Odyssey Tests Feedback Thread

[Crozarius]

I liked the test, as a proof of concept for a worst case scenario high intensity test. It felt like a high intensity canon round expedition in a lot of ways.

I don't have a problem with it being high intensity; It was a direct upgrade from the weekend highpop round just rolling merc, because we had a cool map and a mission instead of a contrived gimmick. It was extremely laggy for me though. 

I would love to see peaceful oriented rounds where science and service and (people not security) get to shine. It's just the nature of things that not every round type has something for everyone to do. Some rounds Security is going to be doing this sort of assault, and some rounds they'll be unoccupied. This already happens in our current Secret model.

As a BC, while I do like the cool factor of using the Intrepid as transport, I felt bad for Samga who had to be banished to the cockpit dimension for 3 hours and couldn't participate in the round because she had to shuttle back and forth. I was dreading being put on this duty myself. I guess this problem is exacerbated by the fact that the Intrepid is not good for expeditions of mote than 5 people + pilots. There are not enough seats and buckles and standing space and storage space for more than maybe 9 people, possibly 13 if you use the sofa, office chair and medical bed. It's a shitshow. We need a bigger dedicated away mission lander; science would get mad if we turned their science ship into a bus.

 

 

[N8-Toe]

if we had a shuttle like that, there'd be no reason to build a base on the ground. If we have easy teleportation up or down, or a huge shuttle fully furnished. There's no reason to build a base or leave the ship. 

 

a publicly accessible teleporter up and down I think would kinda kill the interest? and also help push it towards being a "security only" thing. We build the base, that gives us a reason to be there, gives engineering a reason to be there to build, medical to work out of it, service to feed the crew, and operations to supply it. And from there, others can come and RP there. If we just use the big shuttle, or worse teleport down. There is no reason for any of those people to be going down there. I think us having to build a base, or man an outpost is a feature, not a drawback. And having to take a shuttle gives a feeling of actually traveling somewhere. 

 

8 hours ago, Peppermint said:

hird, 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.

I'm an investigator main, and odyssy has me excited. the role is a fit for going and talking to people we interact with, gathering information, scouting or supporting the rest of security. There is something for me to do. Bartenders and chefs can cook or serve drinks in the field, Liasons and reps can be involved in the intrigue of the round. XO is going to be more busy than ever coordinating shuttles and movement, Miners clearing rocks, Physicians helping the inevitable injured. There will be things to do. Our round we had last night pr

 

8 hours ago, Peppermint said:

hen 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. 

I don't understand the point there will be less RP? doing things with other departments exposes you to characters you might not otherwise interact with. Last night's round there was plenty of time for people to talk to each other, the topic or goal of the round itself gives people something to RP about. we can only talk about the space election for so much, if anything this gives us more situations to talk around the campfire, or to have things to even talk about. If you play a passenger, or an off-duty role I can only assume the main thing you have to do is talk and have that cozy RP your talking about. 

 

On militarization, and the "death of secret"

 

ok now its time for N8 to actually be negative for a moment. the problem leading to the "death of secret" is a deep one and can and will cripple Odyssey if its not addressed. That issue is people are too harsh on antags, have too high of expectations. I don't mean "they should just no RP blow up the ship" but.. you don't always get an hour of buildup and a monologue and debate before dying. sometimes you just die for reasons beyond your control. As well antags are players too, and the crew needs to be good sportsmen. Now lets extrapolate this to odyssey. Hostile actors will be under the same scrutiny, and non hostile actors may have the issue we have with current off maps of being treated like NPCs, and horizon only interacting with them 100% on their own terms and control. We as a community need to address this and encourage antag play. As this issue and toxicity will strangle anything new. I think we can do this! Aurora has overcome issues in the past, nothing says we cant now. 

 

On militarization. I'll be honest. I don't see it at all, I don't get what others see as it. We have a crew armory? Is this somehow more militarized than the blue hardsuited corporate kill team from the corporate navy comes and kills the bad guys like we had on the station? we're less militarized if anything with our shift from NT to SCC. with all of the nougity paramilitary filling being crammed into the PMCG, which is on brand for a corporate dystopia setting. Back on "old aurora" we had omnipowerful Central Command. ERT kill team, and an "NT Navy" in the background. Is "militarization" having a chain of command, or people being required to obey orders? 

 

If by this you mean people are running around with rifles and we're fighting people? People want conflict, our setting is not always the most conductive to conflicts that do not include people getting shot. I have no illusion every round will involve sieges and gunfights, but some will. but our rounds already include that? I dont see a further shift into violence, if anything this is a pull back as well have non violent rounds as well, and pretty much every secret round someones getting smacked with something. I have trust in GM's being able to mix things up, or find things that are crowd pleasers. will it be bumpy? yeah probably, will we have some bum rounds? definitely! but we're bound to have those anyway, might as well try something new. 

[JeffMomentRed]

Huge bump to Peppermint's feedback.

I really hope we can continue to emphasize the civilian roleplay or the other departments in general. The only gamemodes that roll today are autotraitor, vamp(out of the secret playlist) and the only one the combat oriented players seem to actively want to play is merc. I personally think security should be given less than they have, this server attracted me because of its continuing story, attention to canonicity, and roleplay oriented gameplay. The latter two of those I fear are being lost to more combat or balance related concerns, which again, personally, I don't believe are the goals of the server. 

