/tg/Station 13

With Metastation being run on Sybil yesterday, there's been a lot of discussion on replacing box with meta, having a poll in the lobby, or having the map randomly selected. I've yet to see a comprehensive poll on this, so I thought it would be a good idea to make one.

I dislike meta because there's no scarcity of resources to contest and it's too big for anything less than 60+ people.

Edit: Also, I feel it is not made for many of /tg/'s antags. For instance, blobs are basically autowin, due to long travel time for crew, tight corridors, enclosed maint and so forth. Station feels dead too, unless you have 80+ people which we hardly ever reach these days.

I don't really like this poll because everyone has their own assumption on what bagil would be doing during all this.

I still think a dedicated box server and a variety server is the best way to get the best of both worlds here. People craving change get change, people craving consistency get consistency.

Incoming wrote:I don't really like this poll because everyone has their own assumption on what bagil would be doing during all this.

I still think a dedicated box server and a variety server is the best way to get the best of both worlds here. People craving change get change, people craving consistency get consistency.

Box has been run of bagil before, it was still lower population. Sybil isn't popular because of boxstation, it's popular because it's the only server that ever has more than 30 people playing.

From my experience with online games map voting is going to be shit.

We could easily just change the config to give different maps different weighting.

Ikarrus wrote:From my experience with online games map voting is going to be shit.

We could easily just change the config to give different maps different weighting.

That was my vote, although I think 50% box 50% meta is perfectly fine.

More reasons I dislike it and that meta is functionally a bad map for /tg/:

Telecomms is on the AI satellite surrounded by rwalls or enterable through 5 sets of doors, half of which tend to be bolted by the AI, plus a transit tube. Telecomms monitoring and such are through only two less set of doors, still on the AI sat. Thus, telecomms is very difficult to sabotage on meta, scripting or otherwise for that reason, especially discreetly. Shitty.

The AI core is ridiculously unrobust. Once you're on the satellite and you hack your way through a bunch of the doors, open the last one in the AI core and bolt it open. You don't have to even confront the turrets in the AI core, because the AI faces the door, meaning you can laser it to death in seconds. It's literally easier to kill the AI than it is to get into the AI upload and upload laws.

The warden doesn't have view of the armory at all, which makes it ludicrously easy to C4 and steal everything with zero contention.

Maintenance consists mostly of 1-tile-wide tunnels with no cover or frequent sharp turns like box, somewhat open areas, or even cover, meaning firefights in maintenance last seconds. This also makes blobs ridiculously overpowered, ignoring cheese bombings, because, rather than having a 3~ tile wide minimum hallway, many are 1-2 on metastation, and, as I said before, since maintenance is inexplicably more cramped than Box, it's suicide. Then, at the same time, the rest of the station is inexplicably massive, with wide halls and massive departments. Poor design and not suitable for many game modes. Also because of this, the station feels empty without anything less than 80 people.

No scarcity, as previously said. There's even a public autolathe, for christ sake. There's no competition for resources. This may be why people 'like it', on top of the novelty factor, even if it isn't healthy long-term.

Minor, but the SMES units are poorly protected behind glass in engineering, which is literally 2 hacked doors, maybe three, away from deconstruction. There's only three too, and there may or may not be backup SMESes elsewhere.

I'd have to play the map a couple more times for some more stuff too.

Lobby fucking poll. I don't want to ready up and then find out the map is one I don't want to play.

Random rotation; polls are terribad as everyone is going to vote for the same map forever and ever.

Dust2, forever.

>he doesn't like dust2 forever

Scones wrote:Lobby fucking poll. I don't want to ready up and then find out the map is one I don't want to play.

Probably will not be possible. Map needs to be compiled at round start. Metastation uses different code files and z-levels as well so swapping them mid-round is probably not viable.

If we're going to have a poll it would need to delay the end of the last round.

Either way it should be made clear what map is being played in the lobby.

>not playing the 2fort of ss13

cola mao

I remember seeing a really cool looking station that was built into an asteroid. I'd like to use that one.

Ahammer18 wrote:I remember seeing a really cool looking station that was built into an asteroid. I'd like to use that one.

