Assistant slots population scaling

[Ghilker]

The greytide has become a stale meme, we should now move to population scaling

https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/pull/58549

[Armhulen]

Bit early to make a thread for discussing the config on a pr that hasn't been merged yet, no?

[MrDoomBringer]

Bit early to make a thread for discussing the config on a pr that hasn't been merged yet, no?

I think the chances of the PR being merged are affected more by admin/headmin discussion in this thread than maintainer discussion in the GitHub comments.

Regardless, Assistants are valuable for both new and old players to explore the game without being limited to doing a single job - understandable given that right now the "gameplay loops" for nearly every job suck. I don't really see the value in limiting the population, nor do I see how this will solve the issue of greytide.

[wesoda25]

I believe the choice to play the game as one wants (provided they are within the bounds of our rules), outweighs the problems such a change is trying to address.

I think it’s unfair for a certain job to be forced on players regardless of their wishes. Many of us simply enjoy interacting with one another and the content of the game freely, without any obligations.

I feel as if most of the “evidence” brought up to support these changes is anecdotal and doesn’t actually prove much of anything, other than the point that people want to (and will!) play the game as they please. Because of that I’m unconvinced that the “problem” this change is trying to address would be worth those it would create.

Not cool.

[Cobby]

I don’t know how much I really buy into the gameplay loops suck argument the more I see it rehashed.

I would agree that there are some jobs with loops that might not appeal to your particular playstyle, and that other jobs’ replay-ability may plateau if you drive hours upon hours into the role but you still put in hundreds or so hours into that role so the loop can’t be that bad.

All jobs definitely have room for improvement and those will be greatly appreciated if they enhance the game, but what I don’t want is the “gameplay loops are boring” to be used as a cudgel by people who

1) werent planning on playing those jobs anyways, they just want to play assistant without having to form a real argument
2) haven’t put any tangible contribution (even an idea post) out to make the loops interesting if they did have interest in playing other jobs
3) are actually burnt out from the game so they use the “no gameplay loop” role to ruin the fun of others through obsessive validhunting or toeline tiding, which is a lot more “natural” while you wear grey because that ends up being the stereotypical “loop”.


If you are going to argue for the job then it needs to be about what it can bring to the table (I think there’s a sound argument there) rather than putting the burden of proof on literally every other job to justify why it shouldn’t, especially since we’re trying to justify the role that is known for not having a gameplay loop at all.

[XivilaiAnaxes]

Playing assistant is a form of antag rolling ?

[Malkraz]

If you lock me out of Assistant I'll just take up a job slot someone else wanted and play Assistant on that.

[oranges]

If you lock me out of Assistant I'll just take up a job slot someone else wanted and play Assistant on that.

You are going to do that either way, and the longer the assistant job slot is like it is, the more of you there will be.

[saprasam]

If you lock me out of Assistant I'll just take up a job slot someone else wanted and play Assistant on that.

this
actively makes greytiding worse because actual job slots are used & they don’t do their job at all
tl;dr this is fucking stupid and once again shows how little coders know about the playerbase

[Agux909]

Why not do this just on Manuel? It fits more with MRP.
Since there's the rule to always stay in your lane and not bother others, and assistants don't really have an actual lane/dept of their own, doesn't it make more sense there? Clown was already removed because it didn't fit the playstyle so what's just less of another useless role for le roleplay dream?

[Qustinnus]

if you people go grief on another role and get banned i will laugh at you

[Malkraz]

You must not play on LRP much.

[remanseptim]

Clown was already removed because it didn't fit the playstyle

surely
you
fucking
jestin

[Agux909]

I'm not. Join and see for yourself.

[remanseptim]

at least there is now no ambiguity that manuel is a soulless husk of a server, and that they are actively, intentionally trying to ruin space station 13

[Farquaar]

at least there is now no ambiguity that manuel is a soulless husk of a server, and that they are actively, intentionally trying to ruin space station 13

I'm not sure if you fell for it or if you're just playing along

[remanseptim]

wait so it isn't true
if that is the case i am relieved and retract my previous statement

[terranaut]

how could we ever remove the clown role as long as remanseptim continues to be one?

Seriously though, there is no good reason to force people to play a certain job they don't want. They're going to either be unhappy playing, ignore the instructions and do whatever it is they wanted to do anyway, or not play at all and just take up a job slot. Either way you leave at least one but potentially multiple people unhappy, for no real gain in overall game quality. You'd essentially just make people want to play less.

