Families 4.0 Feedback Thread

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Mothblocks
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Families 4.0 Feedback Thread

Post by Mothblocks » #613698

Only post here if you have played a round on the NEW families, that is exclusive to MRP servers

Post any feedback related to the new families (#61123), good or bad.
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Re: Families 4.0 Feedback Thread

Post by carshalash » #613701

I'd like it if it was possible to not become a leader for certain gangs, I got stuck with one in a very early iteration of the game mode that really didn't mesh well with me. The monarchs were also an option that round and I'd always want to be a member of the mighty monarchs.
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Re: Families 4.0 Feedback Thread

Post by Samuel Hayden » #614005

Porting feedback over from github.

In an attempt to show honesty and give some credit to my comment, I'd like to preface with this:
Goof, you probably don't remember me, but we only interacted 3 times, and all of those you were extremely rude without trying to understand my actions inside the game. IF you DO remember, you know that I dislike you, and I type down "family sucks" every single possibility, for that is how I feel about it.

Still, I alone, a player, do not have the power to remove your gamemode due to my personal distaste of you. If I am to be forced to choose between "Play the gamemode so I can play TG, suicide everytime family comes up (impossible if Head or AI) or offer my position to ghosts(not fun since I don't play)", I will choose to play the gamemode. To do so, I must deal with my dislike of you (which obviously affects my opinion of your work) and endeavor to help the growth of the gamemode so that I can actually enjoy it. I am completely willing to address these opinions if it's made clear that I have misjudged you, but I'm pretty sure that won't matter much to you, personally. With that said, here is my honest, unbiased opinion:

Most of the reason why a good portion of current players dislike families is it's tendency to spiral down into Team versus Team. That's why the "this is just revs but worse" comparison keeps showing up.
There is no "hold back", no punishment, no "reason" that stops a player from a gang to devolve into aggression. Players see "joining a family" as "self-antagging", and while MOST players act in good faith, all it takes is ONE individual to iniciate aggression to devolve the whole thing into war.

For security, primarily role-players, silicon players and Heads, Families is just a "how long will it take for people to come after me" gamemode, where the antagonists have the VERY CLEAR ADVANTAGE of being able to build their power BEFORE security is allowed to engage with them. Even when a certain gang poses a possible threat, security feels forced to not do anything about it to avoid an actual war, not even considering the clear Family advantages that follow:
1 - Security has no way of knowing who's a gang member. Yes, they have distinct clothing, but they can just ditch it. Even if not, the admins have made clear that security is NOT ALLOWED to engage MEMBERS of the family that did not engage security first, which is tremendously painful, since families can have many members and it's impossible to discern, document and recognize who's aggressive and who isn't. (Perhaps a good balance to this would be removing the players from the family if they remove their distinct family-based clothing item? Or even, implement a SLIGHT objective based punishment for unnecessary wars or engagements? I'm unsure if that's even possible with BYOND.)
2 - Families can pick and choose when they'll attack. They can snowball so hard that the antagonists to that family have no way of defending. (Perhaps a limit to maximum family members based on sec/player count AND/OR a limit of how many people can be recruited in a given time would alleviate this?)
3 - There are too many families. A Manuel round normally has from 3 to 7 security players, while families can easily grow to "dominate" their departments, which can, on a less populated round, have anywhere from 3 to 5 players. I'm unaware of how many families currently exist and are spawned on every round, but assuming it's 3, that's already too many for a team to deal with. Given the sheer proportion of members, there's no way security can properly answer to an aggressive gang, unless you tell me "yeah, well, that doesn't matter, security is allowed to suffer in this case".

To finish, the best word that I can use to describe the actual status quo of the game mode is "unbalanced" for the reasons mentioned above. It has certainly improved since the previous iterations with the removal of space cops and other adjustments, but while the TvT feeling OR the unbalanced nature of the gamemode are not addressed, a part of the community will always have the same reaction they currently have when they hear "CULT BASE IN ENGI MAINT".
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Re: Families 4.0 Feedback Thread

Post by Samuel Hayden » #614016

I would like to add more to my previous post since I've played families a few more times and noticed a few extra things.

- Heads can join gangs. This is weird for two reasons:
-- 1: Absurd amounts of power can be given to a family as a result. : As mentioned in my previous post, families do not want for power. They're free to snowball as much as they want with the "families are just crew untill they commit a crime" rule. Not only they can have infinite members, now they can have influential members too. I just played a round on Manuel where a CE joined a gang and used his access to kill the skeleton sec crew. They were unable to retaliate or do anything because the CE just dropped the gang-specific item and we had absolutely no wat to tell that the CE was a part of it.
-- 2: What happened to the "you're supposed to play as if you want to have job tomorrow" rule? : How is joining a gang a choice made that agrees with that rule? Cult is forced-conversion, so is revs. If you're a traitor, you're syndicate. If you're a heretic, you were one before you joined. The premise of "join the gang if you want" conflicts directly with this.

