Removing playable vox

[Alberyk]

This pr removes the option of being a vox from the merchant and heist: https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/7664

Why:

-vox lore is untouched at all, with zero development or any real desire from anyone to do anything with it

-can't really enforce anything without a whitelist, since anyone can be a vox

-vox have a terrible meme heritage that no one works to destroy

-vox enables some really annoying behavior from players

-it is used to be extra robust as an antag, instead of roleplaying whatever a vox is meant to be

-will probably open space for our own antag alien species in the future

[MattAtlas]

Okay. Let's go over why I support this.

1. Vox, as said, have a horrible heritage and a pretty shit culture around them. I absolutely doubt them being able to be anything else, because this exact thing has been tried and tried on other servers. It doesn't work.

2. They're a bay species. We should get rid of it now that we have the chance to. We can add our own antag species in their place. That's where the effort should go towards.

[Doxxmedearly]

Reasons supplied seem pretty solid to me; they're excellent points. I support this. 

[Peppermint]

So long as something is added in their place, I don't really care.

 

However the recent trend of removing rather than fixing things is pretty bleh. I'm sure there are people who would be willing to work on Vox lore if they were given the chance. Reducing the number of options without tackling the main issue is not a good thing in my opinion.

[Arrow768]

Well readding is just a question of mapping in the mirrors against.

The species itself still exists in the game. 

[MattAtlas]

12 minutes ago, Lemei said:

So long as something is added in their place, I don't really care.

 

However the recent trend of removing rather than fixing things is pretty bleh. I'm sure there are people who would be willing to work on Vox lore if they were given the chance. Reducing the number of options without tackling the main issue is not a good thing in my opinion.

The main issue is them existing at all. As I said, the effort needs to go towards something new to take their space, not trying to refine the same pile of shit into a smoother pile of shit. We should have our own unique species, not ones from Bay.

[Flamingo]

As much as playing vox can be fun at times, I support their removal for the reasons stated. I’d rather see something a lore nerd is passionate about put in eventually than let vox rot for another few years. 
 

2 hours ago, Lemei said:

So long as something is added in their place, I don't really care.

 

However the recent trend of removing rather than fixing things is pretty bleh. I'm sure there are people who would be willing to work on Vox lore if they were given the chance. Reducing the number of options without tackling the main issue is not a good thing in my opinion.

Vox lore has always been open for modification but it’s still been sitting rotting for years. The last person to try anything was I believe Syntax, and I don’t think much got done there.  
 

I’d rather see them cut out and redone sooner rather than letting it fester with no one fixing it. Besides, the first step to total overhaul is removing it. Gives the devs more freedom to modify things since people aren’t going to be up in arms about actively playing characters. Just my two cents. 

[Soultheif96]

I would encourage it being worked on lore wise and I would not mind working on the Vox.

Geeves was also working on the Vox but then it just stopped, not sure what happened there.

I would encourage it being removed from merchant until someone takes up the mantle to work on Vox lore to make them a viable species to play as a merchant, raider, and so on.

[Nantei]

I know myself and Geeves have both expressed interest in working on Vox. But the efforts are dead in the water from what I hear.

[Brutishcrab51]

I'm personally onboard with this because if Vox are removed, a new race can (potentially) be added in the future. Praise God, banish the Vox.

[Crozarius]

These are great points. I support this as well.

[IAmCrystalClear]

This is fair.

Have there been any suggestions as to what to implement in their place?

[canon35]

Honestly I think I'm on board with this. It wouldn't be too hard to write them out of lore either. Simply have some articles stating that vox have vanished, update their page to say one year they all left, make it a matter of IC and OOC speculation as to what the fuck happened to them. 

I did want them to stick around as antag species but as some people have said, having our own eventually would be really nice. 

[Kaed]

Praise be.  If I have to hear one more memelord shitbird all caps shrieking gibberish over the common channel I'm going to kill somone

[WickedCybs]

It's really hard to do Vox well. While I can't say I have much time on Aurora, some of the issues others have mentioned (the behaviour, memes) seem to big and really, that's how it is on most other servers with Vox. Even just taking time to rethink things about them would do good, though something new would be neat.

 

I'll be interested in seeing how things turn out, if they're removed.

[furrycactus]

Yes, please remove the shitbirds. Rare is it to see a Vox that's anything more than something that yells "VOXXIE WANT SHINIES YAYA" over the radio all the time. They're frankly annoying, and we'd be far better off having our own species.

