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[2 Dismissal] Curtail Mouse-based stupidity.


Kaed

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This is a simple thread about a single thing.


You can pick up mice, you can put them in you backpack. You can put them in your pocket. You can probably put them in a jacket or a webbing.


Fine, sure.


But for SOME reason, which I am 100% certain is due to the previous influence of certain mouse-obsessed developers who will remain nameless, you can also put them on your ear slot.


How do you fit a mouse on your ear, exactly? Usually, people put pens or headsets there, small things that can slot over the top of their earlobe (or inexplicably stick over their lack of an ear). A mouse is neither long and thin nor stationary and inanimate. There's no logical reason why anyone should be able to 'store' a mouse in their ear. Are they taping it to the side of their head?


Please remove this feature. I am seeing a few too many people wearing mice on their ears. If they can wear them on their head, maybe remove that too. Mice are small, undomesticated vermin and should not logically sit in place on someone's body to be used as an accessory.

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The ear slot represents the shoulder. That said, if I see anyone carrying a mouse around on their shoulder I reprimand them or report them to a head of staff. It is bad roleplaying. Very bad. My pet rat will happily sit on my shoulder - but a random mouse would definitely bite me if I tried to pick it up.

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I believe they visually (as in the sprite etc) wear the mouse on their shoulder rather than on the ear. It's still weird, I agree. Although some people do it in an interesting way.


I've been picked up a few times by IPCs who then proceeded with acting as if I was their pet. Like how some people act with their cats. It was fun bu still a bit weird however as the mice in question are wild and wouldn't be suitable pets. A fun way to disincentivize this is to have mice carries of disease that can spread via touch. So wearing a mouse, petting it or getting nuzzled by it is essentially just asking to get sick.

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I believe they visually (as in the sprite etc) wear the mouse on their shoulder rather than on the ear. It's still weird, I agree. Although some people do it in an interesting way.


I've been picked up a few times by IPCs who then proceeded with acting as if I was their pet. Like how some people act with their cats. It was fun bu still a bit weird however as the mice in question are wild and wouldn't be suitable pets. A fun way to disincentivize this is to have mice carries of disease that can spread via touch. So wearing a mouse, petting it or getting nuzzled by it is essentially just asking to get sick.

 

While disease bearing isn't a bad idea, uh.


I'm just imagining people becoming mice to go around infecting players with Mouse Plague. Nuzzling you into a sickbed.


I can understand if ears are just a stand-in for shoulders, but why are we walking around with mice on our shoulders, exactly? This is not a Disney movie, we are not a spunky princess with a small animal sidekick.

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I believe they visually (as in the sprite etc) wear the mouse on their shoulder rather than on the ear. It's still weird, I agree. Although some people do it in an interesting way.


I've been picked up a few times by IPCs who then proceeded with acting as if I was their pet. Like how some people act with their cats. It was fun bu still a bit weird however as the mice in question are wild and wouldn't be suitable pets. A fun way to disincentivize this is to have mice carries of disease that can spread via touch. So wearing a mouse, petting it or getting nuzzled by it is essentially just asking to get sick.

 

While disease bearing isn't a bad idea, uh.


I'm just imagining people becoming mice to go around infecting players with Mouse Plague. Nuzzling you into a sickbed.


I can understand if ears are just a stand-in for shoulders, but why are we walking around with mice on our shoulders, exactly? This is not a Disney movie, we are not a spunky princess with a small animal sidekick.

 


Agreed. Nuzzling should probably not lead to possible infection. Having them placed on your body could very well still make for you getting sick. And to be fair it should probably be a disease that doesn't spread to other people after that. And it is indeed not a Disney movie.

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Why is there more threads about mice. Why, why.... why


This is like the thread with people wearing skrell hard suits. Who cares if someone wears a mouse on their shoulder. If they cause any issues that are against the rules or the mouse is spamming the squeak verbs, ahelp. IC issue, it honestly is just a IC issue.

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Why is there more threads about mice. Why, why.... why


This is like the thread with people wearing skrell hard suits. Who cares if someone wears a mouse on their shoulder. If they cause any issues that are against the rules or the mouse is spamming the squeak verbs, ahelp. IC issue, it honestly is just a IC issue.