-- Families can happen with other antagonists : This is amazingly hard to deal with. As crew, or as security. It's not enjoyable to have a cult/rev situation that can grow infinitely and won't be dealt with because sec is preocupied with something else. Take for exempla a few rounds back on manuel (Melbert made a video about this), where families trigged midround with the objective to "take the disk" IN THE MIDDLE OF A WAR OPS ROUND. Half of a developer's job in game development is to understand that BOTH sides of an experience have to be enjoyable. Being on the receiving end of that is absolutely not. This leads to terrible player burnout and exhaustion because people just can't dodge the round by suiciding (either by rule enforcement or the simple fact that they won't play that shift which could take another hour to finish).

And to answer your comment back on github, where you basically answered "This is a player problem".
I'm sorry, but I respectfully disagree.

The mechanics of every gamemode/antagonist are clear when it comes to explain what the antagonist is supposed to be doing.
Are you a cultist/converted into one? You are now part of the cult, you are an enemy, you must convert and defend the cult so you can summon Nar'sie. Doing so kills all beings, so all beings know that you're an enemy. On sight they'll try to flee or, if pressed, will engage.

Are you a heretic? You sacrifice and ascend. You are a clear antagonist and enemy of the station.

Are you a revolutionary? You fight for your friend revs, kill heads, and win.

Are you malf AI/Traitor? You do your objectives, or have fun antagonizing the crew, at which, when you're found, you're open game for arrest.

NO GAMEMODE/ANTAGONIST WHATSOEVER has unclear objectives and unclear methods of "being dealt with".

Due to the MECHANICS of those antagonists, players are led down a path of specific action, while still being allowed freedom to decide in HOW they'll complete their objectives, but the end is always: They will complete it. OR, at least, they will choose not to, but will antagonize in a way that is CLEAR AND OBJECTIVE. Take traitors as an example: They can choose NOT to complete their objectives and just raise hell around the station. That is fine, but when they're found, all security needs to do is set them to arrest. Then, officers will deal with them. If not, they'll run around rampant but will still be a CLEAR threat. if they're disguised, security won't know who they are, BUT EVEN STILL, they're just ONE PLAYER, not a gang of them.

The open-endedness of the families objectives ALWAYS leads it down to agression. Take one of the families objectives, the "make sure no one has ATVs or Bikes in the station but us" as an example. How are you going to enforce that? The only choice is violence. There is no "hey, don't use bikes." - "yeah okay I won't" ending here. Sure, gangs could RP a truce, catch the ones who break that rule and rough them up a little, and them let them go. Amazing, but now sec has to deal with it, because that gang is now know to cause harm. They identify who were the perpetrators, arrest them, and now the rest of the gang is "up at arms against security" because their friend was arrested. It's a feedback loop that ALWAYS leads back to agression. It's the same problem with the "strand this target" objective, how do you ENSURE they won't leave without GBJ'ing them (which is a rule violation)?

I'll agree that YES, SOME players make matters MUCH worse by exploiting the way the gamemode was designed, but by not limiting their options by adjusting the gamemode, you're also not doing your due dilligence to the gamemode itself.
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Re: Families 4.0 Feedback Thread

Post by Samuel Hayden » #614028

Posting because the person in question asked me to
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Re: Families 4.0 Feedback Thread

Post by GreenKnight2903 » #614031

families currently feel like a revs+ but they cant be deconverted and can just. murderbone. I personally do not like it at the moment and I feel like it doesn't add too much to the game but irritation.
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Re: Families 4.0 Feedback Thread

Post by BigBadAud999 » #614036

forgive me if my formatting dies i don't know how to use the forums father

i believe that gangs don't have enough structure/clear-cut objectives to stop the goons from just murderboning, and that there should be one/two-sentence objectives like other antag objectives, and a set leader for the gangs
but this would make them too much like revs? i think there's just no way to fix this mess of a gamemode without making them revs+
also since it's a voluntary conversion, people are joining gangs just to bone/break things/kill people

the amount of people killing themselves/cryoing/running and making an autismfort when they get families roundstart is incredible and it's clear that nobody really likes it too much in its current state
what is wrong with all of you people
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Re: Families 4.0 Feedback Thread

Post by klapman » #614037

I think a good way to bring Families into check would be to only allow the gang leader to issue the conversion book, and even then only on like a 5 minute timer. I think this would lead to gangs slowly gaining influence over various areas and the crew, while also giving more room for people to actually screen out those who wouldn't go with the gimmick. As is, I wander around and there's just books strewn everywhere. I've never once (aside from the monarch round I played on the night it rolled out) known who the gang leader was or who I should be listening to.

