Bring Back Extended

[Incoming]

Without extended there's a clean assumption that "something will definitely go wrong". People will, consciously or otherwise, pick the most effective options on everything they do.

This mentality isn't wrong, but it means that the game continuously pushes for shorter, more efficiently played out rounds. I feel like people are starting to think that SS13 is a competitive game, when it's REALLY not supposed to be. Balance is one thing, but having every moment of every round based on testing and abusing that balance is another.

It's really eating into game round length, and short rounds where everyone always does the same thing gets old fast. I think a small chance of extended can go a long way to breaking people out of that mindset where as a non antag they spend all their time plotting and planning for "the coming storm" and where as an antag they're forced to play a rush game knowing they'll be facing an optimized defense (i.e. call the shuttle the moment you can, everyone has a weapon).

In short: Even if everyone hates the notion of extended, we need the threat of it so people can ease out of this hypervigilant state that makes every roundtype so predictable and short.

[Zilenan91]

Thing is, extended is inherently flawed because it's fucking boring. The jobs we have don't have enough depth to them to occupy people for long amounts of time, so the only time extended will ever really be a thing is when admins announce it, otherwise people will be on their guard waiting for antags trying to kill them.

[Incoming]

Player mentality takes a while to change, there'd be a good few extended round people would absolutely fucking hate because they'd up their defense for two hours, give up, then bitch in OOC once the round ended. But that's the idea, we need to deincentivize this shit so the game stops trying to play out like a round of counterstrike. There IS depth to a lot of jobs, people just ignore that depth because it takes time or hinges on player to player interaction.

[Saegrimr]

Are you kidding? Extended rounds basically turn into revs without teammates after 30 minutes. Somehow a game mode exists worse than rev.

[asskek]

Extended being fun hinges on admin interaction which often goes horribly, horribly wrong.

Sticky does the best events, in my experience playing /tg/. More admins should take a page from his book.

[Zilenan91]

Player mentality takes a while to change, there'd be a good few extended round people would absolutely fucking hate because they'd up their defense for two hours, give up, then bitch in OOC once the round ended. But that's the idea, we need to deincentivize this shit so the game stops trying to play out like a round of counterstrike. There IS depth to a lot of jobs, people just ignore that depth because it takes time or hinges on player to player interaction.

Are you serious? Mining is punching rocks for thirty minutes then you have some cool shit. Science is diddling on a computer for 30 minutes then you have some cool shit. Cargo is diddling around for 5-10 minutes then you got lots of cool shit. Engineering is diddling around for 5 minutes then you got power. Security is diddling around and getting shot in maintenance for 20 minutes, then an antag gets a taser and goes on a murderspree and gets loads of cool shit.

None of these jobs are built to last for longer than 30 minutes, so without players having the full realization of it being extended, and thus the round not actually mattering, the round will be shit.

[AnonymousNow]

I'll agree with bringing back extended, but it needs to be sufficiently rare so as to add that unknown factor without encouraging too much bitching from validhunters.

I'd also remind you of the suggestion of a Mulligan roundtype - like extended, only it asks for admin input within five minutes, and if no admin (is on and) indicates that they'll push buttons at some point, then at the end of that five minutes it spawns (a) random antagonist(s).

Also, Zilenan - one of the worst things about this shorter round mentality is that we're just not seeing endgame stuff anymore other than in exceptional circumstances. Game dynamics are different and interesting when science is in its "max efficiency, plenty of materials, let's make and distribute cool shit" phase, but that barely ever happens anymore, and if it does then the shuttle is called as soon as anyone learns about it.

I can count the number of station-made combat mechs that I've seen in the last couple of months on one hand.

[Incoming]

Mining is punching rocks for thirty minutes then you have some cool shit.

Actually get cool shit from science and use it, help cargo gold plate the station, go looking for bodies/free shit in space.

Science is diddling on a computer for 30 minutes then you have some cool shit.

USE THE COOL SHIT. Seriously no one in science has any right to complain on this! Build public autocloners, secondary telecoms, other shenanigan based machinery.