 

I care. Clearly, some other people care. Just because you don't care about something doesn't make the issue become utterly irrelevant to everyone else. If I point out what I feel is a nonsensical game mechanic and suggest it be removed preserve a sense of immersion, your vocal distaste in 'mice threads' and apparent lack of interest in pursuing minor mechanics revisions does not particularly contribute to the thread topic.


First of all, you haven't even really given an argument against removing shoulder mice, you've just expressed that you don't care and to deal with it IC. So let me provide a one for you, just as examples of constructive commentary.


-Some antagonists can have mouse pets, like wizards. There is potentially valid reason for them to have shoulder mice. (Counterpoint: Special mice like that could be coded differently from regular mice to allow this as an exception. Perhaps there is a 'tame' variable that can be toggled by admins.)


Second, the 'pass the buck to IC' mentality is also not constructive. If someone is wearing a shoulder mouse IC, chances are they will throw a huge tantrum if you try to take it away from them, because people who wear shoulder mice are usually predisposed already to feel entitled to having them, because the game lets them do it. I don't want to have to deal with that. I don't want to have to deal with writing an IR over something so trivial, that could easily have not happened by changing the game mechanics slightly.

Edited by Guest
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Alright, I posted that quickly and I am sorry about that.


Keep in mind that everyone has their own opinions on this and I will respond to your points with my opinions.

 

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sonicgotnuked wrote: ↑

Mon Sep 25, 2017 9:08 am

Why is there more threads about mice. Why, why.... why


This is like the thread with people wearing skrell hard suits. Who cares if someone wears a mouse on their shoulder. If they cause any issues that are against the rules or the mouse is spamming the squeak verbs, ahelp. IC issue, it honestly is just a IC issue.

I care. Clearly, some other people care. Just because you don't care about something doesn't make the issue become utterly irrelevant to everyone else. If I point out what I feel is a nonsensical game mechanic and suggest it be removed preserve a sense of immersion, your vocal distaste in 'mice threads' and apparent lack of interest in pursuing minor mechanics revisions does not particularly contribute to the thread topic.


First of all, you haven't even really given an argument against removing shoulder mice, you've just expressed that you don't care and to deal with it IC. So let me provide a one for you, just as examples of constructive commentary.


-Some antagonists can have mouse pets, like wizards. There is potentially valid reason for them to have shoulder mice. (Counterpoint: Special mice like that could be coded differently from regular mice to allow this as an exception. Perhaps there is a 'tame' variable that can be toggled by admins.)


Second, the 'pass the buck to IC' mentality is also not constructive. If someone is wearing a shoulder mouse IC, chances are they will throw a huge fucking tantrum if you try to take it away from them

 

The only department that would become an issue that comes in mind is medical and I haven't really seen any mice on shoulders or issues with that. It would fall under the CMOs authority.


If someone does throw a massive tantrum over a mouse that no sain person will act in that way, I highly suggest you ahelp them and it would end up a OOC issue and staff will talk to them. It depends on the intent and actions they take. I don't find a problem if they argue about it and call the head of staff lame behind their backs but if they are completely ignoring orders and/or neglecting their job duty (as medical especially) when they are not an antag.


I understand the pains of dealing with a dude sometimes but if it turns repetitive, then make a player complaint or ahelp.


The actions of a few should not ruin the entire thing.

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Seriously? Please ask for more meaningful changes in the future. Not directly speaking for them but; the dev team has much more serious priorities to deal with at the moment (which you can see here in their active pull requests https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pulls and projects https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/projects), which means nobody is going to be bothered to change mice right now.


Thermal drill targeting acquisition is borderling broken, mining equipment has too much versatility in combat, antags don't get enough equipment to be able to do anything on such a huge map, there are bugs everywhere pls fix, etc. These are current issues the dev team's tracking right now. Compare with what you listed in the OP. Why is this a problem to you? Why can you not deal with this in IC?

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Seriously? Please ask for more meaningful changes in the future. Not directly speaking for them but; the dev team has much more serious priorities to deal with at the moment (which you can see here in their active pull requests https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pulls and projects https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/projects), which means nobody is going to be bothered to change mice right now.


Thermal drill targeting acquisition is borderling broken, mining equipment has too much versatility in combat, antags don't get enough equipment to be able to do anything on such a huge map, there are bugs everywhere pls fix, etc. These are current issues the dev team's tracking right now. Compare with what you listed in the OP. Why is this a problem to you? Why can you not deal with this in IC?

