Box Removal Discussion

[actioninja]

https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/pull/50726
This thread is for discussion of the potential removal of Box Station.

Please read the points outlined in the pull request before commenting.

[mso edit] since action ninja is too fucking lazy to copy paste a bit of text i went ahead and did it for them

Box Station has been antiquated and deserved removal for a very long time coming now.

Recent attempts to update particularly bad parts of Box (powernet, pipenet, etc.) fail to address the single largest issue with box[mso edit: what? what fucking issue?]. Meta was so heavily based on Box that Meta is effectively just a better version of Box

The way I see it Box Station will never match either the popularity or the quality of MetaStation due to fundamental problems with the layout and design.
On top of that, they are such similar of maps that maintaining both at the same time feels like it adds very little. Say what you will about maps that aren't Box or Meta, they are the two most fundamentally similar maps in the game. Even Delta, which is yet another Box derivative, doesn't come off nearly as similar to Box.

There is a push to reduce the number of active maps and there is zero reason to keep around a bunch of maps that are extremely similar. The whole advantage of running multiple maps is variety, and having only Box, Meta, Delta, and the flavor of the month fourth map that everyone hates because it's not one of the three extremely similar maps is a colossal waste of time and effort for everybody involved.

[Tlaltecuhtli]

orango locked while i was fucking writing here is a response to wesoda's comment

> I mean... I'd say its been getting SOME "love and effort" as of late, or at least the latter
> #50704
> #50430
> #50108 (small but effort i guess)

those prs cured the synthoms not the disease, box is ugly and crap that no one wanted to fix even pipe and cables ,
if he spent time getting modern and interesting looking departments (real mapping) people would have took interest in the map and snowballed fixed the issues /contributed
but at this point its better to concentrate the already low amount of mapping prs to maps that are 6 meta / 10 meta like pubby and delta WHEN the map VOTE forces every map to be played TWICE

[RaveRadbury]

Bawhoppen did a really great renovation of box's perma. It's the best perma currently.

[actioninja]

Bawhoppen did a really great renovation of box's perma. It's the best perma currently.

I genuinely do feel bad that recent efforts will go completely to waste if this goes through but I also am so tired of our core three maps being extremely similar with one being the clear worst.

[oranges]

orango locked while i was fucking writing here is a response to wesoda's comment

he can't keep getting away with this

[terranaut]

im going to have to comment based on the assumption that the map on the wiki hasn't changed so drastically compared to now that some highlights i have of the map are completely wrong now

i've always liked its little flaws like how virology is just entombed and secured in the middle of the station, but still in the middle of the station and not a satellite clinging to the hull of the station by the thin thread of a few lattices, the maintenance tunnels in general i've had great chases in as antag or as security chasing antags, i like that not everything is r-glass (although still a bit too much imo, no reason for rp jobs like the lawyers office being reinforced). meta is "better" and "more polished" in the sense that things are more secure and the station design makes more sense, but i don't like that for the game because it lowers the options players can take or are willing to take to achieve some end goal.

[Tlaltecuhtli]

Bawhoppen did a really great renovation of box's perma. It's the best perma currently.

if you think it is good just ctrl c ctrl v it to meta as the 2 maps are 100% compatible for some unknown reason

This post was deleted by Cobby on Wed Apr 29, 2020 12:45 am.
Reason: This is not ntr so you have to have tangible feedback here.

[Tlaltecuhtli]

can this made public btw? https://sb.atlantaned.space/polls/226

This post was deleted by Cobby on Wed Apr 29, 2020 12:45 am.
Reason: Response to deleted

[actioninja]

can this made public btw? https://sb.atlantaned.space/polls/226

Poll results: https://tgstation13.org/tgdb/irvpolltal ... ersesort=1

This is not a decision about popularity though.

