Core Issues: IF YOU MUST READ ONLY ONE PART, READ THIS
Spoiler:
-Grief Lottery: Players take turns either repeating tedious, mundane "jobs" while waiting for an excuse to call the shuttle, or they get to be RULES FREE for a round and make as many people as possible miserable.
1A) Jobs exist only to farm weapons (genetics powers, robotics mechs, science guns, mining for science guns) which you are not allowed to use unless antag or killing an antag, fix antagonist damage (engineering, medbay) or hunt antagonists (security, AI, cyborgs)
-Regarding Information/Paranoia: Players have too much information. AI overwatch, constant comms, well lit areas, security HUDs, team HUDs, shift+click instant examine as you dash past people,
easy random searches with no drawbacks (non lethal weapons), antag tests for the majority of antags at this point (usually via loyalty implant), rigid round types ("its not gang, I just saw a wizard"), suit sensors/portable crew monitors, etc.
2A) Players have no reason to work together, so they have no reason to make themselves vulnerable to other players. The whole station is designed to be run solo, medical is a solo affair, and so on.
-No goal: Basically the same as 1A). Your job leads nowhere, and it's easier to just mash the reset button than to fix anything. It is an endless cycle of the same 20 minutes of your job followed by 15 minutes of evacuation. There is absolutely no incentive or purpose to doing most actions on station.
I consider this the other biggest issue facing SS13 (but maybe there shouldn't be a goal, because it's a round based TDM. The jobs are bloat that distract from that core. Jobs will never lead anywhere in a round based videogame that ends within half an hour. The entire civillian aspect of the game is mostly out of control feature creep with no aim.)
-It's a terrible environment to roleplay in: It is a round based action game in a semi-sandbox (though dont get too wild, if your project interrupts other players and their chance at winning, they will probably adminhelp).
Your roleplay is likely to be interrupted by a killing spree, bored admins, or a ban request because you weren't participating in the killing sprees with enough enthusiasm (we seriously ban for the most basic of deeper roleplaying, developing characters/relationships). I am not sure SS13 was ever meant for this kind of roleplay but a significant portion of our community treats it like a place to do so,
and it'd be nice to think the game can be more than a series of death matches (or maybe this is a dumb goal? why build a roleplaying game on top of a round based mafia/team death match? I don't know but people keep insisting on it. I change my mind daily)
-We have no sane way to add new things to the game/RD is trash: The default option being to just throw it in RD. RD being bad probably requires little explanation, but feeding in items you already have on station to get the tech levels is just silly busy work and not an actual gate to new stuff. Phazons requiring anomaly cores was clever.
Lesser (but still big) problems:
-Permadeath/Quick and unpredictable Death/Long Rounds - I'm sorry, but you can't have all of those. It is just ridicuously sadistic. Making the player behind the character miserable should not be a core of the game design. It just isn't sustainable or healthy to actively seek to piss off a large portion of the playerbase at all times.
-Resource management is a joke: You generate infinite power, which is often the sole required resource of any job. Mineral costs have no rhyme or reason and stopped making any sense at all with machine upgrades. This ties back into "nothing to do but hunt badguys" because
the entire station is stocked and self sufficient from the beginning. This exacerbates other issues because it removes a potential source of purpose/drama.
-Lethalithy is binary: Generally either you have the required protection item (internals, space suit, firesuit, hardsuit/insuls) or you are dead within a minute if not sooner (suffocated, froze, burned, zapped by tesla). Ironically, greater
lethality in this case makes for duller and less involved gameplay.
1A) Jobs exist only to farm weapons (genetics powers, robotics mechs, science guns, mining for science guns) which you are not allowed to use unless antag or killing an antag, fix antagonist damage (engineering, medbay) or hunt antagonists (security, AI, cyborgs)
-Regarding Information/Paranoia: Players have too much information. AI overwatch, constant comms, well lit areas, security HUDs, team HUDs, shift+click instant examine as you dash past people,
easy random searches with no drawbacks (non lethal weapons), antag tests for the majority of antags at this point (usually via loyalty implant), rigid round types ("its not gang, I just saw a wizard"), suit sensors/portable crew monitors, etc.
2A) Players have no reason to work together, so they have no reason to make themselves vulnerable to other players. The whole station is designed to be run solo, medical is a solo affair, and so on.
