Revamping Timer on Unlocking Command Roles

[Sollessa]

So since the revamp of the job unlocks from account age to play time there has been, in my opinion, a large increase in the number of terrible players in the command role or people who don't actually know how to do what they are supposed to know how to do.  My friend who plays Serah said she saw someone yesterday who was playing the CMO and didn't know how to do basic surgeries and the patient almost died because he/she ran around trying to find someone who could do it.  Serah mentioned a change that she thought might help.  She thought it would be good for command roles to be unlocked by play time within that department.  For example, in order to unlock Chief Engineer or Chief Medical Officer the person would have to have played X amount of time in that department as each role so that the player in the command role would have at least basic knowledge of their own department.  So in order to unlock CMO they would have to have time as  Chemist, Virologist, MD, and Paramedic.  To unlock Chief Engineer they would need to play Station Engineer and Atmos Tech.

[Purpose2]

Oh god this arguement again.

I'll pre-face this with I agree.

But the whole idea got resoundingly shat upon by Maintainers.

 

The guy that coded this whole system might be able to expand on the issues... @tzo?

[Sollessa]

I assume the argument is that it's too hard to code?  That's fine, I just wanted to put it out there.  I was unaware it had already been pitched and brought down.  I don't look at the forums very often. @Purpose2

[Purpose2]

That is very much not the argument, in fact, the system is already completely coded afaik.

[Tayswift]

This was PRed and then closed 22 days ago.

[SomeGuy9283]

Will this require Heads of Security to have played any large amount of time as detective?

Cause I'd be skeptical of that.

[Urlance Woolsbane]

I'm probably just being dense, but what evidence is there to suggest that this is the result of the new system? Account age was a much less precise metric, seeing as it allowed you to log on once, then log off and come back a month later with every job unlocked.

[Allfd]

18 hours ago, Purpose2 said:

Oh god this arguement again.

I'll pre-face this with I agree.

But the whole idea got resoundingly shat upon by Maintainers.

 

The guy that coded this whole system might be able to expand on the issues... @tzo?

Not the whole story.

 

It was rejected for multiple reasons by way more then just the maintainers.

 

Those reasons will need to be addressed if you want to go forward with this.  The biggest problem identified as far as I could find in the PR was that the code would not produce an accurate count.

https://github.com/ParadiseSS13/Paradise/pull/7020

[ZN23X]

I think you should be required to play a certain amount of hours (8-10...maybe even more) as Warden before being allowed to be HOS. There are too many HOS's that are clueless about brig duty and just run around the station acting as a glorified officer.

I also think that the fact that I can be captain even though I barely know anything about science and engineering, is absurd. Captain should be knowledgeable in the function of every department.

Edited June 14, 2017 by ZN23X

[Kyet]

@Allfd, "accurate count" was not the main reason this PR was rejected.

Looking at Crazylemon's explanation for the PR closure, at the time it was closed, it doesn't even reference that at all:

Quote

The Headmins and Maintainers are not very enthusiastic about a system that would merely track global departmental playtime, and potentially facilitate further gating and department-based playtime unlocks. As a result, this shall be closed.

 

 

The reasons cited here were (A) that the tracking was per-department (B) that it would support further gating, and (C) that it would support gating based on department playtime.

Objection (A) is an objection that would affect ANY proposal that tries to tally up playtime on a per-department basis. It is an "I don't like the general idea of this."

Objection (B) is an objection that would affect ANY proposal that tries to introduce ANY kind of gating, for ANY reason. It is a "I don't like the idea of more gating, IN ANY FORM."

Objection (C) is similar to (A) in that the thing being suggested in this thread (gating based on department playtime) is exactly what was cited as being unwanted by the heads/maints. It is another form of "I don't like this as a concept."

 

The problem wasn't technical. The problem was that the heads/maints don't like the idea of department-based playtime tracking or job gating. Or, for that matter, any kind of further job gating/progression. The problem was conceptual, not practical or technical.

This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. Anyone who remembers the original playtime PR (https://github.com/ParadiseSS13/Paradise/pull/5224) should remember it was an uphill battle to get merged. It went through many rounds, and by the time it was merged in the end, I felt it had lost many of its best features. Still, getting at least a little of it merged was better than not getting any improvements at all. For what it is worth, even a relatively simple, pared down playtime system has proven very popular since it was implemented.

