Remove Rats from Ghost Spawner

[Doxxmedearly]

PR https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/9103

Title.

Why: Player rats are a nuisance.

Why didn't I fully remove mechanics: If admins want to make player rats for whatever reason they can still do so. If devs prefer, mechanics can go, too. Easy enough.

Discuss.

[UnknownMurder]

I tentatively disagree for three reasons:

1. I saw player rats as part of roleplay, it never bothered me. There are people still interacts with rats whether it be trying to kill rats or befriending it. That's their roleplay and they may enjoy doing it.
2. "Player rats are a nuisance" isn't a big enough of why reasoning response.  
3. It's likely a small pest infestation roleplay that a player is trying to create so the people bothered would do something about it. For all I know, a worst thing a mouse can do is nibble tiny bits of food and someone has to do something about it ICly.

[YourDaddy117]

Maybe it's cause I main roles that don't come in contact with rats often (sec), but I don't think I've ever seen any horrible play from anyone playing rats. This is a super minor thing so it's not like I'll scream much if you actually remove em and i doubt anyone else will. Just seems kind of pointless and like you're removing small feature for next to no reason.

[Roostercat]

I have no idea why this is a problem, nobody has ever said its a problem, and "They are a nuisance" is not at all a good explanation to remove content. This looks more like a "I don't like it so I am removing it" kind of thing honestly. With that logic I could say Wizards are annoying and open a PR to remove them. At least give reasons.

[Codename: Bear]

In my experience rats/mice or whatever they are now, are only a problem when certain players want to be annoying.

I don't know if that's enough to warrant removal honestly.

[Sheeplets]

I'm totally onboard with this.

Playable rats have always either existed to get ground into wet mulch by scrubbers vents and be immediately forgotten about or to infinitely respawn and spite the kitchen staff while offering nothing in return besides a migraine (which is how they earned their five minute respawn timer).  You can't even make the argument that there's just bad apples spoiling a bunch since it's literally their listed purpose to just be annoying whenever possible, which in my experience has involved them taking single bites out of as much food as they can find just for the sake of ruining it and forcing me to throw it away.

Their saving grace was that we used to let them be taken as pets, but that isn't the case anymore if you go by what their wiki page tells you to do, and you can just as easily get them from the maintenance tunnels anyways. 

Edited June 12, 2020 by UncleJo
The smoothed out wrinkles in my brain refolded after I hit the post button.

[Kaed]

Pass. Rats are intended as a low-commitment role for observers, I don't see a reason to remove them other than they are occasionally irritating.

[niennab]

Thank you. Yes. Get rid of those nasty vermin.

They tend to spam the chat by bonking constantly into doors and will generally harass the kitchen and bar staff, getting in the way of rp.

I don't like playing characters who would kill rats, but their behaviour often leads me to.

[NerdyVampire]

I don't favor removal. I think they are fine the way they are. Never personally experienced any issues with them.

[SleepyWolf]

Many of the problems listed are problems with players - if someone is spamming the chat, communicate in looc "Please stop spamming :)" . This will almost ALWAYS make them co-operate. If it continues you can ahelp that someone is spamming the chat. 

The kitchen has readily available tools ALREADY to combat rats - rat traps. And they can even be hidden underneath vents/tables to kill rats. And if the station is ever in a situation where you CAN'T get the rat - that says more about the stations situations than the state of rats.

I've always been an advocate for adding more vermin on station. Mosquitoes, cockroaches, bats... I just think it's funny how... nvm...

 

ANYWAYS nah i like rats pls keep them? you can counter rats, they're not OP, they don't upset game balance or stop roleplay... they even start roleplay sometimes. keep them.......

[canon35]

Sure. Playable rats contribute pretty much nothing in terms of RP and are just used at most as a shitter mob as Jo said. We get nothing from them, we have nothing to lose from removing them. 

[Zundy]

Rats don't bother me, I like em. I'd rather we had more vermin not less.

[Arrow768]

Given that a configuration variable to disable player rats exists, the PR has been closed. 

This configuration variable will be used if there is sufficient support for the removal. 

