Dionae Discussion.

[Kintsugi]

What it says on the tin. I make this thread on behalf of people too cowardly to do it on their own ?

Remember to remain civil.

Many people think Dionae are a net negative as a station race, and oftentimes only exist for powergaming purposes. I cannot for the life of me tell you a single Diona character I have actually enjoyed on Aurora. They either:

1. Exist to have meme names (Seize the Means of Production!) 
2. Exist to make themselves harder to kill as an antagonist, or to game antagonist mechanics (Like Cult)

Something must be done.

[Hepatica]

I propose two things. Remove Diona as a playable race, or make it so they can't spawn as or be selected for antag throughout the course of the round. And please god remove their ability to be in cult. Diona ghost spamming cult is horrific, I think we all can agree, given the main downside to ghost spam is that it does serious pain damage to the user and puts them in pain crit after a bit at 2-3 ghosts, making the summoner completely worthless.

[Carver]

I've never seen them powergamed nearly as hard as IPCs, and seeing as there are a grand total of two trees per year, I have little issue with an extremely rare species you can freely walk the fuck away from.

[Chada1]

I would be okay with removing Dionae from being Antagonists at all, like a species-wide mindshield implant, with the only exception being Antags like Vampire using Dominate or Revolution (As the dev for revolution, DO NOT REMOVE THEM FROM REVOLUTION) We don't need less Crew able to join those factions.

But I am completely UNSHAKEABLY against removing them as a player species, they are one of the most interesting species we have on the Station biology wise and are cute as hecc. I won't be moved from this opinion.

Edited May 27, 2020 by Chada1

[Wigglesworth Jones]

I despise Diona antagonists. Before the health of nymphs was nerfed, it'd take concentrated laser fire from at least two people to kill them. Plant-B-Gone doesn't work against them as well. They're also awful to deal with on cult, because now with the fact that manifested ghosts do not disappear when the rune is walked off, a single plant cultist can spam out apparitions. I'd personally suggest making them ineligible for cult at the very least, and ineligible for antag roles at most.

[Snakebittenn]

Dionae are, currently, a negative for the game. We have to nerf them every week due to the ridiculous mechanics they've been given. Health and limb regeneration, not having bones, not having organs, plus being immune to brain damage, plus being immune to oxy/tox/clone, plus decapitation not killing them, plus ventcrawling, plus immunity to death due to splitting.
Their lore is a little strange as well, but I'll say it can be developed and improved. However, as current, It's like having a shoggoth work at your local RadioShack. As well, their personalities are either:
1). Slow talking naïve idiot
2). Slow talking 600 year old 180 PhD genius RD
3). Slow talking aggressive Dominiaona (in sec)
4). Slow talking merc diona with an assault rifle
5). Slow talking friendly diona that actually has no personality at all
I do not believe in their current iteration that Dionae have a positive impact on the game (mostly mechanically). At the very least, remove their ability to antag.

Edited May 27, 2020 by ParadoxSpace
edited this post to be nicer

[DeadLantern]

Just because the playerbase plays the same stale personalities does not mean the lore or race should be removed.

Additionally, shouldn't this be brought up to the Dionae devs firstly and not to the general public? I doubt they appreciate this kind of thread. 

[Zyrus]

What is this, nerf everything month?

Just because someone is playing a thing terribly, does not make the race itself terrible. We have whitelists for a reason. If someone is being stupid, review it.

[Yonnimer]

Quote

Additionally, shouldn't this be brought up to the Dionae devs firstly and not to the general public? I doubt they appreciate this kind of thread. 

Please do contact the loredevs when you have issues. We are active and are looking for feedback. 

 

Quote

They're also awful to deal with on cult, because now with the fact that manifested ghosts do not disappear when the rune is walked off, a single plant cultist can spam out apparitions. 

A way to change this for dionae is being discussed. 

Quote

Something must be done.

It is. 

Dionae have been massively changing over the past few months. We have actual active loredevs and lore in place to prevent people from using the species to powergame. If you see someone powergaming/breaking lore, inform the loredevs(myself and @Caelphon)

We have been doing the best we can to improve the quality of Dionae, but without actually telling us we cannot solve the issues. For all the complaining i've seen, those people rarely actually try talking to me or cael about it.

[Scheveningen]

Thank you for calling attention to my thread.

Re: reporting powergaming, my personal opinion is that I am tolerant of degrees of powergaming (i.e., a diona photocopying apparitions) from a player behavior standpoint as I believe that being vindictive against "powergaming" [which is in many situations a subjective determination] can be problematic and toxic, but I'm less tolerant of game mechanics being able to support such cheese. Since this is a multiplayer game, there should be as less cheese as possible, since there's no computer opponent involved that needs fat stats to be competitive with the player. I generally don't feel strongly about someone owning me in a video game with a specific cheese method, though with some exceptions of cheese, the fact that it was even possible to do in the first place can annoy me enough to campaign in attempting to get such a feature removed if it truly is that cheesy.