This way it'll be obvious to everyone who the leader is, and there can be a little bit of for real organization. The way I see it going standard style is that the gang leader chills in the hideout most of the time, sending people out to see if anyone's interested in joining the gang, then they come in and interview the interested parties to see who will actually run with the gimmick or not. Right now the gimmicks the mode proposes are actually really solid, but the issue is that these books are just all over the place and nobody can think of anything after a while other than "other gang bad kill kill kill" even when that's nowhere near what the gimmick actually is.

It just becomes an endless arms race, cause every single person you recruit is another person who can recruit and so it becomes a zero-sum game mega fast where the only REAL objective is to get as many people to get as many books out there so that you're more likely to have a numerical advantage over the other gang. It puts people into a panicked sort of state where they don't have room in their head for nuance or fun RP because all time doing that is time that could be spent making sure the other gang can't just kill you for daring to RP. A longer cooldown and a VASTLY restricted recruitment ability would help this, I think. It'd also make gangs more of a slow presence over time rather than seeing your first gang member in minute 5 and your 15th in minute 10.

I'd also suggest maybe requiring the books to be "vetted" by the gang leader somehow before they can be used, so that it's not just literally anyone who picks up a book can be a gang member. Like at the end of the day it really doesn't matter how much you do or do not RP if a random assistant can just grab the book and go off self-antagging in your name. Gangs are often running amok and making enemies of the entire station because of the almost completely random nature of recruitment.

I kinda said the same thing over and over again there, but it's my second time rewriting the post. I'm just going to accept that I'm not a great writer and move on.
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Re: Families 4.0 Feedback Thread

Post by ReginoldJackson » #614039

Samuel Hayden wrote:Posting because the person in question asked me to

"Gangs has a problem where while they don't have allowance to murderbone, they have allowance to murderbone because they're a massive group of antags. Except while Revs and Cultists are KoS and have a way to be deconverted if you want to be nice, there is no way to deconvert gangs, there is only incentive to become one, and unlike a regular antag you can actively seek out to join them without getting banned.

Gangs have full murderbone license, and you can join them at any time without getting bwoinked. It's ultimately a problem and admins need to crack down REALLY HARD on gangs murdering people because I often see them getting murderboney because there's no real actual way to stop them as a jannie because its just like 1 person killing 1 person except its 50 people doing that."
As the person who posted this who got off their ass to post on the forums, I'd like to add that gangs being unconvertable and being entirely optional to join AND their status as being allowed to escalate to full murder violence against 99% of the station means that gangs should be treated a lot more as half-antags than full antags with full permission to escalate quickly to violence. Gangs should not be given full antag status because doing so means that you can simply walk up to someone and ask to be antagged and then start baiting people into situations in which you can murder them (which is allowed by gang rules. Goof has stated before that Phantom Thieves are allowed to just tear out the hearts of heads of staff as a reading of their goals, which is just bootleg revs except you can ask to be converted.)

Sec has no clear way to fight gangs and isn't allowed to kill them on sight, so inevitably what happens is that sec is forced to sit by as a gang member sits in robotics and has to only shoot them when they finally build the gygax to finally raid the vault or whatever thing they've interpreted that allows them to commit violence.

I think all the gangs should follow something more like the Majima Construction goals where they're given a goal to build some big fucking thing as a money laundering operation. Gangs should not be given antagonist rules and should simply be treated like any regular crew member. They should follow normal rules of escalation and should be treated as any other crewmember would by admins. Gangs should ultimately be a way to push a group towards one specific round gimmick. The only time you could convince me otherwise is when engaging a rival gang, which while I don't agree that they should engage with full murderous and round removing force, I'm sure someone would fight me on that.


Also, I'm seconding the comment that Mirino posted on Goof's PR. Everything they've said is something I agree with.
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Re: Families 4.0 Feedback Thread

Post by iamgoofball » #614056

Samuel Hayden wrote: - Heads can join gangs. This is weird for two reasons:
The actual blocker for joining a gang is Loyalty/Mindshield implants. This is, therefore, a problem with Cult as well.
Samuel Hayden wrote:-- Families can happen with other antagonists :
...
IN THE MIDDLE OF A WAR OPS ROUND.
The round you're speaking of was 91 threat.

