Can we discuss the emagged maint drone nerf?

[Dinarzad]

2 hours ago, EvadableMoxie said:

What you're saying is it sucks to be emagged but then saying changes that reduce the frequency and duration of how often drones get emagged are bad.  It makes no logical sense.

Being emagged by itself is not terrible. Being told "Welp gg no re you have 5 minutes to live then a 10 minute wait period, no matter what you do" is a problem.
While some may not seek out being converted, it's not like there are players who would despise the sudden freedom to be an antag. There is actually a middle ground that exists between "Run at people and ask to be made antag" and "I never want to be converted ever." Personally, I don't like being emagged, don't like being antag period, but that doesn't mean I suddenly like what was done, because I'm thinking beyond my own personal feelings on the matter.

The problem is, right now an emagged drone serves to be fun for no one.  It;s not fun for the traitor, it;s not fun for the drone player, even someone who might be able to get into the "I am an evil sabotage bot" role and have fun with it, can't, because they have a whole 5 minutes to live.

It is a change that benefits no one, harms a majority of players in multiple playstyles and does nothing to impair the one type of rule-breaking player that it was intended to stop.

[EvadableMoxie]

I would agree that it's less fun to be an emagged drone now than it was before.  However, the goal is to increase how much fun everyone has. This is similar to the self-antagging and antag-hunting rules. They make the game less fun for some people, but they are necessary to keep the game fun for everyone. 

We're getting into subjective things here, but I've always felt emagged drones were incredibly unfun to deal with, and that's a sentiment I've seen agreed with by a lot of people. Obviously this is opinion, and if you disagree that's valid, but my impression of it is that we're all better off now not having to deal with them. 

Edited June 13, 2018 by EvadableMoxie

[Vissy]

13 hours ago, EvadableMoxie said:

If the point is that it sucks to get emagged how can you say applying a timer that limits how long you are emagged be a bad change? [...]

What you're saying is it sucks to be emagged but then saying changes that reduce the frequency and duration of how often drones get emagged are bad.  It makes no logical sense.

The thing is, the players who play drones have no control about whether they will get emagged or not. They get punished with an equivalent of a brig sentence for a Major crime (10-15 minutes) just because they happened to be in the wrong place in the wrong time. That's what so bad about the timer.

Since we are already on it, what's your stance about the proposed above concept of making the e-magged drones into purchasable traitor items?

EDIT: Only now noticed that there is a third page and that @Dinarzad has already answered these questions. Oh well. :3

Edited June 13, 2018 by Vissy

[EvadableMoxie]

It's not really about punishment, people can do things to you to take you out of a round or change your gameplay, and that's part of SS13.  An assistant with a crowbar might kill you as a drone or a diona nymph, but that's just how playing one of those is. So, if it sucks to be emagged, well, that's SS13. Shitty things can happen to you. I'd still prefer drones not be emaggable at all, but I don't think how it is now is much different than other things in SS13.

I think making them purchasable traitor items could work, because we can apply a specific TC cost to make them balanced.  It wouldn't be infinitely respawnable through no action of the person in the round, and it wouldn't be something that's converted so there'd be no issue with drones trying to be emagged.  I think the only thing I'd want addressed at that point is the ability of drones to interface with electronics while inside pipes. 

[Vissy]

14 minutes ago, EvadableMoxie said:

It's not really about punishment, people can do things to you to take you out of a round or change your gameplay, and that's part of SS13.  An assistant with a crowbar might kill you as a drone or a diona nymph, but that's just how playing one of those is. So, if it sucks to be emagged, well, that's SS13. Shitty things can happen to you.

On 6/13/2018 at 7:14 AM, Vissy said:

Of course, this happens all the time with the other roles, and there already exists a lot of conversion antagonists, but the difference with the drones is that how distant they are from politics and other players' activities to begin with. I'm not saying that drones should not be able to be "converted" into antagonists just because they are drones, but it just... feels wrong, compared to their gameplay style in general.

You have a good point here. It still feels... wrong to me, but it's an entirely subjective matter.

15 minutes ago, EvadableMoxie said:

I think the only thing I'd want addressed at that point is the ability of drones to interface with electronics while inside pipes. 

