Removing Changeling as a Gamemode

[geeves]

https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/7688

This, along with a config change, will cause changeling to disappear from the gamemode vote menu, as well as the secret rotation. The back-end for ling remains in place for persons who wish to rework it to become an enjoyable gamemode.

Discuss whether you wish for this to happen or not, and give reasonings.

[KingOfThePing]

I support this change for the sole reason that not enough people do something enjoyable with the premise. It plays out mostly the same every round and it wears down quickly. Until someone picks it up I think removing it is the best option.

[Arrow768]

I disagree with the way the PR is implemented.
Imho it is sufficient to just remove it from the secret rotation.
If the intent is to fully remove it, then it should be fully removed from the code aswell, as (due to the magic of git) the code can always be looked up in the future.

[Yonnimer]

I disagree with the removal of ling. 

I don't see ling as broken, and I don't agree that it should be removed because of some bad ling rounds/bad ling players. There have been plenty of good ling rounds/gimmicks.

I do agree though i'd like to see a rework of some mechanics, just not the full removal of the gamemode while we wait.

[Natiform]

when ling rounds are really good, they're really good

when ling rounds aren't great, they're just kinda... well. extended with a dash of weird on the side.

i don't think it'd be a great idea to remove it just because some ling rounds are slower than others. as yonni said, reworking some mechanics would work- but what i see more often than not is people just not doing enough when they're lings, other than "oh no sword arms"- not a fault of the game mode, more just... people not working with everything they have.

[AmoryBlaine]

Out of circulation, hopefully someone reworks it into something more unique than a sibling to vampire.

[BurgerBB]

You have a  gamemode where the only people who play it are new players who mass enable all preferences, resulting in some shitty escalation and plenty of ganking. Like just take a goddamn step back and realise that if it isn't a security main playing ling, it's a brand new player who has only played on Aurora for 2 rounds.

I support the removal of this gamemode. Only a handful of people like changeling. Another handful dislike it but think that it will improve over time. The later have been fooling themselves for 2 years. Like it's honestly super fucking malicious that people are in favor of keeping changeling because if they remove it, no one is going to improve it so that means that we should keep a shit gamemode so people suffer and contributors are motivated to change it. Contributors, developers, and players aren't your fucking monkeys.

 

 

 

[Crozarius]

For as long as we don't antag ban people who play Changeling and then do nothing but stealth and hallucination sting and voicechange the entire round, I will support this. 

[Brutishcrab51]

Remove it from the Secret rotation, but make it so you can vote for the Changeling gamemode if you want to. That'll work just fine.

[Doxxmedearly]

Like with your malf thread, my preferred implementation would be to just remove it from secret at this time.

[Garnascus]

-1

Ling is a fine game mode that relies on body horror and subterfudge. Its now finally playable due to the recent work that was put in to fix bugs and add the cool new tiny horror sprite. 

[AmoryBlaine]

If it's worked on fast, I don't see a problem with it's removal. If this is gonna be a few months, or even a year or something- then yeah, just remove it from secret. Though, I think it's important to note that this affects a few other round types IIRC. The traitor and ling type, the cult and ling, or whatever- so we should probably make sure those are still good to go without lings.

[Seeli]

-1 Agree with Garnascus here. & Like ANY of the gamemodes, ling can be good or bad. The only way for people to get better at changeling is to play it. Removing a gamemode because some players do not do much in the rounds to drive narrative could be done for ANY of the gamemodes.

[Nantei]

I also like ling, even though it's not where I want it to be currently. Also for any gamemode removals we should absolutely have a poll considering how big a deal they are.

[Peppermint]

 A bad ling round is just extended. I'm not a huge fan of it, but there are worse (Death to malf).

[Nantei]

12 hours ago, Lemei said:

 A bad ling round is just extended. I'm not a huge fan of it, but there are worse (Death to malf).

A bad antagonist round being equal to extended sounds ideal to me. Much better than it being equal to a Goonstation round.

[VVipEdout]

A bad ling round is either extended with 5 more seconds of work to security/medical at best, while at worst it's hallucination sting spam, stealth drain, or horror form murderbone. A good ling round simply doesn't exist. Removing it from code fully would see nothing good lost, removal from secret would be acceptable.

[Cnaym]

On 15/12/2019 at 14:34, KingOfThePing said:

It plays out mostly the same every round and it wears down quickly.

Highpop round starts with three changelings. At least one of them will be the same as usual.

Lowpop starts with 1 or 2 and has more often than not an involved story with a lot more horror simply because there is no "armblade dude" running around the holodeck in the background.

I'm not for removing it, but taking it out of secret would be okay for me, or make it only happen on lower pop with a lower number of antags (2 maybe like ninja?). Maybe have it only in secret in the Vampire combination, giving both antags a chance to "fake" the other ones effects. I.e. Poison or DNA sting sapping out a bit of blood and so on... usually makes for an interesting interaction in which the station becomes the playground for different factions instead of "Sec against Antag"

[Peppermint]

7 hours ago, Nantei said:

A bad antagonist round being equal to extended sounds ideal to me. Much better than it being equal to a Goonstation round.