If it wasn't Families, it was going to be Cult or Revolution or multiple Wizards or a Blob. 90 threat is the threshold where the game turns off the "High Impact" blocker, which Families has enabled to prevent it rolling alongside those gamemodes. You weren't going to have fun that round anyways.

Samuel Hayden wrote:The open-endedness of the families objectives ALWAYS leads it down to agression.
Gangsters are antagonists. They are the bad guys. They antagonize. I'm not making an antag that doesn't antagonize.
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Re: Families 4.0 Feedback Thread

Post by iamgoofball » #614058

Samuel Hayden wrote:Posting because the person in question asked me to
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This is objectively wrong. You can, in fact, ahelp.

Ahelp, fuck. Murderbone is against the rules.
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Re: Families 4.0 Feedback Thread

Post by iamgoofball » #614059

GreenKnight2903 wrote:families currently feel like a revs+ but they cant be deconverted and can just. murderbone. I personally do not like it at the moment and I feel like it doesn't add too much to the game but irritation.
They are not allowed to murderbone. This is Manuel. Ahelp when you see murderboning.
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Re: Families 4.0 Feedback Thread

Post by iamgoofball » #614061

Samuel Hayden wrote:Even if not, the admins have made clear that security is NOT ALLOWED to engage MEMBERS of the family that did not engage security first
This is not the case with this iteration of families. Who told you it was?
Samuel Hayden wrote:Families can pick and choose when they'll attack. They can snowball so hard that the antagonists to that family have no way of defending. (Perhaps a limit to maximum family members based on sec/player count AND/OR a limit of how many people can be recruited in a given time would alleviate this?)
So can literally every other antagonist??? This isn't a complaint, are you fucking with me? I can't take away human agency from players.
Samuel Hayden wrote:3 - There are too many families. A Manuel round normally has from 3 to 7 security players, while families can easily grow to "dominate" their departments, which can, on a less populated round, have anywhere from 3 to 5 players. I'm unaware of how many families currently exist and are spawned on every round, but assuming it's 3, that's already too many for a team to deal with.
I've seen security teams handle the 2 to 3 families that spawn just fine. And it's fine if security doesn't win! This is a roleplaying game, and sometimes you lose.
Samuel Hayden wrote:To finish, the best word that I can use to describe the actual status quo of the game mode is "unbalanced" for the reasons mentioned above. It has certainly improved since the previous iterations with the removal of space cops and other adjustments, but while the TvT feeling OR the unbalanced nature of the gamemode are not addressed, a part of the community will always have the same reaction they currently have when they hear "CULT BASE IN ENGI MAINT".
Have you considered you just have the wrong mindset for MRP?
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Re: Families 4.0 Feedback Thread

Post by iamgoofball » #614063

klapman wrote:I think a good way to bring Families into check would be to only allow the gang leader to issue the conversion book, and even then only on like a 5 minute timer. I think this would lead to gangs slowly gaining influence over various areas and the crew, while also giving more room for people to actually screen out those who wouldn't go with the gimmick. As is, I wander around and there's just books strewn everywhere. I've never once (aside from the monarch round I played on the night it rolled out) known who the gang leader was or who I should be listening to.
I agree with this, and I think I'll be making this change. However, I'll need to highlight who the starting gangsters are name-wise for communications purposes, and this'll reduce the snowball of gang sizes I think.
klapman wrote:I kinda said the same thing over and over again there, but it's my second time rewriting the post. I'm just going to accept that I'm not a great writer and move on.
This is the most valuable feedback I've gotten in the thread so far, don't worry about it.
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Re: Families 4.0 Feedback Thread

Post by Samuel Hayden » #614065

iamgoofball wrote:
Samuel Hayden wrote:Even if not, the admins have made clear that security is NOT ALLOWED to engage MEMBERS of the family that did not engage security first
This is not the case with this iteration of families. Who told you it was?

I was not made aware that this iteration of families had different rules of engagement. Are you saying that security can decide to cut a WHOLE family short due to one member's action without admin repercussion? If yes, then things are not so bad.
iamgoofball wrote:
Samuel Hayden wrote:Families can pick and choose when they'll attack. They can snowball so hard that the antagonists to that family have no way of defending. (Perhaps a limit to maximum family members based on sec/player count AND/OR a limit of how many people can be recruited in a given time would alleviate this?)
So can literally every other antagonist??? This isn't a complaint, are you fucking with me? I can't take away human agency from players.
Okay, here we go. No man, I am not "fucking with you". Also, I'm not making a complaint, I am giving feedback, like was asked. I did my best to type down my opinions in a clear and concise way to ensure that you wouldn't misunderstand, but by answering with "are you fucking with me?" shows that I've failed. If I've offended you in any way, I'm sorry, but do keep in mind that using strong language in what is supposed to be a serious and formal conversation is just bad practice. It's no wonder people avoid the forums for likewise reasons, right?