Cargo is diddling around for 5-10 minutes then you got lots of cool shit.

Build up ridiculous stocks, start a zoo, team up with cargo to gold plate the entire department, duplicate other departments. Actually send a department something through disposals.

Engineering is diddling around for 5 minutes then you got power.

Build new rooms, set up a supermatter shard, actually fix holes in the station.

Security is diddling around and getting shot in maintenance for 20 minutes, then an antag gets a taser and goes on a murderspree and gets loads of cool shit.

This is the mentality I'm suggesting we break. That traitor goes loud immediately and shoots the sec officer because he knows the round will end in 40 minutes. Slowing it down lets security get back to actually watching out for danger, actually humoring the lawyer, and beating up the clown for poorly defined reasons.

None of these jobs are built to last for longer than 30 minutes, so without players having the full realization of it being extended, and thus the round not actually mattering, the round will be shit.

Every job in this game was built with the assumption that a round could last 20 minutes or 20 hours. They aren't all that great at keeping up the promise of being interesting, but then that can be helped.

[confused rock]

What if extended came back, but with it having lots more random events? so even though you wont find a lot of traitors 25 minutes in you will probably see a lone nuke op or something.

[Incoming]

The problem there is that people could meta a higher event rate with an assumption of it being extended.

[Zilenan91]

Why's that a problem?

[Incoming]

Because you can also meta a lower event rate with it not being extended, which negates the "threat that you're being paranoid for nothing" that I'm trying to get back here. More admin run events is of course fine, but they'd also have to try and do them from time to time in non extended rounds.

[AnonymousNow]

I can't believe I let this one slip - the notion that major aspects of the game were designed around shortrounds. We used to have consistent rounds of over an hour in length, once upon a time, and the revisionist nonsense that suggests our jobs aren't balanced for it is bullshit.

[LiamLime]

There's something to be said about a game mode, in which none of the starting crewmen are antagonist. Instead, late joiners have a much higher chance of being antagonists.

[PKPenguin321]

extended is only very very slightly better than blob
it's still boring as shit though, "SS13 where literally nothing happens: The Mode" isn't engaging at all

[TheNightingale]

I think it'd be nice to have a quiet, peaceful round every now and then. Let people pursue their projects without being interrupted by a shuttle call/bombings/delta alert. Engineering can get around to that snazzy Departures arcade they always wanted to build; Supply can gold-trim their floors and replicate the Armory inside the QM office; Service can make some of every food, drink and plant under the suns... you get the idea. We need more of this, and you can't really achieve that when everyone's calling the shuttle twenty minutes in because they stubbed their toe.

[PKPenguin321]

I think it'd be nice to have a quiet, peaceful round every now and then. Let people pursue their projects without being interrupted by a shuttle call/bombings/delta alert. Engineering can get around to that snazzy Departures arcade they always wanted to build; Supply can gold-trim their floors and replicate the Armory inside the QM office; Service can make some of every food, drink and plant under the suns... you get the idea. We need more of this, and you can't really achieve that when everyone's calling the shuttle twenty minutes in because they stubbed their toe.

i dont play this game because it is quiet and peaceful

[Cheimon]

Rounds like that are great if you've had a project in mind, or somebody comes up with a good idea you can contribute to, but they're not that great for everyone else. Security, for example, becomes an exercise in "Why the hell isn't something wrong? Something's always wrong. Oh well, better keep patrolling." until crew make problems for you instead (having said that, a good riot can be very fun if there's a big enough team on both sides).

[TheNightingale]

Take someone to court for petty crimes. Trials are a great way to get a lot of people involved in something - the judge, prosecution, defense, bailiff, suspect, any witnesses...
I ran a firearms course as Warden once (extended) - invited a bunch of people to the Brig, and instructed them on proper weapon use. And that one time we did live-fire hide and seek, and the Detective beat everyone by going undercover. Or challenged Cargo to a nonlethal deathmatch, with a medal for the team to cuff and secure all their opponents. I've done truth-or-dare a few times, and that's not even remotely job-related.

