A Total Rework-Removal of In-Game Cloning

[Kaed]

All that will happen is people will start inventing excuses for unathi not to care about prosthetic limbs, or more people will play robolizards because it's too hard to be a normal unathi, and their racial integrity believe further diluted.

"Not possible to be viably cloned" is not a nerf, it's a weak attempt to justify an idea being implemented with no revisions on the original concept. 

Being permadead does not encourage roleplay. Being crippled for life does not encourage roleplay. Both of them are the opposite of it, they make most people frustrated and want to leave the game.

When someone points out a flaw in an idea, it's generally not sensical to try and turn the situation around and say no this is working as intended, it'll make things better by making things worse!

 

Edited June 19, 2019 by Kaed

[furrycactus]

6 hours ago, Senpai Jackboot said:

The majority does. Its explicitly written into the religion of all of them. It is the minority that is fine with it. Its an intentional mechanical difficulty of the race to spurn prosthetics. 

There is also a different teir of difficulty. This is too much difficulty with little enough rp benefit.

 

 

I'm confused. The wiki says that sk'akh and th'akh are both accepting of the cloning process, it's just prosthesis that they spurn, which is what I was attempting to refer to. Crystal mentioned that their Unathi character, as well as a few others they're aware of, don't personally happen to approve of cloning, and I was saying that just because the issue doesn't affect them, doesn't mean it won't affect most other Unathi whose religion is fine with cloning.

Hence why I feel that this proposed form of cloning is going to disproportionately affect Unathi more than other races, because the majority of Unathi aren't accepting of prosthesis because it'll harm their soul, and so many more are going to be delegated to sitting around in wheelchairs without limbs for the rest of their life, if canon, or taken almost totally out of the round if they're missing several limbs.

 

 

And I have to agree, being effectively completely pushed out of the round while others aren't because they don't have religions that say "no robot arms" doesn't feel like very enjoyable RP or flavour.

[IAmCrystalClear]

I, personally, believe that (arguably) the least played species being able to be revived more is totally acceptable over the current RNG you're deaf/mute/paralysed/randomly falling asleep every thirty seconds system we have in place.

It's far easier to RP with out a leg or arm than it is to RP whilst randomly being unable to move, walk, talk, see, or hear. I'd rather have no legs and sit on a chair than be under fire from hallucinations all round.

 

Remember that deaths, by the rules, are typically considered non-canon and thus, if you die and are revived, but your race/religion/species is against prosthetics, then you simply should sit through the round and return to full function in the next. All players who choose to have their characters be against prosthetics are doing just that; choosing. It is their choice, in it's entirety, that they will not be able to function fully on revival, and thus they need suffer the consequences. If you do not like that, don't impose that rule on yourself, or, even better; avoid dying and conflict that leads to dismemberment like any sane person should.

[Kaed]

8 hours ago, IAmCrystalClear said:

I, personally, believe that (arguably) the least played species being able to be revived more is totally acceptable over the current RNG you're deaf/mute/paralysed/randomly falling asleep every thirty seconds system we have in place.

It's far easier to RP with out a leg or arm than it is to RP whilst randomly being unable to move, walk, talk, see, or hear. I'd rather have no legs and sit on a chair than be under fire from hallucinations all round.

 

Remember that deaths, by the rules, are typically considered non-canon and thus, if you die and are revived, but your race/religion/species is against prosthetics, then you simply should sit through the round and return to full function in the next. All players who choose to have their characters be against prosthetics are doing just that; choosing. It is their choice, in it's entirety, that they will not be able to function fully on revival, and thus they need suffer the consequences. If you do not like that, don't impose that rule on yourself, or, even better; avoid dying and conflict that leads to dismemberment like any sane person should.

Putting the onus of blame on the victims of a bad faith change is never the correct decision. "It will encourage people to avoid conflict" is a shaky, incomplete arguement that assumes both that a mentality of avoiding conflict will stop a proactive antagonist from ever harming you, and that it is not going to damage the playability of the game if people are forced to avoid conflict or be punished.

Is your ideal of roleplay that everyone not in security sits in there department and flees from conflict the moment it shows up? That might be 'realistic', but it's not very fun. Nor is having a trauma, or sitting in a chair for the rest around because you don't have limbs.