To answer your question: No, families and other antagonists are different in what I've pointed due to the fact that all other antagonists can be dealt with at FACE VALUE. See cult? Arrest. See traitor? Arrest. The threat is clear, their intentions clear. For an opposing player to "get an idea" of that family member's intention, he would've have to memorize their objective and general direction. If you're a Head/non-security member, you have to literally "wait and see" what they do, and this just puts all the power in the family's hands. Families are the only antagonist that you have to WAIT for them to act first, and I see this as an absolute problem. This is one of the main reasons why I call the whole gamemode "unbalanced".


iamgoofball wrote:
Samuel Hayden wrote:3 - There are too many families. A Manuel round normally has from 3 to 7 security players, while families can easily grow to "dominate" their departments, which can, on a less populated round, have anywhere from 3 to 5 players. I'm unaware of how many families currently exist and are spawned on every round, but assuming it's 3, that's already too many for a team to deal with.
I've seen security teams handle the 2 to 3 families that spawn just fine. And it's fine if security doesn't win! This is a roleplaying game, and sometimes you lose.
You're absolutely right. It's fine if security doesn't win, as tends to happen most times when I play security (very unrobust player here). I would like just to have an actual fighthing chance. But then again, to continue defending this point would require actual DATA of the previous rounds, which I do not have access to, so I'll forfeit and agree with you here.
iamgoofball wrote:
Samuel Hayden wrote:To finish, the best word that I can use to describe the actual status quo of the game mode is "unbalanced" for the reasons mentioned above. It has certainly improved since the previous iterations with the removal of space cops and other adjustments, but while the TvT feeling OR the unbalanced nature of the gamemode are not addressed, a part of the community will always have the same reaction they currently have when they hear "CULT BASE IN ENGI MAINT".
Have you considered you just have the wrong mindset for MRP?
Absolutely! The biggest flaw with the MRP definition is that it has NO clear defitinion. It's up to interpretation and that's why you see the "toxicity cycle" so often in Manuel.
This will always be down to interpretatioin untill a ruling is made on it's actual definition, but what is a right MRP mindset to you?
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Re: Families 4.0 Feedback Thread

Post by Samuel Hayden » #614066

iamgoofball wrote:
I agree with this, and I think I'll be making this change. However, I'll need to highlight who the starting gangsters are name-wise for communications purposes, and this'll reduce the snowball of gang sizes I think.
Absolutely beautiful.
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Re: Families 4.0 Feedback Thread

Post by Super Aggro Crag » #614140

really not a fan of how this game mode devolves into a bunch of people acting like outdated racial stereotypes of inner city african americans swarming unaligned people and demanding they sign up so they can get the coveted n-word pass too
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Re: Families 4.0 Feedback Thread

Post by iamgoofball » #614179

Super Aggro Crag wrote:really not a fan of how this game mode devolves into a bunch of people acting like outdated racial stereotypes of inner city african americans swarming unaligned people and demanding they sign up so they can get the coveted n-word pass too
I'm tenpted to remove and replace the GTA folks with different content because of this, but Grove Street is iconic. If you see folks being racist, ahelp it.
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Re: Families 4.0 Feedback Thread

Post by Super Aggro Crag » #614212

It wasnt even the GTA gangs, it was the phanton thieves and jack boys ot whatevet theyre called
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Re: Families 4.0 Feedback Thread

Post by cacogen » #614240

The GTA references seem like really low hanging fruit to me, I know the game is filled with references and a lot of them don't fit the setting but I feel like they aren't usually so mainstream and obvious
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Re: Families 4.0 Feedback Thread

Post by Mothblocks » #614246

for posterity, i believe goof has already removed the gta gangs
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Re: Families 4.0 Feedback Thread

Post by iamgoofball » #614270

ya, GTA gangs are gone and in their place is FOOOOOOOOOOOOTBAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLLLLL
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Re: Families 4.0 Feedback Thread

Post by Super Aggro Crag » #614274

Is it gridiron football or association football? Or both, and the two gangs are feuding over which is the better sport?
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Re: Families 4.0 Feedback Thread

Post by iamgoofball » #614275

Super Aggro Crag wrote:Is it gridiron football or association football? Or both, and the two gangs are feuding over which is the better sport?
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Re: Families 4.0 Feedback Thread

Post by Farquaar » #614279

I hope they're norfpilled football hooligans who talk like Warhammer orks.
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Re: Families 4.0 Feedback Thread

Post by Noodlecat » #614281

Here are my general problems:

1: Hearts vs jacks is awful and just turns into revs lite(now with extra round removal) hearts are given instructions to kill heads, normally leading security to have to round remove hearts in mass as gangs cannot be deconverted and in general turning into a bloodbath and is generally less fun then revs.