I know the Odyssey test run was set in a vacuum and was OOCly made to be a worse case scenario for the gamemode, so I withold my worries to when an actual full-scale Odyssey mode will go into effect. I do hope the remaining departments are given a larger role or even a leading role in the server's narrative and gameplay besides being a support tool for Security, which has more often than not been the case in both events and the average round.

Aurora's opening message each and every round is "While detecting Phoron is considered the primary objective, there also exists secondary and even tertiary objectives in which the crew of the SCCV Horizon must attempt to accomplish - examples of which are investigating potential colony sites for the expansion of the Stellar Corporate Conglomerate and the Republic of Biesel, analysing deep space anomalies to uncover the mysteries of the Orion Spur, and hopefully unearthing additional information on why Phoron exists and why it has such a profound impact within the regions of which it is discovered." Of the several objectives listed as examples, none of them seem to come to mind when thinking about consistent security/combat related events. I hope Aurora continues to be the standing beacon of story-driven roleplay and gameplay that it is, hopefully continuing to improve in this direction as well with Odyssey and the feedback it recieves.

[Triogenix]

9 hours ago, Peppermint said:

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.

There's just a few things I want to address in this paragraph.

1. The rules regarding high intensity events were written by me, and have no relevance to anything non-canon. It's the same as if you said it's hypocritical to have those rules in place, and have merc rounds be big, intense, and bloody affairs.

2. You yourself point out that this is an already present issue, with regular antags. So I fail to see how it's a blow with odyssey, which wouldn't change it from the status quo we currently have? It is possible to say that you'd like to see odyssey mitigate this, as you admitted, already present issue with antagonists, but even taking this paragraph in the context of your whole post, if that was your intent it's presented in an incredibly unclear manner.

3. I'm not sure where the "every round thing" came from. Extended will still be a voteable option, and there are several odyssey's that the lore team are looking to see included which would be pretty chill. Furthermore, like point 2, I don't see how this is different from the status quo with secret.

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In general I also just wanted to note that a lot of people are pointing out issues that, while they may be legitimate, are also issues we have with currently have with secret and the status quo, without acknowledging that fact. I don't think feedback of that type is at all helpful, as it's just discouraging changing things because as Matt said;

3 hours ago, MattAtlas said:

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.

Given that I'm currently doing my own rework to fix existential issues in lore relating to the phoron scarcity, I can say first hand that when faced with existential problems like this and coming with solutions for them, feedback becomes useless when it's pointing out a problem(s) in the rework that are also current issue(s) with the status-quo, and not acknowledging the fact; It morphs the feedback into essentially being against a rework, and something that's currently a problem shouldn't be used as justification against doing rework. To take what @La Villa Strangiato as an example, "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." This also applies to the current status-quo; it's hard to talk to your coworkers about an election when jimmy mcgee and his merc team who haven't read lore show up and start a gun battle with the entire ship, or there's a dude sucking blood and teleporting through the walls.

Now, with that said, acknowledging that it's an issue both in the status quo and in the rework makes things different. Instead of being against a rework, it becomes saying that this issue should try and be resolved in the rework. Using what LVS said again as an example; "Currently it is difficult to have article arcs that are grounded and meaningful to the ship, when a majority of non-canon rounds are heavily divorced from our grounded lore setting, and this issue might carry over. I think Odyssey's have the potential to remedy, or atleast mitigate, this issue by having canon odyssey's which are less intense but still meaningful be common, such as the Horizon being tasked with x, y, or z, and generally more grounded missions overall, even the non-canon ones. Missions also shouldn't be to intense, with both violence and things to do, as we need to give players and their characters a nothing time, where they can simply chill out and talk, as we currently have with the sort of "prep period" antags have for the first hour of a round where nothing is really going on, which Odyssey's may remove. [insert something about regularity of intense missions here, comparing to the current system, better or worse]" You could also say it's ignorable currently and wouldn't be on odyssey's, and how to address that, there's 100 ways to do it.

I don't mean to put words in her mouth(sorry LVS), so don't think this is what she was trying to say, but merely to illustrate how acknowledging an issue is not one a rework is adding, merely one that is being carried over, and could be fixed even by changing parts of the rework; that's much more helpful feedback, even if there's disagreement, than "this thing is bad" with zero further clarification besides a line at the end going "Odyssey's have a lot of potential." I could do this for near every piece of feedback in this thread, but I shouldn't have to. You don't even need to give potential solutions, just point out it's a current problem and if odyssey's will make it better, worse, or neutral. This kind of blossomed out from the short post I intended it to be, but I just wanted to make it clear, given my own experience, how to give helpful feedback for big projects like this. 

 

Tldr; if something that would be an issue if/when Odyssey's are fully implemented, but is also currently an issue with secret and the status quo, acknowledge that fact at the very least.

[Peppermint]

7 hours ago, Triogenix said:

There's just a few things I want to address in this paragraph.

1. The rules regarding high intensity events were written by me, and have no relevance to anything non-canon. It's the same as if you said it's hypocritical to have those rules in place, and have merc rounds be big, intense, and bloody affairs.

2. You yourself point out that this is an already present issue, with regular antags. So I fail to see how it's a blow with odyssey, which wouldn't change it from the status quo we currently have? It is possible to say that you'd like to see odyssey mitigate this, as you admitted, already present issue with antagonists, but even taking this paragraph in the context of your whole post, if that was your intent it's presented in an incredibly unclear manner.

