/tg/Station 13

I don't really know where this should go because this is generally a very broad topic but is important none the less

Throughout this games developmental there has been countless merges and changes to the original, which is good, keeps the dynamic constantly shifting. But lately we've been seeing numerous merges and changes to this game that majority of players have disliked, Namely the Changes with Radiation, the Slight changes with the Super matter and most recently the Gas Mask tinting. Not many like these changes and next to no-one had the ability to argue or protest these changes before they were implemented.

So I am proposing this, we have a more Democratic System for changes. here's how it would work, a Coder or whoever who wants to change a part of the game will have to explain what the change is, how it would effect the game, and why we should want it, then the players get to decide if they want it with a simple Yes/No vote. This will also help keep players active in the player base, by allowing them to take part within the games development and progress as it evolves.

The counter-argument to this is "nothing will get changed, everything will just stagnate". Which is wrong on many levels, firstly change in this game will happen with this system, it just has to be something majority of people agree with, so a Coder wanting to add some useless safety net for an object that is meant to be dangerous cant happen unless the players agree. This will also allow Coders to understand what players want, instead of them assuming what a player would want.

In Conclusion, a More Democratic System for changes to the Game would not only benefit players by allowing them to take part in the games design, but will also help the development team get a better understanding of the Player Base.

We are at the whims of a monarchy called the maintainers and they prefer MRP

Your not gonna get a monarchy to give up power

If only there was a platform where you can publicly track changes and comment on them before they are merged on a per-request basis.

If you can make a good argument that isnt upvote/downvotes then ok but you dont have to look very far to see where upvote/downvotes falls off (see any exploit fix PR).

Players act on what they think would make THEIR experience more enjoyable, versus what would be more enjoyable on a larger scale. Add onto that people dont like change since it requires relearning some of the mechanics (see maps) you arent really selling me on the "nothing will change" argument.

Finally, the game being fine is based on a lot of controversial changes over the years "players" didnt care for. It isnt a new phenomenon and probably worse by the fact that youd actually get laughed at for making this suggestion a few years ago.

Likely better fit for the coding feedback forum unless you're suggesting the administration change what repo it hosts.
I don't think you're going to get anywhere with this.

While I sympathize, what you're proposing will never happen on this codebase. It's also not really something the admins could change if they wanted to. The codebase admin is separate from the server admin.

Not going to happen, should never be attempted, horrible idea. Also lern2englesh.

You are aware that the changes do have to get pitched and passed, right?

Like, let's be real...

Radiation: Everyone knew it was fucked. Everyone hated when the glowy-as-fuck CE would wander into medbay after a bath, or god forbid a xeno with rad immunity would take a HFR bath and then render the station unusable for fun.
Supermatter: The changes haven't seemed hugely significant to me?
Gas Masks: Any feature that inconveniences Dean Ivanov is a good feature

unless you go onto github or actively stare at the chatbox for PR's you arent gonna know about any of the possible changes, im saying that something pops up at the beginning when you start the game, like how the change log is.

If you want a good, simple example of why we will never have a democratic codebase, one of the most disliked PRs on the codebase is adding they/them pronouns to humans. The most disliked is cloning removal, which is nowhere near as controversial today as it was back then, but was a necessary change to the game.

Also, the radiation change that you brought up was a 24 like to 7 dislike ratio, so my gut says you're just posting changes you don't like.

Magical7.62x39 wrote: ↑Sun Dec 05, 2021 11:58 pm unless you go onto github or actively stare at the chatbox for PR's you arent gonna know about any of the possible changes, im saying that something pops up at the beginning when you start the game, like how the change log is.

Keeping an eye on the github is considered a part of active community membership, bickering about PRs is one of the fun ways to pass the time around here. Please join in by leaving ratings and thought-out feedback on PRs as they happen.

RaveRadbury wrote: ↑Mon Dec 06, 2021 12:11 amKeeping an eye on the github is considered a part of active community membership, bickering about PRs is one of the fun ways to pass the time around here. Please join in by leaving ratings and thought-out feedback on PRs as they happen.

This is true
If you're not careful though you'll end up like me and wake up one day wondering why you just spent 12 hours of your weekend spriting cowboy hats for some dumb BYOND game

As far as I am aware, there isn't really any way this can even be handled in policy even if it was decided this would be implemented. The only way that could really happen I guess is MSO telling headcoders to do it or else, which isn't really productive. But putting that aside, there are two pretty important reasons why this isn't really a good idea.

