quirk rebalance needs tweaking?

[Super Aggro Crag]

a lot of the positive quirks seem massively overcosted, and some of the negatives either give too much points or don't give enough

[remanseptim]

family heirloom is unironically slept on
if you take it as assistant you literally just get a free toolbelt most of the time

[Farquaar]

family heirloom is unironically slept on
if you take it as assistant you literally just get a free toolbelt most of the time

I feel as if family heirloom was a layover from a time where it was more common to have all of your possessions completely obliterated, but still easily survive thanks to cloning. Not sure if the "My family heirloom is safe with me" mood buff still exists in-game, but if it does, it probably doesn't need to be there.

Still, that's not to say family heirloom is free points. It makes it a lot harder to ditch evidence or alter your identity when your backpack has an item that screams "hey, this belonged to John Smith". Also, family heirloom doesn't usually hurt you when things are going well, but it bites you when things are going to hell and you have a movement penalty because your jumpsuit burned off in a plasmafire and you lose your pair of lucky dice you had in your pockets.

[steampunch]

Yeah, some of them also don't make any real sense at all. Foreigner should absolutely give you a lot of points cause it makes basic communication pretty much impossible with the majority of the crew. You can't even really mime stuff, because there's no way for you to tell if the other dude is getting what you're trying to say or if he's coming to a completely different and possibly negative conclusion. Yet, foreigner is a neutral quirk for some reason? Junkie should give more points because of constant addiction, and the fact the drug you are addicted to can be "less than healthy." There are a couple others but it mostly boils down to changing the points values to accurately reflect how good or bad the quirks are.

[NoxVS]

Spiritual costs 4 points, all it does is give you some basic stuff, sound that annoys the two admins who haven't muted prayer, and a mood boost from looking at the chaplain

[RaveRadbury]

Spiritual costs 4 points, all it does is give you some basic stuff, sound that annoys the two admins who haven't muted prayer, and a mood boost from looking at the chaplain

>>He doesn't know that Spiritual doesn't make a noise.
How did you pass your trial phase?

[NoxVS]

Spiritual costs 4 points, all it does is give you some basic stuff, sound that annoys the two admins who haven't muted prayer, and a mood boost from looking at the chaplain

>>He doesn't know that Spiritual doesn't make a noise.
How did you pass your trial phase?

I know, whoever trained me deserves to be deadminned for letting me get this far

But yeah, its actually chaplain prayers then. So spiritual just gives you a little indicator next to your prayers, a mood buff for examining the chaplain, and some candles and matches. And you don't even get the prayer indicator or mood buff as chaplain because chaplain prayers overwrite it and chaplains cant examine themselves for the mood

It costs 4 points for a chaplain to get a box of candles and matches.

[Farquaar]

How is light drinker worth 2 points but nearsighted only worth 1? One prevents you from wearing welding goggles, mesons, and HUDs. The other makes it easier to get drunk if you choose to drink, which you'd only be doing if you wanted to get drunk anyway.

[Mickyan]

The PR in question states that negative quirks were impossible to create despite the fact we have a billion negative quirks and barely any positives, this just made everything harder to balance instead of adjusting the few outliers that were unbalanced just by altering their mechanics.

You may as well be choosing their values with a dart board now, some of the current value do in fact look like that's they were picked like that

[Qustinnus]

The PR in question states that negative quirks were impossible to create despite the fact we have a billion negative quirks and barely any positives, this just made everything harder to balance instead of adjusting the few outliers that were unbalanced just by altering their mechanics.

You may as well be choosing their values with a dart board now, some of the current value do in fact look like that's they were picked like that

quote where i said this

[Mickyan]

[Qustinnus]

[quote="Mickyan"][/quote]
as your screenshot shows thats exactly where you stopped reading. That was about the fact that you can't make a negative quirk thats slightly bad and thus wont give you as many points, or gives you slightly more points. The main point of that PR was making every value x4 (which changes nothing in the grander picture but allows you to nuance quirks more)

[Mickyan]

I disagree but you asked for a quote

[Super Aggro Crag]

Nothing changed in the grand picture except positive quirks being massively overcosted thus preventing me from having fun little fluffy window dressing on my characters

[Qustinnus]

I can re-balance foreigner, spiritual and nearsighted.

