/tg/Station 13

I feel like the direction the game is going is that every job is becoming more complex and that they require more and more experience to perform. I personally think that more complex =/= better by definition.

There was a time when I was able to perform every job on the station and it felt really good to use these systems as a traitor to achieve your goals. Quickly hop into chemistry, make some useful poisons or other stuff and use them for your shenanigans. Nowadays I just avoid doing that because the effort required has exploded while the rewards didn't change for a lot of the things. The added complexity of many roles promotes bypassing them instead of interacting with them if they fall outside of your explicit job and I don't think this results in more fun interactions.

I don't think this will change, I think it is an almost inevitable result of the design process we use. I just caught myself thinking "man if only I could play the version from several years ago and don't deal with all this well....bullshit" of course this neglects lots of improvements that have been made, but I do think it is indicative that something was lost along the way.

I feel for you

I miss when BOH bombings were a threat personally. I'm gonna monkey see monkey doo someone on toxins one day.

It's not just chemistry as well, everything got harder and revamped. Toxins, atmos, medicine, botany, genetics, virology

Even basic items got replaced with more "complex" ones, like how simple hardsuits got replaced by modsuits.

Counterpoint - A lot of people (like shadowflame, actually) feel job content is insufficient currently, especially for longer shifts. Increasing the amount of content available in jobs without increasing their rewards to make them overpowered is a good thing because it gives people more things to do and more stuff to learn, AND ALSO people start complaining about sekrit club powergamers (see the fermichem thread in coding feedback) if you give extra rewards for extra complexity.

Increased job complexity over time should be expected because it's way too difficult to put new systems in place, so the only option is to expand old systems.

Until someone introduces a department of magic or something, things will only get more complex for the existing systems.

Shadowflame909 wrote: ↑Sun Jul 10, 2022 12:47 pm I feel for you

I miss when BOH bombings were a threat personally. I'm gonna monkey see monkey doo someone on toxins one day.

Toxins guide by me coming this summer
I promise
i will spread those code cheeks apart, lick the Atmos scent and dispense it in a way where monkey do easily

I might mention i have yet to do a maxcap

Imitates-The-Lizards wrote: ↑Sun Jul 10, 2022 1:21 pm Counterpoint - A lot of people (like shadowflame, actually) feel job content is insufficient currently, especially for longer shifts.

The station crew and their jobs have always been a facade meant to be a backdrop to the actual meat of the game, that is subterfuge and sabotage driven by conflict-creating antagonists. Most station jobs are fun maybe a couple of times but then you've seen it all. The real reason they exist is essentially to create things that can be abused. Chemistry can make poisons and bombs, atmospherics can create massive fires, genetics can turn people into monkeys and make the bad guys into hulks, botany can grow death nettle and killer tomatoes, the HoP can seamlessly give himself all access and steal basically anything for free, etc. Fluff jobs like librarian never got picked because they didn't really play into this. Chaplain never ever got picked even when he had a role in cult because of this (now that he has a sword and armor that's not quite the case anymore).

The point of this rant: The maintainers have geared design towards making crew roles more fun on their own and more applicable to longer shifts like you said. This is fine on paper, but it will never, EVER be as fun as the actual meat of the game. A job can only really play out in one way, whereas the interlocking systems of SS13 that make it fun and unique from round to round are only brought out by unintended uses like sabotage. Even the most complex jobs really only have a handful of outcomes, for example slimes in xenobiology that literally have a flowchart that shows you all the final evolutions of them. Crossbreeding can be as complex as you want, but the outcomes of crossbreeding are always the same. Asking players to focus on that instead of the actual fun conflict-driven part of the game would be like asking someone to play the first level of Angry Birds over and over for an hour every shift. The novelty WILL wear off. Complexity does not solve this issue; it only makes the game harder for new players.

i missed your based takes pkpenguin

I think you are mistaking difficulty for complexity. While its typical that more complicated things are harder to learn, its not a direct correlation. Complexity and interlocking mechanics are what this game (and similarly structured games like Dwarf Fortress and Cataclysm dark days ahead) special.
I think a failing that you see here, is that individual systems are packed too tightly together (fermi-chem being the prime example) given us fewer, more individually complex systems, rather than a wider array of interconnected and simpler systems (a good example being chemistry and hydroponics making interesting results, or all of the atmos machinery)

PK who?

