Job is displayed in lobby

[Nero07]

Well, someone asked me to make a thread. So here it is.

You might have already seen it on bay. You ready up in the lobby and your "high" job choice appears next to your name. Makes it easier to anticipate wether you'll get your preferred slot or not. You can, for example, elect not to queue as janitor, when there are already 4 other people queued as janitor. That was originally coded on bay by me and now I have also implemented it here. It's finished and ready to go, barring any wishes/complaints.

How it looks:

PR: https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/7774

[Pratepresidenten]

I love this, but I have one biggus concernus.

Although I want to put great trust in people, I feel that some of the more crafty people would use this to meta.

People ready up with their role on display, but it doesnt add up with the manifest?? Now its time to play pin the antag on how many are missing and which preferences they have on and we can reliably guess our way to what antag mode it is.

Although this only applies to outside antags, I fear it might still happen.
I also know people can somewhat do this now aswell, but.. I unno. Am I seeing an issue where there is none?

[Peppermint]

I don't like this either.

Very easy to meta it and you can just co-ordinate with friends if need be for roles. Showing roles doesn't really bring anything positive. It'll hurt the more passive players whom queue up for a contested role, whilst this is a HUGE indirect antag buff. 

[Shenaanigans]

Honestly I feel like if people are going to try and use meta strats to figure out what the round type is they have plenty of ways to do that that aren't as complicated as cross-referencing with the readied list and learning who enabled what antag types. That's super complicated. It's much easier to just look for the obvious clues inherent to each antag and do your valid hunting that way.

I also feel that this change does impart a solid benefit. It could encourage more varied manifests if people see that everyone and their mother is playing sec this round and I know I would like to get a feel for what others are planning to play so I can adapt, without having to delay joining until after roundstart. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me why what people are readied up for should be kept a big secret.

[niennab]

What I worry about is what this means for possible fighting or attitude between players who will be readying as the same role. In the current system there's a bit of anonymity in that I might know the name of the character who won the slot, but I don't know their ckey.

 

On a side note, how would the system handle multiple job preferences?

[Nero07]

@Pratepresidenten

So in this Scenario, people would use a pen and paper or notepad or whatever, to note down what everyone readied up as and compare that to the in-round manifest? I guess they could do that. But if there's 2 people readied as janitor, one of them will not be the janitor and presumably join as something different. Also People who don't have a high preference show up as "no preference".

I don't know, seems like a lot of hassle to go through to determine if it's an offstation antag, as opposed to just waiting for people to turn into fish magically or the space hobos knocking at your airlock. And even then, would fuguring out in advance that it's some kind of offstation antag be that much of a meta advantage?

 

@Lemei

Well yeah, you can coordinate with friends, but if you're not friends with everyone else in the lobby, that doesn't really replace this functionality.

"'ll hurt the more passive players whom queue up for a contested role"

how so?

"whilst this is a HUGE indirect antag buff. "

What? How so?

 

@Shenaanigans

Thank you for your support!

 

@niennab

^ List of your cahracters in case I have beef with you. There's also the entirety of the "NanoTrasen Personnel Database" and if all else fails asking after the round usually gets you an answer. In any case I feel like the difference between "The guy who played Finley Greyson this round is a douche" and "Niennab is a douche" isn't that great, but that might be just me.

As for multiple preferences, that shouldn't be an issue, since everyone only gets one "high" choice and that's what's getting displayed. If you don't have a high, it just says "no preference"

EDIT: it'd be possible to add a flag in the job selection window for "don't display my job" and make it display "unknown" in lobby. But that would undermine the purpose of this whole thing (giving people an idea how contested their preferred job is) and I'm not really convinced it's necessary. Lastly, it's been on bay like this for years and they haven't reverted it. So I guess there weren't any major problems.

Edited December 23, 2019 by Nero07

[N8-Toe]

they have this on other servers and it's great. I dislike being the only on in a department usually because I don't have teammates for shenanigans and crisis. so knowing I wont be the only engineer/medic will make me want to ready up more often. 

