Odyssey Tests Feedback Thread

[MattAtlas]

Hello, my favourite lab rats... I mean players.

Today we ran a test of how a hypothetical worst case scenario Odyssey round would go. Dreamy wanted to test his map, and I thought that it would be useful to extend that to a white-room scenario of what would happen in the worst possible Odyssey round. Ergo: if Odyssey can work as a gamemode with no Storyteller and no help beyond what the situation gives you.

I think it was conceptually a success. I saw a very engaged crew (especially Engineering!) and the actors came up with some fantastic improv and stories, with even cute little side stories such as the donut arc. For context, I intentionally did not tell the actors anything until I spawned them in (which took very long because I had to spawn them manually, since I used a broken version of the branch by accident - sorry!), told them the premise of the map and what I would tell Command with an announcement, and absolutely nothing else. They had no information leading up to the round, so they had no time to come up with a gimmick before they played, and I think the result was still stellar.

We've gone down and written the mechanical bugs of the map. I'm more interested to hear in this thread what you conceptually thought about the gamemode. Do you think you were entertained? Did you have things to do in your department? Did you think it was noticeably different from your usual round? And so on.

Soon, likely next week (depending on when I leave on vacation to get a tan), we'll run a second test with the actual gamemode, a fixed map, and a non-admin Storyteller. I hope to see you then!

[hollyhock]

as an engineer, this was super super fun
it was very disorganized for a while, but once everything was together it was great to build the FOB even if i had to leave partway through
i feel like itll get better as more test rounds get done with chiefs and engineers more experienced at doing this kind of thing

fun : )

Edited July 28 by hollyhock

[gladiatorgames123]

An absolutely superb gamemode from what I could tell! 

Despite the fact I had only joined in mid-round, I noticed that nearly everyone was engaged which was super awesome! Of course, some people had to sit around and wait for their part to play, but this is expected in rounds such as these. It feels incredibly refreshing playing in such a gamemode as this, where people are able to break the typical mold of doing round set up then simply... Well, waiting for things to happen from the antags. Even from my perspective as an O.M, having little to do with the frontlines, combat or anything of that matter, I found it really quite engaging. I had jobs to do, things to organise, people to talk too and plan with alongside watching the absolutely amazing work of the engineering team build up!

It'll of course be a matter of time and experience to figure out if I have any major issues or problems with the gamemode, but for the moment all I can say is I have issue with the fact I can't already get my grubby mitts on Storyteller... I am just so happy something like this is coming into fruition and I'm really looking forward to seeing what's made of the mode!

[Tex-Mex]

Security player.

It was phenomenal, it was cool. Adding an actual storyteller and an organized story could go a long way—otherwise, incredible combat and engineering work. It will take some getting used to but it definitely has potential.

[Jaeger Brothers]

As the actor of Jim Ariel, I loved everything about it from getting frozen and the reaction of despair from my fellow actors after I was Frozen and later died to an Infection. I didn't really Interact with Most of the crew but the Security Banter kept everything fun and I see myself playing an actor a lot more and if this is the worst case scenario I wonder what the best would look like

Unpopular opinion but I think the standard round time should be extended to 3 hours for oddyssey since the decision to just kidnapp the Investigator was kinda rushed so we could get things going but other then that.

Edited July 28 by Jaeger Brothers

[N8-Toe]

So I was CE for the round! first I want to say I am so so proud of all the engineers and atmos techs. you guys made the round for everyone

 

so some feedback on changes I think should happen

 

1: the crew needs more materials on hand. we need more steel and base materials in a storage room somewhere for the crew to use. Maybe in an expidition storage room? or just engineering but the amount we had just on hand barely got us off the ground. if we want building FOBs or such to be a thing that happens. we need wildly more to do so

2: further, we need a tech storage with backup boards for basic gear and medical gear. rechargers, scanners, OR tables. having those on hand. The point of this isn't to cut out RND, its to streamline round start. we dont want every oddysy round to be 30 minutes of packing, because than we cant have a slow burn

3: fluff items needed might be things like generic sign posts. or other "organizational markers". give us keep out signs, traffic cones, and other tools for herding and managing abunch of people in motion

 

 

Edited July 28 by N8-Toe

[chaotic_idealism]

I would say this is basically on-site Mercenary. Now, I do enjoy a good round of Merc, so that's okay. IMO, we can add this to the rotation once some rough edges get filed off.