If you rely on other people causing trouble to have fun, think of other ways to enjoy yourself. No murder cases as Detective? Well, that smashed window looks mighty shifty right now - let's make some case notes, bring in some witnesses, interrogate the shards and broken grille.

[invisty]

Bring back extended. Purge the cancer.

We're well overdue for a good purging of powergamers.

[lumipharon]

>RP game
>terrible combat
>relatively shallow jobs
>2d fucking sprites
>All these people want to play call of duty:spess ops

If you can't keep yourself amused in this game for 90 minutes (even if only occasionally), then you should question how and why you play this game.

Like really, you don't have to go full bay, just not be a powergamer constantly looking for their next valid.

[Zilenan91]

The issue isn't that people want to win at the game, the issue is that people don't want to get wordlessly stunned and dunked in maint, never to get back into the round because the antag dealt with your body somehow. This means that they naturally build up a routine of getting weapons every round so they can try to the best of their ability to not get taken out of the game they enjoy playing, and also hunting down other antagonists so that they, once again, don't get killed and gibbed in maint somewhere, never to be found.


I really do wish people would murderbone less, but it's really a combination of factors that make ignoring your objectives in favor of killing more fun. It's partly because of our combat being awful, partly because of our objectives being badly implemented, but mostly because traitors don't really have a lot of interesting things to do. By interesting things to do, I mean like using an emag and a projector to spam holocarp onto the station. Perhaps it's a bad thing that I genuinely can't think of any other non-murder related things traitors can do that aren't memes.


A way to fix it? Datum antags. The implementation of datum antags would do so much good for the game as a whole, I can barely express it. They will, in a lot of ways, make every round unique and different, reducing that feeling of, "Oh hey, Emily is abusing slips again, time to go toss spears at her until she bleeds out again," or, "Oh hey there's a cult, I better not get stun paper- BZZT."
Datum antags will also allow fine-tuning of the way a lot of antags will work. An example I'd like to point to is cult. A while ago, I suggested removing conversion and stun paper from cult, and one of the cult variances in datum antags is a cult that can't convert. It would focus the mode more on a few amount of people, basically leaders, like almost every other team antag, and will really open peoples eyes as to how they can make the game better by offering new experiences.

tl;dr datum antags

[Incoming]

It's literally the trump card against me in every discussion until I finish it.

(We should still bring back extended though)

[onleavedontatme]

>relatively shallow jobs

There's the problem with extended.

Medbay has things to do when antags shoot people.

Sec has things to do when antags shoot people.

Engineers have repairs to do when things break

And etc.

Lots of jobs are built around survival but there isnt much of a PVE threat to deal with nor any overarching goal for players to work towards.

I wouldnt mind being stuck as head of security in extended if there was anything at all for me to do but go to the space bar and watch science build mechs.

[lumipharon]

Last time I played extended (or maybe just a super quiet traitor round, can't remember) as HoS, I ended up with a rediculously kitted brig.
Huge selection of extra guns and amo in the armury, lathe for more ammo, 2 mechs and a teleporter.

Every officer/captain had a telebeacon with them, and I had one mech sitting right in front of the teleporter with its clusterbang primed.
If anyone called for help I was going to telebang the ever loving shit out of them before charging in with the mech to stomp some heads.

Good times.

[Screemonster]

occasionally force extended then do nothing but sit back and watch the station turn into the 'burbs from everyone being so fucking paranoid that SOMEONE SOMEWHERE IS DOING SOMETHING I JUST KNOW IT

[onleavedontatme]

Last time I played extended (or maybe just a super quiet traitor round, can't remember) as HoS, I ended up with a rediculously kitted brig.
Huge selection of extra guns and amo in the armury, lathe for more ammo, 2 mechs and a teleporter.

Every officer/captain had a telebeacon with them, and I had one mech sitting right in front of the teleporter with its clusterbang primed.
If anyone called for help I was going to telebang the ever loving shit out of them before charging in with the mech to stomp some heads.

Good times.

Well yeah thats the problem you build all this cool shit and then have nothing to use it on.