[chocolate_bickie]

Merge this and the tide will get worse. Rather than a bunch if assholes with maint access you will have a team if assholes with varied access, making them a significantly larger threat.

EDIT:You know what here is actual criticism. This adds nothing to the game. It only forces people into jobs in the sense they now have an ID saying "Medical Doctor" rather than assistant. They will not do that job.

Worse they will roll for the job closest to assistant and tide with that.

And before you say this is an admin issue, no, no it isn't. This is not currently an issue because assistant is pressure relief on these jobs. If you merge this you will have created a problem.

No sane admin will enforce this because when they roll Assistant+ they will tide just as much as normal players.

Tldr; Good April Fools post, bit late though

[RaveRadbury]

Merge this and the tide will get worse. Rather than a bunch if assholes with maint access you will have a team if assholes with varied access, making them a significantly larger threat.

Maintenance access is the most valuable general-use access in the game. Most areas have a backdoor into maint.

Speaking of, we have had discussions in the past about removing maint access from assistants as well. Clearly the two might be related and trying to address the same thing.

[chocolate_bickie]

Merge this and the tide will get worse. Rather than a bunch if assholes with maint access you will have a team if assholes with varied access, making them a significantly larger threat.

Maintenance access is the most valuable general-use access in the game. Most areas have a backdoor into maint.

Speaking of, we have had discussions in the past about removing maint access from assistants as well. Clearly the two might be related and trying to address the same thing.

I've edited my post but I'd like to clarify that my point is assistant players will migrate to any role with maint access.

Players gonna play and if you push them they push back.

This might be fine on mrp but it's just another pr that fucks over lrp because coders forgot Manuel is the newest server, not the only server.

[Cobby]

You cant argue in good faith that assistant is not just used to tide and then complain that playing any other role equates to everyone who would have gone assistant is just going to tide as the new job.

Like I said in relation to the last PR this is a heavily administrative issue depending on what problem u r trying to tackle. If it's the behavior related to assistants, then its admin because it doesnt actually matter what job theyre on if admins arent going to change their expectations.

If it's fill out other jobs, why would you take this really good metric we can use to gauge what roles could be improved on the most? Seeing 0/XX or even a consistently full set is a great indicator that there are improvement opportunities for the job without needing to run any stat-pulling of preferences, and padding that out without some sort of clear (non-administrative) motive seems weird.

Basically the change isnt going to have a REAL impact if admins are not going to back up the change, but I guess since its config bound then it doesnt matter if the functionality gets put in or not since admins arent going to use this except for maybe MRP where assistant is probably one of the shittier jobs anyways (2hr+ of no direction sounds absolutely horrendous) .

[wesoda25]

After thinking about it for a while, I think I've realized the wisdom in this change.

The problem with an abundance of assistants and lack of people in critical jobs is honestly a really complex one, and impossible to address in any one post (that I can make, at least), but I'll try.

In an ideal world, we would encourage behavior as opposed to forcing it, however that's something we are incredibly far off from, if it's even possible at all. It's not possible to keep people in important jobs through content alone, as players will get bored eventually. We also apparently can't succeed through discouraging bad behavior (neglecting the station and important jobs) because we've seen players content to let things go to shit. Some people are saying this is how bagil has driven it's pop into the ground and has been unable to recover, and based on this alone I feel it's at least worth trying this change.

Going forward though, I think we should take note of why assistant is such a desirable job, and how we could improve other ones based on it. I imagine this change will create numerous problems of it's own, and the sooner we address the underlying issues that cause people to go assistant and neglect other jobs, the better. Until then though, simply disallowing this behavior seems the best and easiest solution.

[Malkraz]

Assistant is appealing because it's every job at the same time with none of the responsibility of actually doing them if you don't want to. You just need to be a little clever with access.
I have played every single job in the game (except AI) more on Assistant than I have on the actual job slots precisely because I have that freedom to flow between them.