Some things that need improving:

• Lighting. We're doing everything in the dark, or else carrying light sources with limited batteries in a place where there are few or no power sources to recharge them. Quality of life issue. Daytime, please. Otherwise it's just not feasible.
• Maps. Unless one is posted at the beginning of every round, there's no map. It needs to be available on the PDAs. (And the PDA charges need to last all round, even if it's extended several times.)
• Setup time. The first two hours were essentially just setting up the round, which is going to get hella boring if this becomes a regular gamemode. On-ship setup time is about fifteen minutes. It needs to be about that long in this gamemode, too. Having to drag basically the entire ship's worth of equipment and supplies, manually, to the away site takes a LONG time, and it's boring as heck. This needs a solution.
• Complete lack of home base. Working out of the Intrepid was annoying and frustrating. You couldn't take a coffee break and chat with your friends over lunch; you couldn't hang out around the Medbay entryway, smoking and gossiping. There was a sense of being lost, constantly, even when you knew where everything was, because there were no established meeting places and no landmarks that everyone knew.
• No on-ship resources. Medical is doing surgery with anesthesia tanks and by flashlight. Forget xenobotany, xenobiology, hydroponics... No offices, no workshops, not even any vending machines. Can't get a coffee. Sure, you could stay on the Horizon to do those things, but you have to choose between them and having any active part in the round whatsoever.
• And of course the "if you mine a rock, you let all the air out of the planet" bug. We gotta solve that one.

The way I see it, this could be a "ready-made event" sort of gamemode. Use it every once in a while when someone has a good idea. Maybe have an array of maps to use. But yeah, a lot of problems need solving before this is workable.

[Dreamix]

Other than the technical difficulties (sorry about those), I hope it was mostly a success! Being the first ever test run of odyssey, at least. A lot of the things like bugs and issues will be solved until next time.

I've seen a ton of cool roleplay and action during this test, stuff that does not happen in normal rounds.

Edited July 28 by Dreamix

[chaotic_idealism]

Teleporters instead of shuttles would be nice. And multiple teleporter locations all over the Horizon. People carry their own beacons, so they can teleport themselves back... That would make it possible to work out of the Horizon and still experience the away site. Would solve a lot of problems. And probably create more, but man, if I have to try to drag an entire medbay to the Intrepid and to an away site one more time, I'm gonna tear my pixellated speessman hair out.

Edited July 28 by chaotic_idealism

[ASmallCuteCat]

I was one of the volunteers for the round.

I had trouble keeping track of who was on my "side" - there was no crew manifest to refer to. And I sort of forgot who was who, or what their objectives was. Of course, this is probably more of a user problem on my part, but a suggestion I have would be something like, a little text window shared with other actors and the storytellers with a short blurb of who your character is and what their goals are, so they've got something to refer to and something to work off.

Also, is Odyssey meant to be a "land on off-site, find enemies, fight enemies" game mode? I think it'd be really cool to visit away sites where you have to be diplomatic, like the humanitarian mission in the Moghes events, or even trying to broker peace between two disagreeing groups. Or even just something like "oh noes, the intrepid has crashed and we must play minecraft until the horizon can pick us up"

[Dreamix]

  

30 minutes ago, ASmallCuteCat said:

Also, is Odyssey meant to be a "land on off-site, find enemies, fight enemies" game mode?

The idea of Odyssey is kinda, "Horizon goes to do X" instead of "X comes to Horizon" (being mercs/burglars/ninjas/etc).

What "X" is exactly, can be anything. It can be a planet, a space station, a ship, anything. This planet outpost that we tested today, is just the first thing I mapped in, but odyssey missions could be basically anything, including maps without any hostile actors at all.

Ideally there would be some odyssey missions optimized for highpop, and different ones for lowpop too with less/no actor requirements. So it's not just a highpop murder gamemode.

Another thing still, is that the "gimmick" or "story" is up to the actors and storyteller to figure out, and could be different every round. This time it was EE scientists and independent mercenaries protecting them, and that was the volunteers gimmick - next time we run this it could be entirely different.

Edited July 28 by Dreamix

[Fyni]

Hello! Captains perpective.