My personal belief is that most people are playing diona just fine, but it is tiresome how absurdly overpowering diona are in terms of their stats, immunities, etc, and they become very tedious antagonists to have to be in conflict with. It's a mechanics issue and not really a roleplay issue. The roleplay is just fine, and anyone who says otherwise has personal bias involved.

Edited May 27, 2020 by Scheveningen

[Yonnimer]

Just to add my discord key is #Yonnimer#7387 . Cael's is Caelphon#8133 .

There is also the dionae discord you can join if you want to discuss any issues there. There's a link in the affilated_groups tab in the main aurora discord.

[Caelphon]

We have always been open for feedback.

We don't bite, I promise. 

[Boggle08]

1 hour ago, Zyrus said:

What is this, nerf everything month?

Just because someone is playing a thing terribly, does not make the race itself terrible. We have whitelists for a reason. If someone is being stupid, review it.

You would be surprised by how many changes are spurred from someone booting off of a shitty round and typing up a forum post.

 

Without echoing to many of the sentiments already posted in the the thread, I think that dionae need some kind of health rework. They actually have organs, I say we give these organs purpose: create a new health system for dionae that at the very least incentivises the cluster staying together. If you collapse into a tide of nymphs, you lose all of your useful organs. And when you lose all of your useful organs, you start losing out on all of your immunities. Want your organs back? You gotta eat, get light, and wait. Or you can pick them up off the ground and stuff them into your chest if they haven't gone rotten. Dionae can bounce back very fast from grievous injury or splittings. Every race on the station needs complicated surgery, specialized personnel, a shit ton of time, and chemicals to bounce back to full health when they get dabbed on. Dionae should have a system that mimmicks this.

As the treemen are right now, they are mechanically robust enough to almost be their own antag type. Until they get a rework, I'm all for the race getting barred from selection as antags, with the exception of Rev and Renegade(just a dionae with a gun, no uplink).

Despite all the the disdain for treemen lately, I have never seen more Dionae on the station than I have since I started playing about September of last year. Dionae are objectively the most alien race you can play as on the server, I think that factor alone makes them worth keeping around.

Edited May 27, 2020 by Boggle08

[nonno_anselmo]

The strenght of Dionae comes from the fact that literally everyone ignores how to kill them but also vacates the constantly but decides to treat the race as a stress relief whenever they get outrobusted by a slow tree who dies if you put Night Mode on the APCs in the main hallway.

Imagine you wanted to play a race but everyone brought the ooc into ic and berated you for powergaming, fun no ? Might aswell stop roleplaying and play a literal meme, fun : )

Imagine you wanted to do an antag gimmick but everyone instavalided you as hard as a wizard because your race cannot be killed with paincrit and by shooting at it constantly

Imagine, now, you are a sec player and the first thing you do against a Dionae antag is beat the shit out of it instead of turning off the lights. Ignoring a game mechanic instead of trying to counter it properly does not mean the mechanic itself should be removed, people already get mad that lizards beat too hard, cats go too fast and skrells can use baby-tier psionics, ants have a panacea in any k'oi-based food, IPCs take too long to die entirely, robolizards get adrenal implants and combitools but tend to forget that: Lizards get tired stupid fast, Cats break bones with 2 batons, Skrells are hemophiliac and so are Ants, IPCs sparking their legs are as good as dead, Robolizards get tired stupid fast and share the same sparking weakness as IPCs and trees get stunlocked with flashes. Might aswell make all the races reskins of humans.

 

If you, as sec, cannot incapacitate a dionae then you should probably reconsider how you play sec because you are then very likely playing sec to kill and valid and not to incapacitate and stop people trying to kill and valid. Reconsider your choice of department.

 

Learn to play, dionae is a race as liquid and varied as water because it can become a vessel of cultures and stories. Just because bruhmoment42069 got a whitelist back in 2018 and now plays as Licks the Rim of Pleasure doesn't mean every player is going to meme their Dionae and turn their character into a meme. By actively hating on a barely played race just because your sec character who lives in a station employing multiple races expects their security team to know a little something about the others' weaknesses you also actively discourage OOCly playing that race because it bears the scarlet letter of "powergame". Leave your vitriol in IC instead of taking it OOC and let the mods remove unsavory individuals from the community and strip incompetent and unworthy people of whitelists they probably should have not gotten in the first place and perhaps consider playing the race yourself if you think you can do a better job at roleplaying than someone else, dionae are intertwined with literally every race besides the most overplayed one, cats. 

Edited May 27, 2020 by nonno_anselmo
forgot to add that flashes fuck you over tremendously as a tree.

[Kintsugi]

16 minutes ago, nonno_anselmo said:

-snip-

Okay. I turn off the lights to incapacitate the tree. It reaches into it's emergency backpack box and lights a flare, wanders over to a local oxygen locker and pulls out a flashlight, and promptly walks out of the room.

I think you need to calm down - you talk about vitriol and anger, but your post is full of insults and ad hominems. We're all friends here, boss.

[nonno_anselmo]

Just now, DanseMacabre said:

Okay. I turn off the lights to incapacitate the tree. It reaches into it's emergency backpack box and lights a flare, wanders over to a local oxygen locker and pulls out a flashlight, and promptly walks out of the room.