[cacogen]

the only justifiable use of the term gameplay loop is ironically to be abrasive

also you don't want people taking jobs they have no intention of playing
when someone picks assistant instead of engineer for those free all-access tools and no expectations outside of setting up the engine they're doing you a favour by being honest about their intentions and not taking up a job slot

[Mickyan]

My 2 cents is the root of this problem is assistant is far too desirable and versatile for what's meant to be a beginner role and the proper way to fix this problem would be to lower that desirability until experienced people move on and naturally spread to more specialized roles. You have freedom, no expectations from others, near exclusive access to all of maint and years of power creep means that's all you need to do anything

You'd start by getting rid of their maint access and go from there but that's config now so that's not happening. This is also being made as config however so I don't know why we expect headmins to not just turn it off and never speak of it again in a couple of weeks, or next term at the latest when someone uses it as their campaign goal

In conclusion and no offence given to any specific headmins, giving the power to make game design decisions to people that directly benefit from picking the most popular option was a terrible mistake and nothing's going to change

[Eskjjlj]

near exclusive access to all of maint and years of power creep means that's all you need to do anything

There is nothing useful in maint except a couple toolbelts, flashlights and crowbars. Maint didn't get any powercreep. It got nerfed. There used to be free sunglasses and more insuls available outside of engi.
Maints are mostly travelled when it's more convenient than the hallways. For example when there are hull breaches or plasmafloods.

[remanseptim]

s*curity fears maint because they know it's our territory

[Malkraz]

Maint is extremely useful for killing people, hiding bodies, building consoles, creating runes, and fucking up pursuers because they're 1 tile wide hallways. Not to mention all of the hidden rooms you can create hidden doors to if you know where they are. You don't want to do any of this shit in the main areas of the station.

[remanseptim]

maint is literally the assistant's department, prove me wrong

[cacogen]

the proper way to fix this problem would be to lower that desirability until experienced people move on and naturally spread to more specialized roles

why don't people understand that incentivising people to pick roles other than assistant is not going to lead to more job participation and lead to people in jobs they don't want to do probably using whatever extra tools the job grants them to negatively impact the round in a worse way than if they'd just gone assistant

also assistant maint removal was tried at least twice i think it was debated again here within the last year or something i don't really remember but it doesn't have the desired effect

[NecromancerAnne]

at least there is now no ambiguity that manuel is a soulless husk of a server, and that they are actively, intentionally trying to ruin space station 13

You clearly didn't actually check, because it's not true. You can play clown. Agux is confusing Manuel for Skyrat, who disabled clown on their main server.

[chocolate_bickie]

at least there is now no ambiguity that manuel is a soulless husk of a server, and that they are actively, intentionally trying to ruin space station 13

You clearly didn't actually check, because it's not true. You can play clown. Agux is confusing Manuel for Skyrat, who disabled clown on their main server.

Coders are trying to limit assistant numbers, a change that will effect more than one player per round.

The only TG server gagging for this change is Manuel, the Skyrat of TG

[Naloac]

words

I basically agree with your point of encouraging behaviour instead of forcing it. This issue is as brought up earlier in the thread as a *bad* argument is that alot of the jobs fun is figuring out how they work not due to the inherent fun of how they play. The reason people learn jobs and quickly go to the next one is because alot of them just arent really that fun to begin with.

Botany,Viro,Xenobio, and lots of others arent good on their own and require the player to go make fun for themselves *if they arent trying to learn the basics* aka you get an assistant wearing different colours with some small jobs access.

overtime by design the most fun things to do ingame are either the most challenging Lavaland/security. Or stuff thats constantly interacting with the crew and people Clown/Mime.

I personally might get a ton of fun from making the SM the most powerful thing imaginable able to fry a man instantly but alot of people arent going to like that and bounce off instantly.

Assistant gives you the freedom of most of the jobs. an assistant could go do some of lavaland, with botany items while fighting bubblegum with a clown. its a level of freedom the other jobs dont get.

Forcing people into jobs that are either boring / or have not much content beyond the initial learning curve is stupid at best.

[Tlaltecuhtli]

assistant is the freelancer of rp, whenever you need a gimmick they are your main pool of professional actors to oil up your riots, religious cult, unionizing movement, animal rights agents, joker mask wearing villians, why do i have to go ask the introvert botanist too busy planting weed for the 55th time this week or the newbie scientist fortified in his own department scanning plasma toilets or the cook who has no time to spare while feeding manuelbots so he can sign up for GDQ next year, when i have finely packaged people wearing an ' looking for stuff to do' grey jumpsuit?

