Crew/Personal Objectives

[kosmos]

Okay we have the Money Talk -thread which is very closely related, but I don't wanna derail that thread. This is about a completely different (and a much more simple) approach at the same issues. There would be no disadvantage from NOT doing these things, they're only a small carrot for players to do things (rather than motivating them by threatening with a jobban if they don't do their job), a small gratification at the end.

The issues:
Nonantags have no reason to do their jobs
Nonantags have no reason to board the escape shuttle

A suggestion how to overcome these issues and make things more interesting:
Crew and/or Personal Objectives for nonantags.

My examples aren't mindblowing, they're aiming at keeping it nice and simple.

Crew Objectives:
* Export 1000 [insert mineral].
* Export all the crates on the station.
* Keep the station as clean as possible.
* Keep the station as intact as possible (no hull breaches).
* Maximum research.
* Make a superhuman SE syringe/virus.
* Make x amount of mutated superplants.
* Have more than 90 % of the crew reach Centcom alive.
* etc. etc.

Personal Objectives:
* Don't harm anyone.
* Don't die even once.
* Never suffer asphyxia.
* Various tasks depending on your job, e.g. find Hulk when you're Geneticist, make an Adamantine Golem Rune when Scientist, clean 50 blood splats when Janitor etc...

PLUS The Round End Score
Depending on how objectives went plus the normal things (how blown up was the station, etc.) the round gets an overall score.

Yeah... I dunno, thinking is hard. But you get the point! I'm sure you guys can think of many awesome things.

Spoiler:

just steal all the things from other ss13 servers they all have this stuff

[Lo6a4evskiy]

Do you people seriously need the game to write a little message for you and then if you do that it will write another message congratulating you and only then you can do it?

I pity you.

thinking is hard

That's the reason I guess?

[Remie Richards]

Do you people seriously need the game to write a little message for you and then if you do that it will write another message congratulating you and only then you can do it?

I pity you.

thinking is hard

That's the reason I guess?

What is a game but a series of objectives defined by the game or by yourself?

[Lo6a4evskiy]

by yourself?

Bingo

I mean I'm not against this, but it seems to me that many will blindly follow their objectives and there will be nobody to talk to EVER. Or for example chemistry will be too busy completing its objectives rather than help me out with chem implants or hydroponics or bar or whatever. Or mining beelining to certain materials/fighting mobs instead of getting everything others need. You get the idea.

Do we really need this?

This is all just sad.

[Scott]

Imagine the the end round spam.

[Remie Richards]

Alright Lo, fair enough.

And it doesn't need to be shown at round end, you could extend the Personal aspect so that only the objective owner gets it.
The reason traitor objectives are shown is because it's likely a large impact on the round.

sadly people mostly only want objectives so they can brag.

[Arete]

by yourself?

Bingo

I mean I'm not against this, but it seems to me that many will blindly follow their objectives and there will be nobody to talk to EVER. Or for example chemistry will be too busy completing its objectives rather than help me out with chem implants or hydroponics or bar or whatever. Or mining beelining to certain materials/fighting mobs instead of getting everything others need. You get the idea.

Do we really need this?

This is all just sad.

The reason most games set objectives for all players is so that the game's designers can keep everyone working toward goals that make the game interesting for everyone else. This is why antags are given specific items or targets to go after rather than just being given a griff license. If some objectives aren't working toward that purpose, the answer is not "turn the whole game into a sandbox." Instead, more useful objectives should be chosen.

That said, I think you're right that these kinds of job-based objectives would just end up making each department even more insular. If job-based objectives are implemented, they should probably at least require coordination with multiple other departments.

[cedarbridge]

See, when I saw this thread I assumed it was something like /vg/'s shame announcements at round end where the server calls the roboticist a useless shit for not making any borgs all round or something.

[Lo6a4evskiy]

It's more than "Did this or did not". I can have million reasons not to make borgs at all, but suddenly it's my objective and instead of building mechs I have build borgs now? That's stupid. People should be doing whatever is most useful in the current situation, not what RNG decided.

[Kelenius]

It's more than "Did this or did not". I can have million reasons not to make borgs at all, but suddenly it's my objective and instead of building mechs I have build borgs now? That's stupid. People should be doing whatever is most useful in the current situation, not what RNG decided.

I can have million reasons to not kill people at all, but suddenly it's my objective and instead of stealing RCD I have to kill the captain now? That's stupid. Antags should be doing whatever they want, not what RNG deci- oh wait.

[kosmos]

Okay since some people mostly object to the Personal Objectives, that's okay, it was just one suggestion. Have you guys looked at the Crew objectives at all? It was kinda the main point here, thus being the first thing I wrote here.