PKPenguin321 wrote: ↑Sun Jul 10, 2022 10:04 pm

Imitates-The-Lizards wrote: ↑Sun Jul 10, 2022 1:21 pm Counterpoint - A lot of people (like shadowflame, actually) feel job content is insufficient currently, especially for longer shifts.

The station crew and their jobs have always been a facade meant to be a backdrop to the actual meat of the game, that is subterfuge and sabotage driven by conflict-creating antagonists. Most station jobs are fun maybe a couple of times but then you've seen it all. The real reason they exist is essentially to create things that can be abused. Chemistry can make poisons and bombs, atmospherics can create massive fires, genetics can turn people into monkeys and make the bad guys into hulks, botany can grow death nettle and killer tomatoes, the HoP can seamlessly give himself all access and steal basically anything for free, etc. Fluff jobs like librarian never got picked because they didn't really play into this. Chaplain never ever got picked even when he had a role in cult because of this (now that he has a sword and armor that's not quite the case anymore).

The point of this rant: The maintainers have geared design towards making crew roles more fun on their own and more applicable to longer shifts like you said. This is fine on paper, but it will never, EVER be as fun as the actual meat of the game. A job can only really play out in one way, whereas the interlocking systems of SS13 that make it fun and unique from round to round are only brought out by unintended uses like sabotage. Even the most complex jobs really only have a handful of outcomes, for example slimes in xenobiology that literally have a flowchart that shows you all the final evolutions of them. Crossbreeding can be as complex as you want, but the outcomes of crossbreeding are always the same. Asking players to focus on that instead of the actual fun conflict-driven part of the game would be like asking someone to play the first level of Angry Birds over and over for an hour every shift. The novelty WILL wear off. Complexity does not solve this issue; it only makes the game harder for new players.

But this whole post is wrong - First off, it certainly does not apply to me, I like job content way more than interpersonal conflict, even after the 1060 living hours or whatever I have on sybil plus another 1k hours on a tg downstream.

Second off, it applies to a bunch of other people too - think of literally ANYONE playing a job that doesn't give them powergamer bonuses - Chef, Bartender, Janitor, are the ones that come to my mind first, but, really it applies to EVERYONE who plays any job that could powergame but doesnt - see literally anyone who plays botanist but doesnt grow death nettle during their shift, which happens all the time.

Just because YOU dont find things fun does not mean other people don't find it fun, and you should not make that assumption in your posts.

Imitates-The-Lizards wrote: ↑Mon Jul 11, 2022 7:10 am

PKPenguin321 wrote: ↑Sun Jul 10, 2022 10:04 pm

Imitates-The-Lizards wrote: ↑Sun Jul 10, 2022 1:21 pm ...

...

But this whole post is wrong - First off, it certainly does not apply to me, I like job content way more than interpersonal conflict, even after the 1060 living hours or whatever I have on sybil plus another 1k hours on a tg downstream.

Second off, it applies to a bunch of other people too - think of literally ANYONE playing a job that doesn't give them powergamer bonuses - Chef, Bartender, Janitor, are the ones that come to my mind first, but, really it applies to EVERYONE who plays any job that could powergame but doesnt - see literally anyone who plays botanist but doesnt grow death nettle during their shift, which happens all the time.

Just because YOU dont find things fun does not mean other people don't find it fun, and you should not make that assumption in your posts.

It's not wrong at all, that's literally the core design philosophy the game was build on. People finding secondary means of fun in the game doesn't change that. People do elaborate RP in Among US or play hide and seek in Call of Duty, that doesn't mean those games were designed for that. It becomes a core game design issue when all design is watered down to cater to everyone.

Imitates-The-Lizards wrote: ↑Mon Jul 11, 2022 7:10 am

PKPenguin321 wrote: ↑Sun Jul 10, 2022 10:04 pm

Imitates-The-Lizards wrote: ↑Sun Jul 10, 2022 1:21 pm Counterpoint - A lot of people (like shadowflame, actually) feel job content is insufficient currently, especially for longer shifts.

