[feedback] Removes changeling from secret rotation

[Zelmana]

I lied. Posting again.

There is almost as much effort in removing Ling from vote type as there would be to do a minor nerf of some abilities/rework some major problems. "Coders won't touch it" is not an excuse.

[OolongCow]

7 hours ago, Zelmana said:

There is almost as much effort in removing Ling from vote type as there would be to do a minor nerf of some abilities/rework some major problems. "Coders won't touch it" is not an excuse.

Except that it is.

Absolutely any code changes made to ling cannot be accounted for in this discussion due to the nature of how coders work in the community.

You cannot make any argument based on theoretical changes to changeling, because there is no obligation for coders to either agree with you or do what you or the community says. They're volunteers, not employees. You have to make arguments based on what changeling is. And right now? Most people agree it fucking sucks.

This PR is the only PR being discussed. Do not use PRs that do not exist and probably never will exist as an excuse to -1 it.

[restricted]

Ling in its current state isn't fun to deal with from any side of the coin. If it's shit now it's going to stay shit, I am wholly for pruning it from secret.

 

+1(00)

[Itanimulli]

People seem to turn off antag pref an awful lot these days. Hmm. I wonder why.

Regardless, sure, get rid of it. Another mode lost. While I could probably prattle on about "What if you just let the ling make more lings" or "hey what if the general gameplay loop wasn't literally to just murder everyone" I'm sure no one will bother to try coding such things that require effort or work and I'm certainly not capable of doing it myself.

I sincerely hope something pops up that gives people a worthwhile reason to play antags again. Maybe even they'll start liking non-cannon events!

C'est la vie!

+1

[OolongCow]

8 hours ago, Zelmana said:

What changed with Merc? Was it constant rebalancing? Adjusting the Wiki? Changing the name? While some of these things did great to influence what Merc is today, what really changed was server culture. It's not acceptable anymore to just go for disc. In fact, in the past few years you'll get bwoinked for beelining it to armory. Everything is about a e-letter word, Escalation. Why do we not hold good Ling gameplay to the same standard that we put Merc to?

Because changeling, in its current state, treats other players like obstacles to you getting genome points so you can use the powers that are all shittier than adrenaline sacs and armblade (which you obviously took to start with because you're gimping yourself if you don't) that you should kill as quickly as possible so you can reach a forgone conclusion of security shooting you until you die, revive, and then die again until they get sick of dealing with you and blow your head off. The gamemode tells you and by its design EXPECTS you to kill people who probably can't fight back while giving you basically nothing to work with as far as gimmicks or flavor or roleplay.

And that is not going to change unless a major rework comes through, which being very generous here maybe six or seven people in the entire community are even capable of doing. People who may have zero interest in doing so, or be busy with other, more important coding work for the server, or know that people will hate whatever they come up with anyway so why bother?

Changeling is not going to magically get better. The people who enable antag and have been playing changeling, are not going to magically get better. You know this, I know this, we all know this. This thread isn't going to singlehandedly convince "good" roleplayers to enable changeling and start pouring their heart and soul into making a difference. If it is allowed to remain in secret, it's going to remain a shitty gamemode that people actively try to avoid at all costs, nothing is going to change, and nothing is going to improve. And the people who voted down this PR will shrug their shoulders and say "I don't get it, why didn't things get better? I told them that they had to 'just make the antags rp more'! Why didn't that work?" while everyone who just had the second round that night turned into a shitshow by a hub player popping adrenaline sacs and clicking people until they went horizontal the moment they had enough justification to avoid a ban discusses whether they should bother bringing up removing changeling again.

[CatsinHD]

Oolong Cow and others have all made basically the same points I hold onto. As a medmain, it is especially tiresome for the inevitable call for a medic, the medic declaring ling dead, then minutes later hearing "This person just came back alive wtf!!!!" and medical freaking out because "my hud said they're dead, this is impossible!!". I have seen perhaps a handful of good ling rounds by players that I know and recognize that happened to have prefs on, and tried something different. It was still ling, with the same process of kill/capture/science or sec/repeat/die, but they managed to make it fun for the VERY few departments involved. Yet, this example, as I mentioned, was still the very annoying loop that is ling, and was marginally better IN SPITE of the gamemode. Suffice to say, I am tired of seeing it in secret. If someone comes up with a cool gimmick, or the server really wants to have a ling round (and hell, perhaps the absence of it in rotation means the few ling rounds that get voted are genuinely interesting), then people can still vote for it.