My first bit of feedback is time. I was quick to prepare the departments to set up a base on the planet, but that's only because I knew where we were to go and instructed to do so ASAP. If this mode is run "properly" (I.E. with a GM), I can see this infomation taking some time to filter down. The amount of time it takes to set up people and gear means I think some basic info that both Command and the GM can work with needs to be available immediately, or at least within 5 minutes of round start. This can include the aforemention PDA maps / paper maps and a brief (command only maybe) message saying "Prepare for operations / expedition to XYZ planet" I highly enjoyed the command brief I called, if I had more info earlier it could have been better.

With that in mind, with expediance of the action in mind, I would like there to be some guidelines on how to approach these situations. Five minute Intrepid flights,  advanced seat booking (engineering and security first! etc.) can all be specified to ease that start of round chaos.

As the Captain, one of the few I can see reasonably staying on the Horizon, there needs to be better meathods of communication. First, all crew should have access to hailing or an expedition channel, to stop the "angry locals can listen in on our common communications and talk there too" problem we had on Konyang, but which also last night made me restrict exactly what I was saying - keeping the crew less informed, making the round less engaging. I would also like remote cameras to the planet to away sites to work - often your just going of word of mouth as the Cap, and been able to use a borg's cameras or the journalist would make that much easier, and I don't think "over powered" like earlier talk of body cams concluded. Finally, I am unsure if my annoucements were "hearable" on the planet, but making sure they are would aid with that communication and coordination aspect.

Feedback on a per deparetment basis (which I only gather from watching over it all)

Command - Intrepid flights are under Bridge Crew. I assigned one as the "crew chief" (in charge of who and what gets on each flight with absolute authority around the Intrepid). Having this tempoorary role codified (see my earlier guideline suggestion) I think would make the Intrepid less chaotic. Adding guidelines to cycling bridge crew on pilot duties too could help alievate boredom for said players too.

Security - No comment here!

Science - I was glad science had something to do, even a large role in this round. I hope Odyssey always prioritizes this often neglected department more often. We need some generic macguffins which GMs could use which perhaps interact with the tools science has access to? (Cool idea of a "macguffin" designer where you make an object/artefact and give it propeties based off a list)

Medical - Access to chemistry is key and may see a player stuck on the ship producing as such.

Operations - I loved Operations role in moving supplies up and down, using the tug to help medical move their gear etc. and it feels like the department finally coming into it's own. The mining rock issue dulled it a little bit but otherwise it was great.  The machinists were one job stuck largely on ship, even when I asked one down to do field repairs. A way for them to quickly set up recharging stations for IPCs and shipbound synths would give them a reason to go down.

Service - Poor service. I believe a storeroom should be added full of "field supplies" for them to easily set up a field kitchen - a few crates of MREs including K'ois, and "field" stoves / ovens -  cooking equipment which is not electricity powered, but powered by phoron/other sheets like PACMAN generators to help them start this process ASAP. In this and the recent event round, they were supposed to set up in the field but it is severly slowed by power restrictions when they are low on the priority list below engineering and medical.

Overall I had a lot of fun sat on top of this chaotic mess of energy and was proud of what engineering achieved, with the help of Operations. Proud of what my bridge crew did, and amazed at Medical and Security's work in rough conditions.

[N8-Toe]

I don't think doing the transport via teleporter would be an improvement. if anything it'd be a downgrade. Using shuttles gives a feel of actually moving, and forces greater form of cooperation. you cant just pop up and down. If I could just go up or down via teleporter easily, there's no reason for engineering to build a base, no reason for service to setup a field kitchen ect ect. it defeats the crew going to the thing and hanging around at the thing

 

The lack of map I think is a feature. And if the crew gets a map or not should be up to the GM. otherwise do some scouting, maybe we give the investigators bino's in their lockers and make them securities scouts. 

 

On command and being on the ship. We tried setting up a command post during the round, but it fell in priority. I think adding helmet cameras as maybe an accessory? or something some gear has, and a way for engineering to setup communications and network on planet. Would go a far way. So we can have a sorta "mini bridge" for the crew to be led from on planet. 

 

Odyssey I think is going to be great as long as the "going to the thing" is relatively open to who wants to go. 

[Fyni]

 

22 minutes ago, N8-Toe said:

I don't think doing the transport via teleporter would be an improvement. if anything it'd be a downgrade. Using shuttles gives a feel of actually moving, and forces greater form of cooperation. you cant just pop up and down. If I could just go up or down via teleporter easily, there's no reason for engineering to build a base, no reason for service to setup a field kitchen ect ect. it defeats the crew going to the thing and hanging around at the thing

I think the teleporter as a "send down a single or handful or people or a few items" thing is fine, but should not be used primarily too.