AsteroidStation could be easily incorporated into the vote or random selection, although I'd give it a lower weight due to its obscurity

Random selection between Box and Metastation is easily the best choice.

Luke Cox wrote:AsteroidStation could be easily incorporated into the vote or random selection, although I'd give it a lower weight due to its obscurity

I like asteroid, but remembering the layout and gimmicks of 3 maps would be more trouble than it's worth. 2 shall be the number of maps.

I've suggested random selection with 70% box 30% meta. Would that appease all of you who selected box only?

Luke Cox wrote:I've suggested random selection with 70% box 30% meta. Would that appease all of you who selected box only?

That's biased and is no longer random. Gotta be 50/50 split

iamgoofball wrote:

Luke Cox wrote:I've suggested random selection with 70% box 30% meta. Would that appease all of you who selected box only?

That's biased and is no longer random. Gotta be 50/50 split

I said 70/30 because even though random is the winning option, there are a decent number of people who prefer box only. We could also do 60/40 or 65/35.

Keep it simple and keep it to one map per server.

If people get bored of playing with one map they should hop to the other server with another map, even though that never happens.

Steelpoint wrote:Keep it simple and keep it to one map per server.

If people get bored of playing with one map they should hop to the other server with another map, even though that never happens.

People don't want to go to bagil because they don't want 20 person rounds at primetime. Maps on both servers have been changed, with no noticeable effect on population. Looking at the poll, people strongly support rotation. People want to be able to play multiple maps on one server.

Except last time we did a long term map swap everyone went back to the server with Box, irrespective if the server's name was sybil or basil.

Steelpoint wrote:Except last time we did a long term map swap everyone went back to the server with Box, irrespective if the server's name was sybil or basil.

Citation?

I remember when we swapped and it was due to the metafriend shit migrating that caused people to swap servers.

Regardless a significant portion of the community wants meta, So why the hell do you want a box only server and then a weighted rotation in favor of box on another?

Just do random rotation on both.

Scones wrote:Lobby fucking poll. I don't want to ready up and then find out the map is one I don't want to play.

I would have thought map would be chosen upon reboot. Otherwise you wouldn't be able to observe the round until the game started, which we know isn't true.
I'm also fairly certain the map loading red text is one of the first thing mentioned upon reboot.

All it needs is some kind of auto announcement in the lobby of which map is in play. Maybe the /tg/station13 lobby image could change to show what map it is? That way you'd have more of a reason to moan when I change it ; )

As I said before, the players must know what map is going to be played well before the round starts.

This is also of benefit to off station antagonists so they actually know which station they are attacking.

My biggest argument against "le random rotation" is that even on BOX the competence of the crew is at critically low levels. With rotations you only aggravate the issue because crew intelligence dips back down "First day of SS13" levels when nobody has a fucking clue where anything is. I've played Meta 20+ times and I still get lost regularly trying to find basic essential areas of the station.

While new maps have their benefits, it is overshadowed (for me) but the fact that the theme of every round is basically "crew wanders the station looking at cool new shit and ignores their job". I've felt that way myself. Why should I respond to reports of murder in a department I can't even find when I'm checking out this sweet area of maint? Every time we switch maps I just feel like the round isn't even taking itself seriously.

Why fix what isn't broken, I've seen 5+ alternative proposed maps and all the argument for advantages/disadvantages but they never materialize. If there was a significant, material benefit to playing on Meta... the playerbase would've noticed a long time ago and there'd be a very strong push to adopt it, now the attitude is middling at best with some liking it but most having a mix of likes/dislikes.

Oldman Robustin wrote:
now the attitude is middling at best with some liking it but most having a mix of likes/dislikes.

A lot of people want to play something other than box, A LOT of people. As in enough that it gets overwhelming votes to play on meta.

Tornadium wrote:

Oldman Robustin wrote:
now the attitude is middling at best with some liking it but most having a mix of likes/dislikes.

A lot of people want to play something other than box, A LOT of people. As in enough that it gets overwhelming votes to play on meta.

I cast my vote for lobby poll, I know that meta gets votes. Even I vote meta sometimes just for a change of pace.