As for developers and reworks, I also agree of Oolong Cow. Don't play expectations that aren't entirely guaranteed. Everyone on staff volunteers their effort and work, so whether something does or does not get done is never certain. Limit your scope, review the details, make action, see the results, repeat.

I would go on with my own suggestions and thoughts on antags and a ling rework, but it would be out of the bounds for the scope of this thread, so I will simply deposit my +1 and move on.

[Fluffy]

I am more in favor of reducing the probability of ling being rolled, than outright removing it from the rotation, simply due to the breaking of the repetitiveness of the other gamemodes there are.

Surely, it's monotone to see it roll once every 4 rounds, but once every 50? 100? I think it could work that way, and if it doesn't, we can proceed to pull it out of the secret rotation afterwards.

[Ramke]

I support removing them from the secret rotation until the fabled rework/rebalance.

Geeves had a fantastic PR changing some core concepts but it didn't go through, not sure why. I'd rather not really see it randomly chosen until something's done to it.

[restricted]

22 minutes ago, Fluffy said:

I am more in favor of reducing the probability of ling being rolled, than outright removing it from the rotation, simply due to the breaking of the repetitiveness of the other gamemodes there are.

Surely, it's monotone to see it roll once every 4 rounds, but once every 50? 100? I think it could work that way, and if it doesn't, we can proceed to pull it out of the secret rotation afterwards.

If you'd like to code this, I'm all for it. Otherwise the best solution is removal from the secret rota.

[Fluffy]

21 minutes ago, restricted said:

If you'd like to code this, I'm all for it. Otherwise the best solution is removal from the secret rota.

It's an host configuration, no coding required, just Arrow has to change a line in the config file, and at the next restart it would be in.

[Ublicto]

On 13/08/2023 at 01:54, meep109 said:

Personally I believe that the problem lies in the adredaline sac abilities and other shit like that. I think ling's played best as a stealth antag where you actually use identity changes and morphs to make for a fun experience. If we retool or remove the abilities that make the ling sooo strong in upfront combat, I think ling would be so much more enjoyable, instead of just straight up removing it from secret

It is very difficult to play stealth ling with even one medical player looking at sensors. If anything, changeling needs a buff in some areas.

If you want ling to be a stealth antag, then suggest changes that would make it more fun to play stealth ling. Perhaps the ling should get a stun weapon and absorbing a person should transmit healthy suit sensors until they are fully absorbed. Right now a lot of the abilities ling has and the response of players to identifying a ling makes it much easier and more fun to play an aggressive changeling and buy combat focused abilities. This harms RP, and is not a product of ling itself but rather the type of response people have to a changeling and the abilities a changeling at round start is incentivized to take, especially when you have players who are constantly monitoring suit sensors or will always yell for security the moment they see your arm blade. 

What would help make gimmicks more creative might be a way for a ling to reset their abilities. Maybe they have to turn into a blob for a minute and rebuild themselves, but this would allow someone to buy stealth or gimmick abilities at round start and not have to worry about killing people to get combat abilities later.

 

[OolongCow]

5 hours ago, Ramke said:

I support removing them from the secret rotation until the fabled rework/rebalance.

Geeves had a fantastic PR changing some core concepts but it didn't go through, not sure why. I'd rather not really see it randomly chosen until something's done to it.

Geeves lost the will to keep working on it after it was maintainer discussion hell'd.

Edited August 15, 2023 by OolongCow

[OolongCow]

4 hours ago, Ublicto said:

It is very difficult to play stealth ling with even one medical player looking at sensors. If anything, changeling needs a buff in some areas.

If you want ling to be a stealth antag, then suggest changes that would make it more fun to play stealth ling. Perhaps the ling should get a stun weapon and absorbing a person should transmit healthy suit sensors until they are fully absorbed. Right now a lot of the abilities ling has and the response of players to identifying a ling makes it much easier and more fun to play an aggressive changeling and buy combat focused abilities. This harms RP, and is not a product of ling itself but rather the type of response people have to a changeling and the abilities a changeling at round start is incentivized to take, especially when you have players who are constantly monitoring suit sensors or will always yell for security the moment they see your arm blade. 

What would help make gimmicks more creative might be a way for a ling to reset their abilities. Maybe they have to turn into a blob for a minute and rebuild themselves, but this would allow someone to buy stealth or gimmick abilities at round start and not have to worry about killing people to get combat abilities later.

