How do you guys feel about the general direction of Paradise

[SpaceTimeNow]

 

What i am kinda interessted in is, did this thread get us somewhere? I mean there are like 50 replies and like 1500 views, can we pull something out of this or did we just state our opinions and then go on as if nothing happened?

 

Since the only people that can effect real change are admins / coders i would like to pass that question to them specifically.

 

[Kyet]

 

What i am kinda interessted in is, did this thread get us somewhere? I mean there are like 50 replies and like 1500 views, can we pull something out of this or did we just state our opinions and then go on as if nothing happened?

 

Since the only people that can effect real change are admins / coders i would like to pass that question to them specifically.

 

Challenge accepted.

I'll give you a list of what I've done / am aware of happening relative to some issues raised in this thread.

 

As an aside, though, you can influence the direction of the server by discussing proposals on the forums, or voting on the github.

The github is really underused. There are many proposals there which are tied for upvotes/downvotes.

Your single upvote could make the difference between a proposal being tied - or having majority support or opposition.

So, yeah, vote.

 

Focus on survival:

the game is definitely too easy

rounds could use more danger/entropy.

I've been working on several PRs to add danger/entropy, such as:

- Terror Spiders https://github.com/ParadiseSS13/Paradise/pull/4229 (adds dangerous, entropy-generating spiders)

- Easier admin characters: https://github.com/ParadiseSS13/Paradise/pull/4717 (makes it easier for admins to run some types of events, ie: create new situations)

- Syndicate Infiltration Teams https://github.com/ParadiseSS13/Paradise/pull/4816 (groups of syndicate agents who infiltrate together)

 

IMHO, the main issue with medical is that there are fast, permanent treatments available for any condition.

 

I worked on a PR for this (https://github.com/ParadiseSS13/Paradise/pull/4752) but it was not popular, so I moved on to other ideas.

 

There are so many observers that just fly around and complain about the slighest mistake people does, engineer didn't set up the tesla? Wow what a fucking idiot.

 

I'm currently doing three things about this:

1) Making a point to try to channel deadchat in a healthier direction when I see it being salty

2) Trying to pull more ghosts into the round where possible

3) Thinking about doing a PR which challenges ghosts to live up to their words and help fix the problems they see - a sort of "troubleshooter squad", selected from ghosts, which challenges ghosts to actually get on station and help out the people they're complaining about not knowing the game. Or, alternatively, a special sort of pAI.

 

Everything is oriented around the "balance" bullshit, everything has to be "balanced", and by balanced, it means that a selected few thinks it's balanced.

 

nice things have been denied because of balance issue.

 

I've been on a bit of a campaign recently to shift our thinking towards a greater concern for fun.

I would like to revisit other jobs from the Viro/Psych/Atmos/QM/BrigPhys/Barber/... list and see if I can do anything to make them more fun.

 

At some point I also hope to do that evaluation of Paradise's mechanics with a focus on fun that I mentioned.

 

While antags shouldn't be crashing the server with their cluster max cap bombs, they should have some freedom.

 

This is an active discussion. I too would like to see more freedom for antags.

 

Also a factor that affects the amount of antagonism is the fact that people get caught usually pretty early on and thrown into perma.

 

Some admins try to keep the rounds interesting when this happens.

They add new antags, run an event, or whatnot. Something to prevent the round being an hour and a half of nothing happening.

I've seen it done and it usually gets good results.

 

I've put a PR up that tries to make perma less boring: https://github.com/ParadiseSS13/Paradise/pull/4747

 

I've been thinking of doing a PR which would buff the ability of Security to securely parole people. My theory being that Sec is more likely to parole people if they feel they can do so safely. Parole leads to more fun than any kind of brig sentence.

 

I've got another PR up which tries to make parole more of an option: https://github.com/ParadiseSS13/Paradise/pull/4766

More chances for criminals (antags included) to potentially avoid wasting away in perma, and keep the round interesting.

 

The tesla is easy-mode engine and I am supremely disappointed in it.

There's an active PR about trying to rebalance the tesla: https://github.com/ParadiseSS13/Paradise/pull/4695

 

We got a bunch of EZ more low-rp features that keep being added, meanwhile people keep getting way more extreme with rules and regulations which conveniently only the ahelp complainers and security players ever are able to use to their advantage. Your pretty much always guilty of a crime and if anyone is a shithead to you then you need to either join the ahelp-everything bitches or just accept their abuse because even the smallest retaliation will just get you in trouble. Most rounds these days I complete avoid other players because either they rule nazis or they are just there to valid for anything and everything. You can't RP when even the slightest hinting at possible antag goals will get them to attack you with complete disregard for their own life or any possible RP. The people that would RP with a possible antag are usually put off due to the threat of ahelp nonsense unless its a metabuddy friend.

