Remove IPC Damage Weaknesses, or...

[Ziiro]

On 9/16/2018 at 6:14 PM, Rurik said:

With the last point I made, there was a PR a while back to fix it. It was meant to make the IPC's take heavy damage from a EMP, and be stunned for a decent while (half a min iirc) instead of instant death. 

Yep, that was me.

I stand by it in spirit but I think that, specifically for Paradise, the only option that can really "solve" the problem of 24/7 balance complaints is to actually make everyone a reskinned human.

It makes for cool and interesting roleplay and gameplay to have IPCs/Vox/Slimes/etc with different physical traits, but when you have a subsection of the population that doesn't care for that and picks for purely mechanical reasons, any fun or interesting things that could come from that goes out the window. There will always be a best. Always.

[Maniacal Pineapple]

I recently had a stupid idea...

What if we make ipc able to detach their limbs on command or something like that.Basically i got into an ipc crit once and thought it would be cool being able to detach arms and/or legs to be able to talk and call for help(Well it is if i am getting this thing right about an IPC crit i think it is an accumulated damage to a crit threshold correct me if i am wrong.).

I think it would be a nice addition since you wanted IPCs to have no limbs anyway:D

Would be quite fun though...

[Splgrk]

I did once use my arm as a blunt weapon as an IPC, in the stupidest perma escape ever. But I managed to break a window with it. 

[Ziiro]

To keep those who don't follow github in the loop, another IPC balance/feature PR was closed today. Normally I would be fine with this, but I have a sneaking suspicion that a moderate nerf (Low battery will actually kill you) is going to be merged. As public opinion is of apparent little value when it comes to balance.

For the record I think the other parts of that PR are pretty cool: The cell mechanic/etc, but the battery actually killing you is no bueno.

PS.

Fairly recently it was discovered that the damage numbers for IPCs were wrong. Meaning most arguments about balance had their numbers pegged wrong - it's 66% increased damage, not 50%. Of course, this hasn't been fixed yet, and is unlikely to be until after the freeze, but instead just had some notes corrected.

Edited October 3, 2018 by Ziiro
wrong link. multiple times. don't post while sleepy.

[necaladun]

2 hours ago, Ziiro said:

I have a sneaking suspicion that a moderate nerf (Low battery will actually kill you) is going to be merged

I haven't heard anything about that. Not a single head or maintainer has approved it currently, and there are objections noted. Not sure where you're getting these ideas from?

 

You are correct that 17 thumbs down is of little value to us when it comes to balance, however. I wouldn't exactly call that popular opinion, as that isn't even half the staff in number. Popular opinion is not what we look for in balance, as that leads to all the scissor players screaming for nerfs to rocks, and that paper doesn't need any buffs.

[Ziiro]

46 minutes ago, necaladun said:

I haven't heard anything about that. Not a single head or maintainer has approved it currently, and there are objections noted.

It was coded by a maintainer, giving implicit approval of one. He has made no statements on backtracking on the one bad feature of an otherwise interesting PR. (I do have other issues but they're of less concern. If that gets pushed, there will be no more IPC mechanics. They will never be able to leave the station, and will die in droves during power sinks.)

I feel like I've spent enough time on Paradise and the Para Git repo to understand how it's probably going to go, but I'll be surprised and delighted to be wrong on that.

Additionally, the discussion is locked, I'd really like to chip in my own opinion on that one.

1 hour ago, necaladun said:

Popular opinion is not what we look for in balance, as that leads to all the scissor players screaming for nerfs to rocks, and that paper doesn't need any buffs.

I get this, but at the same time it's very bad to buff a species that was already human+ to human++. I do understand that there were nerfs merged at the same time. This is good! But it wasn't the intention of that PR. That was only to buff with "We'll handle nerfs later." when you take into account the absolutely glacial pace of Para development, it was a pretty dire outlook.

[Allfd]

1 hour ago, Ziiro said:

I feel like I've spent enough time on Paradise and the Para Git repo to understand how it's probably going to go, but I'll be surprised and delighted to be wrong on that.