 

If the problem really were "accurate counting" of playtime for each department (taking into account cross-department transfers, for example) then that problem has an easy solution: simply update mob & mind variables of crew when they get job transfers. Doing that would ensure the tracking could handle people who get job transfers. I chose not to do that in my PRs, because I felt that it was at best a side-issue, and the real reason people were resisting the PR really had nothing to do with technical details like this. The real reason they were resisting it was that they were opposed to the very concept, and they were just using things like that as an excuse. Crazylemon's eventual summary of the reasons for PR rejection were all conceptual, and did not even reference the counting issue, so I took that as confirmation I was correct, and that folks' major hangup was always conceptual. Not technical, and not based on accuracy. Concerns about "accuracy" were merely an excuse, not the real reason that people were opposed to it.

 

@ZN23X I did, a long time ago, consider having a progression system that detailed, where you had to move through each rank sequentially, thus ensuring that heads had at least some experience playing each major role in their department. I quickly abandoned the idea because I reasoned that it would never get the support needed to pass. Even general "time spent as crew" playtime tracking/gating was difficult to get added. Thus far, department-based tracking/gating remains elusive. To make it so granular as to consider individual jobs... seems too difficult to get passed through Github. That said, as of recently, TG has an open PR for it...

Also, on the subject of Captains, you can't expect the Captain to have great knowledge of every department. At least one, sure. Two or three, probably. But not *every* department. Most people have one or two departments they tend to stick to. It isn't reasonable to expect that the Captain know *everything*. Just that he has enough experience as a head of staff to know how to manage people, delegate, etc. The Captain's job is not to manage everything, it is just to manage the heads. 

 

@Solless  There are many possible explanations of what you saw:

1) That CMO could have been a regular doctor, appointed acting CMO, without ever having been a CMO (or even a doctor!) before. The job unlock system for head jobs does not prevent people from being transferred into these jobs, regardless of experience, by the Captain/HoP. All it prevents is ineligible people from getting assigned those jobs at round-start. We could fix this by preventing Captains/HoPs from appointing people without the relevant playtime stats to these positions... but I am not sure if a PR that added this limit would pass. At best, it might be possible to add some sort of warning when trying to appoint someone via the ID console to a job that they would not ordinarily be eligible for. This could actually help prevent people with job bans from getting that job via the HoP as well. I'm just not sure it would pass Github.

2) That CMO might have extensive medical experience, but none doing surgery. Not everyone knows *every* part of the departments they play in. They might have been an expert virologist, chemist, shrink, etc, who'd never done surgery before. Department-based playtime wouldn't be able to screen them out in this case. It would just see them as having experience in medical, without knowing they'd never done surgery.

3) That CMO might have enough playtime to play heads, via playing in other departments, but they had no experience in the medical department at all. This is the scenario that department-based playtime (and unlocks for head positions) would address. It isn't the best argument for department-based playtime/gating (that might be a 10-round civilian playing HoS without ever having played in Sec before), but it could be an argument.

4) That CMO might have a ton of experience, even in medical, but just not learn or know anything. In this case, there really isn't any experienced-based system which would be able to identify that they were unsuitable to be CMO. Only a skills-based test (aka: answer a multiple-choice test to be whitelisted to play head positions) would be enough, and I highly doubt any form of "prove your competency via a written test to play X jobs" system would ever pass Github.

 

The best thing you can do if you notice situations like this... is to ahelp it and bring it up with IAA / the Captain. The IAA can advise them on SOP. The Captain can replace them if they're incompetent at the job. And we admins can try to understand *why* they don't know what they're doing. Could be that they're drunk, or they're playing on a friend's account, or they have a terrible memory, or they haven't played on our server in years, etc. If you let us know when you see heads who are terrible at their job, we can try to figure out why, which is really valuable information for us to have, both from an enforcing standards POV, and also for those of us that code so we can better design systems to address the specific causes of the problems that you see.

Edited June 15, 2017 by tzo

[necaladun]

Ideally, I'd love people to have played a heap of the department before playing as the head, and for captains to have played every single department.

Practically, this is a lot harder, and I don't see gating behind playtime as a good way to achieve this.

Play tracking is only since the start of this year, department tracking would be only since it is turned on - that means people would have to go back and play these roles a heap to unlock stuff they are already qualified for, which would be unnecessary grind. That can be (somewhat) fixed by turning it on for (x) amount of time before turning on the actual gating however.

Number of hours played in a department doesn't equal competency, especially as a head. Eg, playing 20 hours as a chemist does not mean you're a good CMO. Hell, 100 hours as a sec officer doesn't guarantee being a good HoS either. While there's correlation, I very much dislike gating based on such an assumption. While it would undoubtedly result in some people who shouldn't be playing as heads not being able to play as them, it certainly wouldn't do enough to fix that while punishing people with having to essentially grind roles that they are already qualified for - especially if they've played heavily before we started tracking, or on other servers. 