 

23 minutes ago, N8-Toe said:

The lack of map I think is a feature. And if the crew gets a map or not should be up to the GM. otherwise do some scouting, maybe we give the investigators bino's in their lockers and make them securities scouts.

I think maps should be there purely because long time player will learn the maps by heart and less frequent players will end up lost. There needs to be an aide.

[greenjoe]

1 minute ago, Fyni said:

long time player will learn the maps by heart

There's plans for maps to have randomized parts, so it wouldn't be possible to remember

[MattAtlas]

I'll copy and paste here what my thoughts on the test are.

I think gameplay-wise it's a stunning success - it's basically exporting the high-intensity event formula to a playable gamemode, that can be adapted up or down on intensity depending on the type of mission chosen and what the actors/storyteller are feeling like at the moment.  There are mechanical kinks to work out, however. The main ones have to do with some jobs, such as the AI, the BCs, and their role in the game. However, this gamemode provides us with an excellent opportunity to finally give some good gameplay integration to departments desperately in need of it, like Operations and Science, because things they can participate in are constantly happening.

The main problem I see is that it's a really big departure from our usual style of roleplay. The average antagonist round, going by the event scale, is probably classified as a medium or high intensity round. It is, however, balanced by the fact that there's usually at least an hour of... nothing, where you get to play your character and pretend to be a civilian in a spaceship. If you are constantly being sent down to missions, you lose that civilian part of the roleplay. And I think that's a part that's already been plenty hacked at with the crew armoury and slow militarization of the Horizons (which I've already commented on plenty as mistakes on my part). In short - the main consideration to make will be on whether or not this shift is wanted, I think.

[Fyni]

1 hour ago, MattAtlas said:

The main problem I see is that it's a really big departure from our usual style of roleplay. The average antagonist round, going by the event scale, is probably classified as a medium or high intensity round. It is, however, balanced by the fact that there's usually at least an hour of... nothing, where you get to play your character and pretend to be a civilian in a spaceship. If you are constantly being sent down to missions, you lose that civilian part of the roleplay. And I think that's a part that's already been plenty hacked at with the crew armoury and slow militarization of the Horizons (which I've already commented on plenty as mistakes on my part). In short - the main consideration to make will be on whether or not this shift is wanted, I think.

It was a lot of fun, and I think having this game mode as a semi regular "event" at the very least will heal deal with missing the quiet rp hour most antag rounds have and make the none Odyssesy rounds popular too because it offers that?

[MattAtlas]

19 minutes ago, Fyni said:

It was a lot of fun, and I think having this game mode as a semi regular "event" at the very least will heal deal with missing the quiet rp hour most antag rounds have and make the none Odyssesy rounds popular too because it offers that?

I do not see how this gamemode doesn't completely overshadow and eventually take over Secret's role as the main gamemode, since the only people playing antagonist now are the usual 2-3 guys and people who've just found the server. This leads to it being played constantly and kind of necessarily changing the server.

I guess you could still have people vote extended though as we all know that's usually a deadhour exclusive.

[N8-Toe]

BC I think have a good transition for odyssey, they're our pilots, our crew chiefs, and general command assistants. I could see myself as captain or head of staff having them handling tasks such as checking on things, carrying messages or supplies, on top of flying the shuttles. if we add things such as helmet or body cameras, they'd be invaluable in handling command and control during hectic situations

 

on the shift of RP. I think once its a regular game mode you'll get people who still stay on the ship to do their casual RP. as well discussions I've seen on the discord of things such as field kitchen supplies and other tools to make it easier for people to be down at the target area interacting. 

[Peppermint]

I didn't play but I watched a bit so hopefully it's still fine to give feedback. I've given the positives of my opinion in the other thread so by focusing on my concerns/the negatives here, I do hope it doesn't come across as too whiny.

Nonetheless I think Aurora really needs to figure out what kind of RP it wants to offer because Odyssey is going to move the server even further down the militarization and explosive side where the video game section is going to become increasingly focused on. At the same time it is also going to see a sharp decrease to the comfy RP Aurora has always offered, as well as the more character and lore driven side taking hits. The events themselves are going to be the main push and the focus will shift from intercharacter relationship building and similar to big set pieces and missions. It's pretty much guaranteed and you can see it in how differently people play events. Much more like cogs in a machine, people staying in their own group for whatever task, which generally means less RP but more macro stuff.