This post was deleted by Cobby on Wed Apr 29, 2020 12:46 am.
Reason: response to response to deleted

[Tiviplus]

Good riddance, maybe we'll actually get some proper maps now

[terranaut]

can this made public btw? https://sb.atlantaned.space/polls/226

Poll results: https://tgstation13.org/tgdb/irvpolltal ... ersesort=1

This is not a decision about popularity though.

I understand that player will is not always the best metric to decide things by from a design viewpoint but maps are a really big part of the experience, they impact everything every player does unless they literally just press the same buttons on the same console in their office without interacting with anybody or anything else, and maps that are severely disliked shouldn't be forced on players, just like you don't force players to play, say, security against their will. It's just not fun. Only tangentially related, but there's a policy thread up aiming to make shuttle calls because everyone hates the map a rule break for Manuel, and I wonder, why? There's a big gap between "this map has some issues but I'm sure they can be fixed" and "this map just fucking sucks".

[Swept]

I grew up on Boxstation while playing on other servers. I can navigate the damn thing in my sleep but I would be lying if I said that it wasn't fundamentally useless for tgstation at this time.

It feels shoddy alongside the other maps in rotation and either it needs a massive facelift or it needs to go.

[Shadowflame909]

can this made public btw? https://sb.atlantaned.space/polls/226

Poll results: https://tgstation13.org/tgdb/irvpolltal ... ersesort=1

This is not a decision about popularity though.

I understand that player will is not always the best metric to decide things by from a design viewpoint but maps are a really big part of the experience, they impact everything every player does unless they literally just press the same buttons on the same console in their office without interacting with anybody or anything else, and maps that are severely disliked shouldn't be forced on players, just like you don't force players to play, say, security against their will. It's just not fun. Only tangentially related, but there's a policy thread up aiming to make shuttle calls because everyone hates the map a rule break for Manuel, and I wonder, why? There's a big gap between "this map has some issues but I'm sure they can be fixed" and "this map just fucking sucks".

What he said but shorter. Has player-base joy factored into your thought-process?

[Indie-ana Jones]

Honestly, I'd much rather see Donut go than Box. Considering IceBox is possibly a thing, it covers the Mult-Z stuff Donut current does without being awful.

[Tlaltecuhtli]

dont worry jimmy got it covered https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/pull/50730

[Shadowflame909]

are maintainers gonna take out 3 maps

it got third place maintainer team!1!

pubby commits die instead. it's only unique element usurped by arrivals public mining shuttle

[CPTANT]

Box was the default map for ages and most other maps are based on it, but now I can't really think of anything that box does better than other maps.

I think we should aim for a sweetspot of like 3/4 active maps. Too few and there is no variation, too many and there are maintenance problems and people spend too much time having to learn new map layouts.

[trollbreeder]

does this mean i get to PR housestation as a replacement

[Megarop]

What's wrong with boxstation besides the pipes, the engine room, the powernet, the gravity generator being in the middle of the station, the AI sat, tcomms not being on the AI sat, cargo not having as many crates to recycle as on most other maps, the security equipment room and HOS office having regular walls instead of reinforced walls, not being metastation, science having the bepis machine in what i'm pretty sure is supposed to be a grenade testing chamber even though chemistry isn't part of science, virology being on the station and having a disposal unit with a space sign next to it that doesn't actually go to space, and science having a firing range but not security?

[terranaut]

What's wrong with boxstation besides the pipes, the engine room, the powernet, the gravity generator being in the middle of the station, the AI sat, tcomms not being on the AI sat, cargo not having as many crates to recycle as on most other maps, the security equipment room and HOS office having regular walls instead of reinforced walls, not being metastation, science having the bepis machine in what i'm pretty sure is supposed to be a grenade testing chamber even though chemistry isn't part of science, virology being on the station and having a disposal unit with a space sign next to it that doesn't actually go to space, and science having a firing range but not security?

Flawed design as a choice is fine if it creates player opportunity such as virology being on the station or security not being a megafortress. Not like r-walls are more of a problem than regular walls when you can grind thermite on the holodeck.