Crew objectives would enhance the feel of station being one, instead of encouraging people to be lone wolves (hello assistants), it would give the people a reason to come together to make a big thing possible which would be impossible to do alone. Like collecting loads of minerals or researching all the tech levels and whatnot.
At the end there wouldn't be bragging, it would more like be an awesome "we did it!" feel.

[Lo6a4evskiy]

I can have million reasons to not kill people at all, but suddenly it's my objective and instead of stealing RCD I have to kill the captain now? That's stupid. Antags should be doing whatever they want, not what RNG deci- oh wait.

Duh.

Crew objectives would enhance the feel of station being one, instead of encouraging people to be lone wolves (hello assistants), it would give the people a reason to come together to make a big thing possible which would be impossible to do alone. Like collecting loads of minerals or researching all the tech levels and whatnot.
At the end there wouldn't be bragging, it would more like be an awesome "we did it!" feel.

More like they would be what incompetent people will never accomplish, but competent people do it alone ez.

Objectives shouldn't be completed for the sake of objectives. You accomplish something for it to matter. Who cares that you maxed R&D if nobody ever used it? Who needs your shitty materials if you dumped them in cargo and didn't tell anybody?

But see, robotics made a bunch of mechs and gave them to security, which then proceeded to stomp revolution. That's something cool you accomplished. Engineers built a second singularity. It's pointless and there was no objective to do it, but that's just so cool, so many people working together and finally your second black hole monster is operational! Or R&D made x-ray lasers that defeated blob. Or chemistry chem grenaded kudzu. Or engineers patch up destroyed escape in a matter of minutes so that people can get to shuttle. That's something you accomplish, even if nobody else knows about it. Greentext means little to nothing.

[Miauw]

Imagine the the end round spam.

I've been planning to make the round end messages show up in a seperate window for a long time.


Also, antag objectives should serve mainly as inspiration to people comfortable with antags, and as some sort of guidance to people new to playing antag. If you have free objectives like BS12 does, new traitors will have absolutely no idea what to do. Too many choices. Nobody really minds (or shouldn't mind, anyway) antags not going solely for their objectives if they make the round interesting in other ways. BUT they can try to complete their objectives in interesting ways.

[kosmos]

Crew objectives would enhance the feel of station being one, instead of encouraging people to be lone wolves (hello assistants), it would give the people a reason to come together to make a big thing possible which would be impossible to do alone. Like collecting loads of minerals or researching all the tech levels and whatnot.
At the end there wouldn't be bragging, it would more like be an awesome "we did it!" feel.

More like they would be what incompetent people will never accomplish, but competent people do it alone ez.

Yea I thought it would be very apparent as I was about to add that the objectives should be extremely hard to accomplish without a full pop station and everyone working together. The point would be that they would be a rare occurrence and when they did happen, it would be notable.

Objectives shouldn't be completed for the sake of objectives. You accomplish something for it to matter. Who cares that you maxed R&D if nobody ever used it? Who needs your shitty materials if you dumped them in cargo and didn't tell anybody?

I don't see how you're argumenting against this, you're just pointing out a different philosophy behind your motivation, which is fine and I hope more people would get. But giving this small encouragement for people would work to make those awesome things, which you mentioned, happen more.

I know you find it sad that people need text to tell them to be a team player, I wouldn't be raising this suggestion at all if the station would always have power up by 10 min mark, teams working together, miners mining and research researching for the good of all station. In my experience this doesn't happen, and I thought that a small motivator wouldn't hurt.

[Reimoo]

Personal objectives don't solve the problem. They just make everyone act unnecessarily selfish. However, crew objectives and end round stats are a good solution. Well, they help alleviate the problem at least.

A short end round summary of what was completed and what wasn't is something that SS13 has been in need of for a very long time, and I can't think of a single server that does this. Stats like % of crew dead, research levels completed, amount of raw resources collected, % of the station still intact, % of the station dirty, % of crew that boarded the shuttle, etc.

Mostly these end stats won't affect the individual in the slightest, but they do give a sense of how the crew as a whole managed the entire round. In other words, it would be fun to compare an end round score in relation to other end round scores to see how badly the station got fucked. A letter grade or a number could be used summarize the round stats entirely for those that want a general score of how well the crew performed. Perhaps this idea of crew unity in terms of achieving a higher score would be the small incentive we need to get people to actually do their jobs.

Spoiler:

And plus, if you're a statistics nerd like me, it will be fun to gawk at numbers and stuff.

[Kelenius]

Objectives shouldn't be completed for the sake of objectives. You accomplish something for it to matter. Who cares that you maxed R&D if nobody ever used it? Who needs your shitty materials if you dumped them in cargo and didn't tell anybody?