-No goal: Basically the same as 1A). Your job leads nowhere, and it's easier to just mash the reset button than to fix anything. It is an endless cycle of the same 20 minutes of your job followed by 15 minutes of evacuation. There is absolutely no incentive or purpose to doing most actions on station.
I consider this the other biggest issue facing SS13 (but maybe there shouldn't be a goal, because it's a round based TDM. The jobs are bloat that distract from that core. Jobs will never lead anywhere in a round based videogame that ends within half an hour. The entire civillian aspect of the game is mostly out of control feature creep with no aim.)
-It's a terrible environment to roleplay in: It is a round based action game in a semi-sandbox (though dont get too wild, if your project interrupts other players and their chance at winning, they will probably adminhelp).
Your roleplay is likely to be interrupted by a killing spree, bored admins, or a ban request because you weren't participating in the killing sprees with enough enthusiasm (we seriously ban for the most basic of deeper roleplaying, developing characters/relationships). I am not sure SS13 was ever meant for this kind of roleplay but a significant portion of our community treats it like a place to do so,
and it'd be nice to think the game can be more than a series of death matches (or maybe this is a dumb goal? why build a roleplaying game on top of a round based mafia/team death match? I don't know but people keep insisting on it. I change my mind daily)
-We have no sane way to add new things to the game/RD is trash: The default option being to just throw it in RD. RD being bad probably requires little explanation, but feeding in items you already have on station to get the tech levels is just silly busy work and not an actual gate to new stuff. Phazons requiring anomaly cores was clever.
Lesser (but still big) problems:
-Permadeath/Quick and unpredictable Death/Long Rounds - I'm sorry, but you can't have all of those. It is just ridicuously sadistic. Making the player behind the character miserable should not be a core of the game design. It just isn't sustainable or healthy to actively seek to piss off a large portion of the playerbase at all times.
-Resource management is a joke: You generate infinite power, which is often the sole required resource of any job. Mineral costs have no rhyme or reason and stopped making any sense at all with machine upgrades. This ties back into "nothing to do but hunt badguys" because
the entire station is stocked and self sufficient from the beginning. This exacerbates other issues because it removes a potential source of purpose/drama.
-Lethalithy is binary: Generally either you have the required protection item (internals, space suit, firesuit, hardsuit/insuls) or you are dead within a minute if not sooner (suffocated, froze, burned, zapped by tesla). Ironically, greater
lethality in this case makes for duller and less involved gameplay.
Spoiler:
Away missions were supposed to provide
-An endgame goal/challenge
-A way for coders to add new things without just shoving them in RD (you find them on the away mission)
Why did they fail?
-They ended up being midround things
-Too much traitor loot
-Too easy
-Too removed from the round (basically another game going on at the same time)
-Rushed out, too many maps, too little code for the maps
-AI mobs are trash
-Severely lacking assests/interesting things to put on away missions
-Making a new away mission is too work intensive/people would rather throw their stuff in RD
Attempting (and going to fail) solution on my part for No Goal and RD sucks
Lavaland is supposed to provide
-A way to add things without putting them directly in RD,they will be found on the planet/brought back for science to do stuff with (Ruin system)
-A potential source of respawns from natives, ship crash events, etc
-Some other stuff that I think is interesting but doesn't adress much in the "Core problems" bit
-Potentially a place to host an endgame goal, even if its something as simple as a boss monster
Why is it (probably) going to fail?
-Too removed from the round
-Changing mining will disrupt the flow of minerals to RD, which will make everyone mad
-An endgame goal/challenge
-A way for coders to add new things without just shoving them in RD (you find them on the away mission)
Why did they fail?
-They ended up being midround things
-Too much traitor loot
-Too easy
-Too removed from the round (basically another game going on at the same time)
-Rushed out, too many maps, too little code for the maps
-AI mobs are trash
-Severely lacking assests/interesting things to put on away missions
-Making a new away mission is too work intensive/people would rather throw their stuff in RD
Attempting (and going to fail) solution on my part for No Goal and RD sucks
Lavaland is supposed to provide
-A way to add things without putting them directly in RD,they will be found on the planet/brought back for science to do stuff with (Ruin system)
-A potential source of respawns from natives, ship crash events, etc
-Some other stuff that I think is interesting but doesn't adress much in the "Core problems" bit
-Potentially a place to host an endgame goal, even if its something as simple as a boss monster
Why is it (probably) going to fail?
