Ratvar feedback thread

[ChangelingRain]

Official feedback thread for Clock Cult.

You get the idea.

[DemonFiren]

Crag was right after all.

[Xhuis]

Maybe now people will actually offer feedback instead of dogpiling on me for making the gamemode.

[InsaneHyena]

You are not dogpiled for making a gamemode, you are dogpiled for being a gigantic ass about other people fixing your mess.

[Xhuis]

You are not dogpiled for making a gamemode, you are dogpiled for being a gigantic ass about other people fixing your mess.

I claim full responsibility for being a gigantic ass. I don't like Amelius and probably never will unless they show that they've evolved beyond their ways of raiding the armory from space every time they're an antagonist to murderbone on a 20-man round. Although I might not like them and I'm massively unsupportive of any changes they make to the game, I'm fully aware that in the end I can't stop them from doing so and I'm not going to fight too much over it.

And I do respond to feedback. In response to the posts in the previous thread before it devolved, I made a pull request to address the issues, and in response to further feedback, I removed some of my changes and modified others. You can find that pull request here.

Now, then! This is a feedback thread for a gamemode, so let's get it back on track. If you want to talk to me further, you can use forum PMs or talk to me in #coderbus - I'm there every day. Although don't expect much of me because the Legion prepatch comes out in two hours.

[Oldman Robustin]

Rework components, they are a mess right now.

1) Having the component REQUIREMENT differ from the component USAGE is terrible. Cache requires 2 alloy but only uses 1 when I chant it. Creates all sorts of unnecessary delays and confusion.

2) The cult should start with 1-2 of each material. Having to wait 8 minutes for a cache because RNG doesnt like alloys is just awful.

3) Even with 1-2 caches, clock cult constantly suffers from shortages if they're making stuff. Meanwhile if you make a wall and just spam caches in space around it, you'll quickly be raining components. It's not intuitive at all. Cache is a word associated with STORAGE not PRODUCTION. The gameplay for getting components should be more interesting than either suffering from constant shortages or spamming caches in space. It's not fun to sit around staring at the wall waiting for the right components to appear and its not great that components become trivial once you execute a basic cheese strategy that becomes almost mandatory.

4) Cut the crap, there's just too much junk making it hard for players to discern useful stuff from the crap. Wraith Spectacles, Sentinel's Compromise, Volt Void, Interdiction Lens, and Mania Motor just to name the worst offenders but fully half of the stuff is useless or super marginal. You've already got enough to get good gameplay and themes going without 50 different abilities.

5) Remove Guvax and make the conversion runes apply a small amount of burn damage (and a hostile warning message) as the conversion occurs. There's a huge issue with "friendly conversion" in Clockwork Cult, about 90% of my conversions are done 100% consentually. I tell everyone to gather around to hear an epic story with a GREAT ending, gold text box pops up, lots of winking and nodding goes on internally, and people line up for free antag status. You can do something similar with conversion runes since they're 100% autonomous. Spam conversion runes in a hall, tell people to come check out the COOL glowing floors that make you strong, soon a half-dozen people are all standing in conversion runes. People need an IC-reason to resist or avoid the cult. Guvax is pretty unworkable. Only thing is that you need to give the clock cult a more reliable way to get victims onto runes without depending on stun prods and being completely vulnerable to people screaming about it.

6) Ratvar just takes too damn long to summon. The requirements for summoning the gateway already mean that most of the time resistance has been completely neutralized before you even unlock the scripture. Standing around for an eternity when you've already won is bad, at least in Gangs the round ends immediately, but Ratvar still puts on another 8 (soon to be 6) minutes of him wandering around playing interior decorator.

7) Combat constructs should be harder to make. Maybe require a large amount of power, more components, something. Right now with the cache-cheesing method you pretty much infinite combat constructs from the ghost pool for as long as you want to sit around chanting. People are still figuring this stuff out but its ripe for abuse.

Those are my current thoughts, I'm sure I'll have more but I'm pretty disappointed to see that Clockwork Cult has barely improved from release day despite dozens of PR's merged.