I also find it a bit hypocritical that there's been a lot of negative feedback surrounding big, explosive events really pushing the envelope of believable happenings to the point lore arcs now need head staff permission and justification for the high intensity stuff that it's now going to be an every round thing. I'm sure someone will point out that people can run calmer, more gentle events, but the history of gamemodes like the dynamic modes, the creep of events, how rare peaceful antag stuff is ect generally shows people will opt for the high intensity stuff. So that's blow one vs more casual/cosy 'I'm just doing my job' stuff as well as focuses on characters.

I think the second is going to be the push for stuff to be planet side. I still think that focusing on the ship itself is much more interesting as everyone is much more tightly packed so will likely get more interdepartmental stuff, but that's a whole other thing I'll touch on later. When people are spread out across a big planet map, they're going to interact with folks outside their bubble less. Likewise you're going to be much harder pressed to find time for the character driven stuff that I'd argue has been Aurora's main strength for a while, though this has been eroded away at. People will have a role, and they'll go do it. They're probably not going to sit down and bicker around the pros/cons of Elyra, or complain about the tajara factions, or discuss if biesel has any freedom. Which given the majority of the lore is seen through the lens of the cultural melting pot and how they interact,is also probably going to become less important. I'm sure people will run lore based events, but I doubt they'll be common (again, see how people could already do this with merc if they want to, but often don't) due to how maps will need to be used for different things + the actor pool is going to be similar to the antag pool. 

Third, a whole bunch of jobs are going to be made much less relevant. There are the arguments 'ok but they weren't any way' and maybe that's a sacrifice that's worth it, but I personally think not. The main way they will be used is through gimmick events, but I think some of them would have to be entirely retooled or just removed.

- Investigator.
- Psychiatrist/Psychologist
- Chaplain
- Bartender
- Chef
- Corp rep/liason
- Corp consular
- Executive officer is in an even weirder spot, I'd argue.
- Physician is going to be even more useless
- Miners, unless the gimmick is specifically built with them in mind to have something to do.

Again I'm sure people will build entire missions around these roles, but it won't happen often and the average, day to day round  is probably not going to find much use for them. Using merc as an example, you sometimes get the odd' force the chefs to make us dinner' gimmick but they're rare (and I'd argue rare for a reason lol) and with the map stuff thrown in, people will have less time to interact with these roles. Assuming people will vote extended here and there is naive at best.

The last big issue is that making these types of rounds more common is going to axe a lot of character concepts even more so than the move to the Horizon did. I'm not going to list every way how as I think it's quite obvious how leaning further into a mission based existence will, but it's a big shame and will see another big loss of lore. Especially as characters are going to have less time to interact with one another, so origins and similar will probably mean less.

Okay, done whining peppermint?

Now, the thing is, maybe this is just where Aurora wants to go. Over the years it feels like we've already lost a lot of the comfy, relationship driven RP and I'm a bitter vet wanting the server to be something it's just not any more. And that's fine. It might be what Aurora offers just isn't really for me any more and given my dwindling play time, there's a lot of truth to that. But I also think people aren't really considering what kind of shifts are going to happen unless there's a lot more rules and railings around what kind of Odyssey missions are run and by whom. It's a new, shiny toy that offers what people have wanted for ages - events and similar - but it feels there's a lot of rose tinted glasses going on for what a big shift like this will actually mean. Likewise given the time investments of going planet side, I know I don't have 4 spare hours an evening to invest in Aurora any more - and longer round times are almost ensured.

I think that to get a alance, the only real way is to focus on the ship itself. Still have the big expeditions, but make them rarer and have it more as things happening/coming to the horizon, with the current gamemodes just with a helping hand of the storyteller to add some spice. Maybe like, 2 ship - 1 expediiton - 1 extended would be the perfect blend as whilst it's all shiny and fresh now, will those sacrifices still be worth it still be a month from today when people are doing the same map they saw 2 rounds ago and folks have burnt out of playing GM/actor?

I think the mode has potential, a lot, actually, but it's a bit too loose on how it's going to work, what kind of ideas there are, and I feel people are too caught up in exciting new thing syndrome. 

[La Villa Strangiato]

 

2 hours ago, Peppermint said:

and I feel people are too caught up in exciting new thing syndrome. 