Neither these options are better than the other. If we were going to go on a standard of pure fairness though, the new idea punishes certain races more than others, while cloning as it is remains largely impartial. Well, with the exception of the new Aut'akh race but they're still being balanced anyway. 

Is there a particular reason we cannot have non robotic limb creation in the game? Why does robotics have to be involved? Why do we have to rebalance the conflict dynamics of the game just to fit with the specific idea you there has been pitched?

At the end of the day, any replacement for cloning should accomplish the same goals as cloning: bringing a person back into the game that has been killed, in functional physical health. Adding all of these extra steps considerations that require there to be a roboticist or you to not be an unathi, or people to agree with the sensibility that it's better to have no limbs than to be dead/trauma plagued over complicates the process for no other reason than because you say so.

I don't see a single compelling reason why this system can't work with people just having thier limbs regrown in a magical science vat, at the cost of more time than it takes to install a prosthetic. You claim it's a choice on the player to not accept a prosthetic limb, but what you're really doing is taking away my choice of how I want to play this game and forcing me to pick what you want or get nothing.

Edited June 21, 2019 by Kaed

[GlitterGuts]

Just personal preference talking here. I agree with removing cloning and replacing it with Defibrillators. Puts a time constraint on the revive and makes recovery not nearly as dehabilitating. 

[Xelnagahunter]

There is a lot of talk here regarding the regrowing of limbs and potentially organs since missing organs would also pose an issue. There was a time that we had a place for that. I'm not sure why we removed genetics, but it seems like bringing bits of that role back is what people kinda want if the loss of cloning. I'm not 100% sure what genetics did but I'm pretty sure they had a machine for creating organic parts. Perhaps that device could be returned to the medical department for that purpose?

[IAmCrystalClear]

A major, key point of this system is that it makes death truly punishing, with different types of death having a real impact on the character in a way that can have long-term implications on them. The argument of "Unathi cannot be revived if missing a leg" is not only untrue, but also it allows for development of both the race and the character on a whole in a long term way; give them a leg anyway, as a mad scientist; maybe they are revived and tradition goes out the window, and the entire character is reformed; perhaps they go on to retire, bound to a wheelchair. Whatever, they are all RP options.

16 hours ago, Kaed said:

You claim it's a choice on the player to not accept a prosthetic limb, but what you're really doing is taking away my choice of how I want to play this game and forcing me to pick what you want or get nothing.

This is also untrue. The mechanics behind the method of cloning should not be your sole drive to play a race of character. You play the race you play because the aesthetic appeals to you with their lore, design, and style. Remember that when an IPC body dies, the body is often in a state in which it cannot be repaired, but you do not see IPCs not being played because of this fact; people play the races they play because they enjoy them, not because of whether a certain mechanic is OP or not.

[Kaed]

It is clear at this point that there is no further point in attempting you change your mind on this matter, you have repeatedly dismissed people who have disagreed with points of your idea, subjectively claiming that what you propose is the best way and compromise would weaken the integrity of your concept that death must be a certain level of punishing based on your own arbitrary framework.

Therefore, I do not support this idea as written and express my judgement that implementing it would harm the ability for people to have fun playing on this server.

Edited June 21, 2019 by Kaed

[IAmCrystalClear]

Firstly, apologies for the hiatus from this thread.

Secondly, I won't change my mind in this matter, I vastly dislike cloning for both mechanical and lore-based reasons. I have a personal belief that death should be more punishing, and that antags should have more options to be creative with how they can take people out the round.

The robotics department is currently underused, which I personally believe leads to a lot of robotics players creating things such as mechs and rigs whenever they get the chance and excuse to, promoting validhunting and powergaming. Cloning is currently also underused, due to the immense complexity it requires to actually perform the cloning process.

If we did have my way, death would be an in-round final end to a character, and cloning facilities would not exist full stop. This is another option that addresses multiple issues at once, and will indubitably come packaged with it's own. The merge itself would clearly have to be rigorously tested beforehand and use temporary merges along the way. A part of this thread is to get feedback, while another part of the thread is to find if developers are willing to make such a large change to the game on a whole without the promise of it being added.