[Timberpoes]

I can re-balance foreigner, spiritual and nearsighted.

Foreigner should stay at 0 points. It's funny, but it's not something I'd want to encourage people taking unless they genuinely just want to play as a Foreigner, I'd sooner leave that at 0 points. I don't want it to form part of the powergamer's arsenal as for a person who wasn't going to interact with anyone anyway who cares if you have to PDA people instead of talk to them.

In other words, I wanna keep it as a "this shift I fancy playing Foreigner for a change" instead of "Gotta take Foreigner so I can fit in Wrinkle Brained and Well Endowed"

[Kassori]

Social Anxiety is really under weighted at the moment, you get blocked from speech constantly around other people, that includes when you're being stunned, cuffed, hypnotized in maint.

[Mothblocks]

Social Anxiety is really under weighted at the moment, you get blocked from speech constantly around other people, that includes when you're being stunned, cuffed, hypnotized in maint.

i think shaps wanted to remake it as something that encourages rp'ing as someone with anxiety more

[cacogen]

The wheelchair one is another example where regardless of the point value it's prohibitively intrusive to play as. Wouldn't be hard to fix, just speed default wheelchairs up a bit.

[NecromancerAnne]

The wheelchair one is another example where regardless of the point value it's prohibitively intrusive to play as. Wouldn't be hard to fix, just speed default wheelchairs up a bit.

And yet people actually take that one with reasonable frequency even then. It's clearly one of the better flavour choices and I don't think it should be overrewarded for taking it. Taking a gimped start is fun for people.

Some traits are just actual junk is the bigger problem. Smoker is a free negative simply because feeding your addiction is going to have a positive impact over a negative from the smoking mood boost. It also has mechanical benefits from the nicotine and syringing chems into the cigarette for further mood boosts.

But Junkie is actually asking to die upon spawn, which is largely because addiction is absurdly lethal for a lot of drugs. Junkie encourages nothing of value and allows for an easy out in a round, made even worse when it clears on a few antagonists, making it useful for antag rolling subtly. Smoker is if anything beneficial short of rounds where you need internals up constantly.

[cacogen]

I disagree. Based on my experiences trying to make it work in the past and assuming it hasn't changed since, the wheelchair is far too slow to expect players to use it as their primary means of mobility without doing whatever it is people do to modify it (I've seen the xenobio slowdown removal potion used and I think you can get a motorised one). I'm going to try it again though just to make sure it hasn't been sped up. Even if people take it I don't think players should be subjected to that torture if they want to have a wheelchair-bound character. There's no good reason for them to be that slow.

[steampunch]

I can re-balance foreigner, spiritual and nearsighted.

Foreigner should stay at 0 points. It's funny, but it's not something I'd want to encourage people taking unless they genuinely just want to play as a Foreigner, I'd sooner leave that at 0 points. I don't want it to form part of the powergamer's arsenal as for a person who wasn't going to interact with anyone anyway who cares if you have to PDA people instead of talk to them.

In other words, I wanna keep it as a "this shift I fancy playing Foreigner for a change" instead of "Gotta take Foreigner so I can fit in Wrinkle Brained and Well Endowed"

Why is it in this very specific and honestly not that harmful instance we feel the need to cockblock powergamers? Most good quirks aren't a big deal anyway, who cares if a powergamer can jump in a locker? That's probably the least harmful thing they're going to be doing.

Having it at zero points makes foreigner pretty unenjoyable and if I'm being completely frank it seems like a quirk built around the creator's preferences for how they play the game, rather than what is the best design-wise. I've tried it a bunch now, and not stapled to one of my normal statics. I made a new character just for it so I could lean into the premise, but honestly it's still too frustrating for being zero points. Hell, half the fun of doing a fancy or silly gimmick is seeing other peoples' reactions. How am I supposed to do that when they're talking gibberish?