 

On the topic of toxicity, I've never seen people actually fight over this on servers with this feature. and it is not hard at all to find out someones Ckey. so I don't think there is a downside

[MattAtlas]

You can already meta offstation antags by looking at the readied player amount and the effective player amount in-game, so...?

[niennab]

1 hour ago, Nero07 said:

^ List of your cahracters in case I have beef with you. There's also the entirety of the "NanoTrasen Personnel Database" and if all else fails asking after the round usually gets you an answer. In any case I feel like the difference between "The guy who played Finley Greyson this round is a douche" and "Niennab is a douche" isn't that great, but that might be just me.

As for multiple preferences, that shouldn't be an issue, since everyone only gets one "high" choice and that's what's getting displayed. If you don't have a high, it just says "no preference"

EDIT: it'd be possible to add a flag in the job selection window for "don't display my job" and make it display "unknown" in lobby. But that would undermine the purpose of this whole thing (giving people an idea how contested their preferred job is) and I'm not really convinced it's necessary. Lastly, it's been on bay like this for years and they haven't reverted it. So I guess there weren't any major problems.

I'm not a good example because I don't hide who I play. There are however a few players I know who intentionally do not share who they play because they prefer the anonymity. If the don't display my job bit is added, I would be on board with this!

[Nero07]

You can kinda hide what you're playing if you don't select a high and instead have only one job on medium.

You would then however have lower priority than people willing to openly slot.

is that acceptable?

[Skull132]

35 minutes ago, niennab said:

I'm not a good example because I don't hide who I play. There are however a few players I know who intentionally do not share who they play because they prefer the anonymity. If the don't display my job bit is added, I would be on board with this!

Funnily enough, staff regularly fall into this category.

29 minutes ago, Nero07 said:

You can kinda hide what you're playing if you don't select a high and instead have only one job on medium.

You would then however have lower priority than people willing to openly slot.

is that acceptable?

Or you could make it a client preference that has a default value of "show role". That way, people who are bothered enough can change it, but the rest, who don't really care, don't have to touch anything and they'll be shown as fine.

1 hour ago, MattAtlas said:

You can already meta offstation antags by looking at the readied player amount and the effective player amount in-game, so...?

Or just look whether the security manifest is empty or not :^). Ultimately tho ye, similar meta can just be done by comparing the manifest vs who list. Or using BOREALIS.

[Nero07]

6 minutes ago, Skull132 said:

Or you could make it a client preference that has a default value of "show role". That way, people who are bothered enough can change it, but the rest, who don't really care, don't have to touch anything and they'll be shown as fine.

Right, but if you have 3 people as "doesn't want to show" on the list. You can't then necessarily make the decision to go to engineering cause it's empty. And you can't be like "there's no HoS this shift, so I'll take it" cause you won't know. Again. Even worse, you could have someone think that, but a hidden guy has HoS on high and takes it. It undermines the intent of the change.

Edit: I really don't get why you'd want to hide your name in the first place. Pretty much every other role playing game makes it pretty clear who's behind the other guy. If you get harassed, that's already against the rules.

Edited December 23, 2019 by Nero07

[BoryaTheSlayer]

The only concern I have, which Nienna pointed out, is that it basically gives you THE method to find out who plays which character.

I do like the idea overall, just hope that anonymity can be preserved. I'm not sure if making these people who want to be anonymous to choose medium priority is very bueno, but that's one way of doing it.

[Nero07]

It's not really THE method because if someone chooses engineer and there's 3, that's still not conclusive. But yes it makes it easier.

What's so bad about that? Do you guys play D&D with black hoods and voicechangers? ?

 If you get harassed, that's already against the rules.

[BoryaTheSlayer]

Some people don't want to be meta'd. Knowing who plays the character often changes perception for other people.

[niennab]

I can guarantee you, especially playing on low pop, I would be able to find the ckey of one Janitor I really like should they ready up. I know however that they, want to remain anonymous and it's not my place to question that.

I don't believe players should be punished by having to choose medium priority considering there are a few very desirable 1 slot only roles. Detective, Forensic Technician, Corporate Liaison and any command role to name a few.

[Nero07]

Fine then, I'll pull it when I get back home.

[MattAtlas]

PR's been closed, locking.