The changes required to implement this suggestion are trivial; developer time is not a concern.

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The requested changes themselves are trivial. There is no point to removing it if it does not present an obvious downside to it existing. Mice are fluff roles, pun not intended. They aren't meant to control the narrative of the round's progression one bit. They're slightly-more-participation observer roles with the added challenge of avoiding getting instantly killed by multiple hazards gunning for them at any given time. I cannot believe I have to defend mice existing in-game. Jesus christ.


If a mouse is acting stupid and emoting its thoughts and desires in addition to exhibiting an unusual degree of comprehension with body language, contact us in the round. If you get murdered by a mouse-sympathizer because you killed their squeaky friend, adminhelp and let us know and we'll deal with it. That's the point of staff. Mice are expected to roleplay like mice too. We're not going to strike them with bans for acting like dumb fuzzy cute animals, but we will strike them for acting way off-base. Make sense?


If this is Kaed trying to be a smart-aleck just because we said some code changes can make moderation easier thus it should somehow apply in this case, then I'm honestly disappointed he's chosen to act out in this way and continue thinking that apples should be treated and considered the same as oranges.

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Complaining about triviality

 

Don't derail the topic, Scheveningen. There are currently no rules in place that require a certain level of import to create a suggestion discussion. You aren't even a developer, you have almost no input on what is or isn't an acceptable or reasonable thing to expect a Dev to do. In fact, here is a developer right now, telling you this isn't an issue.

 

The changes required to implement this suggestion are trivial; developer time is not a concern.

 

Your complaint also seems to assumes that every mouse encountered in the round is populated by a player that is capable of offering roleplay. In fact, there are a far larger amount of mice that are simply mindless mobs that periodically squeak and serve as nothing more than accessories for a number of people who decide that their character has a pet mouse. They offer no resistance or roleplay, because because they aren't players. This is, in my eyes, somewhat of a minor abuse of game mechanics to try and make your character seem more special and unique, and in my experience, has caused people to have to be dragged kicking and screaming into stopping. I don't like having to deal with that any more than when I had to deal with people bringing bootknives to work because they were in the loadout options. And hey, wow. Those are gone now, actually! :o


And, counterpoint to your long rant about the having to defend mice in game, that's also off topic and missing the purpose of this thread. Mice are fine existing. They can keep existing and I won't particularly care. I just want to stop having everyone able to grab them and put them on their shoulders.

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Guest Marlon Phoenix

I think if NPC mice automatically nip people that pick them up, and player mice have the chance to nip people that pick them up, then we would need to be DEDICATED to our mice friends, or feed them to tame them.

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And, counterpoint to your long rant about the having to defend mice in game, that's also off topic and missing the purpose of this thread. Mice are fine existing. They can keep existing and I won't particularly care. I just want to stop having everyone able to grab them and put them on their shoulders.

 

You're asking people to stop being irrationally kawaii in SS13. Allow me to remind you that there are people who will consider nymphs cute and defend them. Nymphs. Bloodsucking little pests.


Most mob holders can be worn on the head as a hat. Mice can be worn on the ear slot instead. I guess it could be standardized, but I don't see a reason to remove it if we choose to leave it for other mob holders. It sounds a lot like, "Remove this because I personally don't like it :ree:!"

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Complaining about triviality

 

Don't derail the topic, Scheveningen. There are currently no rules in place that require a certain level of import to create a suggestion discussion. You aren't even a developer, you have almost no input on what is or isn't an acceptable or reasonable thing to expect a Dev to do. In fact, here is a developer right now, telling you this isn't an issue.

If you have try to twist the purpose of the forum rules to make up for flimsy spatial reasoning to remove mobholder locations, you probably didn't have a good suggestion thread to begin with.


There is also a head developer telling you that the subject of your complaint is largely a non-issue. Because it is cutesy pest stuff. It's really not a problem until certain players who play as mice make it a problem in their execution, savvy?

The changes required to implement this suggestion are trivial; developer time is not a concern.

