/tg/Station 13

Most everyone reading this probably hasn't had to deal with them for a long time (or ever, if you started playing before timebased role whitelists,) but as a new player or as a player who's returning from a hiatus from the game, and hasn't kept their BYOND details on record, they're awful. Even moreso now that antagonist roles are included. Some of the whitelists are as long as a month. It's a serious bummer to come back and read that you're going to have to wait a month, or the better part of one, to play some of your favorite roles.

Aside from this, they're ineffective at accomplishing their intended goal. Anyone can connect and let the account simmer for a month, then reconnect later and have all of the whitelist roles unlocked without actually having learned anything about the game.

There are two ways role whitelists could be changed.

A: Change the long, static "How long has it been since this account first connected to us?" timer to a short timer based on playtime. Maybe ~50 hrs or so.

B: Remove the timer entirely. Implement a quiz people can take in order to ascertain whether they're an experienced returning player who doesn't need learning time. Alternately, give admins the ability to remove people's whitelist timers, so they can use their judgement to determine who doesn't need the wait time.

Could also add a hybrid of these two options, like having a 50-hr play timer, then giving them a quiz at the end of it.

In any case, both options do a better job at ensuring experienced players are behind important roles without punishing people who know the game but have lost their Byond info or haven't connected to /tg/station before.

I originally requested the whitelist/timer based on a series of people would would sign up, flood plasma/blow borgs etc, then log out. For that reason I think a quiz wouldn't help.

That being said a month is absurd, I wanted a week at most.

Kor wrote:I originally requested the whitelist/timer based on a series of people would would sign up, flood plasma/blow borgs etc, then log out. For that reason I think a quiz wouldn't help.

That being said a month is absurd, I wanted a week at most.

In that case, isn't a playtime-based whitelist much more effective? Not sure if it's possible with BYOND though.

The whitelists aren't great, i'm not sure when a month long one came in but that's pretty bad, but they're generally better than not having it.

While a playtime based timer would undeniably be better, tracking playtime with BYOND is both difficult to do and quite a bit more resource intensive for SQL than it's worth.

Admins removing the timer would be good however and I'm pretty sure it's possible without touching the SQL code too much.

One month is the AI.

I remember my first month pretty well and honestly it felt fantastic to have a sense of progression as you learned the game, slowly building up to the coveted AI that could play with everything on the station freely.

I think with the complexity of the game starting out a month is appropriate for silicons

Stickymayhem wrote:I remember my first month pretty well and honestly it felt fantastic to have a sense of progression as you learned the game, slowly building up to the coveted AI that could play with everything on the station freely.

I think with the complexity of the game starting out a month is appropriate for silicons

Is this an MMORPG where we string people along on 'unlocks' rather than focusing on making the actual game fun? This is like one of those '30fps is more cinematic and better' points.

You don't need anywhere near a month to learn how to play a borg, also.

Tracking actual playtime isn't an impossible task. Just track it in client/New() and Del()

Stickymayhem wrote:I remember my first month pretty well and honestly it felt fantastic to have a sense of progression as you learned the game, slowly building up to the coveted AI that could play with everything on the station freely.

I think with the complexity of the game starting out a month is appropriate for silicons

Borgs are one of the easiest jobs though. You have a very simple set of rules to follow, limited tools/no inventory management, don't have to worry about a lot of shit like fire/hull breaches/hunger/being toolboxed, and you have a private channel giving you instructions.

Plus all access lets you learn the station layout and explore. I used to get borged almost every round when I started playing.

>no inventory management
Did you ever minerborg?

>simple set of rules
>entire section of policy specificly for this simple set of rules
>people constantly don't follow this set of rules

People are pretty fucking retarded when it comes to silicon policy.

lumipharon wrote:>simple set of rules
>entire section of policy specificly for this simple set of rules
>people constantly don't follow this set of rules

People are pretty fucking retarded when it comes to silicon policy.

This. The AI/Cyborg whitelist was specifically made so long because people make a mess of laws so badly, then we get bans over "But I was beating the traitor to death to prevent harm??"

MisterPerson wrote:Tracking actual playtime isn't an impossible task. Just track it in client/New() and Del()

It's possible, sure, but would it be any better? What's the advantage of one timer over another? People can let their accounts "simmer" currently, but if it ran off client connection time instead they could just afk instead.

A quiz is a fair idea in concept but in execution it would fall quite short unless the quiz questions were constantly kept up-to-date with changes. For example, a CMO who had played extensively a few months ago would be unaware of the chemistry changes and may end up firing a chemist because he wouldn't make any tricordrazine... If the quiz was about older interaction that he was still current on, he would pass his quiz though. Not to mention the fact that the quiz answers would inevitably get posted somewhere.

Unless I'm missing something the silicon timebans doesn't prohibit players from joining as an assistant and getting debrained into a cyborg/AI, and for everything else there's the HoP.

So really so long as you can build some trust with the robotocist/HoP you don't REALLY get shut out from anything, it just requires you prove to people you can be trusted.

Incoming wrote:Unless I'm missing something the silicon timebans doesn't prohibit players from joining as an assistant and getting debrained into a cyborg/AI, and for everything else there's the HoP.

Pretty much this.
I played primarily engiborgs in my first two weeks on the server just bringing the roboticist a stack of metal from aux tool storage. If you already have a grasp on the laws theres nothing directly preventing you from playing as the job after the fact. Its just a first step to counteract the lazy/uncreative.