The only way you can really communicate with crew is through PDA, and that's mostly one-way because most players don't think of using PDA to talk to a foreigner. That is, if they realize you're one at all, and bother to go through the trouble of talking to you instead of ignoring you. So, you can either basically ignore the whole point of foreigner by using PDA all the time (at that point just play mime or don't take it at all) or get very little real interaction with crew.

It goes beyond RP too. People take for granted how many threats they learn about in game just from radio callouts. As a foreigner, you don't understand those callouts, so it's pretty common to be completely oblivious to danger you need to be preparing for. Many antags like xenomorphs often only have an announcement after they've arrived and started causing trouble; I've literally died because I wandered near a traitor killing people that I wasn't warned about because I can't hear crew. Also, if you run into a threat yourself and call for help on radio, you can only pray someone of the same race or curator is both paying attention, and not braindead enough to ignore your calls for help. Making foreigner more than 0 points isn't about powergaming, it would just mean I don't have to take it and some other extreme negative quirk like hallucinations in order to have some decent positive quirks that fit my gimmick.

[Super Aggro Crag]

i wish there was a bilingual perk so i could speak with the crew but also slav gibberish

[Timberpoes]

I can re-balance foreigner, spiritual and nearsighted.

Foreigner should stay at 0 points. It's funny, but it's not something I'd want to encourage people taking unless they genuinely just want to play as a Foreigner, I'd sooner leave that at 0 points. I don't want it to form part of the powergamer's arsenal as for a person who wasn't going to interact with anyone anyway who cares if you have to PDA people instead of talk to them.

In other words, I wanna keep it as a "this shift I fancy playing Foreigner for a change" instead of "Gotta take Foreigner so I can fit in Wrinkle Brained and Well Endowed"

Why is it in this very specific and honestly not that harmful instance we feel the need to cockblock powergamers? Most good quirks aren't a big deal anyway, who cares if a powergamer can jump in a locker? That's probably the least harmful thing they're going to be doing.

Having it at zero points makes foreigner pretty unenjoyable and if I'm being completely frank it seems like a quirk built around the creator's preferences for how they play the game, rather than what is the best design-wise. I've tried it a bunch now, and not stapled to one of my normal statics. I made a new character just for it so I could lean into the premise, but honestly it's still too frustrating for being zero points. Hell, half the fun of doing a fancy or silly gimmick is seeing other peoples' reactions. How am I supposed to do that when they're talking gibberish?

The only way you can really communicate with crew is through PDA, and that's mostly one-way because most players don't think of using PDA to talk to a foreigner. That is, if they realize you're one at all, and bother to go through the trouble of talking to you instead of ignoring you. So, you can either basically ignore the whole point of foreigner by using PDA all the time (at that point just play mime or don't take it at all) or get very little real interaction with crew.

It goes beyond RP too. People take for granted how many threats they learn about in game just from radio callouts. As a foreigner, you don't understand those callouts, so it's pretty common to be completely oblivious to danger you need to be preparing for. Many antags like xenomorphs often only have an announcement after they've arrived and started causing trouble; I've literally died because I wandered near a traitor killing people that I wasn't warned about because I can't hear crew. Also, if you run into a threat yourself and call for help on radio, you can only pray someone of the same race or curator is both paying attention, and not braindead enough to ignore your calls for help. Making foreigner more than 0 points isn't about powergaming, it would just mean I don't have to take it and some other extreme negative quirk like hallucinations in order to have some decent positive quirks that fit my gimmick.

You have just listed a bunch of reasons why I don't want people to pick the Foreigner quirk unless they're looking for a specific gameplay experience.

I don't want people taking Foreigner because it gives them some free points to offset against other quirks.

I want people to take it because they genuinely want the experience that quirk offers in how it fundamentally changes the way you approach the game. Foreigner is a pure RP quirk. It neither costs nor gives points. You can pick it up for free if that is the gameplay experience you're looking for.

[NecromancerAnne]

It does, if anything, provide a reason for the curator to exist.