[Kyet]

43 minutes ago, necaladun said:

Ideally, I'd love people to have played a heap of the department before playing as the head, and for captains to have played every single department.

Practically, this is a lot harder, and I don't see gating behind playtime as a good way to achieve this.

Play tracking is only since the start of this year, department tracking would be only since it is turned on - that means people would have to go back and play these roles a heap to unlock stuff they are already qualified for, which would be unnecessary grind. That can be (somewhat) fixed by turning it on for (x) amount of time before turning on the actual gating however.

Number of hours played in a department doesn't equal competency, especially as a head. Eg, playing 20 hours as a chemist does not mean you're a good CMO. Hell, 100 hours as a sec officer doesn't guarantee being a good HoS either. While there's correlation, I very much dislike gating based on such an assumption. While it would undoubtedly result in some people who shouldn't be playing as heads not being able to play as them, it certainly wouldn't do enough to fix that while punishing people with having to essentially grind roles that they are already qualified for - especially if they've played heavily before we started tracking, or on other servers. 

What do you think is the best way to ensure heads are competent?

[Jared12100]

12 hours ago, ZN23X said:

I think you should be required to play a certain amount of hours (8-10...maybe even more) as Warden before being allowed to be HOS. There are too many HOS's that are clueless about brig duty and just run around the station acting as a glorified officer.

I also think that the fact that I can be captain even though I barely know anything about science and engineering, is absurd. Captain should be knowledgeable in the function of every department.

fun fact: I have never played warden once in my life. The Captain, in my opinion should not have to know EVERYTHING, that's silly and unrealistic, the wiki even says that RPing a captain shouldn't know everything. You're here to lead, not to do. That being said: unlocking captain should require.. i dunno, 10 - 15 hours as any head of staff first with at least 5 as HoS, due to the importance of understanding space law (you are the only one who can authorize an execution unless there is a magistrate after all)

 

As for the overall: Yes, definitely, X numbers of hours in Y job to by Y head of staff. Maybe 10 hours? I suppose it could also depend: to be CMO you may need 6 hours as medical doctor, 2 as viro, 2 as chem, and 2 as genetics. Just as an example. RD could need 7 hours as a scientist and 3 as a roboticist... these numbers would need to be higher, obviously, I'm saying around 10 just for example purposes.

[Sollessa]

It's a lot to think about sure.  Thanks for the input from everyone and for the very thorough response from @tzo and @necaladun. 

[ZN23X]

Further proof of some possible adjustment here. Just got done with a round. Started as warden. No HOS. 5 min in a HOS joins, someone I've never seen before. John Lennon :eyes:

I find him in the officer locker room gearing up, he then asks me for a taser IC in the following fashion "I need a taser plz I didn't spawn with 1"

I inform him of his X2 in his office, he has no idea what I'm talking about, I escort him there.

I go back to my office. Captain is there.

"Howdy cap"

"Hi...can you show me where my office is?"

IRL I'm like ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!

"Follow me"

Someone I'm sec comms who observed this says "Did the captain just ask where thier office is?"

"I'm escorting them..."

Panic on sec comms.

I escort him to the bridge...

It ended up being Nukies. Ended quickly. Mercifully.

Oh the captain also ordered the crew over comms to murder the clown before the Nukies showed up.

Edited June 15, 2017 by ZN23X
Lynch Clown

[Allfd]

1 hour ago, ZN23X said:

Further proof of some possible adjustment here. Just got done with a round. Started as warden. No HOS. 5 min in a HOS joins, someone I've never seen before. John Lennon :eyes:

I find him in the officer locker room gearing up, he then asks me for a taser IC in the following fashion "I need a taser plz I didn't spawn with 1"

I inform him of his X2 in his office, he has no idea what I'm talking about, I escort him there.

I go back to my office. Captain is there.

"Howdy cap"

"Hi...can you show me where my office is?"

IRL I'm like ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!

"Follow me"

Someone I'm sec comms who observed this says "Did the captain just ask where thier office is?"

"I'm escorting them..."

Panic on sec comms.

I escort him to the bridge...

It ended up being Nukies. Ended quickly. Mercifully.

Oh the captain also ordered the crew over comms to murder the clown before the Nukies showed up.