[ATHATH]

Bawhoppen did a really great renovation of box's perma. It's the best perma currently.

Yeah, Boxstation's permabrig is MILES better than the permabrigs of other stations, and I really don't wanna see it go.

Will we at least be getting Icebox to compensate for the loss of Box, or is the ice moon project getting shut down as well?

[Tlaltecuhtli]

What's wrong with boxstation besides the pipes, the engine room, the powernet, the gravity generator being in the middle of the station, the AI sat, tcomms not being on the AI sat, cargo not having as many crates to recycle as on most other maps, the security equipment room and HOS office having regular walls instead of reinforced walls, not being metastation, science having the bepis machine in what i'm pretty sure is supposed to be a grenade testing chamber even though chemistry isn't part of science, virology being on the station and having a disposal unit with a space sign next to it that doesn't actually go to space, and science having a firing range but not security?

medbay maint doors being hard to access, medbay mulebot windoor being used as a normal entrance because its faster to go by there than actual main door half the time, chemistry being 1 paper thin wall from being broken into, vekter's shit stain on what used to be genetics, shitty layout cryocentric layout, rnd room having 2 apcs, useless misc rooms, toxin room requires manual changes to be viable, sci maint has more death ends than actually maintenance tunnel, north maint being a giant empty space, no door between hydro and chef, giant long interrupted main halls that turn into firelock galore when a fire happens anywhere, tcomms in maint, dorms sucks, xenobio being broken into by looters every 5 min, locker room only existing as a filler between shuttle and main hall, public botany with small seed variety, 70% of map having no location of interest near, engi maint being so isolated not even antags roam there as its a literal dead end, eva having multiple doors for no reason , ugly robotics with windoor to surgery, more tables than empty tiles, incenerator away from atmos, no places where to build projects without either being too isolated to matter or breaking someone else's private property, lack of o2 cabinets/ firesuits/ extinguishers, stealing a fire extinguisher roundstart isnt emergent gameplay its chinese people avoiding escalators and probably more things

[Tlaltecuhtli]

Flawed design as a choice is fine if it creates player opportunity such as virology being on the station or security not being a megafortress. Not like r-walls are more of a problem than regular walls when you can grind thermite on the holodeck.

windows 10 gives the users the false choice of deciding which spyware to not install or which update will brick their computers, creating many different fun experiences

[Vekter]

So when are we removing Delta and Pubby?

[Ivuchnu]

Hold on. Donut won the vote on yeeting followed by caution tape station, Kilo, but Box is getting removed? This is sad and disappointing.

[Pomf123]

based box babbies

[terranaut]

Flawed design as a choice is fine if it creates player opportunity such as virology being on the station or security not being a megafortress. Not like r-walls are more of a problem than regular walls when you can grind thermite on the holodeck.

windows 10 gives the users the false choice of deciding which spyware to not install or which update will brick their computers, creating many different fun experiences

what a garbage post from a garbage brain

if, say, the placement of viro is "flawed" from a third party perspective due to being in the middle of the station rather than a quasi satellite, then for enterprising antags that creates opportunity or chance for misshaps which creates chaotic gameplay, which in my opinion is preferable to SS13 in general than everything being fill of safety cushioning. this is a conscious game design choice that actually will at least sometimes lead to a good user experience, unlike your great analogy

[FloranOtten]

Long overdue. Box apologists get out.

Boxstation has a number of flaws that make for interesting gameplay, but those are not the core ones. I think a look at Box Maint is a nice way to portray the issue at large. Box maint serves no purpose. It is winding corridors with no gear, and a poorly designed flow. It is also incredibly hard to fix, and would probably require a redesign of box as a whole to work properly (and at that point just make a new map). Every room in there, from the electrical maint that serves no purpose but to look pretty, to the smoothbrain air tank room whose pipes only actually lead to a damn connector half the station away, is retarded and doesn't flow well. Why do we have blast doors in there that don't even seal the area between them? Why are there random 2x2 rooms in there with shitty loot? Why is there a massive offshoot with rooms containing only chairs and windows up north?