[confused rock]

I can re-balance foreigner, spiritual and nearsighted.

Foreigner should stay at 0 points. It's funny, but it's not something I'd want to encourage people taking unless they genuinely just want to play as a Foreigner, I'd sooner leave that at 0 points. I don't want it to form part of the powergamer's arsenal as for a person who wasn't going to interact with anyone anyway who cares if you have to PDA people instead of talk to them.

In other words, I wanna keep it as a "this shift I fancy playing Foreigner for a change" instead of "Gotta take Foreigner so I can fit in Wrinkle Brained and Well Endowed"

Can we add wrinkle brained and well endowed?

[cacogen]

It does, if anything, provide a reason for the curator to exist.

Curator is enjoyable. That's all you need.

[steampunch]

You have just listed a bunch of reasons why I don't want people to pick the Foreigner quirk unless they're looking for a specific gameplay experience.

I don't want people taking Foreigner because it gives them some free points to offset against other quirks.

I want people to take it because they genuinely want the experience that quirk offers in how it fundamentally changes the way you approach the game. Foreigner is a pure RP quirk. It neither costs nor gives points. You can pick it up for free if that is the gameplay experience you're looking for.

My point is the gameplay experience has nothing going for it and giving it a point bonus would make it more tolerable, because if you want positive perks that fit your gimmick you currently have to throw more negative quirks on when foreigner alone ought to account for something

Also it's hilarious to me that everyone says it's just for RP when its honestly antithetical to RP. What RP is there in listening to the crew talk gibberish that you can't understand and having no clue how they are reacting to you? If you don't want to make foreigner give points so bad at least make it so you aren't actively shooting yourself in the foot when you take it, then maybe there would be more foreigners around. Despite what certain people assert, I never see foreigner users, cause it's simply not worth it even for a RP gimmick. Add something to give flavor to the quirk other than having to bend over backwards to interact with the rest of the crew. For example, give them some item, like a cheap company "pocket guide," that lets them speak comically broken galactic common while they use it. That would make interacting with foreigners kind of fun and give people who take it a reason to bother talking to the crew. Dunno if that's feasible but as is the perk lends itself to zero interactions or gameplay at zero points.

[RaveRadbury]

Also it's hilarious to me that everyone says it's just for RP when its honestly antithetical to RP. What RP is there in listening to the crew talk gibberish that you can't understand and having no clue how they are reacting to you?

The point of the quirk is that it makes you rely on a small handful of crewmembers one of which is specifically a service RP job. Befriend others of your species (unless you're a foreigner human), get the curator to babysit you, download a pAI, or make friends with the silicons. Like all good quirks, it makes you reliant on others in order to function in the round. This is the RP, having to interact with at least one other player to get by. If you hang out with someone who can translate for you, you won't be caught unaware of station events.

[trollbreeder]

Also it's hilarious to me that everyone says it's just for RP when its honestly antithetical to RP. What RP is there in listening to the crew talk gibberish that you can't understand and having no clue how they are reacting to you?

The point of the quirk is that it makes you rely on a small handful of crewmembers one of which is specifically a service RP job. Befriend others of your species (unless you're a foreigner human), get the curator to babysit you, download a pAI, or make friends with the silicons. Like all good quirks, it makes you reliant on others in order to function in the round. This is the RP, having to interact with at least one other player to get by. If you hang out with someone who can translate for you, you won't be caught unaware of station events.

The same goes for being deaf, you need someone that mimes (or PDAs) what everyone's saying to you, yet that quirk gives you 8 points.

[Rohen_Tahir]

Social Anxiety is really under weighted at the moment, you get blocked from speech constantly around other people, that includes when you're being stunned, cuffed, hypnotized in maint.

Good. Nobody wants all the powergamer greytiders to turn into shy kawaii anime character powergamer greytiders.

[Armhulen]

In general all perks that inhibit speech give way less as it encourages shitty gameplay and that makes sense

Probably already mentioned with foreigner

[steampunch]

Also it's hilarious to me that everyone says it's just for RP when its honestly antithetical to RP. What RP is there in listening to the crew talk gibberish that you can't understand and having no clue how they are reacting to you?