[Super Aggro Crag]

Crag was right after all.

yes

[Amelius]

Glad to see every single dissenting post, even with plenty of solutions offered and supported with evidence and player support from the other thread was locked, deleted and thrown by the wayside.

I'm not going to repeat my suggestions, I'm just going to make my PR in a day or two, explain my rationale behind it in that, instead of trying to fight your irrational hatred of me and anything I might make (even if one should be attacking the proposed ideas rather than hating them on the basis of the one responsible for those changes irrespective of the quality or thought put into them, which doesn't even make sense). I want to make the gamemode good as much as you do, if not more, but that's impossible unless you can approach this project with a clear, rational mind. I can try to pass a PR through, with you kicking and screaming, but that's not productive. It encourages grudgecoding, trying to revert or change things on the basis that they were added by someone else, avoiding suggestions or ideas on the basis of who perpetuated them, and basically makes the open source project into a battlefield, when I, and (hopefully) you too just want to make the gamemode more fun and balanced. I play this game, as a whole, a massive amount, and have for years, and, while I see that Clockcult has potential and is a neat concept, it has it's glaring problems that need to be addressed adequately that haven't been addressed in the slightest since the advent of the mode.

I claim full responsibility for being a gigantic ass. I don't like Amelius and probably never will unless they show that they've evolved beyond their ways of raiding the armory from space every time they're an antagonist to murderbone on a 20-man round.[/size]

I have never, within the past two years, murderboned on a round under 40 people (unless rev or ops for obvious reasons). I just plain don't do it, and I chronically criticize people who do for being faggots. That said, I will do gimmicky stuff at that population like 'non-lethal' murderboning (trying to lock as many people up in perma/gulag before telegulagging was a thing, before I inevitably get wrecked because I can't kill people).

I haven't even raided the armory from space for a long damn time. Yeah, sure, I haven't been around for half that time, but it's still relevant.

In other words, your rationale for detesting me is, by far, off-base.

[Super Aggro Crag]

Its completely asinine to disregards amelius's feedback and start slinging shit just because you dont like his in game play style.

[oranges]

I wouldn't merge Amelius pr's anyway

MWAHAHAHAHA

[Amelius]

I wouldn't merge Amelius pr's anyway

MWAHAHAHAHA

Aren't you feeling sardonic today?

[Reece]

I do think conversion right now is way too prone to being voluntary. Half the time as captain when a clockcult pops up I'm tempted to just tell sec to go and get converted because it took twenty minutes to find them and we're not winning that fight, and it's not like conversion does anything bad.

[Xhuis]

snip

Thank you for the suggestions. I'll brainstorm some changes when I get the opportunity. Joan is also in the progress of fixing components from what I hear.

i've changed

If you're truly different from who I used to know, then I'm not going to fight you over every little thing, nor will I hate on you without a reason. I'll give you another chance, Amelius.

Conversion is voluntary

This is a player problem that can't be addressed. It happens in rev, gang, and bloodcult, too. People want free antagonist - I don't see why we should punish them for it.

[Atticat]

Clock cult feels grossly out of place, even moreso than the original cult somehow. It also sounds really really lame tbh. It feels like something out of league of legends, generic and random, because nobody could think of anything better after so many low-hanging fruit gamemodes have been added (traitor, gang, rev, cult).

[Saegrimr]

Clock cult feels grossly out of place, even moreso than the original cult somehow. It also sounds really really lame tbh. It feels like something out of league of legends, generic and random, because nobody could think of anything better after so many low-hanging fruit gamemodes have been added (traitor, gang, rev, cult).

This.
I still don't understand what the fuck is even happening in clock cult.

What the fuck are all these random ass towers? Where's the jungle? Where's mid? Oh wait this isn't a fucking moba? who the fuck knew
What the fuck are all these retardedly named arbitrary points everybody is farming for? Belligerent Eyes? Guvax Capacitor? Hierophant Ansible?
What the fuck is the purpose of clockwork walls except from blatantly broadcasting where the antag base is?