 

Your complaint also seems to assumes that every mouse encountered in the round is populated by a player that is capable of offering roleplay. In fact, there are a far larger amount of mice that are simply mindless mobs that periodically squeak and serve as nothing more than accessories for a number of people who decide that their character has a pet mouse. They offer no resistance or roleplay, because because they aren't players. This is, in my eyes, somewhat of a minor abuse of game mechanics to try and make your character seem more special and unique, and in my experience, has caused people to have to be dragged kicking and screaming into stopping. I don't like having to deal with that any more than when I had to deal with people bringing bootknives to work because they were in the loadout options. And hey, wow. Those are gone now, actually! :o


And, counterpoint to your long rant about the having to defend mice in game, that's also off topic and missing the purpose of this thread. Mice are fine existing. They can keep existing and I won't particularly care. I just want to stop having everyone able to grab them and put them on their shoulders.

 

I never said this and I never implied this. You're putting words into my mouth. If this is a minor abuse of gameplay mechanics to 'snowflake it up', as it were, why haven't you taken the time to adminhelp these things? Even as they are just mice, people who play observer roles need to respect boundaries and not be disruptive on server. It's not too much of an expectation for them. If they violate those expectations just to try and be funny, you can shoot an adminhelp and we'll nip it in the bud. Like anyone else, if you play on the server you should respect other people's attempts at roleplaying. Mice players should do this as well.


Boot knives presented an issue where people would use them to slit throats and stab people, especially security officers. That was their entire purpose and they changed the progressions of the round just by existing, and people would always overescalate with them. But I'm not seeing any equivalency in the issue here with mice. They're just mice. Mice don't stab people or slit throats, or act as robust throwing weapons that embed and cause internal damage. The subject of boot knives are pretty irrelevant to mice, though, so might I suggest to stay on topic, considering it's a subforum rule?

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I love how this has more replies than other..... more meaningful suggestions, like no offence, but a lot of the suggestions here are more impactful than wearable mice.

 

Mouse outrage is a historically hilarious topic in the Aurorastation community. It shows that there will be anger over the most insignificant things possible. It doesn't matter what you do or if you even do anything, the outrage will happen. So, shhhhh, just let it happen.

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Well since Kaed has failed to elaborate on what's wrong with having mice on your shoulder, when you can have other holders on your shoulder/head, imma +1 dismissal this.


+1 dismissal.

 

You were waiting on me?


You should have formed the comment as a question, then. Because it sounded more like you were just commenting on the comparison to other mobs.


But sure, I'll elaborate.


The mob holder concept was originally generally reserved for things like cats, maint drones, and diona, I might be missing something, but let me elaborate on why those ones actually have valid reasons to be picked up.


Cats: These are domesticated pets. Cats are predisposed to liking to be picked up and petted, and to be around humans.

Maint drones: These are tiny robots that run around and fix the station. You shouldn't technically be picking them up, but they certainly aren't going to hurt you because of you because of their laws. Almost all of them are player controlled too, since they only spawn when someone becomes one. There also once a time when they had a slightly hard time getting around because there were no door hatches or disposal travel, and they had to rely on awkward vent teleporting. Carrying them through a few doors could help them out.

Diona nymphs: Bloodsucking pests though they may be, this fall under a similar category to drones. They are mostly player controlled, and nominally intelligent enough to speak. You could put one on your shoulder and pick it up if you are willing to trust it enough to not suck your blood. Diona nymph mobility was even worse than drones in the past, because they couldn't even use borg powers to remotely open doors.


On the other hand, mice are not supposed to be roles you use to interact with the crew in a positive fashion. Sometimes they appear on station with announcements that they need to be cleared out. People keep saying they're just vermin, kill them if you want. In fact, they are almost mechanically identical to lizards, which nearly everyone just kills on sight, except they have a slew of extra abilities for PLAYER mice to use, like vent crawling, being able to eat food, hiding under objects, and being able to emote squeaking with a sound byte accompanying it.


Most of these are traits you would put on a thing you designed for ghosts to join as when they don't really want to participate in the round but would like to be there as observers. Most of these things are also designed around making you an annoying vermin - making irritating sounds, running away from people trying to exterminate you, and eating the crew's food.


Then a developer came along who really liked mice, and undercut their entire intended dynamic of 'unwanted vermin' by pushing in a change that let people pick up mice and put them on their shoulders. Unlike cats, which exist in a finite quantity and are supposed to be tame, and drones/diona, which mainly exist as player mobs, mice are and remain primarily an 'environmental' mob that people exterminate or at best ignore. People honestly shouldn't be picking up a possibly diseased rodent and carrying it around to poop on their shoulder and panic every time something large moves nearby.