Shame about perma, though. I quite enjoyed that.

[TrumpetPlaya]

damn box atmos is my favorite atmos

[MrStonedOne]

Recent attempts to update particularly bad parts of Box (powernet, pipenet, etc.) fail to address the single largest issue with box.

What the fuck is it? what the fuck is the largest issue with box? are you gonna name it? ever?

Also next time can you fucking be assed to copy the pr text into the forum thread when you lock github and move the pr discussion to the forums.

[MrStonedOne]

I vote no.

There has not been any issues with box brought up.

This is not about popularity, but its popularity was brought up, and it's in the top 3-4, so it is about popularity.

It's got issues, but they were fixed, but that wasn't its biggest issue, but we can't describe it and never mentioned it until our old argument stopped working.

Another map was made based off of box, that must mean they are the same map! No i haven't played the game, how can you tell?

Meta and box are fucking different maps. What the fuck are you even on about.

You know what, sure, i'll entertain this idea, you want to fix that, undo the box pr that moved the ai chamber from the center of the map to the ai sat. this will also move the grav gen back to engineering.

I am getting sick and fucking tired of this tread in coderbus where they allow prs to ruin things then allow that ruined status to be an excuse to remove the thing rather then FUCKING REVERT THE PR THAT RUINED IT

[MrStonedOne]

after skimming the thread discussion, let me present this tl;dr:

Every way box is different from meta station is an issue, that must be fixed or it goes, but it should go because its basically meta station.

?????????????????

[Shadowflame909]

Oranges tried to dab on ss13 boomers

but they forget

the best boomer of them all is a host

+1 to MSO

Leave box alive.

Now the only other thing is maintainability and coders not wanting to map edit 5 different stations. Which is true. Not all features are on all stations. Like the experimentor being removed on some stations but left on others,

But to that I say, like every coder nerf in existence. These things are gradual.

If someone wants that feature to be used more. They'll add it to all other stations.

The same as how all the kinks were worked out in cobbymed. Everything starts off terribly, and it slowly gets better.

/Tg/'s in no rush for new minuscule features and QOL map updates in exchange for losing an entire arsenal of maps.

TLDR: The cost of losing the diversity and interesting change of gameplay maps bring: Like new weaknesses in the station, multi-z level changes, and new gimmicks. Like spacing someone off of pubby's chapel shuttle. Just isn't worth it for faster QOL changes.

[wesoda25]

Basically people who don’t like box wanted it gone because of its bad systems (powernet/atmos etc) but then people started fixing those so they switched to “its too similar to meta”.

Personally I think the way box is set up is different enough so that there are different high traffick areas and congregation spots, which usually provides a pretty different experience than playing on meta.

[MMMiracles]

based MSO blowing meta brigaders out of the water

[Incoming]

Boxstation was designed to be frail, to be exposed to sabotage and problematic chokepoints that could remove a lot of access if they were blown up or walled off.

That's on purpose, that's the design theory. Many older maps were made this way because in the early days malevolent design played a larger part in generating the conflict on stations. There was less stuff to get and thus more stuff to fight over. More risk to being certain places, fewer places to hide.

"Newer" maps lost this scarcity and vulnerability, and having this things became box's niche. Unless I'm missing something (very possible) it also currently has the niche for being the best map for lower populations (<30) because its vital corridors force you into contact with other players even if there are few warm bodies about.

The point is there's a good reason why this relic has endured so long and that's why it still exists. I still look at the github from time to time and I see these poorly defended inflammatory pulls that seem to only exist to piss people off. Try to remember to keep the fake conflict in the game and to keep it fake. Injuring the game to own the playerbase is unhealthy both for the community of this game and the game itself.