Peppermint pretty much hit the nail entirely on the head with my feelings on Odyssey so far, but more on that later. I want to talk about some of my own experiences and my perspectives on the potential gameplay loop.

So I was xenoarchaeologist during this round but dipped about an hour-ish in for a couple reasons.

• I didn't really have anyone to RP with
• I felt a little overwhelmed by the crowding/constant movement/inability to do my gameplay loop (alas, vacuum tiles)
• I didn't have any directives, so I was standing around a little lost for a bit

Obviously the first point is not a knock on Odyssey, and more that I was struggling to bounce off of the characters around me because I hadn't really interacted with them prior. I didn't really have time to engage with them on a personal level because a lot of high-energy stuff was happening at once.

I do think the constant back-and-forth transport between the Odyssey site and the Horizon is very, very difficult to make feasible, at least in the first hour of the round while engineering is setting up a FOB. I felt kind of dazed and confused, particularly because it was very dark down on the landing site. It felt dangerous and forbidden to venture forth into parts unknown.

There's talk of remapping the Intrepid to be a transport shuttle, or some people (I suggested this at one point) think the Canary should be remapped to be a transport-y shuttle, or there should be a new shuttle that's just for transport, or make a smaller science shuttle, or something along these lines of "we need a new shuttle". I said that this was "bloat" in the Discord lately, but I retract that statement in part. What I actually want people to consider is the purpose these shuttles will serve in the aftermath of Odyssey, if Odyssey fully replaces Secret as the "big default gamemode". I don't think Odyssey will fully replace secret, well, ever. At the very least, I don't think it'll outmatch secret for a few months to years; more on that later.

When I say think about what purpose these shuttle should serve, I think people should consider how often the shuttles are going to be used if Odyssey is our big thing. If we get an entirely new transport shuttle, and Odyssey doesn't really pop off the way it was intended to, then that transport shuttle is just going to rot in the hangar. If Odyssey does pop off, but the science gameplay loop remains kind of as it is without any additions or real development, then a science shuttle isn't going to see much use. If you're science personnel, wouldn't you be tasked with engaging with the mission and studying it, from a roleplay perspective, rather than going off to do some other thing? (Obviously this depends on the mission.)

I would argue this would apply more to the Canary. During an Odyssey round the bridge crew is probably going to be heavily expected to engage with the mission, and there's going to be discouragement (not outright forbidding), both gameplay-wise and IC-wise, of using the Canary to scout. If your mission during the round is already to go down to this site and do this thing, can't you just use the Canary for scouting another shift? And so on.

And I guess this is a good time to talk about my feelings about Odyssey in general. I've been considering this for a bit, and I don't think that the antag gameplay loop or even the idea of antags should be left completely neglected in favour of Odyssey. We can't have every round being Odyssey unless we fully dedicate ourselves as development to Odyssey. And sure, maybe that's kind of the intention! But the thing about events that are high-intensity is that we get a population drop after, because people want some room to breathe and discuss their own character progression after a round. I don't even mean that to imply that every round is going to be Odyssey, and every Odyssey round is going to be high-intensity, but I think even one-a-day Odyssey rounds would kind of drain a lot out of the playerbase, more than people realise. There's just not going to be a lot of calm roleplay to incentivize engaging with people naturally in the workplace.

And as Peppermint said above, dedicating ourselves fully to Odyssey and having it replace secret as the "default" gameplay mode will mean a massive shift in the gameplay loop. Some of the roles she mentioned would go pretty neglected! A few of these roles are super high population on the best of days, but they're not never played by a long shot. People value their inclusion despite their lower-than-average playtime, and I think that is important.

3 hours ago, Peppermint said:

Nonetheless I think Aurora really needs to figure out what kind of RP it wants to offer because Odyssey is going to move the server even further down the militarization and explosive side where the video game section is going to become increasingly focused on. At the same time it is also going to see a sharp decrease to the comfy RP Aurora has always offered, as well as the more character and lore driven side taking hits. The events themselves are going to be the main push and the focus will shift from intercharacter relationship building and similar to big set pieces and missions. It's pretty much guaranteed and you can see it in how differently people play events. Much more like cogs in a machine, people staying in their own group for whatever task, which generally means less RP but more macro stuff.