I feel like i'm reading a goddamn Drizzt original character fanfic.

[InsaneHyena]

What the fuck is the purpose of clockwork walls except from blatantly broadcasting where the antag base is?

Their purpose is to generate virtually infinite amount of resources for cult and make it impossible to defeat.

[J_Madison]

just finished a round as chaplain

nobody had any idea what to do in clock cult. Someone got stunned and then immediately converted without warning or process.

oldman was the only one spawning shit because nobody else knew how to. not to mention stun rune spam killed an entire sec team.

mechanics are stupid as hell. nobody used it's unique features and the most anyone even did was bomb. not to mention overly complicated.

doesn't fit the game theme either.

[confused rock]

cock cult keeps getting buffed without normal cult getting jack shit
the only thing normal cult has now that cock cult doesn't is astral

[TerbusReturns]

i didn't know what to do and the wiki was way too much shit to figure out so I just went around kindly asking people to join my anime steampunk club, I got some guy in a Durand to join but we still had no idea what to do so we died murderboning the brig

I made a cache and went back to asking people to join but then I came back and someone beat it up I didn't even know what it was for

I made a couple stun runes but I didn't know what all this moba fedora shit does so I just kept fucking around until some lizard dude agreed and he knew what he was doing

the wiki page is basically that macro "woah nigga you really expect me to read all this shit" yeah I could have posted the pic

[Ergovisavi]

If I had a word to describe what little I've seen of it, it is this:

This mode is overdesigned.

It's very complicated and has many moving parts. Yes, SS13 is "Wiki-reading: The game", but this is pretty damn deep in terms of rote memorization depth in order to learn, bordering on Grapple rules for DnD.

I think the mode fits thematically and it's pretty neat, but I do very much think that it could be simplified heavily in order to have a better goal in mind. You've got fifty billion powers, but do we really need them all? You have an economy with like eight different resources that all do different things, with requirements on some abilities not also being their ability costs and whatnot. It's too much work to learn the mode and so for most players all you're going to see is confusion.

More is not always better. A more simple, but well tested and hammered out round playstyle is going to be better than "Throw a bunch of really cool features at each other". Trim the fat and make the gamemode smooth and I think everyone will be happier.

[Xhuis]

bordering on Grapple rules for DnD

Nothing will ever be a hard to learn as those rules.

As for this gamemode, I've mentioned that it's basically Joan's now, but I'll see what I can do about making a patch thanks to the people that offered me good suggestions. In particular, however, I'd like to make some statements.

• All powers, objects, etc. were not designed or created by me. I was following the original /vg/ design document for the gamemode.
• You are completely correct that clockcult is way too complex right now. I've never seen some of their powers used, even after redesigns.
• I was told that the original PR for clockcult read like a League champion spotlight. I may add Clock Teemo if enough people ask me.

Edit: New PR out here. Three scriptures were removed because they never saw use, and I'll be working on improving it by tweaking/changing stuff depending on the reception to that PR.

[Oldman Robustin]

I'll reiterate that the power mechanic absolutely needs to go. I've never used it, I've never seen it used, and its just another layer of resource management that people do not have time for.

Guvax also remains a long-term issue, every single Ratvar round I've had in the last month I've been able to convert my entire department just by offering to "tell them a story with a great ending". Conversion runes are also not as menacing as they should be, one round on Meta I just spammed conversion runes around the station and told people to stand on them to gain enlightenment - within minutes a majority of the crew was converted.

Also for a machine cult, they really need a way to deal with the whole "Red Alert Shuttle" meme.

They also need a way to kickstart resource production. I spend every Ratvar round AFK in maint for ~10 minutes while I wait for 2 alloy to spawn for a cache. I also need alloy to make the walls that will boost cache production. I think one place to start is by getting rid of local resources and making all slabs contribute to the global supply. That way at least getting a few early converts with slabs can boost production as opposed to just sit in their pocket all shift building a small fortune in resources that they will never use.