3. I'm not sure where the "every round thing" came from. Extended will still be a voteable option, and there are several odyssey's that the lore team are looking to see included which would be pretty chill. Furthermore, like point 2, I don't see how this is different from the status quo with secret.

1. I'm not sure how to better explain myself when other people in this topic have understood what I've said. People have pushed back against constant big, canon events with loads of explosions and violence, ect, ect, so doubling down on it for the average round is a strange decision to me. It has nothing to do with it being canon or not.

2. Yes. It is. However 4 mercs have a lot less of an impact than 75% of the crew being forced down to an expedition every round. The novelty of which I think will wear off quite quickly. I'm not sure what else you're trying to say here, sorry.

3. That's how these things go. Give people a big new, shiny gun, they will use the big, new, shiny gun. It happened on dynamic. It happened on the old secret test mode. It happened with events, ship guns, crew armory to start with, ect. I'm not sure how to further this discussion if you think the odyssey round was similar to the average secret round in intensity.

But like I said, maybe this is just what's better for aurora longer term, though it does essentially make it a new server with different goals. And that's fine, if there's no other option to go forward with. Personally it's not really for me, and that's okay. You can see people are generally more excited than not. I think playing actors will be fun and the very occasional character round might be nice too, but it's certainly not what attracted me here to begin with and I think being both a little sad about that and wary that I don't think people have really considered the wider impact is understandable.

A lot of these issues are dampened by focusing on the ship rather than the ground-side missions.

Edited July 29 by Peppermint

[Mr.Popper]

Hi. There's been a lot of feedback already I both disagree and agree with, so I'll try to avoid repeating others. Here's a wish list of things I would love to see:

• Homebrew > premade modules. Sure, you can just play an Einstein Engines operative or a shapeshifting alien that eats people, but with the current game modes I find the most interesting antags are ones which subvert their game mode's tropes. Similarly, Odyssey will age better the more freedom players have to craft their own story rather than rigidly follow a pre-built one. Granted, as a non-volunteer, it's hard for me to say how railroaded the test odyssey was, especially since there was no storyteller, I just think this should be kept in mind when designing odysseys.
• Don't eliminate prep time. I get that people want to get into the action right away but it's not sustainable for every round to begin with the same deployment at 00:10 exactly. Following up on my previous bullet, there's a lot of fun fluff actors and storytellers could do to add flavor to the away site before Horizon arrives. Placing their own notes, spawning in structures, altering their IDs, etc. I assume the timeline of events would be controlled by the storyteller, so in the absence of one there should be some way for the actors to confirm "OK we're ready for the crew", preferably without having to Ahelp every time.
• Smaller maps. I don't know if this will be standard but the map seemed very tailored to high pop. While I'm sure the full update will bring a wave of activity, it's unrealistic to assume every round will be so packed and having a humongous map with a pop of ~20 people won't be fun. The exception is wilderness maps which can get away with having a lot of empty space, but manmade structures like ships or buildings should be more realistically sized. Even in the case of high pop, I personally don't want to see everyone on the ship transplanted to the away site like in the test run because of the clusterfuck nightmare it creates, although that will presumably be less common as the game mode becomes standard.
• Demographic categories. There's been a lot of talk about X role getting nothing to do or Y role being required for the game mode to function. I have no idea how feasible this would be, but what if odysseys were grouped and selected based off player readies? For example, say there's a category for "high engineering" odysseys which require engineering to be playable. Broken ship, FOB that needs to be built, whatever. Have those odysseys more likely to be selected the more engineering readies there are, and vice versa. This could also address the pop problem previously addressed by having a size categories, only selecting larger maps during high pop. Unfortunately this may further encourage oversaturation of the same departments (security) and guarantee only those same jobs are catered to. Maybe cap the selection rate at a certain point so, say, 3 researchers are just as likely to get their round as 9 security are.

[Shimmer]

Prefacing this by saying that I observed the round rather than participating in it, and furthermore that I won't be touching on mechanical issues (the amount of jank it took for matt to give the volunteers gear, i saw all of it, it was funny :p) since the gamemode isn't even in the oven just yet y'all are still preparing the mixture.

 

Watching from the sidelines, I feel the initial fight against the facility guards tunnelvisioned security into not looking at alternatives ways to breach the place. They basically rushed a really heavily defended position and got very obviously killed - a map would solve this, allowing prudent command members to study a layout and be granted clues to avoid situations in which they are significantly outmatched.

Engineering built an absolutely beautiful outpost and I am so fucking mad I didn't take a single screenshot of it, the Horizon should be able to do stuff like that more liberally and with more benefit, give engineering and other departments more tools and perks to spending time establishing a presence in an Odyssey site to properly tie the Horizon into it.

A new shuttle will need to be engineered. The Intrepid as it stands was just not designed to transport more than 10-15 people at a time, its got poor storage, poor seating, it's a mess to organize and navigate and make sure everyone is prepared and ready. That ship exists for small scale expeditions of around 6-8 people at most, its just not a good fit for Odyssey.

An idea I discussed with LVS (btw im so so so sad u didn't mention it, im LITERALLY crying rn ;-;) was a shuttle unique to the Odyssey gamemode. It spawns only when the gamemode is selected, and takes up the merchant dock, it's bigger, it can transport a shit load of people, store stuff conveniently and easily, and most importantly it should act as a spawn point. That way pilots will not have to waste time going back up to pick up late joiners or stragglers, thus reducing unneeded hassle.