 

Yeah, people are too quick to point out antags based on metaknowledge. The other day, a player was defibbed and instantly went "X killed me". X consented to a search, but within 30 seconds everyone figured out he was a ling with EMP implant, and within 60 he was killed. He was trying to RP a bit, admittedly not very well, but he was trying, and he got killed for it.

 

Banning knowledge doesn't work, though. The only way to really address the root cause of this problem is to invalidate the knowledge. For example, cult books in gateway and fake runes made of crayon make people much less likely to scream "CULT".

 

I'd like to see anti-metagaming techniques used to disrupt other common methods of identifying antags. For example, I'd like to see some traitor items being available as loot in hidden corners of the station (randomly determined, in a minority of rounds). Just something to stop people identifying antags so quickly using metaknowledge.

 

There's a PR up for voting right now which disrupts metaknowledge: https://github.com/ParadiseSS13/Paradise/pull/4688

 

The admin team is often quite unresponsive when actual shit happens.

 

I've been trying to address this to the extent I can, by things like this: https://github.com/ParadiseSS13/Paradise/pull/4694

Prompting admins when a fax is received, giving more options for replies, etc. Making sure admins don't miss requests.

 

more gateway levels, that is all i ask

 

Right now, there are two different PRs up for consideration that add/expand/change gateway levels:

- My terror spiders PR: https://github.com/ParadiseSS13/Paradise/pull/4229

- The Space Hotel PR: https://github.com/ParadiseSS13/Paradise/pull/4700

 

Also, you might find the space ruins PR relevant: https://github.com/ParadiseSS13/Paradise/pull/4780

 

And then, as we were waiting for the death squad to show up, Val stepped forward, against my orders, and offered himself as a husband to the queen, to save the crew. I was in chains at the back of the Chapel as it happened screaming my protests.

 

I had so much fun that round. That storyline would continue with Val's divorce later on. I made in-game friendships with Val and my BS that round, Kayala Guttieres, among others.

 

All because I learned to be comfortable RPing at one notch higher.

While I was not there for that round, I was part of the "divorce" event that was run later.

It was one of the most memorable rounds of SS13 for me. I agree we need more rounds like that.

 

[SpaceTimeNow]

 

Thumbs up for the great response!

Very detailed and one can tell that you thought a great deal about the topics and that certain issues are already being addressed. Neat!

 

 

One topics that i probably never can let go is LINDA, because for me atmos was one of "the" features that made ss13 special. I do understand that atmos code is difficult stuff and that Linda might be currently the best solution, at least code design and compatibility. Performance wise i feel it is so extremly slow that it just feels wrong and took all the "eviromental danger" from the rounds. What is the consensus on the current atmos situation, are you actually happy with where it is?

 

 

 

IMHO, the main issue with medical is that there are fast, permanent treatments available for any condition.

 

I worked on a PR for this (https://github.com/ParadiseSS13/Paradise/pull/4752) but it was not popular, so I moved on to other ideas.

I don't think it is so much about that we need something new in medical, but rather that we have this abundance of really powerful options to heal every condition.

 

I think a lot of the "difficulty" in medical is lost because Chemistry simply can but out way higher quantities than ever before. Additionally Cryo has become more effective, not only the actual healing amount or cooling down speed of patients but also the fact that it very effectivly only feeds small quantities of cryosoup and is not as wasteful as before. Not to mention the new instant healings that patches provide or that the sleepers can be upgraded to just generate almost every med. There were so many new features ported and mushed together, it simply lost all coherence.

 

[BiberDark]

 

[...]

And finally, the fun factor of current-state para has to be the area its most lacking in. If a traitor kills anyone their method of murder gets nerfed again. (And don't get me wrong, I believe nerfing is ok if done reasonably like it was done for the pre-nerf Chainsaw.) If anything can kill a clumsy guy it gets babyproofed. A good example of <--- this is the tesla, which has like 0 downsides and is retardproofed so much its barely ever round ending. Not to mention its practically forced on every engineering team so its not like they have to jump through hoops. The singulo, a round ending doom hole was replaced with this oversized engineering hugbox. Back on topic, players barely try letting antags make the round more fun and will often bash their head in with an extinguisher. Validhunting groups exist and are sometimes to be highly expected. Back in an older round there was a person who announced over the radio that they were making a "vampire hunting group" and it was a legit thing, and they hunted vampires down just because they were valid. Which brings me to vampires, who are so nerfed and weak they're barely acceptable. Vox Raiders are almost always the same shitty traders as usual and never bother to do a fun actual raid and I half don't blame them with the massive assholish validhunting crew and the fact that vox raiders are so shit they don't get any substantial weapons and have this retarded "kill no one under any circumstance lol" law. Every round is the same shit where all the antags get killed or detained due to overnerf-induced frailty and the transfer shuttle arrives after 2 hours and nothing wrong happens ever except in nukies who I'm surprised hasn't been nerfed in the ground after they killed every station-renown snowflake metabuddy multiple times over and over. We might as well just remove all gamemodes and make rules enforcing everyone to sit in the bar and circlejerk and remove all forms of harming and rebrand ourself as Second Life in Space because that's what some people are trying to make us. Hell, as it stands right now, I'd rather stand in the middle of a Second Life yiff orgy for 2 hours than spend a shift on Para now.