This basically hits the nail on the head for me. Before I started writing for the server, I was annoyed by the militarization too. Now that I do write for the server, I have this weird feeling (that could be totally unwarranted) that it's going to feel like I'm writing a completely different atmosphere than the one that the Horizon exists in. When I and Trio conceptualized an arc where Biesel had an election, we did so with the confidence that comes from Aurora being basically the most political, grounded-in-reality HRP setting in Space Station 13. An election in Space America is something you might talk to your coworkers about, at your workplace. But when you're raiding the local Yeyland-Wutani facility, things like "hey did you hear President Schmuck did such-and-such" seem kind of pointless to write.

I hope it doesn't sound like I'm overstating the importance of my own writing. The point is is that I and (I think) Trio always wrote with the intention that these were things that would create a more grounded and realistic setting, where mundane stuff happened that "normal people" could talk about.

And I don't know, maybe eventually the game will become "not for me", as Peppermint has also discussed. But I echo the statement that Odyssey has a lot of potential, and makes it not just easy to have this game mode, but creating events that are written by lore writers. I think that this is a probably necessary thing to implement and work on, but I don't think that we can fully dedicate ourselves to this as the core gameplay loop, unless we're willing to sacrifice a lot of what originally drew people to Aurora.

[Fluffy]

The truth is, we cannot develop to do two things at once, Secret is gonna eventually either be the main focus or replaced out of necessity - Secret got an untold amount of effort poured into it (not only from us, but from Bay too, where the codebase originate from, and I guess whatever else the gamemodes were took from over time) and to this day there's people complaining about it in different ways, if secret couldn't be "fixed" (whatever that means) in the extremely long time it was fundamentally the only gamemode, I don't know what would hint towards it being fixable after there's a new one where most of the effort needs to be focused on

No, Odyssey needs to be focused on, because we simply don't have enough people and spare effort to throw into trying to fix everything else and "unlike the previous decade, it will work this time™" -ing it, spreading work across different things is basically a guarantee none of them will work quite well enough for a long, long time, and I don't think we can afford that. It's either Secret, or Odyssey, that will have to carry us forward, it won't be both unless we somehow rope in another stack of competent and motivated developers to be able to sustain working on fundamentally different things

There's also a definite contrast between what tools and methods to make available - and at what price - between Odyssey and the poor loner traitor that Secret might roll that now have to face tools available to fight a bunker in some Odyssey map with a measy 20 TCs and a big dream

 

I agree with Peppermint on one thing: We need to figure out what kind of RP we want to do, there's many different flavors of HRP, and I think the "corporate paramilitary" type of deal allows us to do the most things and have fun doing them, while still making sense - In fact, we already kinda do this for a long while, it's just that we want to pretend we don't and don't lean into it, while the Captain can literally get you executed and disobeying orders is a crime (of course there's a spectrum in this regards too) - While I don't see myself being in favor of ranks and salute your superiors or you go in prison and that sort of stuff (because it's kinda boring to do), that the game needs to be entertaining is a necessity, we have 5000+ people registered on this forum, an high pop of ~20 outside of events or if someone goes in discord and screams "ITS TOWER DEFENSE ROUND EVERYONE LOG IN" the few times we manage to vote it

That people vote for and opt in for high intensity whenever the option is available (as Peppermint said), that the anonymous poll that we ran clearly indicated that a lot of people who replied would play here less if there was less action, that a lot of readies generally materialize as soon as the group ready counter for mercs hit 4, and a wealth of other indicator, outlines in my view what is the actual preference inside the game: People generally want things to do in a game, things that actually matter for the round. People want to play the game, in the game; not all people mind you, but many do, or eventually get bored out and either completely leave or just show up when they know there's funny things to do - And this is explicitly without considering all those who already don't play anymore, or the new blood that would want to play otherwise

It doesn't mean we have to forego the chatting, the character development and similar, you can have them still in the intermissions between the normal rounds, you can have them at the FOB, not all odyssey rounds will be "charge the Sol bunker until they run out of bullets" style either, or you can stay on the ship with other people that want to do that, there's many options to do that, but there's only so many times a day/week/month I can be interested in discussing fictional event X or fictional food Y or fictional person Z, and the server pop trends clearly shows that. People generally want to play, and do things, and this mode has the ability to engage nearly everyone, and those who don't want to do that have the ability to opt out of it, by being on the ship. Everyone wins.