It's a neat compromise, imo. You won't take away the Intrepid from science, you won't butcher the Canary and take away it's niche, limited, but useful traits (small insert vessel, can pick small groups of people from point A to B quickly and without much infrastructure, like medical evacuation. It's also an excellent trainer craft for new BCs).

It being a spawn point also eliminates the calls for a teleporter. Don't need it if you can just spawn where the mission is.

 

Mechanical elements and issues I see aside, time to go off and speak about conceptual stuff. I don't really think this is the purpose of the thread, so I'll keep it brief, but also people are talking about it so might as well.

 

I'll preface this and say something I talk about both with ironic hate and unironic concern. Security, they have enough. They are the primary department in everything, in terms of mechanical features, attention, involvement, playerbase, lore, variety, and every single thing under the fucking sun. It doesn't matter what you do, expedition, antag, etc etc etc it can and usually will somehow go around and round and tie itself to security. They have enough to do, and should not be the recipients of even an iota of attention.

This is to say, I echo people's concerns of further militarization of the Horizon, but I will also remind people of the original document about the Odyssey and Matt's stated vision on the gamemode. It's not an effort to try to turn Aurora into colonial marines, that would be stupid, if you want that, just play colonial marines, you'll enjoy yourself more trust me. The way Odyssey reads to me is trying to turn Aurora into something akin to a dungeon runner- you have a party, variable in size, that party receives a stated goal from their superiors, and they go about solving that goal. It can be violent, peaceful, it can involve any department and all of them depending on the stated purpose and the vision of the map-maker or the DM.

 

Assuming I understand it right, it can range from anything to a low-pop round receiving a mission to establish a tiny outpost on a planet for data gathering, no time pressure, no material pressure, you can chill and roleplay while working towards a sandboxy goal. It can also be an intense high-pop round where central command orders the Horizon to chase down a pirate holding Miranda Trasen's second cousin's third sister's favorite dog. Depending on the type of round, those can be canon too, meaning characters finally have some work related stuff to talk about.

 

This does, however, introduce it's own problems. Fatigue. I predict high-pop, more intense odyssey rounds will last longer than two hours, will be much more emotionally involved, and take a significant amount of effort. This effort comes from the players themselves, actors, DMs, and also the developers. You will not be able to out-pace players playing your maps, they will come out slower than people will start remembering them by heart. If you just let the gamemode run without limit how frequently it does, I fear it will wear itself out very quickly and players just won't enjoy it, you'll burn through content too quickly.

 

Solution? Limit it. Say three days a week, high intensity Odyssey, with big maps and big goals, can run. Other days you'll have to make do with smaller scale Odyssey maps, secret, and extended. Make people excited for those few days where the big guns are running and I think you'll get more pop than usual, too.

Edited July 29 by Shimmer

[Fyni]

4 hours ago, Shimmer said:

Solution? Limit it. Say three days a week, high intensity Odyssey, with big maps and big goals, can run. Other days you'll have to make do with smaller scale Odyssey maps, secret, and extended. Make people excited for those few days where the big guns are running and I think you'll get more pop than usual, too.

This was all but what I said in one of my posts earlier in this thread - I like Odyssey but as a new "this will be most rounds" it felt a bit intense. I think it needs a tone down (no expectation of sending the whole crew away from the ship for example). Big scale "involving near everyone" Odyssey been a few times a week, maybe with preset times ("every friday night at X time!") will I think give time for people to get that comfy work RP in other rounds and maybe feel more upto that intense odyssesy round every now and again. I honestly think it would make the usual rounds more poplous too as people want to get that RP in between those intense Odyssesy rounds, where that groundwork of relationships can really pay off?

I'd also like to add I don't think the intent of Odyssesy is for every round to be so intense. Lighter rounds where a simple goal is engineering based (fix this broken ship with none hostile crew in danger on it (medic work) and maybe a few active turrets or loose grems (sec work) which doesn't involve everyone seem like they would work well in this format - as long as the "involve everyone all the time" nature of this test round isn't intended for every round I don't think this should be a problem?

Edited July 29 by Fyni

[CatsinHD]

Before I start, I should add a few qualifiers to my post.
1. Didn't playtest or observe
2. Don't have the energy to sit and go point by point to talk about things
So I am going to make generalized statements about things I have seen, and add my thoughts.

To address the elephant in the room. I think, whole-heartedly, Odyssey should be a project that we focus on and see through to completion. It is evident from the past years that trying to balance and advance the sheer scale of antag types we have is un-sustainable without SOMEONE being pissed off (balance for merc, tator is hurt. Balance for tator, merc is hurt). Odyssey is not the cure-all, it literally says that in the document (and I would recommend people re-read it as a refresh on intent as the discussion continues). Security getting all the love is something that will take more time to fix, HOWEVER, storytellers and some mission designs can help account for this.
Example: The Horizon must assist X ship experiencing a Y gas leak. Medical needs to treat the injuries, security needs to provide protection, and engineering needs to assist in sealing the leak. Operations should support by ordering Z specialized equipment.
This is just an example, it doesn't need to be comprehensive. 