The station crew and their jobs have always been a facade meant to be a backdrop to the actual meat of the game, that is subterfuge and sabotage driven by conflict-creating antagonists. Most station jobs are fun maybe a couple of times but then you've seen it all. The real reason they exist is essentially to create things that can be abused. Chemistry can make poisons and bombs, atmospherics can create massive fires, genetics can turn people into monkeys and make the bad guys into hulks, botany can grow death nettle and killer tomatoes, the HoP can seamlessly give himself all access and steal basically anything for free, etc. Fluff jobs like librarian never got picked because they didn't really play into this. Chaplain never ever got picked even when he had a role in cult because of this (now that he has a sword and armor that's not quite the case anymore).

The point of this rant: The maintainers have geared design towards making crew roles more fun on their own and more applicable to longer shifts like you said. This is fine on paper, but it will never, EVER be as fun as the actual meat of the game. A job can only really play out in one way, whereas the interlocking systems of SS13 that make it fun and unique from round to round are only brought out by unintended uses like sabotage. Even the most complex jobs really only have a handful of outcomes, for example slimes in xenobiology that literally have a flowchart that shows you all the final evolutions of them. Crossbreeding can be as complex as you want, but the outcomes of crossbreeding are always the same. Asking players to focus on that instead of the actual fun conflict-driven part of the game would be like asking someone to play the first level of Angry Birds over and over for an hour every shift. The novelty WILL wear off. Complexity does not solve this issue; it only makes the game harder for new players.

But this whole post is wrong - First off, it certainly does not apply to me, I like job content way more than interpersonal conflict, even after the 1060 living hours or whatever I have on sybil plus another 1k hours on a tg downstream.

Second off, it applies to a bunch of other people too - think of literally ANYONE playing a job that doesn't give them powergamer bonuses - Chef, Bartender, Janitor, are the ones that come to my mind first, but, really it applies to EVERYONE who plays any job that could powergame but doesnt - see literally anyone who plays botanist but doesnt grow death nettle during their shift, which happens all the time.

Just because YOU dont find things fun does not mean other people don't find it fun, and you should not make that assumption in your posts.

Its worth noting that the reality PKP brought up is how the game used to be for a long time and quite a few servers are still like that, that driving factor will always be there in some way, even if it doesn't apply to everyone now.

There is nothing wrong with your view of the game as it is, its just history.

PKPenguin321 wrote: ↑Sun Jul 10, 2022 10:04 pmAsking players to focus on that instead of the actual fun conflict-driven part of the game would be like asking someone to play the first level of Angry Birds over and over for an hour every shift. The novelty WILL wear off. Complexity does not solve this issue; it only makes the game harder for new players.

Certified based, and a clean explanation of why R&D has sucked in basically every iteration it's ever had.

PKPenguin321 wrote: ↑Sun Jul 10, 2022 10:04 pm *snip*

This is extremely accurate and in my opinion what makes SS13 actually fun as opposed to the job content. It's also ultimately what the game at its core is built around, and the further you try to stray from this the more unclear and weak the game's design becomes.

There's always been this element with making bombs. players find better ways to deal with the limitations they are given, and are hammered down by coders to make their jobs even harder, which will be optimized out by the skilled players, and put a larger barrier to entry for new players pursuing the job.
And it's always nerfs, never buffs. It's not as though medicine or getting super powers is made easier over the course of time, it only goes one way.

Helios wrote: ↑Mon Jul 11, 2022 11:04 pm There's always been this element with making bombs. players find better ways to deal with the limitations they are given, and are hammered down by coders to make their jobs even harder, which will be optimized out by the skilled players, and put a larger barrier to entry for new players pursuing the job.
And it's always nerfs, never buffs. It's not as though medicine or getting super powers is made easier over the course of time, it only goes one way.

the most egregious part of this is reinforced windows current game

Everywhere and nigh unbreakable. Kept in because maintainers believe tiding would be too easy without it. So now robotics is as secure as secure tech storage

im like 95% sure me, oranges, and maptainers agreed that the best path is to buff normal windows from being more than like ~3 hits from destruction, then replacing most of the r-windows on the map with windows outside of places that actually warrant the security like brig or the bridge

I think we should build a block of glass irl and see how many hits with a fire axe it takes

Pandarsenic wrote: ↑Mon Jul 11, 2022 3:36 pm

PKPenguin321 wrote: ↑Sun Jul 10, 2022 10:04 pmAsking players to focus on that instead of the actual fun conflict-driven part of the game would be like asking someone to play the first level of Angry Birds over and over for an hour every shift. The novelty WILL wear off. Complexity does not solve this issue; it only makes the game harder for new players.