Coders do this for free, and if every PR had to go through a vote to implemented then you are going to have a whole lot more people deciding not to bother contributing if their idea is just going to get shot down by a bunch of people who downvoted their PR. You are also going to have things take ages to go through if every single one has to be voted on and a whole lot of people are going to quickly check out and not bother with the system unless a controversial PR comes through.

But more importantly, the playerbase has a godawful record at disliking PRs that are beneficial to the game. Some people are going to read this and think I am saying the playerbase doesn't know what is good for the game and should usually be ignored. That is, in fact, exactly what I am saying. Want proof, here are the top 10 merged PRs with the most downvotes.

https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/pull/48668 - Completely removes cloning - 148 dislikes. Ended up being a massive improvement to the game and made medical a lot more interesting.

https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/pull/52873 - Removes singularity, tesla, TEG and Mrs. Pacman. Changes supermatter overcharge delam - 134 dislikes. Ended up removing two engines that could instantly end the round if someone put a single C4 on the shield generators. These catastrophic events are now significantly rarer and as such have greater impact when they finally happen, rather than it being another round of "cargo accidentally set the supermatter up wrong so now the round is over"

https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/pull/56601 - Replaces intents with combat mode - 84 dislikes. Now that muscle memory has worn off and people have learned the new way, it is now much more convenient to interact with the game.

https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/pull/41108 - [READY]Removal of circuits - 65 dislikes. Circuits ended up becoming extremely powerful with a significant barrier to entry, meaning you either had no clue what you were doing and couldn't interact with it, or understood how it worked and as such knew how to make an instant death circuit that was a glass shard machine gun.

https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/pull/61917 - Rad collectors gone, tesla coils to generate power - 62 dislikes. Solved the problem of items that get irradiated also generating power, meaning the supermatter generated more power just because someone tossed a few hundred stock parts in the corner of the chamber.

https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/pull/55663 - [Fuck Shotties] Makes shotguns specialist weaponry. - 60 dislikes. Shotguns were pretty OP, and ended up becoming the ideal weapon because you could just delete someone if you were next to them.

https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/pull/45377 - [TMC] Baton rework - 60 dislikes. One click stuns were pretty lame and made things like adrenals mandatory because if a sec officer ever landed a hit on you then you were good as dead. The state of security is much more interesting because of it.

https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/pull/54533 - No more free stuff in maint - 58 dislikes. Removed the guaranteed loot spawns, the most extreme of which was delta where there was just a sec officer locker in maint that any assistant could easily steal.

https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/pull/44530 - Allows gender neutral humans in preferences - 57 dislikes. A PR that literally no one could come up with an argument against except "I don't like this", it ended up harming absolutely no one and gave more options for character creation to the people that wanted to use this.

https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/pull/54327 - Werewolves rejoice! (removes silver from the dispenser). - 54 dislikes. Can't really comment on this since I don't do chemistry stuff much. Left it in anyways since wouldn't be right to cherrypick.

So, out of the top 10 most disliked merged PRs, I am only able to not advocate for 1. I even was part of the people that disliked some of these PRs in the past, and I am glad we didn't handle things democratically because I would have made the game worse.

NoxVS wrote: ↑Mon Dec 06, 2021 12:48 am https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/pull/54327 - Werewolves rejoice! (removes silver from the dispenser). - 54 dislikes. Can't really comment on this since I don't do chemistry stuff much. Left it in anyways since wouldn't be right to cherrypick.

tbf, this change remains incredibly annoying to people who play with chemfactories

We have been here many times before
viewtopic.php?f=10&t=29059
viewtopic.php?f=33&t=24597
viewtopic.php?f=33&t=21934
viewtopic.php?f=33&t=22953
viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2660

It's not a new dispute by any stretch of the imagination.

Coders doing things players don't like isn't a recent thing either, it's just you've been around long enough to be bothered by it.

Ignoring the more edgy examples, let's just talk gameplay.

Before gasmasks and the sm it was combat mode, before combat mode it was botany and sci, before botany it was cloning and sleepers.
There are still some people out there who claim tg died the day coders removed tasers, or slip stuns, or added directional walking.