Mhm. Hence I think it should be kept.

 

There have been lots of wonderful ling rounds, albeit not recently (Though antags in general have been a bit bleh).

[Gangstafary]

As with similar suggestions, I disagree. Not only personally I enjoy both ling rounds and playing as ling, but again, the reason why some rounds might be bad don't have to do with the gamemode per se, but with lack of creativity/originality, etc. Educate antag players as to put effort in their gimmicks and to take pride in doing something innovative and fun rather than straight removal.

[KingOfThePing]

I assumed taking it out meant taking it out of the rotation. I do not encourage killing gamemodes altogether.

[Doxxmedearly]

3 hours ago, Gangstafary said:

Educate antag players as to put effort in their gimmicks

How would you suggest staff do this on the scale required? While I agree with this, and the sentiment, it's not a practical answer to the problem of ling being bad.

Let's not forget that some time within the last year or two, a large poll was held and ling was voted by a WIDE margin to be the least liked gamemode, and, if memory served, most suggestions to fix it were "removal." Something is just now being done about it. 

[Peppermint]

It would be nice if there was more warning on choosing an antag role. Something like:

'By choosing this role, you're accepting your part to drive the story and help entertain the players. Your goal is not to win or to kill as many people as possible', then perhaps more use of blacklisted roles like has been suggested on the malf post. Just as there's been a worrying number of people seeming to think otherwise recently.

[BRAINOS]

Quote

I've never had a good ling round, therefore good ling rounds do not exist, and are entirely impossible.

 

bruh

let's just completely axe a gamemode that wouldn't be hard to "fix" and isn't inherently "broken" in the first place. we could tweak a few cooldowns. i could tweak a few cooldowns and i've never touched byond's nightmare code. turning this into a "people don't understand coder's hell" thing does nothing to address what is wrong with the gamemode. in fact, nobody has actually addressed what is wrong with the gamemode, and i do not understand why everyone hates it so much. god, please, someone tell me what is mechanically wrong with this instead of repeating "i've never had a good ling round so it's a bad gamemode."

i've had a few rounds as ling where i've gotten applause in ooc, and i've been in a few rounds where i've given applause in ooc afterward. never have i had a ling round so bad that i want to completely axe it, along with all of the other roundtypes. this anecdotal support means nothing, but i'm tossing it in with all the other anecdotal opposition.

someone mentioned mindbreaker spam. okay, cool. that's one thing. we can focus on fixing what is easily fixed with "okay this has a cooldown now."

literally every ''terrible bad and spammy'' ling round can be fixed with simply adding cooldowns to the abilities on top of the general chemical gland shit they have now, so you're forced to diversify what skills you employ, and can't just mindbreaker spam everyone in the medbay lobby because you have fifty chems and it costs five to sting. this leaves us with the only other problem: boring ling rounds. and that's not a problem exclusive to ling, and if it was, we wouldn't have boring traitor rounds or boring raider rounds.

removing it from rotation? i'd be sad to see it gone, but at least we can vote for it.
removing it from code, entirely? wtf

if the coders are too burnt out to touch this gamemode, i get it. i'll literally make a PR myself to add cooldowns to each individual ability on top of chem gland storage.
if the idea of cooldowns isn't sufficient, god, tell me why. tell me, mechanically, what is wrong with this gamemode. i am literally, unsarcastically, genuinely and legitimately not sure why we mechanically hate this gamemode.

[BurgerBB]

Here is what is wrong with the gamemode:

The antagonist's MECHANICAL goal is to obtain genomes.

You can obtain genomes in the following way:

- Ganking someone and absorbing them, putting them out of the round until they are cloned.

- Stinging someone, which gives them noticeable clone damage.

 

Here is what usually happens:

- Pre discovery: A ling ganks without any roleplay. The most roleplay they use is: "Hey can you come help me in maintenance, there is a dude stuck." and then they mute/sleep/whatever sting you, then absorb you.

- Pre discovery: A ling spends half the round going around, randomly stinging people for powers. They then turn into beast mode and it becomes a typical security chace.

- Post discovery: Security validhunts the antags with the intent of killing/capturing them as they are non-human and a containment threat.

 

Changeling is inherently shit because of the methods to gain genomes and the fact that they're monsters. In order to fix changeling, you have to make a completely different gamemode. Someone did this a long time ago and it was vampire. Vampire was 100% meant as a replacement to ling but for some reason we like to fill Aurora with outdated gamemodes just because people are afraid that if we have no content, we have no players.

 

Do you know what loses players? Shitty gamemodes. Yesterday we had cult+vamp two rounds in a row and the playercount skyrocketed, moreso than normal.