The expansion of Odyssey to touch the ship itself is a larger topic that I'd not want to tackle until the "ground"-side one is pretty established and is already working, in consideration of what I outlined above; this was a single run and we'll need more data before we can confidently start to tweak things, and we haven't even seen how it would work with a game master (the basically only real difference between Odyssey and, say, the pirate or cult base) yet

 

I don't think however that "Over the years it feels like we've already lost a lot of the comfy, relationship driven RP", as the veterans outline fairly often, in the past it was mostly high pop high adrenaline and arguably not an HRP flavor of that, though I was not around at the time so this is just second hand accounts - If we want to go to what "originally drew people to Aurora", it would hardly have any resemblance to what we're currently doing

 

There's further, more detailed elaborations of some of the concepts I expressed here in various different posts I made in different threads, so I'm keeping this rather short, though as usual if you have questions, feel free to ask

[chaotic_idealism]

What about a bigger, better, more well-equipped shuttle? Basically, a microcosm of the ship itself. Full chemistry lab, full kitchen, full science and engineering area, working medbay with all the trimmings, dispenser for EVA suits and oxygen tanks--if only softsuits. A small armory and a brig cell, too. And a lounge/cafeteria/bar, to serve as a meeting point and briefing area.

The reason I say this is that the Intrepid itself is simply not meant to transport most of the crew to an away site, and it doesn't have enough resources to be used as a base once you do land. An entire base has to be built--which is fine if you have engineers coming out your nose, but not in a typical round, where you... don't. (Plus, engineers building a base takes the entire round and then there's no time to use it.) Engineering could still build things, naturally. A lot of the stuff can be built--machinery, wiring, solar panels so you don't have to feed a generator. But put the kits on the mega-Intrepid itself. Dragging things to the shuttle is utterly boring; they should already be there at round start.

And my earlier idea about teleporting so we could use the Horizon itself as a base--okay, fine, it's a bit much. But we should still have a publicly-accessible teleporter between the Horizon and the mega-Intrepid, if we decide to go that way.

The special event shuttle is a start. But it needs to be more than that. It needs to be a home away from home, including places to hang out and talk in.

Because one of the main drawbacks of this sort of gamemode seems to be that there are no home bases, no places to gather and talk, gossip, tease one another, and worry about what Command's up to. We need that.

Edited July 28 by chaotic_idealism

[MattAtlas]

1 hour ago, Fluffy said:

The truth is, we cannot develop to do two things at once, Secret is gonna eventually either be the main focus or replaced out of necessity

This is kind of the existential problem I have to face. If it's not Odyssey, then what? Secret is a dying gamemode and it's basically on its last throes. Nobody wants to play antagonist so something needs to change, but there hasn't been any discourse other than Odyssey.

I don't know how you can keep civilain roleplay while overhauling the antagonist gameplay loop. Seriously - the only possible change is lightening antagonist rules to an insane degree. Adding new antagonists hardly ever does anything, techno and borer were considered great for the first few weeks then they were put into the trash tier by most of the playerbase.

[The_Ill_Fated]

I'm very much in agreement with all of what Peppermint said.  

I believe that these sort of 'high intensity' combat, explosive focused Odyssey rounds should firmly remain in the minority, it shouldn't be the Horizon kicking down EE or whomever's doors every single round. It shouldn't be every single member of the crew, no matter what their role is, flooding down onto the planet below.  It just doesn't make sense for how things are set up, 80% of the roles on the ship just don't fit into this being the standard, and it crushes a wide swathe of the Roleplaying availability for the players.  

Personally I played from round start to I think almost 3:00.  From start to about 1:45 it was 'GO GO GO' with order after order, request after request, with no room at all for me to even think about roleplaying.  It wasn't fun at all, it was running around like a chicken with my head cut off pressing button after button, while people screamed over the radio at me.  And from what I've gathered, this is what quite a few others felt as well.  

Overall, this test, and specifically some members of staff's statements in regards to it remind me of Baystation's shift to their 'militarized' setting.  I think while there's appealing aspects to it, it is going to end up drastically curtailing a multitude of jobs, or at least making them all but pointless, crushing a substantial amount of roleplay that isn't 'kick in a door shoot a dude', and limiting the sorts of characters it makes sense to be involved in these sorts of things.  

It's just a test, and I think the option is open for this to be implemented in a positive manner.  But I'm very much afraid it's not going to be.  

Edited July 29 by The_Ill_Fated