About balance

[Aranclanos]

Nobody likes merging pull requests that are somewhat related with the balance of the game, they get too much attention and hate.
How do you think we should solve this?

[Cheimon]

Maybe try to get a consensus before controversial balance changes, then. Running a poll is better than nothing. The reason they're controversial is because people don't feel like their side is being heard.

[THE MIGHTY GALVATRON]

I honestly don't think it's possible to balance this game.

[Oldman Robustin]

I agree given what I've seen. It's especially silly when most of the balance-breaking stuff seems to come from PR's that are "features" and "fixes" or just don't get a tag at all. So you get this silly situation where broken stuff gets added to the game but any attempt to fix it gets bogged down with nobody being able to agree on a solution.

I know one example that rustles me was Steelpoint trying to remove LEAP from Hunters. I know from the bottom of my heart that leap is completely broken in its current state and regardless of whether or not you want xenos to be "game-enders" or just "potentially game-ending events", it's completely unfun to go up against something that can teleporter down the hall faster than you can run and without a riot shield (there's like 3 on station) you are 100% screwed.

But when the PR came up, nobody could agree on how to fix it. Steelpoint just wanted to remove it, others wanted to add a chemical cost, others just wanted to give it a cooldown, others wanted to give it more downsides (like stun if you ever miss an actual target), and eventually the PR was just closed and we're still stuck with the absolute worst outcome... leap remaining in its current state. In what was completely unintended irony, every coders chanting "IMPROVE, DON'T REMOVE" with respect to Leap was also pushing to close the PR instead of, you know, making encouraging Steelpoint to add a cooldown or something instead and thus "REMOVE, DON'T IMPROVE" became the motto for how to deal with disfavored balance PR's. It didn't help that Cheridan's closing comment was basically "I unbanned you and you immediately start grudgecoding? Stop it." Making sure nobody had any incentive to try and fix this utterly broken Hunter ability.

Any serious fix to these problems involve more fundamental changes to coderbus that won't be addressed seriously here, so for now I think the best band-aid is to bring stalled/controversial/important balance PR's to this forum and try to include a poll that isn't biased to see what people think. If it's a situation where there's a split between a "Change nothing" camp and a "Change something" camp, then at least shoot for the least offensive "something" to change. If everyone agrees on "Change something" but the camps are split between "Change this" and "Change that" and "Change those" then at least don't shut down the PR... keep trying to develop some kind of consensus on the safest, smartest solution and don't stop the dialogue until SOMETHING gets changed. That problem is what killed the leap nerf, and is what continues to delay critical changes to other aspects of the game. Everyone agrees SOMETHING must change, but there's a lot of voices about what that SOMETHING should be and without a clear answer the issue just dies and stays dead until we get enough shitty rounds that someone tries to bring it up again.

For example, there's a consensus here that AI needs to change, but no consensus on how. Remove the AI, remove departmental AI radio, remove door bolting, make door bolting channeled, remove door control entirely, remove voice tracking, add more anti-AI items, etc... etc... start eliminating the stuff that just won't happen. I have no faith in the person best positioned to do this (Cheridan), but someone needs to step up and just straight up announce that, for example, we aren't going to entertain changes that remove the AI or remove the ability for AI to bolt doors. Narrow changes down to a meaningfully small group and then focus the conversation there, get a poll with the 3 most popular choices, and a 4th "The current state of the game is preferable to any of these choices" option. Just don't stop pushing balance issues because the PR's or Feedback threads get cluttered. They often get cluttered because there's so much passion for doing SOMETHING to fix a BIG ISSUE, but the most common result is that same passion makes developing a consensus solution difficult and so any balance effort there gets abandoned or otherwise gets pushed through with what one of the more authoritative coders thinks is the best solution and players are left to pray that said coder has some notion of what they are doing (and the fact that they often don't is a huge issue, people who barely play get to shout down a dozen more experienced voices).

[Amelius]

Run polls ingame and/or here. Reversions should actually be possible for majorly hated changes and nerfs that were pushed through (e.g. slowspace, locked nuke op hardsuits, removeable of free nuke op implants), especially with little debate or consultation with, you know, the people that actually play on the server instead of just masturbatory coderbus.

I still can't believe we made tabling literally useless and added firing pins. Despite lots of good discussion in the lockbox thread, no one with power to rollback firing pins has posted, making it all pointless. This same problem was what spurred the 20 -> 30 TC pull request to be instantly closed, despite almost unanimous debate deeming that it would be good to at least try. We still haven't even fixed the antag rates that SoS fucked, and again a year ago wherein antags were made to scale logarithmically with population, despite the justification no longer being relevant due to greytiding being almost nonexistent these days.

