The new random candidate mechanic is frustrating

[Boxy]

The new random candidate mechanic is bad.

The old click the fastest mechanic was better.

plz fix.

[Viz]

The fastest clicker mechanic punishes everyone who doesn't just sit glued to their PC clutching a poopsock, random choice is fair.

[CourierAsy]

I just now got the mechanic role and im loving it being random, no idea on whats the problem there, but i agree with @Woje, that other way sound really bad.

[Vargh]

I don't agree, it's better for everyone to get a chance to play whatever spawn on the server instead of just letting it get picked by your everyday antag fisher who just spam click the top right corner so they can be cool and do bad things.

If you don't like something, at least try to make a good reasoning about why instead of this bad attempt of a meme

[Corocan]

I prefer random as opposed to having to furiously click and break my enter key. RNG is the future, old man.

[BeanOS]

I'll be honest, I never understood why it wasn't random to begin with, because as was stated before, having people just being able to get it because of either a clicker or even just having better ping, was extremely annoying.

[BryanR]

I think eventually all ghost roles that are not round start spawns should be RNG based grabbing from the pool of observers.

[Spacemanspark]

Why is this bad? Can you give a good reason? 

The new RNG picking mechanic is how just about everything else works, from revenants to robotic brains. It works quite nicely and doesn't turn it into a fest of whoever can click a button first. 

[Krossarn]

As a player, that is far from the fastest clicker around, it’s well nigh impossible to get midround antags. Tired to get A Terror last night in high pop and they were spewing out eggs.. I gave up after 20 minutes.. 

[AffectedArc07]

23 hours ago, Boxy said:

The new random candidate mechanic is bad.

The old click the fastest mechanic was better.

plz fix.

Assuming you mean for terror spiders, let me give a bit of context (I wasnt the OP of the PR, but @Kyetis likely willing to explain in more detail)

 

This still applies to terrors grown from eggs mid round, but the initial event spawn randomises candidates. The mechanic itself is not "bad", and is actually a lot fairer. The "who can click first" mechanic was highly unfair, since it was basically "whoever has the best ping and best reaction times gets to play the role", instead of actually being fair and picking out from a group of candidates, like any other midround. The old "click fastest" mechanic was not better.

Also, if youre going to write a post with a serious suggestion, I recommend actually writing a proper writeup post, instead of a 30 second post with the words "plz fix". Fix isnt even valid in this situation because its not a bug, its intended behaviour. 

Edited December 5, 2020 by AffectedArc07

[Carthusia]

3 hours ago, Krossarn said:

As a player, that is far from the fastest clicker around, it’s well nigh impossible to get midround antags. Tired to get A Terror last night in high pop and they were spewing out eggs.. I gave up after 20 minutes.. 

I was in that round to, it took me 30 minutes to get a spider, every time it would pop up, no matter how fast I tried it would always be taken first.

I havent seen the new system for spider choice yet, but is it a general spider spawn like "A spider has spawned, do you wish to play it" or is it still specific such as "A red terror has spawned, do you wish to play it?"

[Kyet]

22 hours ago, Boxy said:

The new random candidate mechanic is bad.

The old click the fastest mechanic was better.

plz fix.

Assuming:

1. You are referring to the recent change whereby initial terror spiders spawned directly by an event, go to a random candidate from opted-in ghosts instead of the first ghost to click them.
2. You're being serious, and this is not a meme post.
3. You haven't read all the previous discussions on this topic (I'm NOT expecting you to have read them, I'm NOT blaming you for not reading them, I'm just mentioning this to explain why some of the rest of this post will be familiar to other readers)

Then:

1. The change was made by me (author of terror spiders), after being convinced that randomizing it for initial spawns would actually be better than the old system.
2. Many, many people have given their feedback/preferences on this topic over time. I only changed it after considering the matter for a very long time, and getting a lot of player feedback. It was NOT a change I did lightly. A lot of thought and consideration went into it. I was fully aware some people would be unhappy, but I stick by my belief that I made the right decision.
3. At this point, I am not going to change it back. While I would object to anyone else extending it to cover the rest of terror spiders... if I decide that would be a good idea too (and I very well might decide that at some point in the next 6 months), then I will make that change myself as well.
4. Basically, I'm sorry you don't like it, but its here to stay, and you should get used to it, because I may decide to extend it to cover all other terror spider spawns in future.

[Boxy]

oki thx.

[Boxy]

3 minutes ago, Boxy said:

oki thx.

@Kyet

In all seriousness.  i was not being too serious with this post i just expressed that i personally dislike random selection. 

Now my reasoning for supporting fastest click is that the person clicking   has been intently watching the round and is more likely to know what is going on, and also random selection feels unfair for people who pick observer in the start of the round in the hopes of playing some sort of special tittle. 

That said reading the response it seems most people including people who are more dedicated to the server then i am  prefer the new mechanic so fair enough.

 

Now the ideal system for me would be a system that has factors and qualifiers,  as how many times you died this round.  (less times the better placing observers at the top of the line for the first pick)

Have you been an antag this round?  (if yes its a lot less likely you get picked)

and probably more things to come up with to make it fairer and more likely for everyone to get their fair share of roles.

[Viz]

21 minutes ago, Boxy said:

Now my reasoning for supporting fastest click is that the person clicking   has been intently watching the round and is more likely to know what is going on, and also random selection feels unfair for people who pick observer in the start of the round in the hopes of playing some sort of special tittle. 