The point of the quirk is that it makes you rely on a small handful of crewmembers one of which is specifically a service RP job. Befriend others of your species (unless you're a foreigner human), get the curator to babysit you, download a pAI, or make friends with the silicons. Like all good quirks, it makes you reliant on others in order to function in the round. This is the RP, having to interact with at least one other player to get by. If you hang out with someone who can translate for you, you won't be caught unaware of station events.

TG is already plenty of relying on a small handful of crewmembers for various things, and that already causes players headaches. However designing a perk to make you utterly rely on a very small and exceptionally unreliable portion of the crew just to interact with the rest of them just makes it not fun. Sure, now I have more of a reason to talk to the curator, but for starters, is the curator gonna actually give a fuck to translate for me? And secondly, what other interactions am I effectively missing out on because no one can understand me, and vice versa? You really can't justify being largely unable to interact with most of the crew without PDAs because it makes me interact more with like two crew members and the AI who certainly does not have the time to help me with my voluntary dead weight quirk. It's not like I interact more with other nonhumans other than asking a nearby one to translate something for me sometimes.

Most of the time I just fall back on using PDAs because the pace of rounds gets too fast and too chaotic to spend time forcing another player to play Google translator for me, or more often, looking for one who is willing. Remember when mimes got changed cause they just fell back on PDAs and thus defeated the whole purpose of miming? This feels similar. Honestly, at this point I care less about upping the value of the perk and more about making it actually neat to use and not just a wasted opportunity.

[Mickyan]

We can argue for hours whether this or that quirk is worth 1 or 2 points but the fact is we'd both be talking out of our ass because they were never intended to be balanced with one another like you're making a character build in an RPG and the points system only exists to stop positive quirks from being a required pick for maximum power, regardless of how minor an advantage it may be. People that complain about quirks being useless or too expensive still haven't figured this out.

Still have not seen any new quirk additions that seemingly required this change

[Mothblocks]

are you telling the person who created quirks what they were intended to be? or someone else

[Mickyan]

The person that made quirks isn't around anymore and on that note I am 90% positive I'm the person who has made and reworked the most quirks out of everyone else, I'm also going by what's been cited numerous times by maintainers and the caveat for them being merged was that they'd be an optional feature that wouldn't put people that ignore it at a disadvantage, hence their balance being skewed towards negatives

[Mothblocks]

The person that made quirks isn't around anymore and on that note I am 90% positive I'm the person who has made and reworked the most quirks out of everyone else, I'm also going by what's been cited numerous times by maintainers and the caveat for them being merged was that they'd be an optional feature that wouldn't put people that ignore it at a disadvantage, hence their balance being skewed towards negatives

floyd posted in this very thread. isn't he the one who created quirks...? im apparently insane, nevermind me

[cacogen]

Social Anxiety is really under weighted at the moment, you get blocked from speech constantly around other people, that includes when you're being stunned, cuffed, hypnotized in maint.

Good. Nobody wants all the powergamer greytiders to turn into shy kawaii anime character powergamer greytiders.

like most of the quirks i tried social anxiety once and then never again. it caused me to have a seizure standing up which a level of Realism™ unwelcome in video games

[CDranzer]

All quirks should be neutral and have pros to balance out their cons

Alcohol tolerance should give alcohol dependence
Emotional instability could intensify moods while shortening their duration
Apathy could do the opposite
Being blind could let you hear whispers from far away, or hear talking through walls
Being paralyzed could give you a really sweet wheelchair that has its own storage and oxygen supply or something
Being a foreigner could mangle your incoming and outgoing speech, but be paired with being able to speak and understand all regular languages (including racial ones) to a limited degree
Maybe you could have a quirk that makes you resistant to both toxins and medicine

In the end you'd have fewer quirks, but they'd be more interesting, and you'd be able to balance them individually instead of having to arbitrarily quantify how much alcohol tolerance deafness is worth