For what its worth (Basically nothing) I personally subscribe to the model of "That seems neat and unique, lets merge it."  Approach to balance.  

I completely understand where you are coming from.  But it really does come down to Neca's rock paper scissor example.  While our current system has the appearance of being arbitrary, it does a decent job of upsetting almost everyone, which is a pretty fair indicator of a fair system.  

Yes it is chalk full of balance decisions that many in the community find questionable.  But it is extremely hard to look at a species other then the karma ones and say they have any advantages/disadvantages.  IPC stand out, because IPC have different mechanics.

I see three ways around the Rock Paper Scissor issue.  

1)  Make all the species reskinned humans (IPCs need to eat fuel to break it down into methane for a fuel cell or something and have black oil blood)

2)  A trait system where we can assign things points, and just kinda let whatever happen.  IPC can just have less points to spend on traits then humans, to offset stuff.  They can pick between EMP weakness or the change to cells. (Or they could take a weakness trait and only speak in trinary or something)

3) We could change game mechanics or gameplay to put less of an incentive on everyone killing each other all the time. 

That is kinda what I have for ideas,  otherwise well

 

1 hour ago, Ziiro said:

2 hours ago, necaladun said:

Popular opinion is not what we look for in balance, as that leads to all the scissor players screaming for nerfs to rocks, and that paper doesn't need any buffs.

I get this, but at the same time it's very bad to buff a species that was already human+ to human++. I do understand that there were nerfs merged at the same time. This is good! But it wasn't the intention of that PR. That was only to buff with "We'll handle nerfs later." when you take into account the absolutely glacial pace of Para development, it was a pretty dire outlook.

Everyone in this is right, 

Yeah, we have had plenty of human to human+ buffs with promised future nurfs that never materialized,  I would not fault you for saying there were never any nurfs intended by the author/maintainers/heads at all, as often, no nurfs are ever offered.  I will not fault anyone for pattern recognition, even if the conclusion drawn is faulty, the pattern still exists.

But none of that really addresses the concern about how species should be handled.  It just refers back to previous examples that may/may not have been the right/wrong decisions for the right/wrong reasons.

I have three ideas,  the first is the easiest to both get coded and pass the merge process, it is the one I like least, but it is the most likely way to resolve this after just not resolving it.

It is not possible to just have things appear out of nothingness and into fully formed PRs, someone has to code them, and that is primarily what we lack.  You cannot merge something that was never coded.

Edited October 3, 2018 by Allfd

[Ziiro]

40 minutes ago, Allfd said:

For what its worth (Basically nothing) I personally subscribe to the model of "That seems neat and unique, lets merge it."  Approach to balance. 

Huge yes to this, if it's handled properly and with sufficient agility. If you want unbalanced wackiness, go whole hog on it. One time I tried to make a species immune to all slowdowns on the grounds they couldn't use guns. Seemed like a cool idea at the time. I'd still like to try it.

40 minutes ago, Allfd said:

But none of that really addresses the concern about how species should be handled.  It just refers back to previous examples that may/may not have been the right/wrong decisions for the right/wrong reasons.

To be honest with you, I personally think your #1 is the best solution. And, of course, eventually doing a point-buy positive/negative trait system to get some of your traits back (EMP weakness, -10.. Colorblindness -5, Darksight +5..). You could actually do a lot with that framework. At least with that being an eventually, there's no interim time of X race being more powerful, or Y race simply being miserable to play.

I do think that would be met with opposition from the community and maintainers, however, as that is losing mechanical race flavor.

40 minutes ago, Allfd said:

It is not possible to just have things appear out of nothingness and into fully formed PRs, someone has to code them, and that is primarily what we lack.  You cannot merge something that was never coded.

We've discussed this issue in another thread, but I feel that it's largely discouraging to coders to have to wait multiple months for your PR to be reviewed and ruled on, and you spend that time making sure that there are no outstanding merge conflicts or problems. This has been improving recently, at least!

Edited October 3, 2018 by Ziiro

[Allfd]

3 hours ago, Ziiro said:

4 hours ago, Allfd said:

It is not possible to just have things appear out of nothingness and into fully formed PRs, someone has to code them, and that is primarily what we lack.  You cannot merge something that was never coded.