But seeing the patterns of voting it always goes "First vote: Overwhelmingly Meta, Second Vote: Meta, but closer, Third Vote: OH GOD RETURN BOX". Then it stays Box until basically all the players have rotated out and there's a sufficient number of people who hadn't seen meta that day to cast their vote for meta again.

With random we get meta forced down our throats an indeterminable number of times. I could definitely see myself just logging out if I'm in the mood to play high responsibility positions and get Meta a 3rd round in a row. It's good in small doses just like crazy whacky admin rounds. Random rotation doesn't give you anything in small doses.

Same thing happened where we had a month of new maps. Asteroid station, Metastation, That one station that was like 50% maint, etc. it's fun for a few rounds but by the end of the week you literally can't force yourself to log on until it's back on Box because all the novelty/exploration has worn off.

Oldman Robustin wrote:

Tornadium wrote:

Oldman Robustin wrote:
now the attitude is middling at best with some liking it but most having a mix of likes/dislikes.

A lot of people want to play something other than box, A LOT of people. As in enough that it gets overwhelming votes to play on meta.

I cast my vote for lobby poll, I know that meta gets votes. Even I vote meta sometimes just for a change of pace.

But seeing the patterns of voting it always goes "First vote: Overwhelmingly Meta, Second Vote: Meta, but closer, Third Vote: OH GOD RETURN BOX". Then it stays Box until basically all the players have rotated out and there's a sufficient number of people who hadn't seen meta that day to cast their vote for meta again.

With random we get meta forced down our throats an indeterminable number of times. I could definitely see myself just logging out if I'm in the mood to play high responsibility positions and get Meta a 3rd round in a row. It's good in small doses just like crazy whacky admin rounds. Random rotation doesn't give you anything in small doses.

Same thing happened where we had a month of new maps. Asteroid station, Metastation, That one station that was like 50% maint, etc. it's fun for a few rounds but by the end of the week you literally can't force yourself to log on until it's back on Box because all the novelty/exploration has worn off.

We had a streak of like 8-9 rounds on meta a few days ago.

Why not try to improve meta instead of just giving up and going back to box AGAIN?

The way the /vg/ map voting system is not a lobby poll.
That vote happens as the shuttle is passed the point of no return or something. It's towards the end of the round, not at the start of it.

Tornadium wrote: Why not try to improve meta instead of just giving up and going back to box AGAIN?

Whoever designs it can do that themselves and convince everyone that it's a flat out improvement on Box, THEN we can talk about making 50%+ rounds on Meta.

This poll doesn't account for the magnitude of beliefs too. I'd venture a guess and say that almost no players are leaving because they hate Box/love Meta, but being forced to endure RNG for their station of choice could definitely drive people away.

Oldman Robustin wrote:

Tornadium wrote: Why not try to improve meta instead of just giving up and going back to box AGAIN?

Whoever designs it can do that themselves and convince everyone that it's a flat out improvement on Box, THEN we can talk about making 50%+ rounds on Meta.

This poll doesn't account for the magnitude of beliefs too. I'd venture a guess and say that almost no players are leaving because they hate Box/love Meta, but being forced to endure RNG for their station of choice could definitely drive people away.

So keep having it on the server so people can play it and point out what they do and don't like?

When we are playing it the feedback is always positive. It seems to be a vocal minority complaining (mostly about petty fucking things).

Tornadium wrote:

Oldman Robustin wrote:

Tornadium wrote: Why not try to improve meta instead of just giving up and going back to box AGAIN?

Whoever designs it can do that themselves and convince everyone that it's a flat out improvement on Box, THEN we can talk about making 50%+ rounds on Meta.

This poll doesn't account for the magnitude of beliefs too. I'd venture a guess and say that almost no players are leaving because they hate Box/love Meta, but being forced to endure RNG for their station of choice could definitely drive people away.

So keep having it on the server so people can play it and point out what they do and don't like?

When we are playing it the feedback is always positive. It seems to be a vocal minority complaining (mostly about petty fucking things).

