[BIG YIKES] Staff Complaint - Jackboot, VUX

[Scheveningen]

Preface: Keeping with a recent notion the developers have been using to curb back certain facets of gameplay and presentation, the issues I'll list in the complaint are not about the staff members themselves behaving in an offensive manner. Far from it, in fact, but this thread is going to be up here written by me to address some major grievances I'm seeing in the Unathi lore and some promises I'm seeing broken. Particularly, the question being asked right now is, "When is it too much?", and the promise broken was "I am not comfortable with transhumanist themes and I do not believe it is within the vision of the lore team and myself to introduce them", because this was the very statement and precedent set that caused Shells that could adopt the appearance of xenos to be wholesale removed, in addition to removing MMI-based IPCs from the game. This was the first ever large-scale retcon that ever happened in terms of how it applies to the game's setting, overarching narrative and how it inevitably affected gameplay. It too, broke another long-standing rule of Jackboot's that lore must justify gameplay, because gameplay facets have been removed in order to justify the lore many times before.

Ultimately, the objective of this complaint is to seek clarification on what narrative objectives are being pursued by the lore team now. Times do change, but this did seem as if it came out of left field and there's not a lot of transparency/discussion coming from the lore team towards people who have direct questions about this sort of thing, and that's another issue that comes out the woodwork too, the concern of whether or not it should be the community's business as to what the lore team does.

To reclarify: I do not want a punishment as a resolution to this, that is not the intent of this complaint, it's to open conversation about an issue I've detailed below. I just do not know any other area of the forums where this kind of conversation can be better facilitated. I've seen other people (even members of the lore staff) have a few things to say about it but I mostly want to make this thread to have an area where other people can post their views on this, because I'm not the only person with opinions about this, and I'm not necessarily important as some other people. I just find this discussion to be important to have, and that's why I'm bringing it up, because there's no real guarantee someone else will if I don't.

BYOND Key: Scheveningen
Staff BYOND Key: Jackboot, UglyXeno
Reason for complaint: Seeking clarification on the precedent/exception being set by the upcoming implementation of the Aut'akh, which bring certain implications of balance and influence on the grander scope of the Auroraverse.
Evidence/logs/etc: For particular reference points: 

The above is the current Unathi deputy's application. Many of the ideas listed and examples of work he did were indeed very interesting and the concept of an embedded progressive faction existing within Sinta culture creates a lot of potential for conflict between various Unathi of differing backgrounds. I do not mind the concept of so and so having several prosthetics, but we'll touch on what I think is "too much" shortly.

https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/5919 



And that's what they look like. Seem familiar?



Not intended to be a mean-spirited comparison. It's more of a light-hearted observation.

The above PR stipulates several Lore Team Requested changes of a long-time coder of the server to implement. There are no assumptions to be made here, one can factually infer everything in the PR was followed to a specific standard provided in material through a document written by one or both of the two working on this, as already confirmed by Alberyk that he was provided these details, as the individual implementing the features.

Let us define a term here before we detail what's in the PR. Precedent: "an earlier event or action that is regarded as an example or guide to be considered in subsequent similar circumstances."

The bionic eyeballs: This comes default and has specific whitelisting based on job. An Aut'akh character essentially has an immediate mechanical advantage with the med/sec HUD overlays over a character that must spend points to spawn with a HUD eyewear item, or they must find it in their job locker. It later stipulates they have greater weakness to flashes and EMPs, but IPCs have a similar weakness, but are still quite potent on their own given their other advantages.
adrenal management system: Upon activating it injects tramadol and inaprovaline together. Their effects as painkiller stack additively in strength at the cost of dealing brute and toxin damage. This gives Aut'akh the ability to power through pain in short bursts. I already mentioned to alb that paracetamol instead of tramadol would be better, since tramadol+inaprov combo is half as good as oxycodone, and 105 strength of pain immunity is still quite powerful. (essentially, at 150 damage you only 'feel' 50 of the damage. At -100 health you die, but oxycodone is considered the perfect painkiller.) Caveat: I understand the blame actually lies upon medical chems being OP as shit, so this particular thing is just a symptom of how busted chemistry is.
haemodynamic control system: This basically stops bleeding while processing but makes the Aut'akh hungrier. This is still pretty powerful, and a life-saver in those situations.