People are resistant to change, especially after they've played enough to solidify their conception of the game.

All that aside, making the change you suggest would either require the maintainers to be on board, or some form of threat from headmins or the host to comply or be split from (We had one of these this year, it wasn't fun).
We're not in the same hierarchy, so policy discussion is kinda an eh place to discuss this.

Speaking personally, I would never willingly subject our coders to vote driven development, and if something like that happen I would just leave.
Then again, I'm part of the group with power right now, so take that was you will.

I guess to say the quiet part out loud, I'm not driven by the opinions of today's players. I code and merge what I think will be best for the future.
Since the future isn't here yet the only decision making system I have is my own judgement, and the judgement of my fellow code monkeys.

Just how it be

Have you ever seen a vox pop news segment where a reporter hits up random members of the public for their views and opinions on the topic del día?

And you get a wonderful 5 minutes filled with people who are JUST informed enough to hold an opinion, but not informed enough to realise all the """facts""" they rely on to form their opinion are objectively wrong.

When pressed for why they hold the views they do, many either can't explain. Or even worse - occupy that dangerous area where they know just enough to do research, but don't know enough to realise their research source is a misinformation campaign.

This is the experience I get to enjoy every time a controversial PR is opened, where players have VERY STRONG opinions on things but cannot articulate why they hold their opinion. Usually that opinion is based on feels, gut instinct or just a plain misunderstanding about the goals of the PR or the implementation details.

For better or worse, if you want to enact change in the codebase then you need to know your shit.

If you can't code, you better be able to clearly explain why you believe something is worse for the game AND why the status quo is better. Or the opposite if you're supporting a change someone else has made that a maintainer is opposed to.

If you can code, you just need to convince one maintainer out of the team of ~20 to merge your PR, while avoiding earning the ire of any other maintainer enough they block your PR.

Thumbs are already bad because it gives the peanut gallery influence over whether or not something is merged when they may not understand it (either due to not having read the body of the PR or the body being too vague and them not taking the time to read and understand the code) or may just be voting against the PR because they don't like the person who made it. This sounds like a more extreme version of that where the thumbs actually get the final say over whether something is merged, instead of just providing social pressure to the maintainers to merge what the immediate majority wants.

Make a compelling argument that sways the direction of the conversation in the comments in your favour if you want to influence whether something gets merged or request changes to the PR.

No. Others have already expounded on a lot of reasons as to why, but I have a few of my own.
Maintainers are allowed to merge changes they see as 'good for the game'. While I may personally disagree with and dislike these changes and some of the maintainers who merge them, they have largely been good for the game. There have been very few exceptions. Yanking the controls out of the maintainers' hands will rub them(and some coders) the wrong way, and cause them to quit developing for /tg/station altogether.
The maintainers have a purpose. They're there to look out for bugs, code quality, and design. Gutting their role is a Bad Idea.
Also this doesn't go here. The admins and headmins, as far as I know, have extremely limited control over the maintainers and attempts to force their hand have been rare and rife with drama.

Coders BAD!!

500 upvotes 1 digg gold

We understand where you're coming from OP! Lots of us too at some point early in our ss13 careers had the same thought, and either also made a thread or supported one with a similar sentiment. Many admins, headmins & former hosts have even done the same. But after awhile you learn that a democratic codebase just isn't the way of things. The maintainers & headcoders, though sometimes disliked, have the ability to make changes they view as necessary for health of the game, and they've been fairly successful for around a decade under this system.

Also, surprised nobody's mentioned it, but to let you know, we actually did have a spin-off democratic codebase at one point called NTstation. Suffice to say, it didn't work. Community politics & stagnation ended up making it fail, and our current system, as the healthier one, was the one that survived.

NoxVS wrote: ↑Mon Dec 06, 2021 12:48 am https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/pull/56601 - Replaces intents with combat mode - 84 dislikes. Now that muscle memory has worn off and people have learned the new way, it is now much more convenient to interact with the game.

Combat mode is the dumbest TG code controversy. The dislikes are the coder's fault for making it seem like a completely different system when it wasn't. The only thing it did was remove disarm and grab. All they had to do was leave combat mode off as 1 and combat mode on as 4 to retain muscle memory. But no, they had to call it a new mode and change the keybindings for no fucking reason. They brought the controversy upon themselves when they could have easily avoided it.