I mean if you think the mechanic hurts people who observe specifically to fish for antags that's not exactly making your argument particularly strong

[Spacemanspark]

46 minutes ago, Boxy said:

Now my reasoning for supporting fastest click is that the person clicking   has been intently watching the round and is more likely to know what is going on

If anything, I'd argue this is a reason against faster clicking. People shouldn't be going into ghost roles with meta knowledge on the back of their minds. 

46 minutes ago, Boxy said:

and also random selection feels unfair for people who pick observer in the start of the round in the hopes of playing some sort of special tittle. 

I'm going to admit, it's a bit tiring seeing observers feeling so entitled to things. They really aren't. While I certainly don't mind giving them things to do sometimes, they aren't owed it. If you want to guarantee you're involved with the round, play the normal way. 

As it is, this is a simple RNG system and it's presently only for the starting terror spiders. Any other  ghost can still play terror spiders just fine when more hatch. 

[necaladun]

4 minutes ago, Spacemanspark said:

I'm going to admit, it's a bit tiring seeing observers feeling so entitled to things. They really aren't. While I certainly don't mind giving them things to do sometimes, they aren't owed it. If you want to guarantee you're involved with the round, play the normal way. 

Preach it

[BryanR]

2 hours ago, Boxy said:

Now my reasoning for supporting fastest click is that the person clicking   has been intently watching the round and is more likely to know what is going on, and also random selection feels unfair for people who pick observer in the start of the round in the hopes of playing some sort of special tittle. 

As someone who observed a hell of a lot of rounds before I even became an administrator, you shouldn't go in with the mindset of 'I'll get that special role' when you do. I used observation when I didn't feel like playing but I wanted to watch and see what was going on, chat with other observers, and just have a good ol' time commentating on what went down.

When I became a mentor, I'd frequently use it so that I could dedicate myself to answering questions and I wouldn't have to divide my time between playing and the job I had attained, which carried over when I became an admin.

The long rambling point is, that observation isn't for special roles and you shouldn't expect one when you do observe. There isn't anything unfair about RNG and people who observe from round start because the mechanic was never intended just for special roles.

[Boxy]

I personally don't observe hoping for a good role or observe in general, but i do think there could be a good case to be made for people who do to get the midgame antag roles if and when those roles happen.

Now that is not to say  they should be entitled to those roles, but i get the feeling it would be better if they had a stronger claim on them and  were more likely to get them.  I don't think you can metagame more as an observer then a player at round start picking a role.  Besides it allows the people who desperately want to play traitor  a grater chance, and in all likelihood as midround antag spiders for example   they will die at most in 15 minutes after they spawn in.

I mean imagine how sore do you have to be to observe a whole round just in the hopes of getting an antag role. its still a bad deal for them any perspective even if mechanics were in place to favor them playing antag.

[BryanR]

Its not about metagaming and more about there should be no guarantee or favoritism. The opposite could be said about someone who is new to the game and finds this role and wants to play the ghost role. They're new and won't be as quick to click on the prompt as more veteran players, regardless if either observed from the beginning or if they died, the newbie gets the short end of the stick all the time since they won't nearly be as fast as the veteran.

 

3 minutes ago, Boxy said:

I mean imagine how sore do you have to be to observe a whole round just in the hopes of getting an antag role. its still a bad deal for them any perspective even if mechanics were in place to favor them playing antag.

If someone is sore because of this, they're playing the game with the wrong reason in mind. Joining with the expectation of getting the role and not getting it would be why they're sore. If it was a simple hope then they wouldn't care either way. This expectation is something I would like to see discouraged and the RNG factor does that wonderfully.

[Spacemanspark]

9 hours ago, Boxy said:

Now that is not to say  they should be entitled to those roles, but i get the feeling it would be better if they had a stronger claim on them and  were more likely to get them.

There are already a ton of things for ghosts to do without admin intervention or waiting for the midround. Things such as:

-pAIs

-Robotic brains (and whatever robotics turns you into from there. Mechs, borgs, IRCs, AI cores) 

-Nymphs made from botany

-Station pets

-Sentient mobs from xenobiology

-Maintenance drones

This isn't accounting for lavaland roles, which adds... 

-Ash walkers

-Veterinarians

-Beach bums

-Diona gardeners

And probably other things I'm missing. 

You do not need midrounds to do something as a ghost. And, again, nor are ghosts entitled to such things. There's a reason the button is called 'observe' and not 'become event fodder'. 

9 hours ago, Boxy said:

I don't think you can metagame more as an observer then a player at round start picking a role. 

I... wha? 

Ghosts have access to antagHUD, can hear all radio speech and dialogue in the game, have the ability to jump between any player at any given time and all sorts of information giving things. 

This is a very false statement. 

9 hours ago, Boxy said:

Besides it allows the people who desperately want to play traitor  a grater chance

If you're playing the game specifically to get antag, there are better servers for that. We are not the server for gloating about a kill count. 

9 hours ago, Boxy said:

and in all likelihood as midround antag spiders for example   they will die at most in 15 minutes after they spawn in.

I've barely, if ever, seen this happen. Often times terror spiders dominate the station. I'm not sure where you're pulling this information from. 

 

None of this is compelling enough to warrant a reconsideration of the RNG system. It's fair and far better--and also consistent with nearly every other ghost role across the board. 

[Boxy]

@BryanR  Fine you talked me into why RNG is better you did make good points i had not considered.