Certified based, and a clean explanation of why R&D has sucked in basically every iteration it's ever had.

This is why I play security or antag every round. I have 2000+ hours in the game and I've actually attempted RnD a few times, same to xenobio. Just doesn't appeal to me to have the same gameplay loop every round and it doesn't even involve interacting with others. Not trying to criticize what other people enjoy- if some people like it then awesome, I just believe like PKPenguin that the reason it exists is a backdrop to other action.

Pandarsenic wrote: ↑Mon Jul 11, 2022 3:36 pm

PKPenguin321 wrote: ↑Sun Jul 10, 2022 10:04 pmAsking players to focus on that instead of the actual fun conflict-driven part of the game would be like asking someone to play the first level of Angry Birds over and over for an hour every shift. The novelty WILL wear off. Complexity does not solve this issue; it only makes the game harder for new players.

Certified based, and a clean explanation of why R&D has sucked in basically every iteration it's ever had.

It was fine with old fetch RND, the high roller times of the Moonlighters and weaponsci at the omnilathe where people would aggressively commandeer it because it was essentially a source of empowerment, garnering RD's having significant robusting power. Mainly because it was fine with the arnaments, scientists had to leave to get stuff so there was sufficient time to slip in, and captains had absolute authority to complete your gamecycle loop for you so it did suck in a capacity but that wasn't what was meant to be fun about it, it was the power struggle similar to that which still goes on in cargo mostly today. I compare its decline similar to that of the Roman Empire; the early days of techwebs was the same, but that was mainly down to Kevinz, who upkept the ways of their nomadic tider forefathers, pehaps unconciously influenced into expanding science in self serving ways so it was always empowering, until eventually a pretender state took over the dept, sacked it and brought it into decline, now the entire system is heavily edited with experiments in a backwards period despite pretending to venerate this period of antiquity, with a RD nothing more than a glorified science janitor who gets shown up by golems,

Since nobody wants to interrupt science at all, there's nothing to target and no reason for antagonists or tider really to go there (forting up is antiquitated) I mean you can't even back up tech, the idea being that someone could just yank your hard earned tech away from you or the AI/antags could interfere with your progression by altering/kablammo'ing the servers meaning you gotta go cold-turkey on disks got completely removed with the science becoming irrelevant to get stuck at arbitary timegates and deptlathes. I already left when I had to in a technical sense but Modern de-jure SS13 roleplay isn't satisfying, i still play a smaller bit, but mostly i go for other experiences. I wouln't pour a 1000 rounds, about roughly 500 hours of my own life off a half hour estimate into it again for this experience.

Mothblocks wrote: ↑Mon Jul 11, 2022 11:42 pm im like 95% sure me, oranges, and maptainers agreed that the best path is to buff normal windows from being more than like ~3 hits from destruction, then replacing most of the r-windows on the map with windows outside of places that actually warrant the security like brig or the bridge

Do you have a precise idea on how much you want to buff it? Do you want to give it armor or damage deflection? If a normal window takes less than 10 seconds to deconstruct, how long should it take to bust down with a toolbox?

I feel the best example is definitely modsuits, which to be honest really added nothing to the game except for unneeded complexity
(No offense to Fikou who spent a lot of work and delivered a well-made feature)

This game isn't complex enough. Without robust systems, SS13 is nothing more than a vapid deathmatch, which seems to be exactly the kind of experience you expect out of it. (Judging by the fact that your idea of a "good" chemistry system is one which is easy to mass produce instruments of murder.)
My advice? Play literally anything else.

Itseasytosee2me wrote: ↑Mon Jul 11, 2022 4:09 am I think you are mistaking difficulty for complexity. While its typical that more complicated things are harder to learn, its not a direct correlation. Complexity and interlocking mechanics are what this game (and similarly structured games like Dwarf Fortress and Cataclysm dark days ahead) special.
I think a failing that you see here, is that individual systems are packed too tightly together (fermi-chem being the prime example) given us fewer, more individually complex systems, rather than a wider array of interconnected and simpler systems (a good example being chemistry and hydroponics making interesting results, or all of the atmos machinery)

This is a good take and probably the only argument that's actually swayed me to be more against fermi.