-Too removed from the round
-Changing mining will disrupt the flow of minerals to RD, which will make everyone mad
Spoiler:
Option 1: Goal oriented
Goals: (how big of an impact on the game/how much work to code)
Non-obtrusive/Very Easy: Just simple crew objectives. "Build X mechs to support the war effort." "Prepare X nutriment amount of food to relieve a famine."
-Possibly using save files to reward/punish the next station with something minor/a news report on the result of last stations efforts.
Non-obstrusive/Difficult: Instead of a series of shitty away missions, pour all the effort into one big dungeon like the Solarium that requires the whole crew to access, and to explore/deal with.
-Probably run into the same issues as away missions
-Open source means it will probably get old faster than it took to code.
Obtrusive/Easy: Events are much more game changing and require crew cooperation to deal with to survive. They could be anywhere from things like "deliver x space cash or Y happens" or more destructive events that threaten survival
-People would probably still call the shuttle rather than dealing with these events.
Non-obstrusive/Difficult: Inspired by FTL obviously. Also by the shuttle build events/Orion trail type stuff. The station is a ship/the station can move. Small maps are loaded/unloaded in space around the station as small points of interests. Captain controls where the ship goes next.
He also controls how the station would interact with stuff like a trade event or whatever.
Obtrusive/Very Difficult: (Cheridan will recognize this one) Like the above, but the goal of the game is to keep the ship running long enough for the ship to reach the end. Instead of unloading/loading small things, move the ship from an asteroid field, to lavaland, to deep space, to a nebula etc.
-The various functions of the station would actually matter (like needing power for the engine, or keeping shields running, or whatever)
-Antagonists would not need to be a choice between dull and super lethal: The paranoia would come from the possibility an engineer could turn off the shields at the wrong time, or someone might revolver the guy responsible for keeping the guns running.
Traitors could be much more about using their environment or sabatoge.
-New crew and antagonists could slip onto the ship each stop.
-This is a pretty radical departure from how SS13 works currently, so I doubt people will be up for it.
-calling the evac shuttle would be losing in this case, you are abandoning the ship and your mission.
-Engineers would actually have purpose, as the ships systems would need to run, and damage repaired instead of abandoning ship
-Security would make sure nothing weird got on the ship at stops, accompany miners on resource runs, accompany exploration teams, guard the captain during diplomacy, etc, instead of just circling the halls for traitors
-Captain would have actual choices to make/things to lead on
-Civillian jobs would still be there just for fluff probably. People need to unwind at the bar between forays into the frozen tundra
-AI would of course be the ships computer
-Enemy "ship" (I dont think it actually needs to exist) would target random areas, Chief Engineer would allocate shields to areas and see if hits were blocked or not before resolving an explosion or fire or something similiar.
-Obviously I've thought quite a bit about this one and there are more details if anyone cares about the idea as a whole
-Hopefully this still keeps what makes SS13 magical. The captain would still be a condom, security would beat the clown for running onto the artillery deck, science would make a large hole in the ship for no reason, various cosmic horrors would torment the crew, etc. There would esentially be the same gamemodes we have now running at the same time as this new "fly the ship game," in the same environment (except ship shaped, and the outside changes)
BONUS: Let the captain name the ship
This would require a ton of work, but it wouldn't require actually changing much of the current game (could be developed parallel to it for the time being until a proof of concept is established).
Option 2: Lethality/Paranoia
1)Make a station on a planet. My dark secret was that Junglestation was something Pete and I were talking about, then dropped due to "we like space" backlash, before startoad ran off to never finish it on his own.
-Would allow for more varied events/3rd party factions (natives with their own objectives that may or may not align with the stations, or the traitors).
-Less binary lethality (wildlife, storms, whatever)
-Would probably help with the whole stealth/paranoia thing if people could hide in the wildnerness instead of in the same maint room that officers check every round
-Ausops wanted to make a station that was a series of buildings, I think that'd be interesting as well (especially if the various buildings periodically get cut off by storms). No brightly lit hallways, dark no mans land between departments.