I think you need to calm down - you talk about vitriol and anger, but your post is full of insults and ad hominems. We're all friends here, boss.

disarm.

pick up.

throw away.

 

Literally like disarming an antag's revolver, interacting with the gun to unload it and throwing the revolver away. Incapacitate, not kill. 

 

And as Cael and Yonni have said already, they are now being on the lookout for people who powergame as naenae. So things like making floodlights with circuits and spamming radium in plantbags to get more light.

Edited May 27, 2020 by nonno_anselmo
further explaining

[GreenBoi]

6 hours ago, DanseMacabre said:

Okay. I turn off the lights to incapacitate the tree. It reaches into it's emergency backpack box and lights a flare, wanders over to a local oxygen locker and pulls out a flashlight, and promptly walks out of the room.

I think you need to calm down - you talk about vitriol and anger, but your post is full of insults and ad hominems. We're all friends here, boss.

Self-made lights are almost always weaker than natural lighting, unless it's a strong powergamer's light beacon. This means they won't heal as fast (or at all since there's a lightvalue that does no healing and is essentially limbo: no healing, no damage from darkness) which lets you hurt them.

 

In most rooms, just having night lighting on screws their healing.

[Susan]

I'd like to also point out that Vox were removed for really adding nothing to the game and having a bunch of broken dumb mechanics.

I'm in the camp of 'Diona don't really add anything'. I don't want to get into Nonno's weird tangent about incapacitating - that is not security's only job. If a Diona has a lethal weapon and has used it or is threatening to use it, they will be met with lethal force. Anyone who thinks stunning a man wielding a revolver is a good idea does not understand the use of force pyramid.

If Diona are to remain, they need to be fixed. Their health and hardiness needs to be lowered, and they need their click delay back. There was a period of time where there was at least a two or three second click delay on Diona making their place in combat roles like security or merc less tenable because of how slow they were. Now there's nothing restricting Diona from going ham which goes against how they're supposed to be; Diona shouldn't be reacting immediately to things or blind-firing assault rifles down the hallway. 

Mechanically enforce their slowness by having a delay on them attempting to click on anything, make them susceptible to Plant-B-Gone again, and reign in their obscene health functionality.

[DeadLantern]

I find it strange that people continue to post about how Dionae need to be fixed and changed--did you not read what the loredevs are saying? They said they are working on changing things about the race 

This conversation and thread is pretty useless. Instead of talking on this thread, DM the loredevs about your contentions with the species. There is literally no reason to participate here because the same things can be achieved by talking with the loredevs (AKA, the people who can actually change stuff).

Additionally, I find it frightening and absurd that people (including another loredev) would rather rag on the species here instead of just... talking to the people in charge of the race.

Just DM Yonnimer or Caelphon instead of complaining how bad Dionae are in this thread or on discord.

[Susan]

Lore devs are in charge of lore. My concern is game mechanics. Lore should not dictate mechanics; it is a game at its core and balance is necessary. If the lore says Tajaran are immortal that would be an awful mechanic to implement just because it was written that way. I am absolutely entirely unconcerned about Diona lore, it's their ridiculous game mechanics that leave a bad taste in my mouth.

Equally I don't know why you think me choosing not to sneak this discussion way into DMs when a public topic has been made is some heinous crime. I don't think anyone made this topic as a BM to Yon or Cael. They are just as capable as reading this topic as anyone else. Why have this forum at all, just contact code devs personally with suggestions? Honestly.

[DeadLantern]

As far as I know, loredevs also have the power to change mechanics (but not neccesarily the skill). Again, literally go up on this thread, both Yonnimer and Cael say they are attempting to rework Dionae and both of them are open to DMs about the subject.

Also, Dionae have been lambasted by devs, loredevs, and players alike. Ask anyone about Dionae and it will be virtually all negative. This type of thread and the type of talk that goes on in Discord or OOC makes it seem like the people who can change the mechanics are far out of reach. Doesn't it seem a little underhanded to talk about horrible a species' mechanics are, only to not directly bring it up with the people in charge with the species?

While a forum thread like this can be read by the dionae loredevs, it believe it would be more efficient and in better taste just to DM them or even bring it up on the Dionae discord or something. Making this forum post visible to all and commentable by all makes it seem like Dionae are not getting changed and that no one is doing anything about it, which is just untrue. 

[Caelphon]

Again, this is an example of one of the few projects we've been working closely on with the Developers. 

https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/8966

 

Dionae have been given a lot of hate, so they withered. They just need some patience and love, and they'll grow. We just ask that you give us time. 

 

@DanseMacabre

[Kintsugi]

34 minutes ago, Caelphon said:

Again, this is an example of one of the few projects we've been working closely on with the Developers. 

https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/8966

 

Dionae have been given a lot of hate, so they withered. They just need some patience and love, and they'll grow. We just ask that you give us time. 

 

@DanseMacabre

I’m glad something is being done, keep up the good work boss