 

 

And here we have it again ! A hidden nerf for the sillicon or ai faction. Giving some nice features ( lip-reading power) ok, but at the same moment the only effective weapon are weakened.

 

- Overload Machine cost increased from 15 to 20

- Override Machine cost increased from 15 to 30

- ReAdds Lockdown ( but only 90 Seconds and SINGLE USE )

 

https://github.com/ParadiseSS13/Paradise/pull/5355

 

Paradise went from a thorny

to Disney Land

 

[Shadeykins]

 

Medical has been seriously dumbed down, surgery is unintuitive and you can no longer combine/seamlessly switch between different surgeries on the same limb, and a lot of racial differences have been removed because they were "snowflake" over the past two years I've been here.

 

I pretty much disagree with, and have overtly stated that I have disagreed with *almost* every change that's been made to the medical department to date and have always been hotly against changes that make races more "samey". Aliens should be aliens, not carbon copy humans with a few gimmicks and the game mechanics should support exactly that. For instance, things like medical allergies based upon races are unique and interesting and it's a shame they got removed. (Vox were allergic to dexalin (the oxy-loss drug), back when we had it).

 

I feel like the general direction is that over the course of the past two years, the mechanics behind Paradise have become more 'gamey', simple, and presented in such a way that they contribute to a degradation of roleplay. Some of the gamemodes especially in how they're oriented (ragin' mages and demon spam is the big one) definitely contribute to this.

 

With that said, I think there have been a lot of recent changes that have been quite good such as the changes to maintenance, the randomization/spreading of some syndicate items and the overhauls/introduction of SoP along with some of the science/genetics nerfs.

 

Some things have gone that I loved, some things have been introduced that I dislike, and some things have been introduced that I am also fond of.

 

I think we're currently headed in an O-K direction, so long as we don't continue to simplify for the sake of reducing "snowflake" (Which is hardly ever always a bad thing) and instead add depth. SS13/Paradise is attractive for it's depth, not for a lack of it.

 

My two cents.

 

[BiberDark]

I call this faction "The Equilizers".

[Earthdivine]

 

And here we have it again ! A hidden nerf for the sillicon or ai faction. Giving some nice features ( lip-reading power) ok, but at the same moment the only effective weapon are weakened.

 

- Overload Machine cost increased from 15 to 20

- Override Machine cost increased from 15 to 30

- ReAdds Lockdown ( but only 90 Seconds and SINGLE USE )

 

https://github.com/ParadiseSS13/Paradise/pull/5355

 

 

Can I ask what about this is ahorrible nerf? Atleast it makes Overload Machine worth using, before there was no utter reason to ever pick it because Override is just so much better in every way.

 

The readdition of one of the strongest tool is a bad thing?

 

To keep this ontopic, however, speaking as someone whos been here from the beginning, I can agree that some of the lethalness of the game is gone. However, in some cases that's because we been removing one hit kills (which the old days were filled to the brim with) and general "Throw up your hands and lean back, waiting to die" shit, much like how ZAS was.

 

But truth be told this game is still hideously lethal and you can die on a drop of a dime, but no one ever does anymore because you know all the mechanics, the quirks, and ways to get around things. People cry and complain about the bite being taken from antagonists but when you can't use half the list because people know what to look out for or specific behaviors, that's not a problem with the antagonists. You know someone getting close might be trying to Sleeper pen or Changling Sting you, people have macros that immediately input "Say; HELP!" and then scream, and not to mention "memechems" which tons of scientists and medical personnal keep on themselves. Of course it feels like Wizards suck when their win percent is way below average when a wizard can teleport on station and immediately die because someone had a syringe on them "just in case".

 

That's not even going into the double standard that people have created.

 

I honestly feel completely fine with how things are, there's no more absolute bullshit that isn't regarded as "well it's your fault", but I would have to say in the eyes of someone whose "new" to the game it is still a metal death trap.