As was mentioned by Fyni as I wrote this response, Odyssey is not meant to be high-intensity every round. It can vary just as much as Secret can. We saw this with Dynamic and see it now, there is flexibility in how the round plays out. I will say, Storyteller's should have the ability to gage how intense players IN ROUND (not ghosts or lobby sitters) want the round to be. Regardless, for the most part Odyssey is not Steel on the Horizon (or whatever that arc's name was) intensity at all times. Even assuming it was, players can still vote extended or secret as a break.

Now, how to limit Odyssey... either let players vote on what size map they want, let the storyteller choose, or just rely on players voting in odyssey via democracy when they so choose. Having scheduled times for X size map feels a little... meh, and honestly feels limiting for the Storyteller's too (assuming one is present), but I can see the case for it and would be willing to hear it out.

I didn't go over a few other issues I had when reading responses, namely the Intrepid and the "militarization of the Horizon". The latter shies away from the purpose of the thread, and has a larger debate than just Odyssey. The former is out of my wheelhouse since I didn't play.

[chaotic_idealism]

On 28/07/2024 at 20:42, MattAtlas said:

Seriously - the only possible change is lightening antagonist rules to an insane degree.

Well... have we tried that?

[NewOriginalSchwann]

I’m a couple days late to feedback, whoops.

 

I was one of the engineers in this round and it was fun from my perspective, despite never seeing an actor/antagonist. Having to go down to the planet and build a base of operations had the department working with one another to create a few buildings and make them livable. We spent a bit planning it all out and it felt really good to do something other than reacting to antagonist damage or doing a relatively minor project. My only complaint is that we can’t build roofs yet, so every building has rain in it.

[OolongCow]

My biggest concern is one I haven't seen brought up:

If the usual gamemode becomes Odyssey, doesn't that make the setting of the server in the majority of rounds whatever mission we're on, rather than the Horizon? What are we losing if the majority of rounds are about going to a map divorced from what's arguably the main character of the server, the ship? And what's the motivation for mapping for the ship when realistically 75% of rounds won't take place on it? Why add a cafe or put miniature plant pots on tables if no one will ever see them? I'm not trying to naysay these changes, but I do think it's something that should be thought about and mitigated. Adding Odyssey maps that are functional shuttles that can dock with the Horizon, and the crew can board, would be a great alternative to "everyone has to always leave for something disconnected from the ship". Consider stuff like the Orion Express ship docking to refill our gas tanks, or the Tajaran circus ship being expanded on and letting actors put on a show. I've always thought it's incredibly strange how little the Horizon interacts with other friendly ships and their crews. We have overmap vessels for ghost spawns, but the rules around those are intentionally very wary of them stealing the show from antags. Putting more fleshed out ones front and center as Odyssey maps the Horizon MUST interact with would be a good change. A crewmember aboard the other ship might decide to steal from the Horizon, pick some pockets, and trick the crew out of their money. A cargo technician might get in a barfight with another patron on a Dominian vessel using space to circumvent gambling laws. I'd really like to see maps like that so that we don't lose the Horizon as an important part of rounds. I don't want to see it being populated relegated to Extended only.

[CatsinHD]

5 hours ago, OolongCow said:

What are we losing if the majority of rounds are about going to a map divorced from what's arguably the main character of the server, the ship?

Ironically, I hold the opposite position. I was always annoyed how little the Horizon being a ship seemed to not matter in the slightest for 8/10 rounds. The Aurora had a reason to exist, it was a mining and research station (even if mechanically research was rare lol), but the Horizon isn't as precisely defined. It's the SCC's general-purpose, force projection, and exploration ship. We're a discount USS Enterprise from Star Trek. It felt weird, then, that most rounds were spent barely considering what happened outside of the ship for all but the Bridge Crew, Xenoarch, and miner. Sometimes the xenoarch (or the miner if they're injured) would rope in 1 or 2 other departments.

While I agree to an extent that I don't want to completely steal the focus away from the Horizon, I feel there's a better way to tie things back to the Horizon while not relying on everything happening on the ship. Whether it's as a holding cell for arrestees, a hospital for those who need it (and aren't critical), or for supplies, but that is something that can be worked on as Odyssey matures (and is why I am writing this post, so matt sees it as well as you). And, regardless of what mission the crew is on, you'll always have passengers, off-duties, and over-map ghost spawns (who might need a review on their rules) who can use the service and recreation facilities, since that's who they're for to begin with.

NOW, that does not mean there shouldn't be overmap Odyssey missions like you missioned. Those would be pretty cool and I'd like to see them. There's a lot of potential there.

[MattAtlas]

8 hours ago, OolongCow said:

dding Odyssey maps that are functional shuttles that can dock with the Horizon, and the crew can board, would be a great alternative to "everyone has to always leave for something disconnected from the ship". Consider stuff like the Orion Express ship docking to refill our gas tanks, or the Tajaran circus ship being expanded on and letting actors put on a show. I've always thought it's incredibly strange how little the Horizon interacts with other friendly ships and their crews. We have overmap vessels for ghost spawns, but the rules around those are intentionally very wary of them stealing the show from antags. Putting more fleshed out ones front and center as Odyssey maps the Horizon MUST interact with would be a good change. A crewmember aboard the other ship might decide to steal from the Horizon, pick some pockets, and trick the crew out of their money. A cargo technician might get in a barfight with another patron on a Dominian vessel using space to circumvent gambling laws. I'd really like to see maps like that so that we don't lose the Horizon as an important part of rounds. I don't want to see it being populated relegated to Extended only.

