Communication Movement Impairment/Limbs

I will never understand why Aurora is so hellbent on having everything in its proper place in some ways, even when it's not hurting anyone. Letting people play LAs as they want to RP being one isn't hurting anyone. It's a department that kind of just does its own thing regardless, so you're not really going to have situations like the super doctor medical intern or the hellkillermurder sec cadet who are both experienced players larping at being new. The stakes are not really the same. The most elegant way of doing it imo is to have LA stay a learner role and have an alt title for a more long term one. But even then, who is actively being hurt by LAs sticking around/what mechanical damage is being done? 'Realism' is not really an argument and even then that's more of a support than anything.

This all assumes a lot of bad faith on the staff team. Not really sure why? At the end of the day a level of trust in admins and whatnot is needed, or why play on the server at all. It feels a lot that people really don't know what happens behind the scenes and how opinions are reached. I would point out the bar for joining the various teams isn't high - in the sense if you have a good attitude and aren't an ass, you can generally get in without an issue. I wish more people would give it a go to see there isn't this evil staff cabal plotting behind the scenes to fuck everything up. Likewise if we had issues to the point we needed to 'hold the entire team accountable', that's the kind of thing that kills servers - just look at the various fallout and similar entries. Still, for some of your points: - Host pays for and runs the server. If you compare Aurora's structure to near any other server's, I think you'll find that Alb and Arrow are much more hands-off than others. The system works well as the 'power' balance is shared across multiple areas - lore, CCIA, admins. The last group often asks the first two what is required. Likewise unless things are wildly different these days and I doubt it, mods/admins all have a lot of say in policy changes and whatnot as do other teams. Sometimes less so, but for the most part it's not like people just say 'ok we're doing this' and that's it. - You can complaint head staff. The problem is that there's no practical way to complaint all the head staff, assuming you mean the XO staff complaint. As who's going to take it? The system generally means you need someone of the same 'rank' on a complaint - should the admins all get together and look through the maintainer stuff? It doesn't really work. They're also different jobs. People who spend hours deciding what's best for the server and looking down the various routes to go are going to have a better grasp than folks who just handle the rules. - Most of the successful complaints on staff are to do with people making the wrong call, it getting reviewed, the punishment reversed, ect. If someone handles 300 tickets over 2 months, there's going to be times they might not make the perfect judgement. That's life. Any that are more serious - such as toxicity, harassment, ect - are dealt with harshly. There isn't a strike system because generally it means complete removal from the community if it's serious enough. I can name four instances of shitty staff members being removed (permanently) for things players may not have had such a harsh handle on, but these generally aren't announced openly. But most complaints are just 'I disagree with this judgement' and someone reviewing it. I - There's a practical viewpoint to consider as well. Aurora has many talented coders. However of the server, there are maybe three individuals - two of which are on head staff - who can handle maintaining the code of the server to a large degree. Do we just vote random people in to take this slot? There are like, six active developers and that's being generous. - Things do evolve and change with what the wider community wants. Most the head devs didn't want the XO thing at all - it was still asked about. Now, I absolutely agree it was handled badly and I think it should be looked at in review (internally, what should we do kind of thing) but it's not like the answer was 'no' and that's it. For other things, they listen too. A while back I had some really gross treatment by an old staff member, as did a bunch of other people. It was handled poorly. Since then however similar issues are dealt with differently and much more carefully - it's a video game server, not a courtroom; shit is going to happen, but it's the way it's picked up that's important. There were other incidents when I was staff where I vehemently disagreed with how some matters were handled. But again, this just led to conversations and progress. I think you have some points here. That said, I don't think the tone of this is really fair at all. Nonetheless: - Sure, votes should be handled better. There should be a goal and a (vague) version of how it's going to be implemented. The XO one sucked. It happens. I don't know why it took so long but perhaps people were busy, or sick, or had family issues, ect. - More clarity on how long maintainer discussion is going to take would be nice. A goal of it being sorted within a timeframe, same for staff/player complaints. The problem here comes from however that there are often just not enough active admins. Again, voluntary. - A while ago a similar thread suggested player notes would be made visible. I was against that then and against it now as a player, but there's maybe that could be revisited if folks are worried about clarity on things. Idk, I have faith in the staff team and stuff like this tends to be somewhat unfair.

Please don't introduce yet another neutered, cut down version of a mechanic we all have to do mental gymnastics (ICly) to justify working weirdly. If we really think there's less RP benefit of including these (with limitations and a way for antags to access which would actually be a buff for any remotely competent ones) vs worrying yet again how horribly unbalanced this was going to be to antag mechanics the server is already trying to remove away from, I'd rather they weren't included at all. It's a big frustration I have with aurora that people are very quick to jump to how awful, unbearable, terrible it is to make 'x' change without even testing it. Likewise the problems with antags really aren't these camera networks we like to blame. It's also not hard to say 'hey help here' and have 4 officers teleport in to beat down the solo traitor who spent all his TC on 4 weapons and a grenade. Sooner or later the server really needs to accept that this constant pandering to antag gameplay isn't improving anything - we're in the exact same space we were years ago and losing out on features isn't worth it. We have Odyssey coming for a reason. If people are concerned about being constantly followed around, just add them to the armory helmets. Though I think that would be a shame.