[Alipheese]

snip

Uh, last I played 2 months ago, everyone everytime for clock cult mass produced slabs for dat infinite resources as soon as possible. 10 minutes with that and you have everything you could ever need. Slap them all into caches and use only 1 for actual use. Others for production.

[Oldman Robustin]

snip

Uh, last I played 2 months ago, everyone everytime for clock cult mass produced slabs for dat infinite resources as soon as possible. 10 minutes with that and you have everything you could ever need. Slap them all into caches and use only 1 for actual use. Others for production.

2 months ago they didn't have all the limitations against slab spam.

Spamming slabs doesn't help anymore, but keeping everyone's resources isolated hurts the Cuck Cult and makes playing them pretty miserable when you're the only one building. Trying to build your entire infrastructure JUST off your slab is what makes playing this cult unpleasant.

If global supply is too OP, its trivial to change some vars to slow down slab production further to account for its global nature.

[Xhuis]

Reading the paragraphs might help.

In all seriousness, I know the wall of text is daunting at first glance. A lot of it is fluff, and you can safely skip some of them if you aren't a brand-new player to conversion antags, which those were intended to do. The wiki has some concise guides, and you can easily just skim through the whole Recollection and pick out the most important bits.

I made this as a complex antagonist with a lot of workings for people to master, but it seems like a lot of /tg/ doesn't have the attention span to handle such a thing (this isn't an insult, but a miscalculation on my part).

[Gun Hog]

I made this as a complex antagonist with a lot of workings for people to master, but it seems like a lot of /tg/ doesn't have the attention span to handle such a thing (this isn't an insult, but a miscalculation on my part).

I personally like the complexity, my complaint is in the very poor UI. The action buttons are an improvement, but it is only a bandaid to the real problem of having very little work-ability. Needing to a hold the slab to use your scripture only makes that worse. Perhaps if the interface worked more like the uplink or even the crafting menu? Both menus put a thing into categories (weapon, defense, etc), and provide a brief-but-useful explanation of what that thing is.

UI is everything when it comes to smoothing out a learning curve. People do not want to read fluff and paragraphs while they are playing that antag, especially on Sybil. They do not have the time in a typical round! Adding the scripture's function to the name was quite helpful, but you need to finish that job. Clockwork Cult NEEDS a proper UI to go with its complexity - it falls apart otherwise. Take the Syndicate Uplink into consideration. It tells players what their tools do without having to skim through walls of text.

Fix the UI, and you will make it a LOT easier and faster to dive into Clockwork Cult.

[Xhuis]

I want so badly to make a good UI, but as I've said, I just can't make UI. It doesn't click for me. The last time I tried, I had to reset the entire source of my local copy.

[Super Aggro Crag]

8====D~~~~ O^: <---- ratvar
^
a dinger

[DemonFiren]

Get rid of all the fucking fluff, this should maybe cut down the text walls?

[Screemonster]

In all honesty the level of fluff and required reading would be better suited to a high-rp server. On Sybil people just wanna play the game and they just wanna open the tab and know what they're supposed to do.

The engine setup guide doesn't have a million paragraphs on what the tesla anomaly is or how the particle accelerator works or the history of its development or shit, it's just PUT ACCELERATOR HERE, PUT GENERATOR HERE, SHOOT CONTAINMENT WITH EMITTERS TO MAKE FIELD, FIRE ACCELERATOR.

That's what's needed in-game. If someone's just had a tablet dropped in their lap then you can assume the round is ongoing and they don't have time for all the required reading. They don't need the fluff background history, they need to know what to do.

The wiki has some concise guides

Which is exactly the problem.
The consise guide should be in-game.
The long-winded arrpee fluff should go on the wiki.

[Xhuis]

Tbh if you think my fluff is bad, examine the proto-kinetic accelerator some time...!
In all seriousness, I will see about making some changes to this after I finish up the PR I'm working on.

[Saegrimr]

The KA is there specifically as a joke and isn't required to use it or know how to use it. Since you know, rooty tooty point and shooty.

[Xhuis]

Don't worry, I know ^^