As an example I will share my story of a md turned cmo turned captain:
So as there was no cmo I went to hopline to become cmo, get promoted. At this point in the shift there is security and families start up, and its hearts vs jacks, sometime later in the shift the chaos starts, sec gets murderized by the phantom heart CE and some other hearts, captain goes ssd for the rest of the shift, unaffiliated traitor mime breaks into bridge and envy’s knife the captain to become captain, gets killed by me and the only remaining sec officer as we thought he was a ling. Uh oh captain is ssd and ce is bad so I have to be captain, me and the sec officer attempt to track down ce and the “ling”(I knew it was just an envy’s knife I just did not tell anyone)mime who were murdering everybody who stood before them. Many a heart attempted to break into bridge and were met with hellfire lasers from the captain’s gun. CE was found mid smuggling into the shuttle via bs bag, as the “ling” mime was sealing him in the bag I grabbed said bag and cremated it. Later on the shuttle ride a random jack on the shuttle bridge held me at energy gun point and nearly killed me, he was promptly killed. This was followed by a hostile gygax breaking onto the bridge. Gygax was killed. Overall 5/10 round, revs would have been better.


2. The second a gang becomes problematic for security things turn into a round removal fest. Gangs have no deconversion so sec can either execute/round remove, perma and risk the gang members breaking their friend out(will obviously happen) or gulag and risk obvious escape.


3. Gangs needs to be the only antag in the round or it gets so bad so fast. While kings could make for interesting synergy(if the gang status of the person they are disguised as showed up). Traitors just supply the gang with gamer gear. And heretics just sacrifice gang members and enemies alike. Another high threat antag like nukies, or god forbid another conversion antag.


4. Families manages to derail the round worse then war ops or revs. I like revs, I really do, in fact, I love revs, creates an interesting dynamic that synergies well with other antags but revs does have its problems especially post-rev win. I like war ops, yes it definitely needs admins to be on server, and it needs to be made very clear that war ops is not permission to greytide, but I do like it as a antag. Both of these have something in common, they work on a station vs threat or command and sec vs threat basis, group of people against another group. Families attempts to mimic this, however the way it pulls it off is really really bad, family objectives are stupidly vague, heart objs can be seen as a revs lite, while Wild West showdown is just steal the mats, not at all the most obnoxious part of pirates. Space Rosa is a three way nukie bloodbath and I LOVE IT. Popularity Contest and Wild, Wild Wasteland are okay, if kinda boring. Steelport Shuffle is fantastic and should stay, has very clear goals, and is fun. Level 10 Arch is awful and is just grief a department as an objective, also henchmen can spawn as scientists and even rd so yea.
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Re: Families 4.0 Feedback Thread

Post by iamgoofball » #614351

Noodlecat wrote:1: Hearts vs jacks is awful and just turns into revs lite(now with extra round removal) hearts are given instructions to kill heads, normally leading security to have to round remove hearts in mass as gangs cannot be deconverted and in general turning into a bloodbath and is generally less fun then revs.
I will rewrite the Phantom Thieves of Hearts objective to clarify they're not supposed to literally steal the physical actual hearts of the heads of staff and are, instead supposed to convince them to be less corrupt and confess to their sins.
Noodlecat wrote:2. The second a gang becomes problematic for security things turn into a round removal fest. Gangs have no deconversion so sec can either execute/round remove, perma and risk the gang members breaking their friend out(will obviously happen) or gulag and risk obvious escape.
Security has a non-perma, non-death, non-gulag option. Can you guess what it is?
Noodlecat wrote:3. Gangs needs to be the only antag in the round or it gets so bad so fast. While kings could make for interesting synergy(if the gang status of the person they are disguised as showed up). Traitors just supply the gang with gamer gear. And heretics just sacrifice gang members and enemies alike. Another high threat antag like nukies, or god forbid another conversion antag.
The other two conversion modes(revs and cult) can't roll alongside Families unless it's an over 90+ threat round. This is already going to be a chaotic shift regardless. Changelings, Traitors, and Heretics have all shown to work well when paired up with Families due to the Families serving as an extra layer of defenses those antagonists have to work past/take advantage of. I had a round where I was a Changeling playing Security and two different gangs against eachother with the fear of changelings and it worked out extremely well, with the exception of a Captain player who had a literal meltdown and started RDMing folks on the Escape Shuttle and got a talking-to from admins for it.