-Same deal as above with the FTL knockoff, jobs would have more to do exploring around and defending the station/base
-I am pretty close to having a prototype of this done, it wouldn't require the codebase to really change gears.
2)Classic "what the fuck is going on who can I trust" (Skip this section its angry grumbling)
-Would basically involve rolling back years worth of "quality of life" updates and meta/antag tests (I listed most in the "problems" section)
-This will piss everyone off
-People will adminhelp angrily in the vague situations this caused
-It will still be a grief lottery
-Will still have no goal
-I'm really not sure a social trickery game works with 80 people anyway. I have fun playing things like Mafia or Munchkin or other nonsense where you have to pit people against eachother and make and break alliances, but SS13 has evolved far past the point where the gameplay supports that
Server culture/rules don't seem to support it either (imagine a game of mafia where admins had to get involved every time there was an innocent lynched). I think the grief lottery/team death match murder sprees/no goal/endless conversion modes have driven off many of the people who want something else.
-It is ironic that Cheridan gave me this very prestigious job after I explained how to make the game paranoid again because I'm not sure I have any interest in actually going back.
-I dont think this would actually work at our current population
-Long involved jobs that go nowhere like RD don't really make sense in a game like this, but I can't imagine ever removing them/players being okay with it. It will really be easier to just unify all the extra stuff we have now towards an end goal rather than cut the bloat this point. At some point our core gameplay/balance became garbage time sinks you repeat every round.
-people seriously play this game for the "jobs" now and complain when they get interrupted from feeding the same items into the same machine each game god why
-Rules would need to be more relaxed: "grey tiding" needs to happen so that there is enough confusion/cover for the traitors. There's a problem if the only people in the halls or breaking into places are badguys/imminiently banned.
-Some game modes should probably be axed as well, conversion spam death match is overdone and doesn't fit with a theme of paranoia
-People love the AI too much to ever limit it enough for this to work
-"Ruined the round" is a phrase you hear often from admins/ban requests, so I don't think our playerbase is going to accept playing a game where the point is to have everything ruined (I mean, they already do, but still)
-May as well make a new game or new codebase at this point, you'd have to remove so much to have paranoia again, and people are just too attached to various critical things.
-Birdboat is probably the closest to an old classic map where everything is built wrong and dangerous, and players fucking hate it.
Option 3:Keep on doing what we're doing
We're the most succesful SS13 codebase by far, and we're the biggest server, why fix what isn't broken? We did fine without a design lead. I can fuck off and leave people alone or just do the shitty work of settling balance arguments without trying to impose my grand vision on things.
Datum antags should shake up the game nicely with or without me. SS13 is completely dysfunctional from a design standpoint, but people seem to enjoy it anyway. Why rile them up by moving it forward to a new goal (or back to paranoia)
SS13 is a round based action game at heart about a disaster aboard a nonsensical space station, there is no higher purpose.
In this scenario, we keep the same badguy of the week/coders do whatever format, with just a few guidelines
-Encourage more player interaction/engagement. Large numbers of players shouldn't be suicididing out of boredom, or locked away in their departments doing fuckall while waiting for an antag to till them. Previous examples of me pushing this: Constructs, summon guns (I know, I know)
-Blend roundtypes together, have more than just Station vs Antagonist, focus less on power levels of rigid teams: People should be making and breaking alliances. It's always fun (for me anyway) multiple different factions with various goals deciding who they're gonna team up with in the face of crisis. Previous examples: Side antagonists, me mixing malf into traitor.
-Everything should be dangerous/everyone should be able to kill everyone/rule of cool: I personally think stories such as "that time the clown slipped 5 nuke ops and toolboxed them to death" are far more memorable than "that time the security officer tased a nuke op." The best part about current SS13 is all the absolutely nonsensical shit that can happen.
Militarized security vs civillian proof antags while everyone watches will happen over my dead body. The game excels at subverting expectations and telling interesting stories. Everything that can go wrong does go wrong, and that includes the guy who is "supposed" to win being fucked up by a random greyshirt with a spear. Everyone should have a chance to be the hero and impact the round (or die trying).
>but kor several of your options aren't even SS13 anymore! It's too different!
I'd argue that SS13 has not been itself anymore repeatedly and continuously since it was created. It's an atmos sim that has evolved continuously into several different things.