[cacogen]

skyrat makes it sound like trash so it's weird it's pretentious

[Yenwodyah]

Greytiders existing is good, they add low-stakes conflict. Trying to remove tiding is just going to make the game more boring.

[Mothblocks]

the cook who has no time to spare while feeding manuelbots so he can sign up for GDQ next year,

it's been a week since i last read this and i still have utterly no clue what the insult here is

[cacogen]

Based on a couple of precedents now I'm coming to the conclusion that when Jared takes exception to things he pretends not to understand them. Or maybe he just has bad reading comprehension.

1. Manuelbots = RP NPCs
2. Cook can't even do his primary job, feeding the crew, because of the demands of the tourist bots
3. You have to go fast to keep up with the demands of the tourist bots
4. He can't roleplay with the cook because the cook is too busy cooking for NPCs who are doing the roleplaying

He's pointing out the obvious thing coders won't acknowledge or do anything about which is that the minigame is overly demanding of the player's time to the point where the cook can't do it and interact with the crew.

[Mothblocks]

Yes but what does "so he can sign up for GDQ next year" mean. Everything was coherent up to that point. I know what GDQ is and have no idea what it's meant to mean here

[cybersaber101]

words

I basically agree with your point of encouraging behaviour instead of forcing it. This issue is as brought up earlier in the thread as a *bad* argument is that alot of the jobs fun is figuring out how they work not due to the inherent fun of how they play. The reason people learn jobs and quickly go to the next one is because alot of them just arent really that fun to begin with.

Botany,Viro,Xenobio, and lots of others arent good on their own and require the player to go make fun for themselves *if they arent trying to learn the basics* aka you get an assistant wearing different colours with some small jobs access.

overtime by design the most fun things to do ingame are either the most challenging Lavaland/security. Or stuff thats constantly interacting with the crew and people Clown/Mime.

I personally might get a ton of fun from making the SM the most powerful thing imaginable able to fry a man instantly but alot of people arent going to like that and bounce off instantly.

Assistant gives you the freedom of most of the jobs. an assistant could go do some of lavaland, with botany items while fighting bubblegum with a clown. its a level of freedom the other jobs dont get.

Forcing people into jobs that are either boring / or have not much content beyond the initial learning curve is stupid at best.

Yo dawg don't throw shade at botany comparing it with 2 jobs who don't interact with the crew outside of killing them.

[cacogen]

Yes but what does "so he can sign up for GDQ next year" mean. Everything was coherent up to that point. I know what GDQ is and have no idea what it's meant to mean here

You have to go fast to keep up with the demands of the tourist bots which rhetorically would give you the ability needed to compete in GDQ (or to do this at GDQ) is this sealioning

[Mothblocks]

oh nevermind you're right, i thought he wrote GDC this entire time

oh well

[oranges]

Forcing people into jobs that are either boring / or have not much content beyond the initial learning curve is stupid at best.

continually claiming that it's the jobs that are boring or have no content when the assistant job literally has "zero" content makes no sense

[Tlaltecuhtli]

interacting with people care freely is content retard and so is 'hard mode' where you have less than any job so you can play around with ghetto shit like maint stuff and improvised gear

[Cobby]

you can interact with people freely on other jobs, i dont think ive seen (m)any cases where someone got punished in any capacity for not doing their job that isnt your obv ones like sec/heads/ai

if so some people need to delete their posts because they threatened with breaking the rules / gentlemans agreement / whatever you want to call it of fucking off to not do the job is they cant be assistant

[cacogen]

i thought he wrote GDC this entire time

oh

[oranges]

you can interact with people freely on other jobs, i dont think ive seen (m)any cases where someone got punished in any capacity for not doing their job that isnt your obv ones like sec/heads/ai

if so some people need to delete their posts because they threatened with breaking the rules / gentlemans agreement / whatever you want to call it of fucking off to not do the job is they cant be assistant

actually destroyed tlat, nice

[Tlaltecuhtli]

supporting clicking random job so you can ignore it and what you wanted to do sounds great game design that sure will punish bal dee, ryan cobb, bindy and other serial griefers from 2018

most players/latejoiners prefer being able to see by crew manifest 2 engineer and 2 botanists who are actually playing instead of 5/5 on both with schrodinger workers

[cacogen]

wait wesoda25 is serial grifer?=