But they can, because of one person's moderate obsession with them while they were still on the dev team. I could potentially see an argument for only letting player-controlled mice be picked up and worn on the shoulder, if they really want to roleplay as a tame friendly mouse, but the majority of the time, people who are wearing mice now are people who picked up a mindless mob that they're supposed to be role-playing is a wild, untamed animal. Just so they could use it as an accessory.


There is another thread about mice biting people who pick them up. This could also be a solution to people not grabbing non-player mice to use as a kawaii accessory. Because I think that's largely the root of the problem here. Picking up and carrying mice that are not containing a ckey, because they are incapable of roleplaying resistance to the idea or really participating in any way.


And yeah, it's pretty easy to undercut the whole subject by going 'lol mouse outrage again?' and trivializing problem, but I'm mainly trying to fix what I see as another dumb oversight Nanako made that is creating characters with 'pet mice' that they picked up in a random maint shaft. I'm not against people playing their mice how they want, but when there isn't even a player involved and they become an animal prop, I feel mechanics abuse is happening.


So, tl;dr verision:


Figure out a way to stop or discourage people from picking up mice without a ckey in them.


As an aside note, I notice I seem to come into conflict with people in threads a lot because I have a game development mentality that seems to be different from a lot of people. I'll try and summarize it like this:


-If a mechanic exists, and it serves no useful purpose in the roleplay setting other than to be irritating, distracting, or serve to make your character more snowflakey at the expensive of a sense of immersion, then it needs to be revised or removed. "Because it's funny" is never a valid reason to preserve something for me.


Insisting that the ball be passed to admins for everything feels lazy to me, when something I feel should be dealt with on the coding level. I'll make a more relevant comparison to the issue with mining and unlimited pizza spawns, which I also made a thread about. Sure, it doesn't hurt anyone to tile the entire cargo bay with stacks of pizza boxes, but it there really a valid reason you should be able to do this? Rather than just suggesting an admin be called every time it happens, how about fix the issue that allowed it to occur?

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A feature existing entirely due to developer self-indulgence doesn't particularly inspire me as to the validity of its existence.


That being said, I stand by my previous long post about why specifically mice are an issue and the direction I feel should be taken.

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A feature existing due to developer self-indulgence doesn't particularly inspire me as to the validity of its existence.

 

As Zuh stated. Literally why nymphs (bloodsucking bundles of alien branches) and drones (probably covered in oil, dust, grime, and other goodness; otherwise metallic objects) are pick-up-able is because of developer indulgence. Believe it or not, the feature is internally consistent with already established mechanics of being able to pick up all holder mobs. This list of mobs also includes dirty, hairy, lab monkeys who wear diapers. (Diapers which probably have shit in them!) I hope I've been graphic enough to get my point across.


 

So, tl;dr verision:


Figure out a way to stop or discourage people from picking up mice without a ckey in them.

 


A recommendation: please present an issue for what it is next time. That way we can discuss the actual issue, instead of us having to read your walls of text about matters which are only tangentially related. And also, recall Samantha Mason? The mice loving doctor/CMO who existed before Nanako was a member of this community? She always dragged a mice with her, even if she couldn't put it on her shoulder.

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A feature existing due to developer self-indulgence doesn't particularly inspire me as to the validity of its existence.

 

As Zuh stated. Literally why nymphs (bloodsucking bundles of alien branches) and drones (probably covered in oil, dust, grime, and other goodness; otherwise metallic objects) are pick-up-able is because of developer indulgence. Believe it or not, the feature is internally consistent with already established mechanics of being able to pick up all holder mobs. This list of mobs also includes dirty, hairy, lab monkeys who wear diapers. (Diapers which probably have shit in them!) I hope I've been graphic enough to get my point across.


 

So, tl;dr verision:


Figure out a way to stop or discourage people from picking up mice without a ckey in them.

 


A recommendation: please present an issue for what it is next time. That way we can discuss the actual issue, instead of us having to read your walls of text about matters which are only tangentially related. And also, recall Samantha Mason? The mice loving doctor/CMO who existed before Nanako was a member of this community? She always dragged a mice with her, even if she couldn't put it on her shoulder.

 

I don't remember Samantha Mason, no. But you are correct, I should have narrowed down my suggestion to something a little more precise, and I do tend to get rambly when irritated about something. Either way, the suggestion is out there now.

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