this is a very, very good idea

[N8-Toe]

I do think offmaps during odyssey will be more interesting as if the "site" is just a spot on the star map.. they can arrive if the horizon wants them too or not, and gives a reason for allied ships to be involved.Right now I think a barrier to engaging offmap play, and what has gotten me in the past is I am on the offmap. and I want to engage with horizon, and get told "No" and thats the round, or "Yes but you have to do XYZ before hand" that just pulls the rug from any engaging story.

my average Orion round
spawn
10 minutes setting up ship
10 minutes packing shuttle
10-20 minutes flying like a goober looking for horizon

"Can I dock"
either - no one there to hear me
"go away"
 and sometimes "we'll have cargo meet you" - hanger tech shows up, snatches boxes... annnd I may as well be a visitor.

my average IAC round
5 minutes setting up ship
30 minutes minumum of chemistry
atleast 15 minutes of wandering around for horizon
than ethier
ignored to death
told to stay away
"we have a medical problem but can you instead just come work on our ship under guard" I've had 1 round where a non antag crewmember was let to actually get on the ambulance and come to the IAC ship.

I'd be more inclined to play these roles if I could just "show up" so to speak to whats happening, or the horizon had a reason to ask me to help. And same with the "hostile" offmaps. they should be allowed to unilaterally choose to engage

Edited August 1 by N8-Toe

[Lmwevil]

I think that fundamentally Odyssey cannot replace secret, in lowpop where you may not have a GM or have a GM but no actors it just feels like an agony simulator. 

Limited for high to medium pop and not all the time would be mandatory because on lowpop with a gm and no actors, or visa versa is basically entering the pirate base. 

People's stamina also can't keep up for 'an event every day' and would hamper the chair rp that a lot of people do enjoy doing inbetween getting their combat hit. 

We saw after the Odyssey test that the player count immediately tanked with everyone going 'holy fuck I'm exhausted' and I feel like it could overall present a fatigue issue for players who participate in them as a regular thing. 

As a supplement for secret, this is great. It cannot replace secret. Secret is also not solely developed by us, basically every other ss13 server has a version of secret which allows for idea and code cannibalism where needed. 

It's hard to summarize my point of view, but I feel this may also make actual canon events seem tame or actually boring in comparison with how constantly intense these have the potential to be on highpop. 

This feels like a step towards militarized RP and away from our funny corporate space ship, especially if these have the potential of being canon so we have sec officers going (I'm a veteran of over 50 combat missions on planets and have 100 confirmed kills, fish fear me, women love me.) At least canon violent events have a chance of permanent character death (and on Adhomai record numbers), and are a strict rarity that everyone looks forward to for the novelty. 



TL;DR: 
Odyssey does not feel realistic to be a replacement to secret, but an addition would be welcome. Even with zero PRs relating to secret it has still been going strong during Odyssey development, and probably will continue to do so. I also feel like it is overstated on people 'never playing antag'. I've monitored antag and some people just toggle it once a week or only on lower populations where they can do more relaxed gimmicks. 

Odyssey is extremely promising and deserves dev time. But I have been proven right with my predictions and likely will again that 2 years down the line we will still have Secret, even if Odyssey may be played more or less than it.

[Caelphon]

1 hour ago, Lmwevil said:

Odyssey does not feel realistic to be a replacement to secret, but an addition would be welcome. Even with zero PRs relating to secret it has still been going strong during Odyssey development, and probably will continue to do so. I also feel like it is overstated on people 'never playing antag'. I've monitored antag and some people just toggle it once a week or only on lower populations where they can do more relaxed gimmicks. 

Odyssey is extremely promising and deserves dev time. But I have been proven right with my predictions and likely will again that 2 years down the line we will still have Secret, even if Odyssey may be played more or less than it.

Granted, I did not play the devtest for the mode, however, I am subjected to proper low-pop. On a good day, there's maybe 5-8 players on the Horizon. I do think that it should be restricted unless at least fifteen people are readied up. 

[Dreamix]

28 minutes ago, Caelphon said:

2 hours ago, Lmwevil said:

(...)

Granted, I did not play the devtest for the mode, however, I am subjected to proper low-pop. On a good day, there's maybe 5-8 players on the Horizon. I do think that it should be restricted unless at least fifteen people are readied up. 

Odyssey missions can be virtually anything. It doesn't have to always be highpop combat, it's just the first test we had so far.

I think midpop or lowpop missions definitely have a place in it as well, and we've been thinking about testing such odyssey mission at some point.

• Missions that do not feature any combat, or only have combat against NPCs like carp or hivebots.
• Missions that do not require any actors, or where actors are optional.
• Missions where Horizon is just told to scout out some point of interest, or do some other small task.
• We have some away sites that could be adapted to missions. Like the Crystal Planet Outpost that I added a long while ago, where it'd just be some abandoned outpost on some random planet, and Horizon is told to check it out, and figure out why exactly is it abandoned.
• Or the Abandoned Industrial Outpost, or the Blueriver Planet, or the Crashed Tanker, or other sites like that.

 

One may ask, but why turn these away sites into missions? Do they not work perfectly fine as they are currently, being just away sites?

And my answer is, currently expeditions to away sites are like, entirely optional, not even guaranteed to be nearby, do not involve a lot of crew (other than the usual xenoarchs, bridge crew). 