So introduce something that will arguably provide a significant deterioration of Sybil so we can improve it until we get back to where we are right now?

Right.

I prefer rounds with corgis too, but if 10% of the playerbase was going to leave over the inclusion of Corgi's I wouldn't push for it either.

I think "don't fix what isn't broken" is completely applicable to these discussions. Having a slightly better layout/design isn't worth the weeks and weeks of players/security being incompetent at their jobs. "BEING KILLED IN BATHROOMS" and having 1 officer show up 5 minutes later is not a fun experience for me.

Tornadium wrote:

Oldman Robustin wrote:
now the attitude is middling at best with some liking it but most having a mix of likes/dislikes.

A lot of people want to play something other than box, A LOT of people. As in enough that it gets overwhelming votes to play on meta.

THere's always 50% votes for meta 10% votes for box 40% didn't vote.

And random map is just not a good idea given BYOND's RNG and also we only have two possible maps, it make's no sense for it to be random. Voting is better.

I sticky'd this as a global announcement to ensure more people see it.

Oldman Robustin wrote:

Tornadium wrote:

Oldman Robustin wrote:
now the attitude is middling at best with some liking it but most having a mix of likes/dislikes.

A lot of people want to play something other than box, A LOT of people. As in enough that it gets overwhelming votes to play on meta.

I cast my vote for lobby poll, I know that meta gets votes. Even I vote meta sometimes just for a change of pace.

But seeing the patterns of voting it always goes "First vote: Overwhelmingly Meta, Second Vote: Meta, but closer, Third Vote: OH GOD RETURN BOX". Then it stays Box until basically all the players have rotated out and there's a sufficient number of people who hadn't seen meta that day to cast their vote for meta again.

With random we get meta forced down our throats an indeterminable number of times. I could definitely see myself just logging out if I'm in the mood to play high responsibility positions and get Meta a 3rd round in a row. It's good in small doses just like crazy whacky admin rounds. Random rotation doesn't give you anything in small doses.

Same thing happened where we had a month of new maps. Asteroid station, Metastation, That one station that was like 50% maint, etc. it's fun for a few rounds but by the end of the week you literally can't force yourself to log on until it's back on Box because all the novelty/exploration has worn off.

Bear in mind that it wouldn't necessarily be 50/50. The two stations could be given different weights in the random selection based on feedback. Box could still be the primary map with Meta popping up every so often.

I dislike weight being given to either station. If it's 50/50 then people will learn to live with the station map they don't like as much, if it's 70/30 they'll just go braindead at roundstart 30% of the time.

What makes you think they won't just go braindead 50% of the time?

The way I would do a poll is that everyone votes, then one vote is randomly selected. That vote is the next map. Fair representation of minority and majority views. If 40% of the people want meta, you get 40% meta. If 100% of people want meta, you get 100% meta.

I'm still not sold that having wildly different maps is a good idea, but I'm interested in trying it out for a bit.

MisterPerson wrote:The way I would do a poll is that everyone votes, then one vote is randomly selected. That vote is the next map. Fair representation of minority and majority views. If 40% of the people want meta, you get 40% meta. If 100% of people want meta, you get 100% meta.

I'm still not sold that having wildly different maps is a good idea, but I'm interested in trying it out for a bit.

Guild Wars 2 PvP actually has a system like this. People vote on different maps, then it's randomly selected with odds proportional to how people voted. Box and Meta aren't all that fundamentally different, which is why I don't think running them side by side will be an issue.

Luke Cox wrote:

MisterPerson wrote:The way I would do a poll is that everyone votes, then one vote is randomly selected. That vote is the next map. Fair representation of minority and majority views. If 40% of the people want meta, you get 40% meta. If 100% of people want meta, you get 100% meta.

I'm still not sold that having wildly different maps is a good idea, but I'm interested in trying it out for a bit.

Guild Wars 2 PvP actually has a system like this. People vote on different maps, then it's randomly selected with odds proportional to how people voted. Box and Meta aren't all that fundamentally different, which is why I don't think running them side by side will be an issue.

If MSO wants to code this, I fully support this idea

Ikarrus wrote:What makes you think they won't just go braindead 50% of the time?