Noodlecat wrote:while Wild West showdown is just steal the mats, not at all the most obnoxious part of pirates.
Wild West Showdown is not "steal the mats", it's plan and execute a heist while another team of heisters is scoping out the exact same score. Also, they're antagonists. They're gonna be obnoxious to the station, that's what an antagonist is.
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Re: Families 4.0 Feedback Thread

Post by Noodlecat » #614353

iamgoofball wrote:Also, they're antagonists. They're gonna be obnoxious to the station, that's what an antagonist is.
Well antags are supposed to make the round interesting, not just grief.

Interesting:MD who tc trades for a surgery disk with necrotic revival and uses that instead of normal revival
Uninteresting but still antagonistic: Just do objectives and stealth.
Just plain obnoxious:steal and cremate the lathe boards.
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Re: Families 4.0 Feedback Thread

Post by iamgoofball » #614367

Noodlecat wrote:
iamgoofball wrote:Also, they're antagonists. They're gonna be obnoxious to the station, that's what an antagonist is.
Well antags are supposed to make the round interesting, not just grief.

Interesting:MD who tc trades for a surgery disk with necrotic revival and uses that instead of normal revival
Uninteresting but still antagonistic: Just do objectives and stealth.
Just plain obnoxious:steal and cremate the lathe boards.
Sometimes the Antagonists make your lives harder. That's their job.
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Re: Families 4.0 Feedback Thread

Post by Noodlecat » #614371

Either way, a theme based entirely around griefing a department is not good.
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Re: Families 4.0 Feedback Thread

Post by ReginoldJackson » #614489

Samuel Hayden wrote:
iamgoofball wrote:
Samuel Hayden wrote:Even if not, the admins have made clear that security is NOT ALLOWED to engage MEMBERS of the family that did not engage security first
This is not the case with this iteration of families. Who told you it was?
I was not made aware that this iteration of families had different rules of engagement. Are you saying that security can decide to cut a WHOLE family short due to one member's action without admin repercussion? If yes, then things are not so bad.
Personally I think Families needs some policy clarification and this kind of stuff is why. I'd be very interested to have the input of some jannies about this and what questions they have about policy, because I'm seeing A LOT of confusion going around about Families policy.
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Re: Families 4.0 Feedback Thread

Post by mrmelbert » #614632

- Too common. The real deal needs to be rarer.
- I don't think it needs to be a midround ruleset or latejoin ruleset. Roundstart is fine, midround is INCREDIBLY disruptive.
- It requires an inordinate amount of admin attention to make sure rounds go smoothly which I am not exactly a fan of.
- The more open ended gangs like the mob or mafia are better than the blatant reference gangs.
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Re: Families 4.0 Feedback Thread

Post by iamgoofball » #614634

mrmelbert wrote:- Too common. The real deal needs to be rarer.
100% i'll drop the rate it shows up
mrmelbert wrote:- I don't think it needs to be a midround ruleset or latejoin ruleset. Roundstart is fine, midround is INCREDIBLY disruptive.
yeah, i can set that up
mrmelbert wrote:- It requires an inordinate amount of admin attention to make sure rounds go smoothly which I am not exactly a fan of.
Every time I look into "this round went to shit", players didn't ahelp when shit went down. Hell, I'm one of them. I needed to ahelp sooner with the Tojo/IRS round.
mrmelbert wrote:- The more open ended gangs like the mob or mafia are better than the blatant reference gangs.
I can only work with the sprites I got. If folks send in sprites, I can add new gangs, like the footballers.
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Re: Families 4.0 Feedback Thread

Post by Shikarego » #614635

I played two families round today, back-to-back. For context, I never ready up and I have antag stuff turned off for Theo.

First round, I became a family leader of the IRS midround. In short, that was some of the most RP fun I've had in a while. When everyone is into it, the possibilities are endless. The Tojo Clan (opposing fam) had cargonia, they ordered guns, sec demanded they give up the guns, so Tojo goes to WAR. Some of the IRS kids eventually decide they want to 'fight for their 2nd amendment' and team up with Tojo against sec. It became a game of cleaning our family name so sec would back us, convincing our comrades that we shouldn't give a shit about guns and let Tojo die, convincing Tojo members to defect, etc. I had so much fun just talking to people around the station.