 

Ling does not need buffs. Buffs will not suddenly make people besides the ling have fun in changeling rounds. Ling being "bad" is not the reason other people find it unfun. People besides the changeling hating changeling is why this thread and PR were made. I'm not sure you understood that, since you just advocated buffing the parts people hate most about changeling (silent funny haha murder) while seemingly attempting to defend it. This isn't a "what I think is wrong with changeling" thread, it's a "do you think we should take this gamemode out back and shoot it because it makes everyone else in the round miserable?" thread. Asking coders to buff something a good chunk of the community just said they want dead because of how selfish the gamemode inherently is is not going to have the effect I think you wanted it to. Because you could've said "give absorbed players more to do" or "make morph more fun" or "add stuff that involves people besides security and medical". But instead you asked for changeling to be even stronger, and even more 1v20, and even more "give me all of the fun, it belongs to me because I enabled antag" than it already is.

Edited August 15, 2023 by OolongCow

[kyres1]

Before this reaches too many posts and too many words to reasonably care about for this topic, I should make a few things clear about the essence of this PR ;

1. A rework is not slated to happen nor ever going to happen if you want to look back in time and see how no reworks have ever happened.

2. Additions and tweaks to the gamemode are extremely few and far between.

3. The contentious nature of the game mode makes contributions towards it unappealing and often detrimental to the author.

4. The gamemode fundamentally curbs essential rules and toes many lines of uncertainty between what is OOCly acceptable for player behavior, and not, as defined by our rules.

5. The gamemode has a plethora of often unseen features that are vastly overshadowed by the utter necessity of taking a "meta kit" to avoid total unavoidable shutdown, therein railroading the gamemode into only one of two possibilities ; kill or get cuffed.

 

The above points, with all conjecture as to the quality of antagonist players, the quality of development, or the quality of the mechanics aside, are all factual as far as I can tell.

So, with those really really simple bulletpoints presented like that, it is impossible to rationally support this gamemode remaining in its current state. Ta-da. The PR was made. Kill it.

[Dreamix]

Remove ling from secret, but add it to the uplink, same as psionics are.

So ling is not effectively removed (which is what removing it from secret would do), but the rare traitor with the rare ling gimmick in mind could do it if they wish so. Of course it'd use up all TC so a traitor would have to commit to it.

I think this would be nice. Ling as a gamemode is kinda bad, and I think traitor is one of the best and most flexible modes we have (same as merc).

Edited August 15, 2023 by Dreamix

[OolongCow]

2 hours ago, Dreamix said:

Remove ling from secret, but add it to the uplink, same as psionics are.

So ling is not effectively removed (which is what removing it from secret would do), but the rare traitor with the rare ling gimmick in mind could do it if they wish so. Of course it'd use up all TC so a traitor would have to commit to it.

I think this would be nice. Ling as a gamemode is kinda bad, and I think traitor is one of the best and most flexible modes we have (same as merc).

But that wouldn't change or fix or improve any of the main reasons people hate changeling. It doesn't matter if it's rare. Meteor is rare too, but besides the funny factor, you don't see people genuinely asking for it to be added to secret. Because we all know it just creates low quality rounds with limited opportunities to RP.

The fact is, changeling needs a complete rework. The most likely way it ever gets one is if it's "around" but never played until someone decides to kill the old mode for good and add a new one wearing its skin (like a changeling).

[geeves]

i'm in favour of removing it entirely, but removing it from secret is second best

waiting for a rework is just agony for something that will likely never happen

if people really want ling to stay in full form, they can rework it themselves while its out, or commission someone if theyre incapable of doing so

[Triogenix]

1 hour ago, geeves said:

i'm in favour of removing it entirely, but removing it from secret is second best

waiting for a rework is just agony for something that will likely never happen

if people really want ling to stay in full form, they can rework it themselves while its out, or commission someone if theyre incapable of doing so

This sums up my thoughts pretty simply as well. Remove it from the secret rotation for now, and if people want it still used, they can code a rework for it.