What often comes up is that it's the admin teams job to intervine in stuff like this,  the problem is we don't have the best track record in doing so.

 

that said things like this should not be happening at all and a more immediate fix such as increasing the time requirement significantly is likely required.  @tzo @necaladun

[Sothangel]

The old system was, what, 14/21/28 days playtime for heads of staff and Captain, right?

 

Ultimately I'm not sure there is much we can do, there are always going to be people who are not amazing at particular jobs, but enjoy them nonetheless. There is no perfect solution here.

[Allfd]

I mean, this is not "less then amazing".

 

So much as well,  total incompetence at best.

[ZN23X]

Yea I'd say there is a wide gap between someone who isn't good at being a member if command and someone who is captain and literally does not know where the bridge is.

[Sollessa]

I don't know, I just feel like I never saw stuff like what @ZN23X Tetra is saying before the change was implemented.  I may be wrong, but nothing like that comes to mind.

[necaladun]

13 hours ago, tzo said:

What do you think is the best way to ensure heads are competent?

 

First of all, teaching and encouraging them to learn rather than yelling at them for being idiots would be the most important thing. Expecting heads to know everything is a big ask, especially things that you can only learn as a head - such as how to use the teleporters, etc. This is the biggest thing here, encouraging people to learn rather than making them feel like idiots and insulting them for asking. Insulting someone so much they stop playing as a head only removes 1 bad player from being that head - and likely never makes them get better, instead the just leave the server. It doesn't stop new people.

Secondly - setting a good example. If people see shitty heads acting shitty, they will follow the example. If they see hyper-competent heads, they'll be less likely to try to play that if they're not up to it (and get robusted by them). Also, GOOD people playing heads is less bad people able to play them.

Thirdly - Jobbanning the ones with too much ego to learn, and encouraging the ones who are willing to learn but havn't yet learnt to play something else for awhile.

Overall, nothing can ever really ensure heads are competent, but it can be encouraged and helped. Gating behind playtime in departments itself has numerous problems. I do think upping some of the requirements for overall playtime might be good.

Other random ideas I've had include a big pop-up when you try to set the job saying "THIS IS A SUPER HARD AND IMPORTANT ROLE ARE YOU REALLY REALLY SURE YOU"RE ON OF THE BEST OF THE BEST ON THE STATION HUH!?" or the like. I'd love some form of tutorial/questionnaire as well, but not sure how easy that would be to establish and a fair way of doing it. I think at the least some form of method of discouraging anyone who can't be bothered spending 5 minutes on the wiki just once per head role would weed out a lot of the lower hanging fruit.

 

[ZN23X]

@necaladun...teach a man to fish...very good point...

Doesn't help to scream at them and call them idiots for sure, if anything that will probably make them more stubborn and less receptive to change.

Can be difficult from a IC perspective to try to teach someone who is above you in rank, but there are ways. Might be a good job for a NT rep or even the Blueshield to try to guide heads that clearly need guidance. I'll try to do my part when I can.

There's also the question of how far down the rabbit hole you want to go. What one person thinks is a bad job another might not, I may think how I play HOS is the "right" way but someone else might think I should never be HOS.

...and honestly if command sucks, the station will fall to shambles and the round will end. A new one will begin. Life goes on lol

Part of what gives SS13 it's unique flavor that we all love so much. Gotta take the good with the bad.

[Jared12100]

@ZN23X The easiest way to learn how to lead people is to play QM. It's not important enough to fuck over the station if you're bad at it, but at the same time, you're in charge of a department. A good QM can make cargo a well oiled machine of usefulness, but a bad QM wont exactly screw everyone over.

[Tomar_Brindsbane]

You do't have to gate through playtime, but you could gate through other means such as some sortof achievement system. For example before you play as a HoS the server might track that your character has set the cell timers once, or picked up a weapon from armory or even sent a chat message in the security channel. For CMO it might be administrating a drug to a patient or healing a broken lung in surgery, ect. That way you can ensure standards at least in understanding basic mechanics, while allowing qualified players to get access very quickly.

[Tayswift]

The issue with gating captain behind playtime in all departments is that good leaders aren't defined by knowing every little thing about what they're managing. Good leaders make smart, well-informed decisions by listening carefully to their subordinates that specialize in certain areas. That's why, for example, the president of a country doesn't need to know how to be a doctor, engineer, businessperson, etc at the same time. CMO is a different story of course, since often you're the only one who has any idea how medbay works.

Captains should ideally have some leadership experience, and have played on the server for a while. Job bans can probably handle the rest.