PRs shouldn't be democratically merged, but there definitely needs to be more cooperation with the playerbase. If the coders actually listened to the negative player feedback against Combat Mode, they could have improved the PR and avoided the controversy. Instead, they ignored feedback and disrupted the muscle memory of everyone.

What would you have changed

Combat mode was up twice, the first closed because Floyd WAS listening to feedback, and remade the PR once he found a good way to act on it (that's why Shift-RMB is a thing). That's why a "democracy" isn't important here either, the status quo worked

I already said what I would have changed,
1. be more clear to the playerbase about the actual change and not make it seem like a huge change when its really not
2. use 1 and 4 for combat mode off and on instead of changing muscle memory for no reason

1 and 4 are combat mode on and off we literally made that change like a few days later

Also there is literally a bullet point list explaining the changes very simply, I don't think we could've said anything to not piss people off--it's simply a change that had to be made that people would be mad at

Mothblocks wrote: ↑Tue Dec 07, 2021 1:06 am 1 and 4 are combat mode on and off we literally made that change like a few days later

False
Default keybinding is still unbound for both combat mode on and combat mode off. The only default keybindings for changing combat mode are F or 4 for toggle combat mode.

Mothblocks wrote: ↑Tue Dec 07, 2021 1:06 am Also there is literally a bullet point list explaining the changes very simply, I don't think we could've said anything to not piss people off--it's simply a change that had to be made that people would be mad at

True
Those people pretty much were all hated it just because it was a change. No way you could have pleased them. But you could still listen to the people who were giving the feedback that it was clunky and unintuitive.

Im just waiting for the pendulum to swing back and maintainers want to add wizard stuff back to xenobio

Mothblocks wrote: ↑Mon Dec 06, 2021 12:03 am If you want a good, simple example of why we will never have a democratic codebase, one of the most disliked PRs on the codebase is adding they/them pronouns to humans. The most disliked is cloning removal, which is nowhere near as controversial today as it was back then, but was a necessary change to the game.

Also, the radiation change that you brought up was a 24 like to 7 dislike ratio, so my gut says you're just posting changes you don't like.

I'm surprised anyone even hates new rads, it's significantly more approachable than old rads.

Saaaaame, old rads were genuinely terrible.

Did these people like the Chief Engineer killing all of medbay with the irradiated Pen and ID in his PDA despite cleaning everything else off after a dip in the SM chamber?

democracy doesnt work

Timberpoes wrote: ↑Mon Dec 06, 2021 3:04 am If you can't code, you better be able to clearly explain why you believe something is worse for the game AND why the status quo is better. Or the opposite if you're supporting a change someone else has made that a maintainer is opposed to.

Where is the best place to do this? 95% of the playerbase don't know about a PR until it is merged, at which point feedback on the merged PR does not matter whatsoever unless it's in regards to a bug. It seems to me opinions only count in the context of another PR (which requires coding knowledge).

I am curious if there has ever been a situation where thoughtful arguments given by players explaining why something is worse for the game has reversed it.

Coders know game design better than any non-coder does, so of course player opinion often has to be disregarded when the change is objectively better for the game (i.e., combat mode, cloning removal, etc.). But players are the ones actually playing the game, and often times they have real, legitimate gripes with PRs that one could only experience after playing with the change for several dozen rounds. It seems these sorts of gripes are disregarded entirely.

Some examples are: security not spawning with batons and gasmask tint. Players have done their best to offer legitimate reasons why these were bad changes, and if they're wrong they're wrong, but the problem I have is they weren't even engaged with or acknowledged, even before the merge.

sinfulbliss wrote: ↑Wed Dec 08, 2021 2:45 pm

Timberpoes wrote: ↑Mon Dec 06, 2021 3:04 am If you can't code, you better be able to clearly explain why you believe something is worse for the game AND why the status quo is better. Or the opposite if you're supporting a change someone else has made that a maintainer is opposed to.

Where is the best place to do this?

https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/pulls

RaveRadbury wrote: ↑Wed Dec 08, 2021 2:53 pm

sinfulbliss wrote: ↑Wed Dec 08, 2021 2:45 pm

Timberpoes wrote: ↑Mon Dec 06, 2021 3:04 am If you can't code, you better be able to clearly explain why you believe something is worse for the game AND why the status quo is better. Or the opposite if you're supporting a change someone else has made that a maintainer is opposed to.