It feels like talking in feedback, OOC, and making a pull request is all futile if you want change in this game, especially because you know that down the road, someone else is going to push a hundred crappy changes without debate through git, with or without vigilance, and each of those changes will be defended to the death and, after weeks of one-sided debate, only provided a band-aid patch that solves nothing and only serves to make things markedly worse than they were in the first place (e.g. current state of nuke op implants, slowspace -> current state wherein it's better than it used to be, but it isn't the same as it was in the past [no longer ignores bulky equipment in zero-grav, so going around the station in a hardsuit is slow without a jetpack, also meaning that without a jetpack, one of only two on the station, you're fucked in space, excaberating the problem we originally had with traitors murdering security from space with a jetpack, because sec are sitting ducks, instead of like in the past, where they could zoom around the edges of the station, even without a hardsuit, yielding a slight disadvantage in maneuverability but otherwise far more even odds). These changes are very rarely reverted after weeks of debate over a singular, hated change, if ever, the only time I recall this happening wholesale is with *beep boop* borgs, wherein borgs could no longer talk in totality. Contributing to git, is like trying to lay golden eggs where other people take their ogre shits an act of total futility. People don't want to, and shouldn't have to monitor github 24/7 in order to prevent all this crappy shit from coming in, especially when some of it is bundled with other shit (e.g. firing pins were bundled with nuke op implant changes) that serves to muddle any debate that may exist on git, and even that debate does not need to be answered, rather, only one of a few people need to hit the 'merge' button, all of which are the very same that propose the code in the first place. The result is you have an insular, almost incestual community that doesn't give a fuck what other people think, only the people within the maintainer 'class'.

Basically, there's no real oversight. Almost everything is merged, just look at goofchem in it's original state, merged and kept merged despite being a defunctional abomination for months upon months with literally everyone hating on it. If that couldn't be reverted, why could anything else realistically, unless you manage to somehow convince the creator, which can be impossible in certain cases?

[MisterPerson]

What does any of that have to do with balance changes?

[Amelius]

What does any of that have to do with balance changes?

Because the merging and reverting (like it exists) process is bworked meaning unwanted balance changes are pushed forward and wanted ones are ignored. If slowspace, a 20 -> 30 TC buff for traitors isn't, and a flat nerf to tabling that makes it literally useless aren't balance issues, then what is?

[MisterPerson]

That's fine, you just started soapboxing about goofchem for absolutely no reason and that muddied the point.

[Miauw]

time to make a thread about it being impossible to make a thread about an underlying problem without it being derailed towards currently relevant controversial topics :^]

[Incomptinence]

The game is meant to be asymmetrical.
A captain is not on par with an assistant trying to balance shit around titanic elephants in the room like that is barely balance it is just differences in opinion.

Our "balance" changes rarely add fun or even make a round work better. Usually they make it function worse if a coder has a raging grudge against a particular antagonist or security in general like look at the stun rebalanced made flashbangs super safe to use, rev became stronger because they give no stuns of their own to start with and it eventually brought us disablers in latter editions have you tried going against proper lethal antag guns with a piss weak disabler?

[Cik]

i think as long as you have moderate consensus everything will be fine, it's the things that sneak through that get the uproar.

i mean, can you put any examples in this thread of balance-related changes that had at least 50% support that were a shitstorm? generally the shitstorm forms when things are forced through without broad support, or that are buggy

see:

goofchem, cheridan newcop changes, slowspace

all of these things essentially triggered a revolt in stages; first stage was at least mostly constructive feedback ignored, second stage was anger generally

what are some things that had broad support that triggered a shitstorm anyway?

[Falamazeer]

Honestly, Robustins point about many ideas sparking controversy followed by just nothing happening needs more people to consider the truth there. because that seems like a damn good poke at the heart of the issue to me.

but certain elements* seem to prefer to bury their head in the sand rather than hear that their code babby is not welcomed warmly.
or spend too much time attempting to control the dialogue by funneling feedback further from their eyes through moderation, or outright trolling it until it devolves into a shitflinging contest, which they then use as justification for ignoring it.

You guys got in-house problems that should have been addressed at some point. godamn, ever heard of spring cleaning? you got black mold growing under the floorboards, It's gotta go.

*I'm not pointing fingers because I'm not a shitflinging ape you know who you are.

[JackHunt]

Someone needs to make a balance change guide or something. A list of what needs to be considered and what to do and not to do. Questions like "What is the problem this is trying to solve" "How does it solve it?" "What other things does this change effect?" "What elements of the game does this make better and for who?" "What element of the game does this make worse?"

I dunno. It seems like we'll run around in circles until we have something consistent to point to because right now the reasons for and the effects of PRs are all over the place.

[Konork]

Someone needs to make a balance change guide or something. A list of what needs to be considered and what to do and not to do. Questions like "What is the problem this is trying to solve" "How does it solve it?" "What other things does this change effect?" "What elements of the game does this make better and for who?" "What element of the game does this make worse?"

I dunno. It seems like we'll run around in circles until we have something consistent to point to because right now the reasons for and the effects of PRs are all over the place.

Forget about the balance guide, someone needs to write up an actual design document for where we should take the game. People keep trying to pull it in different directions while yelling at each other that their changes are awful, and no one seems to actually stop to explain where they're trying to take it so every side thinks every other side are idiots. I mean, look at Changeling for fuck's sake, it keeps getting shit added and taken away with absolutely no direction, leaving it an aimless clusterfuck of an antag with no clear design goals.