I understand if nobody likes any of these plans though. I am open to other suggestions (or just accepting that we're forever going to have roleplayers/job simulator types/team death match types all coexisting, as per option 3).
Goals: (how big of an impact on the game/how much work to code)
Non-obtrusive/Very Easy: Just simple crew objectives. "Build X mechs to support the war effort." "Prepare X nutriment amount of food to relieve a famine."
-Possibly using save files to reward/punish the next station with something minor/a news report on the result of last stations efforts.
Non-obstrusive/Difficult: Instead of a series of shitty away missions, pour all the effort into one big dungeon like the Solarium that requires the whole crew to access, and to explore/deal with.
-Probably run into the same issues as away missions
-Open source means it will probably get old faster than it took to code.
Obtrusive/Easy: Events are much more game changing and require crew cooperation to deal with to survive. They could be anywhere from things like "deliver x space cash or Y happens" or more destructive events that threaten survival
-People would probably still call the shuttle rather than dealing with these events.
Non-obstrusive/Difficult: Inspired by FTL obviously. Also by the shuttle build events/Orion trail type stuff. The station is a ship/the station can move. Small maps are loaded/unloaded in space around the station as small points of interests. Captain controls where the ship goes next.
He also controls how the station would interact with stuff like a trade event or whatever.
Obtrusive/Very Difficult: (Cheridan will recognize this one) Like the above, but the goal of the game is to keep the ship running long enough for the ship to reach the end. Instead of unloading/loading small things, move the ship from an asteroid field, to lavaland, to deep space, to a nebula etc.
-The various functions of the station would actually matter (like needing power for the engine, or keeping shields running, or whatever)
-Antagonists would not need to be a choice between dull and super lethal: The paranoia would come from the possibility an engineer could turn off the shields at the wrong time, or someone might revolver the guy responsible for keeping the guns running.
Traitors could be much more about using their environment or sabatoge.
-New crew and antagonists could slip onto the ship each stop.
-This is a pretty radical departure from how SS13 works currently, so I doubt people will be up for it.
-calling the evac shuttle would be losing in this case, you are abandoning the ship and your mission.
-Engineers would actually have purpose, as the ships systems would need to run, and damage repaired instead of abandoning ship
-Security would make sure nothing weird got on the ship at stops, accompany miners on resource runs, accompany exploration teams, guard the captain during diplomacy, etc, instead of just circling the halls for traitors
-Captain would have actual choices to make/things to lead on
-Civillian jobs would still be there just for fluff probably. People need to unwind at the bar between forays into the frozen tundra
-AI would of course be the ships computer
-Enemy "ship" (I dont think it actually needs to exist) would target random areas, Chief Engineer would allocate shields to areas and see if hits were blocked or not before resolving an explosion or fire or something similiar.
-Obviously I've thought quite a bit about this one and there are more details if anyone cares about the idea as a whole
-Hopefully this still keeps what makes SS13 magical. The captain would still be a condom, security would beat the clown for running onto the artillery deck, science would make a large hole in the ship for no reason, various cosmic horrors would torment the crew, etc. There would esentially be the same gamemodes we have now running at the same time as this new "fly the ship game," in the same environment (except ship shaped, and the outside changes)
BONUS: Let the captain name the ship
This would require a ton of work, but it wouldn't require actually changing much of the current game (could be developed parallel to it for the time being until a proof of concept is established).
Option 2: Lethality/Paranoia
1)Make a station on a planet. My dark secret was that Junglestation was something Pete and I were talking about, then dropped due to "we like space" backlash, before startoad ran off to never finish it on his own.
-Would allow for more varied events/3rd party factions (natives with their own objectives that may or may not align with the stations, or the traitors).
-Less binary lethality (wildlife, storms, whatever)
-Would probably help with the whole stealth/paranoia thing if people could hide in the wildnerness instead of in the same maint room that officers check every round
-Ausops wanted to make a station that was a series of buildings, I think that'd be interesting as well (especially if the various buildings periodically get cut off by storms). No brightly lit hallways, dark no mans land between departments.
-Same deal as above with the FTL knockoff, jobs would have more to do exploring around and defending the station/base
-I am pretty close to having a prototype of this done, it wouldn't require the codebase to really change gears.
