We need to address this malicious attitude of "Improve, don't remove"

[BurgerBB]

"Improve, don't remove." is a vocal response that players tend to give to developers, other players, or contributors who discuss removing a non-bug mechanic/feature of the game. While in most circumstances this is a good school of thought but in some it absolutely isn't.

Every since I've played here about 2 years ago, Changeling has been constantly debated on whether or not it should be in circulation. If you search on the forums you'll see an abundant amount of forum posts asking for it's removal or rework, as seen here: https://forums.aurorastation.org/search/?q=Changeling. Discord also has frequent arguments about changeling, and of course, they don't seem to go anywhere because of the held opinion of staff, players, and even hosts:

 

Changeling was voted one of the least liked gamemode when a player survey was done in 2018, as seen here: 

Many players then went on to say that they prefered a rework over a removal, but were still happy with a removal if a rework is not possible. But despite this, changeling has only been reworked minimally since the player poll in 2018. I'm not trying to downplay the work that contributors made on changeling, but it's extremely obvious with all the feedback that players have been given since then that the core problem with changeling still exists. It's clear that no one really likes changeling still except for a few people, but for a reason I honestly find malicious, it's still in rotation.

Garnacus has been the one to usually shutdown any thread or discussion about removing ling. It's not just him, but he's usually the one to do it and is the most vocal about it. To summarize his stance on changeling, I am linking this post:

I don't mean this as a gotcha or anything but, I don't think this is a very good reason to have a flawed gamemode in rotation. What he, and others believe, is that it's better to have an extremely flawed gamemode in rotation than to not have it in rotation because it means that people have a higher chance of fixing it. Personally as a contributor and ex-developer, I find this kind of insulting that contributors are being used/manipulated like this, but I don't speak for everyone here. Regardless, I don't think we should ever leave broken or extremely disliked features in Aurora just because if we remove it, no one will fix it. Making gamemodes is hard. Reworking already existing ones is harder. There is a reason why the $100 gamemode challenge hasn't been completed yet, and there is a reason why haven't had any new or unique game modes other than "Ninja except there is two."

Changeling is just an example of this. It's the biggest one and perhaps the easiest to talk about because nearly everyone on Aurora has an opinion of it or seen arguments happen. Quite a few players like to call the volunteer devs or contributors who don't work for any money "lazy" because they want to remove a feature instead of spending the 20+ hours of reworking it and having to deal with the feedback from players, developers, and hosts on changeling. What I want to do with this thread is perhaps show people a new perspective on the issue and perhaps maybe get players to understand the developers better and why they believe that some features are better left removed and out of circulation instead of reworked.

[Carver]

On one hand, I agree with this from the stance that the possibility of removal may encourage 'changeling rework #493' to actually get finished/polished. On the other hand, I feel this is the only thing saving some roles (Psychologist, if Cloning were removed.) from being removed or made irrelevant. It's a very tough subject to discuss because it truly depends on a case by case basis, so as not to have some random shithead asking for things they don't like removed every other week.

On the other hand, the 'Improve, don't remove' argument was rendered wholly invalid by the death of Security Stationbounds. So any time someone brings it up, you can bring up the counter example of that module's removal. Ex: Security Stationbounds were removed for being considered 'terrible' and 'unfun', Changeling is also terrible and unfun. Thus, Changeling should be removed.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

Sometimes reworking something is better. For example, virologist and IAA were dead roles and we remade them into new roles of biochemist and consulars.

But in other cases a removal will probably be good. Changeling is an absolute blast as the changeling but people get so mad about it because the game mode revolves around picking people off. Having a new infiltration game mode with the same mouthfeel as changeling without the problematic mechanics would be great, but do we need changeling to stick around until we get that?

[Zundy]

Improve don't remove is a stellar attitude to have and no "I am silly" comic can change that. That being said ling needs to be tweeked or taken out back. Make ling into the many from System Shock 2 tbh. More versatile.

[Scheveningen]

Marlon pretty much says what I wanted to say. A chaplain recently defused a nuke by slicing the anchors to the nuke and then pushing it down a hole into space. While in the given round this was particularly heroic because it was a last second save, the precedent this sets is pretty bad, because you can essentially "defuse" the nuke from killing the entire station by slicing the anchors and then throwing it down a hole into a z-level where it is ineffective, rather than attempting the actual risk of defusing the nuke through its electronics and wiring.

Naturally, if I started a project thread right now to remove the ability to even slice open the bolts with a welding job, we'd see a week-long debate about how being able to remove the anchors without the nuke disk really adds more to gameplay and roleplay than it hurts, despite evidence to the contrary. There's definitely a community problem boiling down to multiple attitudes having different opinions on how gameplay and roleplay should be, thereby harming productive attempts to achieve proper resolutions to issues.

Edited October 25, 2019 by Scheveningen

[wowzewow]

Naturally, I'd agree. That some of these features suck dick and would be better off cordoned off by admin powers instead of being a part of actual gameplay.

However, the improve don't remove people are just a result of the vocal minority/silent majority.

Because in the end, we aren't like Bay or /tg/ where gameplay is everything : we're a little more HRP than other HRP servers, and our culture is that we usually don't need to mechanically enforce things - we just find a way around it (cryo-ing immediately after realising its cult/ling) or just RP it out, as usual.

So we've reached a status quo - where new, profound, game-changing updates are yelled at to be less offensive or something because the vocal minority will kick up a fuss (whereas the average player will just ignore it) (e.g. the tattoo trampstamp controversy, funny joke descriptions) like some kind of nanny state.

Honestly, we should trust and most of all, RESPECT our playerbase for being mature and being able to handle these kinds of things well.(although I agree, pregnant women should NOT be on station - that's an extreme, but a raunchy tattoo isn't going to cause any moral dilemmas)

Just give players the liberty to roleplay it out. This entire argument is just about what's best for the playerbase without even testing or asking about it like some overconcerned mother.