If you could invade a dungeon or repel an invasion or do some other PVE activity I think it'd be fun

[PKPenguin321]

the entire appeal of this game is that a group of people is running a space station...
and then someone turns on them and everything goes horribly, horribly wrong
extended goes against this is by allowing people to run the space station, but not allowing anything to go wrong

considering the station that you're supposed to be running is 90% automatic (atmos is set up from the beginning and literally doesn't need to be touched and will work fine, singulo/solars barely need to be set up and wont need maintenance pretty much ever again, we straight up don't have a water maintenance system), all you really get to do is sit around eating and drinking. you can go do science if you want like lumi said, but since practically everything in science is intended to a) blow up, b) kill somebody else, or c) give dead players a chance to get back into the game (and people won't be dying since it's extended), there's no real point

the only thing extended is really good for beyond running admin events is RPing without getting interrupted, which you can still do in other roundtypes ("b-but muh powergamers!! i c-can't roleplay w-with them!!" --somebody that's never actually tried to RP). not to mention that (and i know how much people hate this argument, but it IS a valid argument) you can always switch over to another server when you feel like doing some heavy RP and almost nothing else. you're free to switch back when you feel like light RP and also actually doing things.

[lumipharon]

It's not a valid argument because you can just turn it around and tell people to go powergame on another server.

And no one has ever asked for "heavy" RP, people ask for light RP, which is what this server is supposed to have, yet sees very little of anymore because some people constantly push for shorter, combat driven rounds and call the shuttle whenever possible to reroll for antag.

There is a difference between "light RP" and "powergame er'ry day"

[TheNightingale]

I thought we were supposed to be medium RP?

[PKPenguin321]

It's not a valid argument because you can just turn it around and tell people to go powergame on another server.

And no one has ever asked for "heavy" RP, people ask for light RP, which is what this server is supposed to have, yet sees very little of anymore because some people constantly push for shorter, combat driven rounds and call the shuttle whenever possible to reroll for antag.

There is a difference between "light RP" and "powergame er'ry day"

if you honestly think there's no ("no" as in 0, zero) RP here then i question if you actually play the game on this server or not
if you want to see a server with absolutely no RP whatsoever, try hippie (seriously, go play just one round there, just one)
that place is actually hell


EDIT:

I thought we were supposed to be medium RP?

does medium RP even mean anything different than light RP
afaik there's just NO RP | IN BETWEEN-RP | VERY RP
call them whatever you want to but they're still basically the same thing

[Cheimon]

Take someone to court for petty crimes. Trials are a great way to get a lot of people involved in something - the judge, prosecution, defense, bailiff, suspect, any witnesses...
I ran a firearms course as Warden once (extended) - invited a bunch of people to the Brig, and instructed them on proper weapon use. And that one time we did live-fire hide and seek, and the Detective beat everyone by going undercover. Or challenged Cargo to a nonlethal deathmatch, with a medal for the team to cuff and secure all their opponents. I've done truth-or-dare a few times, and that's not even remotely job-related.

If you rely on other people causing trouble to have fun, think of other ways to enjoy yourself. No murder cases as Detective? Well, that smashed window looks mighty shifty right now - let's make some case notes, bring in some witnesses, interrogate the shards and broken grille.

Trials are indeed fun, but I didn't mention them because they require several things that are totally out of your control. Firstly you need interesting lawyers who want to do it. Second you need a judge, in almost any case a head of staff (it definitely can't be a security officer, because nobody is going to agree to that) who is prepared to sit there, listen for ages, and make some sense of things. And third you need a case, which has to involve a prisoner who's up for it (because otherwise a trial of 15 minutes for someone for petty assault is borderline griefing). It can't be unenforceable (otherwise nobody gives a shit) and it will be interfered with (what's that mysterious ticking noise? or that welding by the prisoner?).

Obviously, after that, you need a willing security team to guard the trial, keep order, flashbang the audience, ensure the prisoner isn't stolen, and so on. But that's almost last on the list of things you need to make a trial start and have any chance of finishing. It's no wonder trials, as fun as they are, don't get done very often.