On 6/11/2018 at 7:26 AM, Vissy said:

• Full cyborg-like access => No remote access : basically, the idea is to completely take away all the cyborg-like access priveleges from the SDs, forbidding them from accessing the doors, APCs and other similar devices as a cyborg or AI could. [...]

Already addressed in the proposal in an even broader way. :3

[EvadableMoxie]

If you take away all of an emagged drones remote access then they're really only useful for combat.  So then it feels like it's stepping on the toes of the Holo-parasite.  And I'm not sure it's good design to allow a traitor to buy a couple of drones, tell them "Go kill X." and then sit back and wait.   I suppose they can do that now with emagged borgs, but at least that risks discovery if the borg rats you out when it's rebuilt. 

I think it would be more useful to give drones a role that is separate from combat.  Let them be useful for getting you into places or scouting things out, but leave the combat support role to holo-paras. 

But then it's all theory, I'm not against testing anything and seeing how it plays out. 

[Vissy]

On 6/14/2018 at 3:58 PM, EvadableMoxie said:

If you take away all of an emagged drones remote access then they're really only useful for combat.  So then it feels like it's stepping on the toes of the Holo-parasite.  And I'm not sure it's good design to allow a traitor to buy a couple of drones, tell them "Go kill X." and then sit back and wait.   I suppose they can do that now with emagged borgs, but at least that risks discovery if the borg rats you out when it's rebuilt.

Again, I have already explained that removing remote access would not hinder the drones' sabotaging ability (at least, why I believe so) and why I proposed it in the first place. Please, at least consider reading other people's posts thoroughly before replying to them.

[Vissy]

So-o... It's been over 4 months since the last activity in this topic, and seemingly no progress on it whatsoever. Could we get some attention from the proposers of the nerf in question, or maintainers, or..? Please? .-.

[McRamon]

Naah its all good. Drones are not a huge part of a gameplay

[Vissy]

Perphaps, but still... The amount of the stalled discussions on this forum like this one is just depressing.

Also, I really want to see if we could get a new traitor item in form of an uplink drone or something like. 0w0

[Shadeykins]

6 hours ago, Vissy said:

So-o... It's been over 4 months since the last activity in this topic, and seemingly no progress on it whatsoever. Could we get some attention from the proposers of the nerf in question, or maintainers, or..? Please? .-.

This was done and dealt with, as you yourself mention, four months ago. Don't necro threads, please.

[Vissy]

13 minutes ago, Shadeykins said:

This was done and dealt with, as you yourself mention, four months ago. Don't necro threads, please.

Was it? When? I didn't notice any changes about the drones, nor an implementation of any of the proposed solutions, nor any counter-arguments to the arguments about wrongness of the PR in question. The discussion just... hang up in the middle. Maybe I'm just missing something?

EDIT: Admittedly, I didn't meet an emagged drone since then, nor did I attempt to make one myself (so as to avoid ruining their player's rounds to some extent) or become one. Perphaps, there were indeed some changes I just didn't notice; perphaps, the PR was rolled back? I don't know, to be honest. Still, the fact remains that the discussion just hang up without any resolution whatsoever, nothing just like a message along the lines of "Hey, we've noticed this, we've fixed this thing in that and that way, the discussion is closed, thank you guys for everything". If it's actually resolved somehow, I'd very much like to know about that, please.

Edited November 12, 2018 by Vissy

[Shadeykins]

https://github.com/ParadiseSS13/Paradise/pulls?utf8=✓&q=is%3Apr+maint+drone

Many issues get resolved on the GitHub or even on the Discord/server. Not everything is noted down on the forums.

Asking administration to copy-paste a response on every single pertinent thread/venue in every location (when we may not even know about the thread's existence) is not feasible.

If you have a concern about the current status of drones, you are more than welcome to create a new and relevant thread about it. Necroing a thread that has been dead for four months to try and make a critique about the coding team is not the way to do it. Reasoning is already supplied on the pertinent pull request.

Edited November 12, 2018 by Shadeykins
Locking. Please do not necro-post on threads.