Second round was roundstart families. I walk down the entrance hall of Delta and someone comes up to me, throws a book and says "Funny book. We're funny."
"That's your pitch?"
"Basically."
We go back and forth a bit more, ultimately Theo is unconvinced. I spent the round doing chemistry, entirely divorced from gangs except for the monarch janitor who kept breaking in for lube. It sounded like quite a miserable war out there, but I can't meaningfully speak to it. Lots of violence, medbay was always busy. A lot of people didn't seem to have fun, but the round was ended by a dragon so I don't really know.

I've encountered it a few other times with varying results.
My point here is: Families 4.0 has a lot of potential for fun. It can be delightful. Largely because of the free-form, RP-directed nature of it. The players can make it a ton of fun. This also means the game puts a lot of responsibility on the players; if they aren't motivated to make it fun and just wanna shoot guns in the halls, the shift will get dull. I think what makes Families 4.0 work is the same thing that breaks it: It trusts the players.

Honestly, I'd rather a round be ruined by player choices than by a wizard or something. This is a risk I am willing to take.
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Re: Families 4.0 Feedback Thread

Post by Noodlecat » #614649

The current problem with this is why I don’t do gimmicks often as a traitor

1.people get brunt out on this stuff(especially considering how common families is in the testmerge does not make this any better) gimmicks are hard to come up with and take time and luck, which brings us to part 2:

2. Gimmicks require everybody has to play along(especially with team antags like this) it only takes one asshole seccie or validhunting staffie to bring a gimmick crashing down(or in the case of team antags, someone on your team not wanting to play along), this type of thing contributes to point 1.

Conclusion: the way that this relies on players so much to do gimmicks fits better for a solo antag, but much less a team antag, which has the problem of people not wanting to do gimmicks or conflicting gimmicks.
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Re: Families 4.0 Feedback Thread

Post by Valorium » #614912

Had a families football round, was pretty stellar. Only issue is that there should probably be some protections in place to ensure gangs grow at roughly the same rate, or at least that one gang doesn't grow dramatically faster than another - the admins of that round had to spawn in several ghost roles in order to actually keep the teams balanced in any capacity. Otherwise, quite fun.
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Re: Families 4.0 Feedback Thread

Post by NoxVS » #614968

Noodlecat wrote:The current problem with this is why I don’t do gimmicks often as a traitor

1.people get brunt out on this stuff(especially considering how common families is in the testmerge does not make this any better) gimmicks are hard to come up with and take time and luck, which brings us to part 2:

2. Gimmicks require everybody has to play along(especially with team antags like this) it only takes one asshole seccie or validhunting staffie to bring a gimmick crashing down(or in the case of team antags, someone on your team not wanting to play along), this type of thing contributes to point 1.

Conclusion: the way that this relies on players so much to do gimmicks fits better for a solo antag, but much less a team antag, which has the problem of people not wanting to do gimmicks or conflicting gimmicks.
That's my biggest concern. The football round I watched was great, players set up a long field across the entire station to play on, some casual lighthearted cheating, etc. Lots of fun, but it also took some help from admins. The next football gang round I saw, none of this happened. Sides were so unbalanced I had to send reinforcements over to one side to even it out (someone one gang spawned with 5 coaches, the other with 1), didn't really see anyone trying to set up a game to play, was starting to just devolve into both sides attacking each other by the time I left. It feels like this mode works great as an event but not so much as a consistent round type. I can see burnout being real bad for the extremely specific gangs, where once you have played it once then future rounds of it don't really feel the same.
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Re: Families 4.0 Feedback Thread

Post by iamgoofball » #614972

NoxVS wrote:(someone one gang spawned with 5 coaches, the other with 1)
This is a weird bug to solve, I need to chat with Mothblocks about how to resolve it.
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Re: Families 4.0 Feedback Thread

Post by NoxVS » #614973

iamgoofball wrote:
NoxVS wrote:(someone one gang spawned with 5 coaches, the other with 1)
This is a weird bug to solve, I need to chat with Mothblocks about how to resolve it.
Round was 169453 if that helps with anything at all
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thehogshotgun wrote:How does having jannies like you, who have more brain tumor than brain benefit the server
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Re: Families 4.0 Feedback Thread

Post by Valorium » #615093

If it's any consolation, being the reinforcements for that round was really fun, and everyone seemed to enjoy it despite the more murdery bent (although given one of the reinforcements was a Russian soldier robot, it probably shouldn't be surprising they went for violence).
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