 

So, basically, I think lowpop/midpop Odyssey would be more like just, expanded and guided expeditions.

Edited August 5 by Dreamix

[Lmwevil]

1 hour ago, Dreamix said:

Odyssey missions can be virtually anything. It doesn't have to always be highpop combat, it's just the first test we had so far.

I think midpop or lowpop missions definitely have a place in it as well, and we've been thinking about testing such odyssey mission at some point.

• Missions that do not feature any combat, or only have combat against NPCs like carp or hivebots.
• Missions that do not require any actors, or where actors are optional.
• Missions where Horizon is just told to scout out some point of interest, or do some other small task.
• We have some away sites that could be adapted to missions. Like the Crystal Planet Outpost that I added a long while ago, where it'd just be some abandoned outpost on some random planet, and Horizon is told to check it out, and figure out why exactly is it abandoned.
• Or the Abandoned Industrial Outpost, or the Blueriver Planet, or the Crashed Tanker, or other sites like that.

 

One may ask, but why turn these away sites into missions? Do they not work perfectly fine as they are currently, being just away sites?

And my answer is, currently expeditions to away sites are like, entirely optional, not even guaranteed to be nearby, do not involve a lot of crew (other than the usual xenoarchs, bridge crew). 

 

So, basically, I think lowpop/midpop Odyssey would be more like just, expanded and guided expeditions.

I fundamentally think that a lowpop/midpop Odyssey expedition (assuming it is replacing Secret, as Fluffy said earlier do correct me if I'm wrong) is kinda wild. 

On low to midpop if people are going off on an expedition the ship will be UTTERLY empty and any person joining the server for the first time will be met with an empty ship and people off having some adventure. Plus, there are plenty of jobs that simply do not work on an adventure, such as the entirety of service, some of science, half of operations, half of security and also all corporate liasons as well as consulars. 

In a standard secret, even if it's extended secret, all service jobs and others such as investigations and consulate/rep roles have a purpose. Antag goes wild kidnaps a consular, cool w/e but we simply cannot cater to everybody with these things. Which will leave a large amount of players just afk on the ship or leaving to play something else. People play consulars to rep their faction, teach people lore and get people who break the lore of certain factions deported, just as people play corp reps to be soulless husks who kinda vibe around and talk with people of their company. While you could generate hooks for some of these people in some odyssey events, it isn't why people ready for those roles. 

People do not ready for bartender wanting to go take their equipment down on the intrepid, nor do people pick chef to make rations. They pick it to roleplay with people and if an antag screws them over then that's part of that roleplay. If 14-16 people leave in medium population we just lose our service mains and our rep/liasonmains

Hindsight will show me right in that Odyssey cannot fundamentally replace Secret entirely. Because if one Odyssey mission is just some bunker, it's basically just Extended With a Bunker and there's no conflict interpersonally that is brought up. Interpersonal conflict is a large part of what makes antagonism interesting, because it brings facets out of characters that normally would not be shown unless under stress. 

If Odyssey is only intended to be a votable mode, I'd say it must be 15 players minimum to allow the ship to not simply die and cease to exist when players get the non optional choice of go down or be on a skeleton ship. 

Edited August 5 by Lmwevil
slightly incoherent 3rd paragraph fix

[Fluffy]

Ideally, the ship will work in unison with whatever is happening mission side; for how I envision it, you have people that wish to simply RP on the ship (bar/kitchen/holodeck/wherever), and those that wish to participate in the conflict either down on the site or on the ship doing things for those down on the site

This allows both the sides of the population to play what they want to play (pure chat RP on the ship, action/conflict RP mission site) without either side interfering with the preferences of the other

For lowpop, I doubt we'll have a satisfactory solution for it, there's a reason lowpop sucks and we've never been able to make secret quite work well with lowpop, I doubt odyssey will manage to do it either - But we can't solve every problem with a single answer, so that's fine, just because it doesn't solve an issue that it's already present, doesn't mean it's not an improvement, and who knows, maybe we will have far fewer lowpop so when it is, extended will be a generally welcomed thing

[NothingNew]

Why can't the Odyssey GM and actors set up a story involving the ship itself, the GM spawning in things as may be necessary?

There are also secondary vessels that could be utilised with ships visiting the Horizon - Plenty of opportunities for high and low combat stories to be developed with those. I like the idea of odyssey, but with secret I like how character conversations and little roleplay moments have the opportunity to be disrupted with potentially the involvement in a different story.

Edited August 8 by NothingNew

[Sneakyranger]

The odyssey test today was the most fun I've had with SS13 in some time, and even the simplest variations on an away site can make the content dynamic enough to remain interesting. The fact that we have canon things to actually do outside of events is also wonderful in a way that I cannot put in to eloquent speech, so here's something more basic:
It's very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very good.

Apologies to the Aurora users who still read out loud for having to parse that sentence. Hopefully you have a glass of water nearby, or more likely, monster energy.

 

My notes- not even criticism really - is that today's test was rather long, and it felt like it was closer to the 3 hour mark by the time the round ended. For a good round such as that, it wasn't really an issue - however, expectations may need to be adjusted and communications made if this is expected to be more common. I'm not sure how broad the timeframes are for the varying Odyssey events, but I am guessing that they will tend towards being longer than we are used to.