I mean if someone is building combat mechs it's powergaming kinda so should just be ahelped. This doesn't need to be a policy.

Gonna be honest, I don't care about balance because at this point the server has lost so many RP entrancing features so Johnny The Traitor can take a hostage and demand 1 million credits. That's fine. People like different gameplay loops and I'm not saying my opinion here means any more than anyone elses. Thankfully the server seems to finally be coming around to the idea that antags take away from RP and the system is fundamentally broken for HRP. With odyssey especially, hopefully we'll not need to worry about stuff like this any more. That said if there are balancing concerns, why not just give everyone access? It could be used as some kind of auditing thing where the crew get to see what security is up to, though with the option to turn them off (albeit against regs without a good reason). If anything that would be a buff to antags who can now see where everyone is at all times, we still get RP through it, and it'd allow the crew to have a constant livefeed of whatever is happening to ensure they can be kept in the loop.

Seems very fun. Cool change for flavor. Would need to be similar to sensors only being on for blue alert though.

This feels like vision cones all over again. A change that was made for 'realism' but has very little reason to stay. It makes playing certain characters and roles really tedious.

I like how much of these suggestions just push further and further into the kind of mrp TDM time gameplay you'd get on paradise. Mm yes let's just remove the rifles and then plug the gap with mechs and science guns as if that isn't actually even more unabalanced. Most antags aren't very good at the game. A lot of sec officers are pretty good at the game. There's also an entire ship of medical behind them and the horizon's map sucks to hide in and get some space. Antags on HRP just don't work which is what the whole point of a new game mode approach is. Gonna echo Omi albeit clearer - skill issue.

I agree with bits of this, disagree with others? Mostly because fighting over jobs as people rush this way and that has been a staple of SS13 in general for basically forever. We've always had medical players drag patients off of one another for something to do. We've always had officers have 4 people and a warden respond to a minor argument in the kitchen. We've constantly had every command member turn up to every single problem. My last round a 'lil bit ago now was playing investigator and an intern grabbed up basically every task (not an issue on its own) and then just vanished off, didn't talk to the other investigators about what was going on, didn't report anything, then would just rush off to the next thing. All very annoying. It was the kind of round I'd just cryo on if I didn't have solid RP from the rest of the manifest. I suppose things like this feel a bit more common now, but they've unfortunately never been rare. There's a reason certain jobs (bartender, chef, consular/liason, investigator) are often straight up annoying to play with non-OOC friends due to how often someone will have a 'I would like a-" out of their mouth before your teammate is practically frothing at the mouth, brick in hand, ready to smash your brains out so they can press the drinks machine buttons first. However I think that's less your main point here? More that the departmental cohesion and actual 'job RP' has kind of faded away from aurora? As in that case I agree quite a lot. Teamwork is certainly down. I don't play very often right now due to time but I've definitely noticed that communication is pretty much dead. Very rarely will command announcements tell people what's going on. Few people will pick up their radio and actually report back. Which is strange as the easy pick-up RP is really quite solid at the moment - better than it has been for a while - so it's a strange disconnect to the interdepartmental side where people will just vanish to the four corners and usually not even mention they've fixed the vending machine or treated the broken arm. It can also be quite frustrating to try and enable other people - such as above with the investigator intern - only for them to decide that means they get a free pass for a big 🖕to run all over you and do whatever they'd like. I don't really know what the fix to this is though other than to somehow mechanically enforce teamwork, but how is that going to be done? It likely won't slow people down to RP out what the disaster is, or to sort out who's going to what call, ect. There might be an argument that the setting change away from the 'just another working day' has pushed this a bit more, but even then it's just not new. I do find it a 'lil funny that people jump to 'let antags blow shit up' to the fix for absolutely everything however; as if that's going to make my engineering coworker fluff RP out the fix to a window/discuss how we've lost the screws or whatever.

I just want bioshells, man. I've considered commissioning it previously but it's pointless without knowing if it'd get through. Either as a replacement for shells or as well as (so people can still play the terminator fantasy). Otherwise I have no opinions as play no other frame. Specifically the signalis/alien themed kind. I think ideally they would replace shells but I can see the arguments for keeping them as well. I don't really agree with giving IPCs more hazards though. I don't really see why that gameplay would be enjoyable and I don't think there's anything wrong with it. If anything, I'd prefer a working radiation system where you can't just stand out in it and then not affect those around you.

For the above round, there were quite a few lol. A story in a good number of parts; thankfully Sol prevailed.