PKPenguin321 wrote: ↑Sun Jul 10, 2022 10:04 pm

Imitates-The-Lizards wrote: ↑Sun Jul 10, 2022 1:21 pm Counterpoint - A lot of people (like shadowflame, actually) feel job content is insufficient currently, especially for longer shifts.

The station crew and their jobs have always been a facade meant to be a backdrop to the actual meat of the game, that is subterfuge and sabotage driven by conflict-creating antagonists. Most station jobs are fun maybe a couple of times but then you've seen it all. The real reason they exist is essentially to create things that can be abused. Chemistry can make poisons and bombs, atmospherics can create massive fires, genetics can turn people into monkeys and make the bad guys into hulks, botany can grow death nettle and killer tomatoes, the HoP can seamlessly give himself all access and steal basically anything for free, etc. Fluff jobs like librarian never got picked because they didn't really play into this. Chaplain never ever got picked even when he had a role in cult because of this (now that he has a sword and armor that's not quite the case anymore).

The point of this rant: The maintainers have geared design towards making crew roles more fun on their own and more applicable to longer shifts like you said. This is fine on paper, but it will never, EVER be as fun as the actual meat of the game. A job can only really play out in one way, whereas the interlocking systems of SS13 that make it fun and unique from round to round are only brought out by unintended uses like sabotage. Even the most complex jobs really only have a handful of outcomes, for example slimes in xenobiology that literally have a flowchart that shows you all the final evolutions of them. Crossbreeding can be as complex as you want, but the outcomes of crossbreeding are always the same. Asking players to focus on that instead of the actual fun conflict-driven part of the game would be like asking someone to play the first level of Angry Birds over and over for an hour every shift. The novelty WILL wear off. Complexity does not solve this issue; it only makes the game harder for new players.

yeah the possibility space for player to player interaction is infinite and the possibility space for gamecode is finite.

I long for a simpler version of the game with more manual intervention as a core component, but we've shifted from that for years and more systems are becoming inaccessible to admin tinkering and abuse

Jaukkuri wrote: ↑Fri Jul 15, 2022 12:31 am This game isn't complex enough. Without robust systems, SS13 is nothing more than a vapid deathmatch, which seems to be exactly the kind of experience you expect out of it. (Judging by the fact that your idea of a "good" chemistry system is one which is easy to mass produce instruments of murder.)
My advice? Play literally anything else.

these systems just arent particularly fun on their own? they are supposed to be a toolset to create interesting conflicts and stories, all of which will probably involve murder. There are plenty of games with more complex and fun systems that you could be playing instead

Farquaar wrote: ↑Fri Jul 15, 2022 12:46 pm

Itseasytosee2me wrote: ↑Mon Jul 11, 2022 4:09 am I think you are mistaking difficulty for complexity. While its typical that more complicated things are harder to learn, its not a direct correlation. Complexity and interlocking mechanics are what this game (and similarly structured games like Dwarf Fortress and Cataclysm dark days ahead) special.
I think a failing that you see here, is that individual systems are packed too tightly together (fermi-chem being the prime example) given us fewer, more individually complex systems, rather than a wider array of interconnected and simpler systems (a good example being chemistry and hydroponics making interesting results, or all of the atmos machinery)

This is a good take and probably the only argument that's actually swayed me to be more against fermi.

I do actually appreciate fermi as a concept. Wish it was more "advanced chemistry" rather than something that needs to be accounted for all the time. A system added, rather than a system integrated.

The best part of chemistry was always ghetto chemistry.

A fun chemistry system should capitalize on this and revolve (partly) around creative sourcing of materials. The interaction with Botany was always a good one and this should have been expanded. Let Chemistry collect and grind items and seperate, store and combine the resulting chemicals. Looking for your taser? Too bad, chemistry ground it up to make sprayable puppies. I dunno, go wild. There should be a mix of helpful and harmful effects for sourced items, a bad example was corn, which was only realistically used to blow stuff up.