The whitelists are to prevent 'It's my first daaay' AIs, or nuke ops who can't open their uplink/backpack.

Every single one except for antag whitelists are easily circumnavigable for people who have the persuasion/knowledge on how to do so.

Time-based whitelists have honestly proven to be more or less entirely ineffectual at keeping new players/inexperienced players out of complex/high-responsibility roles - As Dorsis said, they really only serve to keep people who lack basic game knowledge out of the way until they can learn basic controls and customs.

This does seem, however, like a decent place to gather feedback on placing other requirements on certain roles - Head roles especially. I know I'm not the only person who has witnessed the following, and only in a day or two, from supposed 'Heads' of staff.
- A CE who cannot deconstruct an APC
- An HoS tazing a blob
- A Captain who spends their entire round in Chemistry, does not speak over Command, and leaves the disk in their office

All this, and more. Time-based whitelists do not keep shitty players out of Command. AdminPMing over incompetence seems petty at best and downright bay-esque at worst. Time gating is clearly not working, whitelists are on the blacklist, and admins beating people up over being shitty is lame. How can we fix this? Heads of staff should be roles reserved for experienced players who can lead their department and champion it's duties.

What about a system where you couldn't sign up as a head until you had played a full round as every position that head oversees?

Cheridan wrote: It's possible, sure, but would it be any better? What's the advantage of one timer over another? People can let their accounts "simmer" currently, but if it ran off client connection time instead they could just afk instead.

A quiz is a fair idea in concept but in execution it would fall quite short unless the quiz questions were constantly kept up-to-date with changes. For example, a CMO who had played extensively a few months ago would be unaware of the chemistry changes and may end up firing a chemist because he wouldn't make any tricordrazine... If the quiz was about older interaction that he was still current on, he would pass his quiz though. Not to mention the fact that the quiz answers would inevitably get posted somewhere.

True, but we can do stuff to subtract AFK time. There's a periodic loop ran every so often to kick afk clients that we have off in a config. We could repurpose that to count time for account age. And I never said it would be better, just that it's an option. Another option would be to tie in achievements. ie you unlock CMO after doing a certain number of things as a medical doctor that implies you know how to play it.

The quiz would get out of date from people not updating it. ie goofchem gets merged but the quiz keeps asking about tricord or the map changes at all.

MisterPerson wrote: True, but we can do stuff to subtract AFK time. There's a periodic loop ran every so often to kick afk clients that we have off in a config. We could repurpose that to count time for account age. And I never said it would be better, just that it's an option. Another option would be to tie in achievements. ie you unlock CMO after doing a certain number of things as a medical doctor that implies you know how to play it.

The quiz would get out of date from people not updating it. ie goofchem gets merged but the quiz keeps asking about tricord or the map changes at all.

It should calculate hours non-AFK played in a department, in that case. Set the threshold fairly high to prevent "yes i played engineer once and atmos once time to be the chief engineer the station deserves".

Honestly, you can setup whatever system you want, people who don't know what they are doing will still be able to find their way into jobs they don't know how to play properly.

Our curren system is dirt simple, and while obviously not super successful, it at the bare minimum stops complete newfriends from shitting things up too much. And if they're intelligent enough to ask the hop for a specific job change/get borged, they're probably smart enough to figure out what they're supposed to be doing anyway.

Scones wrote: How can we fix this?

Well right now as head

- You're a prime target in pretty much every game mode, whether as a direct objective or simply because of your gear/access
-Can't be certain/all antags (depending on which head, obviously)
-Under extra admin scrutiny/will get banned for fucking around
-Will get yelled at in OOC for powergaming if you kill the badguys
-Will get yelled at in OOC for not powergaming if the badguys kill people
-Your authority is often unrespected or unenforcable

That being said I don't think shitty heads are the worst thing in the world, captain being a comdom is part of the SS13 experience

I'm pretty sure the white list works by time since the first time your ckey was recorded as entering the game in the Ban-DB, considering thats been running for years you probably should be subject to the same warm-up period as any other newbie to get a feel for the server again.

Of course theres always the people the that have changed their ckeys, but these people are rare and most are doing it to evade bans so... meh.

Incoming wrote:Unless I'm missing something the silicon timebans doesn't prohibit players from joining as an assistant and getting debrained into a cyborg/AI, and for everything else there's the HoP.

So really so long as you can build some trust with the robotocist/HoP you don't REALLY get shut out from anything, it just requires you prove to people you can be trusted.

Silicon job bans, however, do. Just to be clear with everything. I tried it when I was banned from cyborgs, and the roboticist couldn't put my mmi into a cybrog frame. Wouldn't work.

Yep there's hardcoding to prevent that. Also obviously if you keep getting in game transfers to jobs your banned from, you're going to draw administrative ire

Whitelists have worked fine and I didn't mind as a new player because I understood that I didn't have the skills to play roles like AI or sec yet, anyways. In specific cases like coming back with a new ckey after a long hiatus, it should be make that you can request for admins to remove your whitelist timers.
The problem with letting accounts simmer for a month after the first connection is an oversight at worst, and there's nothing we can really do about it. If a player jumps on after simmering an account and plays captain then gets banned, they can always appeal it and then they'll have learned anyways.
Whitelists don't really do a lot of harm. I don't think there's much of an issue.