Furthermore if most Odyssey scenarios take place off-ship some rules need to be put in place about Intrepid use - it may honestly be time to take it away from Science and give them something else, as the incident with the Intrepid today (being flown in to meteors at round start by science) was, well, not good. If this has been established elsewhere in the feedback thread, my apologies.

[Mr.Popper]

I played actor in the latest test and what struck me most was the lack of drip (don't laugh). The premade role kits are a cool idea, but they seemed to be incomplete placeholders. Snowy, the storyteller, was very receptive to our needs and spawned in everything requested, but I can't imagine it was fun for her to custom-tailor every one of us. I also worry how a round without a storyteller would look with everyone wearing the same generic clothes. A few clothing cabinets in the spawn room like most offships have would be great.

Other than that there were some issues with map compatibility, namely the station's undersized airlock. It really congested the away team and I hope the finished maps have more room to breathe.

[Fyni]

10 hours ago, Sneakyranger said:

My notes- not even criticism really - is that today's test was rather long, and it felt like it was closer to the 3 hour mark by the time the round ended. For a good round such as that, it wasn't really an issue - however, expectations may need to be adjusted and communications made if this is expected to be more common. I'm not sure how broad the timeframes are for the varying Odyssey events, but I am guessing that they will tend towards being longer than we are used to.

I don't think there was any intervention from the outside - there was a natural player vote when the away mission was wrapping up. Perhaps some OOC guidelines to storytellers, actors and even command try and get to that stage within 2 hours would be good though.

10 hours ago, Sneakyranger said:

Furthermore if most Odyssey scenarios take place off-ship some rules need to be put in place about Intrepid use - it may honestly be time to take it away from Science and give them something else, as the incident with the Intrepid today (being flown in to meteors at round start by science) was, well, not good. If this has been established elsewhere in the feedback thread, my apologies.

I was considering this myself. Odyssey rounds can start wit ha simple "we have recieved a report that you should be stationed on standby" which will include Intrepid grounding until further notice. However, yes, this does take away from science's ability to have a normal round. While I think there is plenty of time for them to have a normal round, maybe what the Horizon needs is a bigger then canary but smaller then intrepid science shuttle to help with this? I dunno.

Other thoughts:

• Meta knowledge: Not knowing IC where we were going but people knowing OOC was a bit awkward. Said Xenoarch beelines directly to the Depot, and it was nearby the whole time. Having the exact location shown to everyone at round start might not be nessesary - I know we're not meant to use meta knowledge but I did feel that info pulling at people during the hour set up time.
• Communication and cameras: I still think there should be body cams available for away teams, and these cameras and the Intrepid cameras should be accesible even when they're at away sites. This will help engage people forced to stay behind with the round (like me as Cap this time), help with communications issues we always have when it's busy, while not "breaking" an antag exprience (maybe the storyteller has the ability to cut them out for story reasons)
• Service: So often left out, Service was making food and drink aid for the crew. This was great! They should get access to more and labelled portable fridges so they can do this easier in the future.
• Operations: I loved the scramble across the ship for resources. However, this round we kept the Intrepid mostly stationary, which meant Ops was mostly just pushing things through the teleporter. This might be a playstyle thing, but a smaller pilot-able shuttle to do deliveries which isn't the Spark (which is often been used by miners) might lead to more engagement?

[MattAtlas]

1 hour ago, Fyni said:

I don't think there was any intervention from the outside - there was a natural player vote when the away mission was wrapping up. Perhaps some OOC guidelines to storytellers, actors and even command try and get to that stage within 2 hours would be good though.

12 hours ago, Sneakyranger said:

So for the last event my explicit objective was seeing how things would go with absolutely no admin guidance beyond some reminders at the start. It actually ended up pretty well overall. I think we might see rounds lean more towards 2:30 round time in the future, but that's guesswork.

Fyni is right in that I need to do something on the meta aspect of knowing you're going somewhere OOC but not IC. My current plan is to have every Odyssey mission print a generic "there is something of interest in this sector we are scanning, prepare an expedition and you will receive more information soon" message, so that people can get ready and will be ready to go when the main message comes in at 00:30 or whenever.

1 hour ago, Fyni said:

• Communication and cameras: I still think there should be body cams available for away teams, and these cameras and the Intrepid cameras should be accesible even when they're at away sites. This will help engage people forced to stay behind with the round (like me as Cap this time), help with communications issues we always have when it's busy, while not "breaking" an antag exprience (maybe the storyteller has the ability to cut them out for story reasons)

I'm not particularly sure about body cams but I'm also not opposed to the idea, honestly.

1 hour ago, Fyni said:

• Operations: I loved the scramble across the ship for resources. However, this round we kept the Intrepid mostly stationary, which meant Ops was mostly just pushing things through the teleporter. This might be a playstyle thing, but a smaller pilot-able shuttle to do deliveries which isn't the Spark (which is often been used by miners) might lead to more engagement?

Current post-release Odyssey plan is to add a ship gun that lets Ops shoot supplies down to the away site. I do like teleporter usage, though - nice element of emergent gameplay.

10 hours ago, Mr.Popper said:

The premade role kits are a cool idea, but they seemed to be incomplete placeholders.

Yeah, they basically are placeholders for these test. Actual Odyssey scenarios will probably have better kits, but expect the Storyteller to always have to do some heavy lifting with spawning items. No way around that - as an admin I can tell you that you'll always always always need to spawn things for people, no matter how much you prepare.