The above three, however, are actually very interesting and are still balanced, imo. I do not mind those being default, they are interesting. They are not necessarily as power-creepy as the loadout stuff they get, which I find to be "too much" (when you add that into the above three in total) and they also break the general rules on requesting items in the loadout (no weapons, no job-items on spawn, to avoid disrupting the balance and potentially fucking with someone's antag round just by spawning in as an example), especially the grasper stun baton. While half as strong, and it uses nutriment to use plus having a cooldown, it sort of breaks the concept that people should not spawn with anything that could be considered a weapon. While Alb has balanced them to not be as oppressive as their original inspired items, I do find these items concerning, because it creates two quandaries.
1.) The first instance in which a whitelisted race can spawn in with essentially job-related items. Whether they have certain drawbacks doesn't dial back they're still capable of functioning. One could defend this and say there's no slippery slope involved here, but it still establishes a double standard in which Aut'akh can do this but no one else.
2.) If we fully intend to follow this example in the future, we will find a notable amount of power creepy items finding their way into the game that have potential to seriously change the pacing of a round and flip it onto its head.

Furthermore, Aut'akh have 30% brute resistance, 20% weakness to burn damage, 20% resistance to toxins, and take 10% more fall damage. They process metabolism twice as fast as well. All of that isn't so bad, the brute resist is a little overtuned but not the worst thing given their burn weaknesses.

Once capitulated into the big picture, though, Aut'akh are quite strong in this rendition. The strength largely comes from them being tooled like versatile swiss army knives, being able to survive certain circumstances that others would not be able to handle. They are very interesting, but they set a lot of uncomfortable precedents that worry me a great deal. I understand the nature of development is ever-changing as well, and all of this is subject to change too. But pile on the transhumanist themes and some of the other advantages they get through loadout-specific stuff that synergizes with their species and the concern begins to increase.

I do not actually dislike them, overall, but objectively it's hard to ignore the amount of strong-arm strength they will bring into the game.

Additional remarks: 
I have a few closing questions.
1.) Is the anti-transhumanism thing no longer policy for accepting lore canonization applications, given the precedent Aut'akh seems to set here (it seems strange the Unathi were the first to implement these traits into their species, given they are not as advanced as the human race nor the Skrell) ?
2.) Can we expect suggestions to be entertained to start adding spawn-in advantages for various characters?
3.) Is Aut'akh a special exception to anything said in the past about certain themes as part of a developer's vision, or the spark of new precedent in perpetuating a new vision?

I do find this to be exciting, though some things don't make much sense to me while others are very cool nonetheless. The effort put forward is not something I will insult or discredit because there's no reason for that.



Although Garn put it best. 'Mecha Reptar' is pretty awesome of a pop-culture likening.

[Garnascus]

Quote

Ultimately, the objective of this complaint is to seek clarification on what narrative objectives are being pursued by the lore team now. 

This is not what staff complaints are for you idiot. This should be a general thread or something. Staff complaints have generally been to overturn staff decisions. 

[Scheveningen]

1 hour ago, Garnascus said:

This is not what staff complaints are for you idiot. This should be a general thread or something. Staff complaints have generally been to overturn staff decisions. 

ill destroy you


In all seriousness, that's not the impression the staff complaints board gives me. As-is, it seems permissible. And this thread didn't fit within general discussion either.

[Skull132]

Complaints are not open discussions. This is basically you asking for a private audience, since no one other than the parties involved and staff can post on this.

Complaints are to solve issues with conduct or decisions made. The decision made, in this instance, would have been to forego a feedback or public project or whatever thread by lore team. That is complaint-able. Alternatively, said private audience could have been requested via forum PMs, discord DM, whatever. As regular human beans do.

[Scheveningen]

Yes, you're right. Tag this with [oops] and I'll reformat the thread for general discussion.