50% of the time seems like a hell of a lot of time to invest in logging in, waiting through a lobby, etc and then deciding not to play. I just think that if, let's say meta, were to pop up a minority of the time players would feel less inclined to stick around if they dislike the map because they know there's a good chance the next two rounds will be Sybil. If it's 50/50 then it forces folk who actually want to play (not just be antag) to adjust and learn the new map.

Not-Dorsidarf wrote:

Luke Cox wrote:

MisterPerson wrote:The way I would do a poll is that everyone votes, then one vote is randomly selected. That vote is the next map. Fair representation of minority and majority views. If 40% of the people want meta, you get 40% meta. If 100% of people want meta, you get 100% meta.

I'm still not sold that having wildly different maps is a good idea, but I'm interested in trying it out for a bit.

Guild Wars 2 PvP actually has a system like this. People vote on different maps, then it's randomly selected with odds proportional to how people voted. Box and Meta aren't all that fundamentally different, which is why I don't think running them side by side will be an issue.

If MSO wants to code this, I fully support this idea

Any word on this, MSO?

Ikarrus wrote:What makes you think they won't just go braindead 50% of the time?

For a certain few, they will go braindead 50% of the time.

I can't see the majority doing it.

All I know is that if it isn't excruciatingly clear in the lobby what map is being played, I myself will go braindead if it's Meta. Ridiculously flawed map where almost all of our antags are OP or UP, with some really terrible core poor design choices that will take months, if not a year to hammer out, if Meta gets to it at all. Makes antag balance a living hell for coderbus too.

On the plus side, Meta seems open to criticism, so maybe that might speed up the process and we can phase out incredibly stupid shit like, say, the AI core facing the door, ASAP.

At least I hope that in one month, the novelty wears off everyone realizes that the map is intrinsically flawed and realizes that they were entirely better off on Box for a while. Hopefully.

This is a assumption but metastation to date has always been balanced off the lower population that Basil usually gets.

If metastation is subjected to the higher population rounds that Sybil gets for a long period I would imagine we would see more changes to suit these higher populations.

Steelpoint wrote:This is a assumption but metastation to date has always been balanced off the lower population that Basil usually gets.

If metastation is subjected to the higher population rounds that Sybil gets for a long period I would imagine we would see more changes to suit these higher populations.

The idea is, however, that the current rendition of the map is far inferior to Box, hence why should we play said map for an extended period of time until it is fixed.

Because like all things that don't get played with, it won't get fixed. Box was "broken" for the large population when we had a sudden population increase regularly. But things get balanced, hence why its a opensource github project, its constantly evolving and changing.

peoplearestrange wrote:Because like all things that don't get played with, it won't get fixed. Box was "broken" for the large population when we had a sudden population increase regularly. But things get balanced, hence why its a opensource github project, its constantly evolving and changing.

The question is why we should bother playing it if it's currently a vastly inferior map to Box. We could just play Box instead.

Amelius wrote: On the plus side, Meta seems open to criticism, so maybe that might speed up the process and we can phase out incredibly stupid shit like, say, the AI core facing the door, ASAP.

Please don't

Not every thing about every map has to mirror box.

AI core is suppose to be facing the door, not the back wall, because its much harder to get in thru the front, like MUCH harder.

I like this the way it is.

And mind you, Its not a fucking "ASAP" issue. box had the ai facing the door for almost all of its existence, and everybody got along fine. Hell, It used to not have its own sat, it was just right there below bridge and Malf was still winnable, I know, I've done it, ON MY FIRST MALF ROUND.

Any word on this, MSO?

I have to figure out how to make this work, I can't modify the code on the server or else it gets wiped on the next update, So i need to make this work with the server tools, in a simi-generic way since it has to be on the github, and in theory, usable by other servers.

It's not vastly inferior. It just has a couple of map issues that need bringing up to speed, since it was a fairly unused map and Metacide was away for a long period it kinda lagged behind. They are now active again, we're getting good feedback and things can be changed.

Also as a lot of people have made it clear, this isnt a "box vs meta" situation, its a "why not both!?".