[Cheimon]

Someone needs to make a balance change guide or something. A list of what needs to be considered and what to do and not to do. Questions like "What is the problem this is trying to solve" "How does it solve it?" "What other things does this change effect?" "What elements of the game does this make better and for who?" "What element of the game does this make worse?"

I dunno. It seems like we'll run around in circles until we have something consistent to point to because right now the reasons for and the effects of PRs are all over the place.

Forget about the balance guide, someone needs to write up an actual design document for where we should take the game. People keep trying to pull it in different directions while yelling at each other that their changes are awful, and no one seems to actually stop to explain where they're trying to take it so every side thinks every other side are idiots. I mean, look at Changeling for fuck's sake, it keeps getting shit added and taken away with absolutely no direction, leaving it an aimless clusterfuck of an antag with no clear design goals.

But here you run into a problem. Code is run by volunteers, and volunteers (understandably) do not all want to be told "no, you are not allowed to do this, design doc says so". While some might appreciate the direction, I wouldn't be surprised if most just wanted to make what seemed fun to them.

The obvious example is Cheridan's firing pins, but you can institute any topical controversial coding issue. If the powers that be (on merging) aren't willing to agree on something like that, how would they all agree to a design document? And if you, the playerbase, somehow force it onto them then how are you going to get the coders to stay and keep producing content?

I love the idea of a design document, I just think that it's never going to work in practice.

[PKPenguin321]

Nobody likes merging pull requests that are somewhat related with the balance of the game, they get too much attention and hate.
How do you think we should solve this?

Polls subforum dedicated to specifically posting polls for your PRs

[Not-Dorsidarf]

Nobody likes merging pull requests that are somewhat related with the balance of the game, they get too much attention and hate.
How do you think we should solve this?

Polls subforum dedicated to specifically posting polls for your PRs

Feedback Forum was nearly exclusively this for like, at least several months, back when people complained about game balance in OOC and General Discussion.

[PKPenguin321]

well it would be nice to have another forum specifically for polls so we can whine in this one and do efficient things in the other

[callanrockslol]

There was a forum for proposed commits on either erro forum way back. That seems to be absorbed by github being a better discussion place than google code was though.

A bot that automatically makes a thread that links to each and every commit made on github so people would be able to keep up with it easier maybe?

[Miauw]

some prs have like fifteen commits, we need one thread per PR that is tagged with balance, feature or controversial.

we almost never push directly to master.

[Atlanta-Ned]

I kinda like how things stay unbalanced for a few months at a time until someone notices and then BAM it's time for a new tactic to address the buff or nerf that was just applied. Is it such a bad thing if the code is as chaotic as the game itself?

[Cheimon]

I kinda like how things stay unbalanced for a few months at a time until someone notices and then BAM it's time for a new tactic to address the buff or nerf that was just applied. Is it such a bad thing if the code is as chaotic as the game itself?

Yes, this is a bad thing, because it means really un-fun things can be pushed through as well as the occasional interesting exploit. Morphine blob, for example, was in the game for ages. It wasn't fun for anyone but nobody was prepared to fix it. Likewise, the nuke op balancing changes to remove their explosive implants. Nobody seemed to like it, but it took ages for anything to change on it.

Shifting of the established gameplay is good. Things staying rubbish for months at a time is bad.

[Ikarrus]

I think he's more saying that issues aren't very apparent until months after they've been implemented, usually once the metagame becomes familiar with it.

aka "It was fine until someone ruined it for everyone else"

[Cik]

that's inevitable, getting a perfect picture of how well things are balanced is effectively impossible. look at "workplace accidents" or "how i learned to kill fucking anything with morphine" or bioterror:how i learned that there is a 3 tc bulldog magazine that 1 hits 90% of fucking everything even post-nerf. balance is almost always reactive, expecting coders who do it for free(tm) to get it perfect when nobody else on the planet has ever managed it is foolish.

[lumipharon]

But both of the examples Cheimon were immediately obvious as awful in terms of balance (morphine blob the instant it first appeared in game; removal of explosive implants before it even got merged).

Yes some times things get merged that no one immediately realises will be hilariously broken or OP - somethings are obviously awful and get merged anyway.

[LiamLime]

Apology for reopening this topic, but...
Apart from meteor pen tier stuff, does anyone still believe that "balance" is a thing in SS13? You can use the balance argument for any change, but all it serves is to argue the change to the more naiive players. If we have a line with "impossible to achieve" on one side and "everyone achieves" on the other, no matter what they try to achieve, then the fun balance for ss13 is not a point, it's a region and it requires an insanely outlandish change to push ss13 out of the fun region - something in the meteor pen region. Whether a tool costs 20TC or 30TC will have virtually no effect on whether the game is fun or not. What changes like that do is change optimal strategies, causing players to rethink their strategy, which brings hem out of the safe, stable, predictable state into one where they have to learn again. While this often enrages players, it also helps them from getting bored of the game. So changes like this are in fact needed, they are however not for some balance reason, that's just a cover story. Instead your argument can simply be "strategy reshuffle", not that players will more willingly accept that, of course