Where is the best place to do this?

https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/pulls

To add onto what Rave said, on some particularly controversial PRs, Github comments may be closed and a forum thread is sometimes made to be used for feedback instead.

How can you say arguments weren’t addressed when you didn’t know where the arguments are located?

I looked at the gas mask tint and pretty much every argument was there and a response was given, it was just not liked. The only thing that wasn’t was the extent of the tint which is why there’s additional PR put up to revert if we think it’s too strong.

Pandarsenic wrote: ↑Tue Dec 07, 2021 5:42 am Did these people like the Chief Engineer killing all of medbay with the irradiated Pen and ID in his PDA despite cleaning everything else off after a dip in the SM chamber?

The people who hate the radiation changes are the people who "accidentally" did this every round lol

Mothblocks wrote: ↑Tue Dec 07, 2021 1:06 am 1 and 4 are combat mode on and off we literally made that change like a few days later

Please don't assume my work, minuscule as it may be.

When I first proposed this in the discord coding channel I got laughed at and was told to "get good" and "wyci".
Now it's "we changed that".

The truth is that any substantial feature or "refactor" PR is followed up by bug fixing, QOL and polishing PRs made by the players that are actually affected by the original changes and have to deal with them every round, sometimes even after raising these issues before merges.

thebleh wrote: ↑Tue Dec 14, 2021 12:23 pmand was told to "get good" and "wyci".

well you coded it didn't you? WYCI is to bait the idea guys to get the fuck out.

(They probably thought you were a ideas guy coders hate em)

Sounds like the status quo works then

Yeah the maintainers just don't care anymore

thebleh wrote: ↑Tue Dec 14, 2021 12:23 pm

Mothblocks wrote: ↑Tue Dec 07, 2021 1:06 am 1 and 4 are combat mode on and off we literally made that change like a few days later

Please don't assume my work, minuscule as it may be.

That change was never made, he was lying

Actually, someone literally just made a pr for it today https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/pull/63410 but it was closed due to the feature freeze.
The change was never made "days later" like he claimed: the PR was literally made today, and it was never merged at all.

we care very very much, which is why we are out here busting our asses off merging 400 pr's a month for free.

That change was never made, he was lying

I think it's disingenuous to immediately assume bad faith: I wasn't lying, I had misremembered what this PR that I merged had done, the one that added those keybinds, but did not bind them.

That PR was created February 4th, combat mode was merged February 3rd. Try not to needlessly assume bad faith on others.

Authoritarianism is when the keybinds exist but I have to set them myself

1984
Most people didn't even know that the keybinds were added or that you could even change them at all. I guess most of them were still using the default press f or 4 to toggle system. My point is that the coders could have listened to feedback of how the default f or 4 toggle keybinds was a bad change and ruined muscle memory. They could have instead changed it to 1 off or 4 on, which everyone was used to. From there the only change they would have get used to is to press right click for shove instead of pressing 2 and left click.

Now, I don't even know if its a good idea to change it back or not, since everyone's muscle memory has probably already reset to using f or 4 toggle. At this point, they probably should just leave it how it is so that people's muscle memory isn't ruined again.

Alright, this thread has run past the OP, I'm taking it out of policy discussion (not that headmins could do anything about it in the first place)

Keep your boiling rage for coders to a simmering seethe and cope, everyone, or I'll lock and trash.

i'm kind of surprised they havent made it so that we need to drink and eat or else we die

Chesse already tried it, if you drank too much you pissed your pants and everyone around you would laugh

i still remembering showering

Mothblocks wrote: ↑Thu Dec 16, 2021 12:05 am Chesse already tried it, if you drank too much you pissed your pants and everyone around you would laugh

I remember this one.

I like the idea of needs (not pants pissing though). Hygiene was bad because people were forced to interact with it. If it just amounted to a negative moodlet that you could turn into a positive one it would work.

RaveRadbury wrote: ↑Wed Dec 15, 2021 11:02 pmKeep your boiling rage for coders to a simmering seethe and cope, everyone, or I'll lock and trash.

Trying to convince coders to remove the thigh-high socks to take a break and/or take a shower and reflect on PR criticism + concerns.



Been there, done that, got the t-shirt from the giftshop on my way out.

Okay necro.