[AmoryBlaine]

Given this is just a formality at this point, perhaps a new thread for a new species is in order? Not even a species, could just be a merchant guild or something with their own style, ect.

[geeves]

14 hours ago, Soultheif96 said:

Geeves was also working on the Vox but then it just stopped, not sure what happened there.

 

13 hours ago, Nantei said:

I know myself and Geeves have both expressed interest in working on Vox. But the efforts are dead in the water from what I hear.

I wrote an arc, which went ignored. Then my handler got perma-banned after harassing the entire staff team, and some players. Vox are unfixable, and a unique Auroran creation should replace them.

[keinto]

Just login in here to say I wish they hadn't been removed after just 3 days of discussion. Vox are a part of SS13 fond to me despite the feedback in this thread which I partly agree with, but in my head they were supposed to remain mysterious and annoying. Their design looked just as good as the other species and their basic lore was good enough to work with due to being rare as antags or merchants. There is a place for species which we know little about just like we do in nature. 

I think we should keep a space for them despite their flaws and while I'm not hoping to change anyone's mind I think there should have been better arguments other than "annoying and undeveloped" if they were going to be removed just 3 days after.

 

 

[BurgerBB]

I'd like to think that this movement to remove Vox started when I ICly pointed out the behavior that Vox typically do.

 

"HI MY NAME IS VOX. I GO AROUND THE SSSTATION FORCING OPEN DOORSSS FOR NO REAL REASSSON. I BREAK DOOR CIRCUITSSS INSTEAD OF HACKING IT BECAUSSSE I AM A BURDEN TO ENGINEERING."

Edited December 15, 2019 by BurgerBB

[Carver]

Something something I'd say just whitelist them but whitelists don't actually work at all. Doesn't hurt to remove them (and I won't exactly miss them), but a lot of the arguments presented are somewhat flawed.

On 13/12/2019 at 03:32, Alberyk said:

-vox have a terrible meme heritage that no one works to destroy (1)

-vox enables some really annoying behavior from players (2)

1) This isn't exclusive to Vox, and permeates multiple whitelisted species in a manner that has never really been spoken of due to fetishistic bias towards them and unreasonably lax policies from maintainers.

2) Per above, this isn't exclusive to Vox either. Though I can say to an extent that efforts have seemingly been made to cut down on terrible behaviours from whitelisted xenos (taj, unathi and especially IPCs), a lot of fairly unacceptable and memey behaviour is often overlooked as 'just joking around'. To which a joke ceases to be funny after it's repeated ad nauseam.

Taping over a single hole will not fix the inherent problem that caused said hole (the players).

[Mofo1995]

I would like to say, for clarification, I've had a lot of people ask me to open up a vox lore developer position. I won't open a dedicated vox position, but there's certainly interest among some members of the community. 

[Zundy]

I dunno mofo, people suggest I do all sorts of crazy things in general chat *taps nose and gives Drago a thumbs up and a wink* but they're meme suggestions like vox dev. I'd rather they were replaced too. We had suggestions and sprites for that Peleng or whatever race and even actual alien races from Coalf. I'd rather we used our own brand.

[Scheveningen]

peleng when???

I mean it'd be nice if Peleng or an antag race was put into the game, not expecting it though. I found that Vox was only particularly offensive because it's from Bay (not a slight against Bay specifically, it just isn't our own thing) and the only thing that Vox had in our own lore was the Inviolate from Bay. I admit that I turned off heist on all my characters after Vox got removed as I would only play Vox when I got heist, as I think I played it to a degree that people found it enjoyable. Naelynn was the same way, but why keep a species only 2 people play regularly or play well?

With nobody on staff who wanted to change it, it pretty much stood around for awhile as an abandoned gameplay feature, so while I'm only a tiny bit salty that it's gone, I still agree with the reasons why it was pitched out of a window.

Edited December 21, 2019 by Scheveningen

[Mofo1995]

59 minutes ago, Zundy said:

I dunno mofo, people suggest I do all sorts of crazy things in general chat *taps nose and gives Drago a thumbs up and a wink* but they're meme suggestions like vox dev. I'd rather they were replaced too. We had suggestions and sprites for that Peleng or whatever race and even actual alien races from Coalf. I'd rather we used our own brand.

I dont mean as a meme suggestion, I meant lads dipping into my PMs asking about it.

I would argue that a lot of the issues from Vox stem from a lack of concrete lore to give them direction. But truthfully, if we have to build lore from the ground up if it's missing that much on a fundamental level, it would be better to make our own.