2)Classic "what the fuck is going on who can I trust" (Skip this section its angry grumbling)
-Would basically involve rolling back years worth of "quality of life" updates and meta/antag tests (I listed most in the "problems" section)
-This will piss everyone off
-People will adminhelp angrily in the vague situations this caused
-It will still be a grief lottery
-Will still have no goal
-I'm really not sure a social trickery game works with 80 people anyway. I have fun playing things like Mafia or Munchkin or other nonsense where you have to pit people against eachother and make and break alliances, but SS13 has evolved far past the point where the gameplay supports that
Server culture/rules don't seem to support it either (imagine a game of mafia where admins had to get involved every time there was an innocent lynched). I think the grief lottery/team death match murder sprees/no goal/endless conversion modes have driven off many of the people who want something else.
-It is ironic that Cheridan gave me this very prestigious job after I explained how to make the game paranoid again because I'm not sure I have any interest in actually going back.
-I dont think this would actually work at our current population
-Long involved jobs that go nowhere like RD don't really make sense in a game like this, but I can't imagine ever removing them/players being okay with it. It will really be easier to just unify all the extra stuff we have now towards an end goal rather than cut the bloat this point. At some point our core gameplay/balance became garbage time sinks you repeat every round.
-people seriously play this game for the "jobs" now and complain when they get interrupted from feeding the same items into the same machine each game god why
-Rules would need to be more relaxed: "grey tiding" needs to happen so that there is enough confusion/cover for the traitors. There's a problem if the only people in the halls or breaking into places are badguys/imminiently banned.
-Some game modes should probably be axed as well, conversion spam death match is overdone and doesn't fit with a theme of paranoia
-People love the AI too much to ever limit it enough for this to work
-"Ruined the round" is a phrase you hear often from admins/ban requests, so I don't think our playerbase is going to accept playing a game where the point is to have everything ruined (I mean, they already do, but still)
-May as well make a new game or new codebase at this point, you'd have to remove so much to have paranoia again, and people are just too attached to various critical things.
-Birdboat is probably the closest to an old classic map where everything is built wrong and dangerous, and players fucking hate it.
Option 3:Keep on doing what we're doing
We're the most succesful SS13 codebase by far, and we're the biggest server, why fix what isn't broken? We did fine without a design lead. I can fuck off and leave people alone or just do the shitty work of settling balance arguments without trying to impose my grand vision on things.
Datum antags should shake up the game nicely with or without me. SS13 is completely dysfunctional from a design standpoint, but people seem to enjoy it anyway. Why rile them up by moving it forward to a new goal (or back to paranoia)
SS13 is a round based action game at heart about a disaster aboard a nonsensical space station, there is no higher purpose.
In this scenario, we keep the same badguy of the week/coders do whatever format, with just a few guidelines
-Encourage more player interaction/engagement. Large numbers of players shouldn't be suicididing out of boredom, or locked away in their departments doing fuckall while waiting for an antag to till them. Previous examples of me pushing this: Constructs, summon guns (I know, I know)
-Blend roundtypes together, have more than just Station vs Antagonist, focus less on power levels of rigid teams: People should be making and breaking alliances. It's always fun (for me anyway) multiple different factions with various goals deciding who they're gonna team up with in the face of crisis. Previous examples: Side antagonists, me mixing malf into traitor.
-Everything should be dangerous/everyone should be able to kill everyone/rule of cool: I personally think stories such as "that time the clown slipped 5 nuke ops and toolboxed them to death" are far more memorable than "that time the security officer tased a nuke op." The best part about current SS13 is all the absolutely nonsensical shit that can happen.
Militarized security vs civillian proof antags while everyone watches will happen over my dead body. The game excels at subverting expectations and telling interesting stories. Everything that can go wrong does go wrong, and that includes the guy who is "supposed" to win being fucked up by a random greyshirt with a spear. Everyone should have a chance to be the hero and impact the round (or die trying).
>but kor several of your options aren't even SS13 anymore! It's too different!
I'd argue that SS13 has not been itself anymore repeatedly and continuously since it was created. It's an atmos sim that has evolved continuously into several different things.
I understand if nobody likes any of these plans though. I am open to other suggestions (or just accepting that we're forever going to have roleplayers/job simulator types/team death match types all coexisting, as per option 3).