I think something like this would be the basis for a system that would have good creativity without relying on the mechanical difficulty of performing the steps and also make chemists actually leave their place.

toemas wrote: ↑Fri Jul 15, 2022 5:21 pm

Jaukkuri wrote: ↑Fri Jul 15, 2022 12:31 am This game isn't complex enough. Without robust systems, SS13 is nothing more than a vapid deathmatch, which seems to be exactly the kind of experience you expect out of it. (Judging by the fact that your idea of a "good" chemistry system is one which is easy to mass produce instruments of murder.)
My advice? Play literally anything else.

these systems just arent particularly fun on their own? they are supposed to be a toolset to create interesting conflicts and stories, all of which will probably involve murder. There are plenty of games with more complex and fun systems that you could be playing instead

Interesting conflicts and stories are not created by thoughtlessly popping your randomly generated target in the halls with a syringe of killing juice. If that actually is interesting to you, then I'm very sorry and you may have my condolences.
You're right in the sense that there's plenty of other games with more complex and fun systems, which is probably why players that try out all the jobs either quit or become greyshits. (Does this sound familiar?)

Job content without other players' meddling/obstruction seems to all be one of three types: Simple (deep or not) and exactly the same every round, complex and requires a huge amount of effort to learn but once you learn it its simple and exactly the same every round, or entirely based on interacting with other people and completely different every shift.

Im rock i have like a bajillion hours and have travelled far and wide in search of good gameplay and good rp
Pkpenguin is right about everything and also game is so complex now its ANNOYING to do those job tasks now which isnt good it makes me want to play a simpler server

Dorsidwarf’s type 2 fucking sucks and its awful its why we removed old rnd and why toxins is still bad

PKP has always been right we were fools to not reelect them headmin

I'm of the mind that the game should have a greater breadth instead of depth. More quick and easy stuff to do, less 30 min periods of the same grind every round before things get good. As it stands from my point of view there are a few big systems that you have to invest an hour into to get anywhere, and then a bunch of tiny systems that don't really do much to the round. Right now all the cool stuff (even traitor gear) is locked behind a timewall so for at least the first thirty minutes of every single round it's the exact same motions over and over again just so I can upgrade a machine or build a battlemech or do anything interesting. I would really prefer if we had a couple dozen more surgery sized systems instead of a handful of xenobio sized ones.

Okay in fairness Potato, I don't think these two threads are as comparable as they appear on the surface

The guy saying breadth set me off the rest of it is kinda unrelated

Fair

How do the rest of the maintainers opinion themselves about where the direction of the game should go? Do they all share orange's view that the jobs need to be made more complex?

TheFinalPotato wrote: ↑Wed Jul 20, 2022 2:53 am viewtopic.php?p=265803#p265803

What was done wasn't making the puddle deeper, it just made it more of a pain to reach the bottom.

And Like I said 5 years ago:

Not really having a goal for the crew is one of the most fundamental flaws in ss13 game design.

It's not really an option to tack on things such as station goals etc. Such a thing should have been thought of during the conception of the game.

Things would be way more engaging if the game was structured around the crew being forced to work together to survive. That traitor among them then becomes a lot more interesting, as he is still somewhat dependant on the rest of the crew.

The great "depth" experiment has failed because, at a fundamental level, mechanics can't replace roleplaying in a multiplayer-dependent roleplaying game.

I dont mind rounds being the same, with some RNG to spice things up in a potentially different method.

Personally I've found myself cracking open abandoned crates every round. I've only gotten a katana once though.

I agree that more complexity doesn't really make a better game but I wonder if the issue is entirely a rise in complexity or more so that there's seemingly not a lot of effort put into making these systems compelling. Like when I think about other games that have similarly complex systems like CDDA I enjoyed learning about their more intricate systems because doing so meant I could use them to do a bunch of cool shit. Compared to a lot of the newer reworks which often times feel less rewarding than real life work.

Pandarsenic wrote: ↑Wed Jul 20, 2022 4:23 pm The great "depth" experiment has failed because, at a fundamental level, mechanics can't replace roleplaying in a multiplayer-dependent roleplaying game.

this comment implies we have even begun to try that approach

I mean at the end of the day, I don't really think it's that much of a bold stand to say that the meat and potatoes of ss13 is that it's a multiplayer roleplaying game. All other mechanics are just minigames or supplements to that fact (albeit very important in sum). Importantly we have indeed always retained a fairly open-door policy for new features/mechanics, but if you focus on that part gameplay-wise, you're gonna have a bad time, and probably will shit bricks whenever a removal happens.

Why make more jobs more complex when it's clear it only makes them less likely to get done, less accessible and makes the game less enjoyable overall? There's only so much time in a round, and forever the possibility of having your progress interrupted.