We've discussed this issue in another thread, but I feel that it's largely discouraging to coders to have to wait multiple months for your PR to be reviewed and ruled on, and you spend that time making sure that there are no outstanding merge conflicts or problems. This has been improving recently, at least!

These are some of the hardest things to do, we had well...  It took a great deal of effort to get the whole staff on the same page that not only were people complaining about the backlog, but that a backlog existed, and we needed to do something about it.  After that we had to figure out what to do about it.

We are doing better, we are making progress.  It would be wrong to say the hard part is over and we have smooth sailing on the codebase front.  We have a number of issues with our coder pipeline, and while we have cleared the backlog, the side effects of having one on our coder population are going to take time to counter.  I could be wrong and we see a sustained bounce back, but I imagine we are going to see a spike of new PRs, a crash in new PRs, and then a slow gradual rebuilding.  It will probably look something like the hype cycle curve.

So while we are working through backlog, we have other code issues we need help on.

1)  The long PR times and uncertain outcomes months in the future has contributed to many of our coders moving on.  We have to rebuild trust that we will evaluate things fairly and in a reasonable time frame, and if we disagree, providing a meaningful and useful reason we disagree. We will need to rebuild engagement with our codebase, since we already lost it, we will almost certainly have a harder time then we did last time.  Its easier to gain trust the first time, then it is to regain it after loosing it.

2) We continue to receive feedback that the staff and community do not agree with many of the gameplay decisions being made that effect where they think we should be moving.  We have no real defining goal or direction, so it is very difficult to look at anything qualitatively vs just the balance numbers.  Since most of the interactions don't come down to numbers, the appearance is that gameplay decisions just kind of happen for personal preference reasons.  Since not everyone shares the same preference, it seems to be well,, unpredictable and unfair.

Normally I would say, "Well thats tough because this is the direction the server is going in."  But without being able to articulate that direction, well.  Then it would be disingenuous of me to claim that more of a plan exists then personal preference at the top.  I am good enough at this public speaking stuff, to know I won't win any friends by saying a plan exists, and then being unable to answer what it is.

Number 2 is actually a really big deal, because we can't really have any sort of rewards for coding or what to tell coders about their ideas as we have no idea what we really want.

I wish it was all just good news,  perhaps it will be, perhaps we get a github bounce that keeps growing.  But, objectively, we have problems.  We are however, trying to solve them.  While we may not have a path forward yet, we are working on it.

Now thats done, onto fun stuff!

 

3 hours ago, Ziiro said:

4 hours ago, Allfd said:

For what its worth (Basically nothing) I personally subscribe to the model of "That seems neat and unique, lets merge it."  Approach to balance. 

Huge yes to this, if it's handled properly and with sufficient agility. If you want unbalanced wackiness, go whole hog on it. One time I tried to make a species immune to all slowdowns on the grounds they couldn't use guns. Seemed like a cool idea at the time. I'd still like to try it.

Maintainers have started doing test merges, we are making good progress #voxleap2018

The difficulty, is its very easy to see a feature get added for rocks, and have the paper players freak out.  The easiest solution is then to remove it.  This is actually the most expensive solution, as the person who made the feature will probably not sink that level of effort in again anytime soon, and we end up with all the features removed.

In my mind, the better solution all things else being equal, would be to give a neat new thing to paper.

The problem is because everyone on the server is a special snowflake,  getting the players of an entire species to agree to what constitutes an acceptable nerf, is just as difficult as getting different species to agree.  I think we have to go with a trait system, we have no other choice then to keep following the signs for "Spesss, bland edition"  If we stay on that road, we may just end up get where we are going.

I don't like the idea of all species being reskins, because its on the path to acceptance that this is not a roleplaying game, its a PVP game with a rules about what you can say in the chat window.  While CS:GO has a thriving market for gun skins (or so I am told), my feelings on server direction is that I am not super interested in a free 2d version of an FPS.

Edited October 4, 2018 by Allfd
rocks != paper