Stop making "quality of life" changes

[captain sawrge]

It's literally a buzzword for power creep.

[cedarbridge]

More or less what the term has evolved into being. QoL is fine when it does what it says on the tin. Making something easier to use in the way it was intended or fixing something's functionality without outright buffing the thing is fine and dandy, but "added new thing to make X even easier and faster" is not.

[Sweaterkittens]

I think the problem lies in the fact that "Quality of Life" is used as a justification for making something downright easier, rather than more intuitive or less frustrating. Making a UI more intuitive and easier to use is a quality of life change - making science start with a stack of 500 of each material so that they don't have to get mats from miners is "Quality of Life". The distinction between the two is very important.

Unfortunately, I think a lot of this is due to the fact that a lot of the jobs in the game just aren't fun. Most, if not all of them are simply a means to an end. You sit at a console doing the same thing you did every round previously, plugging in the same things and either waiting for your time-gated reward (such as in science) or rolling the dice on rng (such as genetics and virology). This is why things like a chem dispenser in botany are PR'd - It eliminates the need to interact with chemistry because people are bored sick of doing that every round. And while I agree that making jobs completely self-sufficient is boring and not "quality of life", I get why people try to make it happen.

The core of this issue is that oftentimes the non-combat gameplay of SS13 is very often tedious, boring, and entirely not fun, which is why people want to streamline it.

[Screemonster]

"Quality of life" is things like the change I made to loot crates so they reject guesses that can't possibly ever be a guess, 'cause I got sick of hearing people complain about them being "bugged" on account of the multitool returning nonsense values if you feed it 1111 or the like. The comments in the code said that the answer could never contain the same number twice, but there was absolutely no indication of this in the game.

I suppose the thing that really makes that a "quality of life" rather than "power creep" is that it made absolutely no difference to people that already knew the codes were always 4 unique digits, but to a newbie who hadn't got to the stage of diving into the code it made them a lot less obtuse.

[onleavedontatme]

Who removed the worldfilter for quality of life changing to powercreep on the forums that was my favourite

[Arianya]

Out of interest, would the magazine-fed weapons being reloadable by just using a fresh magazine on them (i.e. not having to manually unload them and then put a new magazine in) be considered Quality of Life or Powercreep?

Sure, theres an obvious element of convenience in not having to do inventory micromanagement, but at the same its a fairly clear instance of added power (in that syndicates/nukies can reload their weapon very quickly).

[onleavedontatme]

You can already do that

[Arianya]

You can already do that

I know, I'm asking which one that is considered.

[Cobby]

I just want a " 'quality of life' " tag for PRs that are obvious powercreep under the guise of QoL

[Screemonster]

having your gun automatically search your bag for a compatible magazine and yell "reloading!" over the ops channel when it runs dry would be powercreep, I'm not sure saving a click or two for the sake of not fannying with inventory shuffling counts.

Giving the AI a built-in allchannel headset rather than the three intercoms was powercreep not because it saved the AI from having to remember what the radio frequencies are for each channel and dialing the intercoms to that frequency, but because it allowed them to listen to more than three channels at once.

[Wyzack]

The big issue here is that a lot of things in this game are hard because BYOND is shit and the old UIs are mostly unresponsive trash. When AI got its shit all revamped it became a million times easier to play, and this got people riled up. At the time Cheridan basically said something along the lines of "Poor usability as a method for reigning in the power of features is not acceptable in any form" and so AI became a lot better simply because the trash UI got less trash.

I think that might have been where QoL=powercreep sort of started, at least most recently. Sometimes things being less garbage to use is the same thing as power creep, and our choices are to leave them obtuse or fix the shit which causes a sometimes unintended buff. I dunno what the answer is tbh

[bandit]

The big issue here is that a lot of things in this game are hard because BYOND is shit and the old UIs are mostly unresponsive trash. When AI got its shit all revamped it became a million times easier to play, and this got people riled up. At the time Cheridan basically said something along the lines of "Poor usability as a method for reigning in the power of features is not acceptable in any form" and so AI became a lot better simply because the trash UI got less trash.

I think that might have been where QoL=powercreep sort of started, at least most recently. Sometimes things being less garbage to use is the same thing as power creep, and our choices are to leave them obtuse or fix the shit which causes a sometimes unintended buff. I dunno what the answer is tbh

End thread.

[Davidchan]

I'd say that while the two terms share a lot of middle ground, it's not all black and white, and in some cases the powercreep was actually needed to allow roles to live up to their expectations.

Giving Xenobio a slime processor instead of having to do a 3 step surgery on every slime, QoL. Letting that Processor load multiple slimes at once? Powercreep. Giving them a bluespace terminal that allows them to teleport slimes around without ever endangering themselves or getting in line of sight with a slime? Holy fucking power creep.

As for the question on the gun, I'd only call it powercreep if you ejected the old mag and inserted a new one in a single click, or just pushed bullets into the gun mag like CM used to do. If clicking on the gun with an object in hand just ejected the mag and allowed for a subsequent click to insert the new mag.



That said tactical reloads are cool and efficient.

[Bombadil]

I'd say that while the two terms share a lot of middle ground, it's not all black and white, and in some cases the powercreep was actually needed to allow roles to live up to their expectations.

Giving Xenobio a slime processor instead of having to do a 3 step surgery on every slime, QoL. Letting that Processor load multiple slimes at once? Powercreep. Giving them a bluespace terminal that allows them to teleport slimes around without ever endangering themselves or getting in line of sight with a slime? Holy fucking power creep.

As for the question on the gun, I'd only call it powercreep if you ejected the old mag and inserted a new one in a single click, or just pushed bullets into the gun mag like CM used to do. If clicking on the gun with an object in hand just ejected the mag and allowed for a subsequent click to insert the new mag.



That said tactical reloads are cool and efficient.

I feel like most of the changes for the most part made xenobiology viable in 30 minute rounds.

[XDTM]

Exactly, i can barely get to xenobiology late-round content WITH the console, and now with monkeys that fight back the old way is just bad.

[DemonFiren]

We need more changes like this.

The more people get frustrated because rounds are too short the better.

[Wyzack]

While what DF said sounds kind of like knee jerky stop-liking-what-i-dont-like assholery i think it is actually a really good point. If more people are enjoying the game content to the point where these shitty half hour refreshing rounds are too little gameplay for them it is a strong indicator we are moving away from main game enjoyment coming from the "roll antag, acquire valids" grief lottery. Obviously xenobio is one small part of a much larger game but i think it is a good direction to move in

[DemonFiren]

That's precisely what I meant, thank you.

[Weepo]

just make ss13 a fucking atmos simulation again.

[MisterPerson]

The big issue here is that a lot of things in this game are hard because BYOND is shit and the old UIs are mostly unresponsive trash. When AI got its shit all revamped it became a million times easier to play, and this got people riled up. At the time Cheridan basically said something along the lines of "Poor usability as a method for reigning in the power of features is not acceptable in any form" and so AI became a lot better simply because the trash UI got less trash.

I think that might have been where QoL=powercreep sort of started, at least most recently. Sometimes things being less garbage to use is the same thing as power creep, and our choices are to leave them obtuse or fix the shit which causes a sometimes unintended buff. I dunno what the answer is tbh

Balance is fairly easy to tweak as a general rule. Not always, obviously (see the AI's omniscience for example) but things like guns being too strong can be fixed in ways that aren't stupid. So I'd literally always take the QoL, every single time. Granted yes, sometimes people conflate QoL with obvious buffs for their personal playstyle, I'm just saying that legitimate QoL improvements are always worth taking even if they mess up balance.