[Ublicto]

13 hours ago, OolongCow said:

Ling does not need buffs. Buffs will not suddenly make people besides the ling have fun in changeling rounds. Ling being "bad" is not the reason other people find it unfun. People besides the changeling hating changeling is why this thread and PR were made. I'm not sure you understood that, since you just advocated buffing the parts people hate most about changeling (silent funny haha murder) while seemingly attempting to defend it. This isn't a "what I think is wrong with changeling" thread, it's a "do you think we should take this gamemode out back and shoot it because it makes everyone else in the round miserable?" thread. Asking coders to buff something a good chunk of the community just said they want dead because of how selfish the gamemode inherently is is not going to have the effect I think you wanted it to. Because you could've said "give absorbed players more to do" or "make morph more fun" or "add stuff that involves people besides security and medical". But instead you asked for changeling to be even stronger, and even more 1v20, and even more "give me all of the fun, it belongs to me because I enabled antag" than it already is.

What I have argued is that if changeling is to be a more stealthy horror antagonist, it should be given tools that allow it to be that rather than incentivizing fighting. If traitors for example only had easy access to weapons and no gimmick or stealth items they would overwhelmingly choose hostile gimmicks, and the same is true for changelings. I agree that there are problems with changeling, but I think those stem from what tools the ling is given easy access to rather than changeling itself. My experience in changeling may be the opposite as yours, i find silent murder difficult to achieve and what is even more of a challenge is hiding that murder when everyone has suit sensors on.

Regardless, if changeling will not be altered and the choice is between removal or preserving it as is I will not miss the current changeling mode. I think it's a really unique game mode though and would hope it can be changed or preserved to allow better game play and role play for everyone in the round.

[restricted]

All of the talk about "improving" changeling distracts from the core issue, in that it is is shit and actively making the game worse. If you want to make a changeling improvement thread, where we all spitball about great ideas that will never be implemented that's fine. This thread is about actually doing something to fix the problem, so we should focus on:

If changeling is indeed a problem (yes)

Will this break anything if implemented (no)

[OolongCow]

2 hours ago, Ublicto said:

My experience in changeling may be the opposite as yours, i find silent murder difficult to achieve and what is even more of a challenge is hiding that murder when everyone has suit sensors on.

This issue is that "silent murder" is universally considered a bad thing that nobody wants in their rounds, because "oh four people died, I had no clue" isn't fun for people besides the antagonist.

[Ublicto]

12 minutes ago, OolongCow said:

This issue is that "silent murder" is universally considered a bad thing that nobody wants in their rounds, because "oh four people died, I had no clue" isn't fun for people besides the antagonist.

Is being instantly hunted whenever you try and do anything fun? Right now changeling incentivizes being loud, because being the thing is extremely difficult.

[BravoBohemia]

A changeling going loud is also usually no fun for any party involved because said changeling can just 'die' and stand right back up again to start the process all over again whenever they like. Being that the two options afforded to changeling are not really fun for anyone, it makes it a pretty obvious choice on whether or not it needs to be pruned until it can be tweaked in a satisfactory manner. 

[OolongCow]

2 hours ago, Ublicto said:

Is being instantly hunted whenever you try and do anything fun? Right now changeling incentivizes being loud, because being the thing is extremely difficult.

Because your only option is to fucking murder someone and remove them from the round, which instantly elevates everyone to trying to stop you IC and OOC because they do not want to be stung, drug to deck two port maintenance, then drained and thrown in a crate so you can ignore them in hivemind and treat them like an obstacle to genome points and a "win".

If there was a traitor who parapenned and decapped random people in maintenance "because I'm a monster" they'd be banned faster than the shoechef. Ling having an "excuse" because "that's just how the gamemode is" doesn't make why that's unacceptable behavior for literally every other antagonist type but apparently not changeling any less stupid. The gamemode is inherently flawed and you need to accept that, and that other people are tired of dealing with it.

Edited August 16, 2023 by OolongCow

[OolongCow]

Actually, thinking about it more, I've stumbled onto a revelation that's probably not very new to many people but probably needs to be said:

Changeling is just objectively worse than vampire.

The modes are already very similar, yet vampire is just objectively a better mode in every way. You're not obligated to kill people, you have to manage your resources better, there's more interesting and stronger powers than just adrenaline glands and armblade, you can convert people, you can be sneaky, you can be loud, you can do more interesting gimmicks, and with the justified exceptions of hulk and veil walk spam, security isn't as eager nor as obligated to blow your head off since you're not an inherently uncontainable monster that has to be put in the no rp box. If we rolled the exclusive stuff changeling gets into it, fixed people's issues with veil walk, and did some minor flavor finagling on it so people feel more comfortable with it fitting the lore, I don't think most of the people objecting right now would actually end up missing changeling much.

Edited August 16, 2023 by OolongCow