But see, robotics made a bunch of mechs and gave them to security, which then proceeded to stomp revolution. That's something cool you accomplished. Engineers built a second singularity. It's pointless and there was no objective to do it, but that's just so cool, so many people working together and finally your second black hole monster is operational! Or R&D made x-ray lasers that defeated blob. Or chemistry chem grenaded kudzu. Or engineers patch up destroyed escape in a matter of minutes so that people can get to shuttle. That's something you accomplish, even if nobody else knows about it. Greentext means little to nothing.

You're totally right! Because nobody on this server cares about the greentext, ever, and so nobody will care about crew objectives as well.

[Steelpoint]

I think personal objectives can be a great tool to help newer players be introduced to the games mechanics and job expectations. It would give new players something to strive for and a clear goal for the round.

Some of the obvious examples being for a Roboticist to build a Cyborg Body. A chef making a specific kind of food or to have the Singularity online.

I think these objectives should be toggle-able, and be on by default. Also it should only tell the applicable player of the objective and if they succeeded.

[Remie Richards]

just steal all the things from other ss13 servers they all have this stuff

https://github.com/d3athrow/vgstation13/pull/1221

Goofball ported Paradise's Goon Style scoreboards to /vg/
Seems relevant.

[Reimoo]

So what is stopping us from stealing it too?

[Ezel]

Why steal it?
if you can try code it by yourself
might you learn something new or something
or improve it

[Remie Richards]

It's not really stealing. They're all public licences so the other codebases (besides goon) Cannot legally stop us taking code bits, and vice versa (correct me if I'm wrong on that, that's my understanding as a non lawyer)
It's just nice to ask, and get permission and such.

Ezel, Porting something from codebase to codebase usually involves some touch ups. quite a bit of the code in that PR is hideous for example.

[LdShade]

The objectives just need to be well thought out.

The objectives suggested in OP are terrible, no offence.

[Raven776]

I'd suggest most goals be limited to certain things that can be taken to the shuttle with you. Plasma sheets, research disks, a genetics disk with all superpowers possible in the SE, a disease with over five symptoms, certain foods, certain drinks...

[callanrockslol]

Imagine the the end round spam.

I've been planning to make the round end messages show up in a seperate window for a long time./quote]

Please no, it would mess up player logs fairly badly.

[Septavius]

* Don't harm anyone.
* Don't die even once.

WHAT

[Steelpoint]

* Don't harm anyone.
* Don't die even once.

WHAT

Those would be amusing objectives for a member of Security.

[Arete]

Those would be amusing objectives for a member of Security.

>Greentext by spending the round in an escape pod.

[cedarbridge]

Those would be amusing objectives for a member of Security.

>Greentext by spending the round in an escape pod.

TIL survivors hide in pods all round

[kosmos]

Remove greentext (from antag objectives) altogether and add in crew objectives, I think we'd have a fantastic setup for more interesting rounds with less murderboning.

Or instead of removing antag objectives make antag objectives very vague while trying to create interesting scenarios, like "hold 5 people as hostages" or "make the AI do weird noises", completion-tracking would be impossible for these so it wouldn't be possible to greentext these, they would just act as a guideline for the unimaginative antag.

[cedarbridge]

Remove greentext (from antag objectives) altogether and add in crew objectives, I think we'd have a fantastic setup for more interesting rounds with less murderboning.

Or instead of removing antag objectives make antag objectives very vague while trying to create interesting scenarios, like "hold 5 people as hostages" or "make the AI do weird noises", completion-tracking would be impossible for these so it wouldn't be possible to greentext these, they would just act as a guideline for the unimaginative antag.

Some of my favorite custom objectives were things like "lead a localized rebellion at <department name here>

[Septavius]

Remove greentext (from antag objectives) altogether and add in crew objectives, I think we'd have a fantastic setup for more interesting rounds with less murderboning.

Or instead of removing antag objectives make antag objectives very vague while trying to create interesting scenarios, like "hold 5 people as hostages" or "make the AI do weird noises", completion-tracking would be impossible for these so it wouldn't be possible to greentext these, they would just act as a guideline for the unimaginative antag.

that is the lamest suggestions ive ever seen

[kosmos]

Remove greentext (from antag objectives) altogether and add in crew objectives, I think we'd have a fantastic setup for more interesting rounds with less murderboning.

Or instead of removing antag objectives make antag objectives very vague while trying to create interesting scenarios, like "hold 5 people as hostages" or "make the AI do weird noises", completion-tracking would be impossible for these so it wouldn't be possible to greentext these, they would just act as a guideline for the unimaginative antag.

that is the lamest suggestions ive ever seen

Do you have any real argument against it or are you just shitposting for fun?

[Ezel]

I can't wait until I see when the station is destroyed
Promotions for everyone
Gibbed result system is so broken and other servers uses the same system