[Alberyk]

I am for disabling rats as a ghost role. It was never worth the trouble, and it adds nothing but a way for people to annoy each other under the guise of them being a pest. Like assaulting the kitchen and chewing boxes.

[BoryaTheSlayer]

Rats don't really contribute much, if you want to observe the round you can already do so as a ghost, and i don't really see what kind of RP they provide anyway other than you having to use mousetraps when they steal food from the kitchen(which gets old very quickly). So that's a yes from me.

[Arrow768]

1 hour ago, Alberyk said:

I am for disabling rats as a ghost role. It was never worth the trouble, and it adds nothing but a way for people to annoy each other under the guise of them being a pest. Like assaulting the kitchen and chewing boxes.

AFAIK you can only chew boxes with food inside of them. Chewing other boxes has been removed. 

[Snakebittenn]

There are ways to make them less obnoxious. Putting traps in vents, giving the kitchen more traps, making Hiding take a little bit so you can't instant transmission up and down a table, and removing window bonking. I would rather try these methods first.

[Carver]

Rats have a curious habit of metagaming traps in all forms. Out with them unless they're placed under far stricter rules.

[Chada1]

We really need to get into the habit of removing things that don't contribute to the roleplay/enjoyability of rounds, rats as cute as they are, are one of those. I think we should either make them create ghost spawners from the pest event instead of being a constant available thing, or outright remove them.

If we did this idea, we could add the other pests as playable too which would be far more fun anyhoo. ?

Edited June 14, 2020 by Chada1
Added the playable pest idea

[Chada1]

Continuing: If we added them as part of the ghost spawner system (and require the pest event to be playable) It'd be far more immersive too, and I really do want to play as a Lizard or a Yithian, or one of those doggo things that'll likely just get shot to death by Security ?

We could also add Diona Nymphs as part of the event which'd add a lot of roleplay and stuff to the round.

Edited June 14, 2020 by Chada1

[Kaed]

15 minutes ago, Chada1 said:

Continuing: If we added them as part of the ghost spawner system (and require the pest event to be playable) It'd be far more immersive too, and I really do want to play as a Lizard or a Yithian, or one of those doggo things that'll likely just get shot to death by Security ?

Not a bad idea tbh.

[Scheveningen]

I believe the removal of rats from the config would not be a bad idea, all things considered. There really isn't much to it in terms of purpose that roleplaying an animal at-will presents and there's also the issue where the 5 minute respawn time creates problems where - despite that the rat player has to wait 5 minutes - will just continue being a massive pest instead of a minor pest. Playable rats sort of take more away than they give is the problem.

I'd like to see more NPC rat mechanics and such, though, but that can come at a later point in time.

[Chada1]

I don't mean to push this idea too much, but I still think a really good way to approach this would be to tie the pest events to the ghost spawner so players would get a more varied selection of pests to play on a round-by-round basis too. ? It sounds v. fun, and I think would be more conducive to roleplay if the roles were more limited-time things.

[Carver]

I'd only accept that if regulations in regard to pest control were made stricter to account for weird fuckers who take disease ridden pests and treat them like domesticated animals, otherwise it may just encourage more immersion-breaking childish behaviour from crew who go '? aw pet da lizard/rat/etc.' at the first sign of a bio hazard alert.

[Kaed]

12 hours ago, Carver said:

I'd only accept that if regulations in regard to pest control were made stricter to account for weird fuckers who take disease ridden pests and treat them like domesticated animals, otherwise it may just encourage more immersion-breaking childish behaviour from crew who go '? aw pet da lizard/rat/etc.' at the first sign of a bio hazard alert.

Lizards aren't known to be big vectors for disease.  At least, not to the level that rats are. But I've honestly never seen a whole lot of issue with people doing something other than murdering player rats on sight that aren't actively being pests - there's no reason to do so other than to be a jackass and claim IC justification of 'but is pest so allowed'. Ideally rats and other small critters inhabited by a player are for observing the game from up close and maybe taking part in a little bit of interactivity, rather than just chewing on every food object in sight like shits.

And this toxic critter behavior will become less common if it is a special event spawn, rather than a repeatable throwaway pest mob on a 5 minute cooldown.  Making something less common and more limited makes people treat it with more care.

Edited June 16, 2020 by Kaed