Clearly there's a sweet spot in terms of complexity that prevents people coming up with optimal metastrategies for those in the know to repeat every round without a job also taking half the round to complete and a huge wiki article and the help of an expert player to learn.

oranges wrote: ↑Thu Jul 21, 2022 10:31 pm

Pandarsenic wrote: ↑Wed Jul 20, 2022 4:23 pm The great "depth" experiment has failed because, at a fundamental level, mechanics can't replace roleplaying in a multiplayer-dependent roleplaying game.

this comment implies we have even begun to try that approach

How else would you describe the changes the chemistry, Toxins, atmos, etc?

Imitates-The-Lizards wrote: ↑Mon Jul 11, 2022 7:10 am

PKPenguin321 wrote: ↑Sun Jul 10, 2022 10:04 pm

Imitates-The-Lizards wrote: ↑Sun Jul 10, 2022 1:21 pm Counterpoint - A lot of people (like shadowflame, actually) feel job content is insufficient currently, especially for longer shifts.

The station crew and their jobs have always been a facade meant to be a backdrop to the actual meat of the game, that is subterfuge and sabotage driven by conflict-creating antagonists. Most station jobs are fun maybe a couple of times but then you've seen it all. The real reason they exist is essentially to create things that can be abused. Chemistry can make poisons and bombs, atmospherics can create massive fires, genetics can turn people into monkeys and make the bad guys into hulks, botany can grow death nettle and killer tomatoes, the HoP can seamlessly give himself all access and steal basically anything for free, etc. Fluff jobs like librarian never got picked because they didn't really play into this. Chaplain never ever got picked even when he had a role in cult because of this (now that he has a sword and armor that's not quite the case anymore).

The point of this rant: The maintainers have geared design towards making crew roles more fun on their own and more applicable to longer shifts like you said. This is fine on paper, but it will never, EVER be as fun as the actual meat of the game. A job can only really play out in one way, whereas the interlocking systems of SS13 that make it fun and unique from round to round are only brought out by unintended uses like sabotage. Even the most complex jobs really only have a handful of outcomes, for example slimes in xenobiology that literally have a flowchart that shows you all the final evolutions of them. Crossbreeding can be as complex as you want, but the outcomes of crossbreeding are always the same. Asking players to focus on that instead of the actual fun conflict-driven part of the game would be like asking someone to play the first level of Angry Birds over and over for an hour every shift. The novelty WILL wear off. Complexity does not solve this issue; it only makes the game harder for new players.

But this whole post is wrong - First off, it certainly does not apply to me, I like job content way more than interpersonal conflict, even after the 1060 living hours or whatever I have on sybil plus another 1k hours on a tg downstream.

Second off, it applies to a bunch of other people too - think of literally ANYONE playing a job that doesn't give them powergamer bonuses - Chef, Bartender, Janitor, are the ones that come to my mind first, but, really it applies to EVERYONE who plays any job that could powergame but doesnt - see literally anyone who plays botanist but doesnt grow death nettle during their shift, which happens all the time.

Just because YOU dont find things fun does not mean other people don't find it fun, and you should not make that assumption in your posts.

I did find it fun for about 2,000 hours. You will eventually have the novelty wear off, too. Even with that aside, you and I are outliers. Most people do not play nearly as much as us as the novelty wears off for them much faster.

Oh Shit the big man showed up everyone hide your hard drugs!!

The game can be fun past the 2000 hour barrier, and it doesn't just require antag rolling or becoming an admin/coder/non-player
Roleplay. A lot of the time nobody puts captain priority high, and you can get it consistently. Change your name to something unique and roleplay. Like being Captain Stone Cold, putting on the Championship belt from the vault, and talking about how you are Stomping’ mudholes in those syndi asses and walking ‘em dry.
Or be a HoP named Augustus Caesar. Hire people to make a legion, which is an alternative power centre. Say it's to protect the station from blue level threats, but remember, the legions answer to Caesar, not the Captain. And as HoP you can order all the arms and armor you want from Cargo, who are your subordinates.
There's the classic Clownshop, going clown and running a pawn shop. This has been a good gimmick in a lot of rounds, and the arguments tend to be whether or not the clown shop should sell the Nuclear Authentication Disk to the Syndicate, if they pay enough.
You can change the round, break the monotony singlehandledly, and have other people follow your lead