[Mickyan]

I do not like box

Yes, fixing what I don't like about it makes box more similar to meta

No, meta is not the perfect pinnacle of map design

I am okay with keeping box if it's the first to go when more unique maps are available to take its place

[Shadowflame909]

The most important thing to this removal is, what does this mean for Ice Box?

A more unique box with even more flaws since it's literally what planet station dreamed to be.

[Anuv]

Box just sucks it's so old and awful and lame the game has to evolve

[oranges]

Oranges tried to dab on ss13 boomers

can you stop assigning this PR to me arbitrarily shadowflame

[BeeSting12]

Long overdue. Box apologists get out.

Boxstation has a number of flaws that make for interesting gameplay, but those are not the core ones. I think a look at Box Maint is a nice way to portray the issue at large. Box maint serves no purpose. It is winding corridors with no gear, and a poorly designed flow. It is also incredibly hard to fix, and would probably require a redesign of box as a whole to work properly (and at that point just make a new map). Every room in there, from the electrical maint that serves no purpose but to look pretty, to the smoothbrain air tank room whose pipes only actually lead to a damn connector half the station away, is retarded and doesn't flow well. Why do we have blast doors in there that don't even seal the area between them? Why are there random 2x2 rooms in there with shitty loot? Why is there a massive offshoot with rooms containing only chairs and windows up north?

Shame about perma, though. I quite enjoyed that.

Why does maintenance have to have loot? I actually really like box’s maintenance. I also agree with everything MSO said. I used to hate box because I was unfamiliar with it, but now I really like it especially with the perma changes. There’s no issue with having similar maps especially when you’re not offering a “unique” alternative. Give me a viable alternative for box and then we can talk. Also, list out issues with Boxstation and I’ll look into repairing them if there’s a legit bug.

[oranges]

Don't you think it's a little late now to be saying "I'll fix bugs in box" when the bugs were around for several months and nobody fixed them?

The real problem here is that a new map can be made, but because it's new, they are never able to compete fairly with meta/box/delta etc.

Right now my only options as headcoder are

A) put the map in the game, hope it sticks around for multiple years and then run a map vote poll, being castigated the entire time for "keeping shit maps around"

B) test merge the map, run a vote and watch it lose every single time to existing maps because of familiarity.


How do I ensure we continue to get new/unique maps in this system?

[Naksu]

What is the interesting gameplay boxstation offers? Less is sometimes more, but more often a bad map is just a bad map.

Neither "unique" nor "designed" means good. The only thing that matters is if the map is good to play a round of ss13 on, and boxstation is not. Boxstation's maintenance does not lead to interesting gameplay, the atmos substation thing has not played any part in any round I've played or seen, and what's left is a bunch of corridors that loop into themselves awkwardly, chock full of obstacles like wooden barricades on top of girders, sometimes with a door on top (pro tip, if you break 4 of these girder+barricade things you can get a whole soap). The departments mostly do their job though some of them are much sparser than they need to, like botany or cargo, and this extra space doesn't translate into anything beyond "there is more tiles to drop items on."

If you get to pick between good maps and "a map that's kind of like meta except intentionally bad", what would you pick?

[Armhulen]

The one redeeming thing is that box has a lot less resources for the station to use roundstart. Other maps definitely spoonfeed everything you could want immediately. But that's something we should fix about other maps, removing random bits of roundstart loot. Either way we get icebox so I don't much see the problem with removing spacebox since either way we wouldn't ever settle with maintaining the exact same map doubled

[oranges]

I am getting sick and fucking tired of this tread in coderbus where they allow prs to ruin things then allow that ruined status to be an excuse to remove the thing rather then FUCKING REVERT THE PR THAT RUINED IT

This is pretty disingenuous and isn't how it goes at all, I get an enormous amount of bad press when I deny PR's that make "box" like meta, the general player view is that actually box should play just like meta and have the exact same available items as it, it's very hard to stop this trend, and I don't always manage to get to them in time. This doesn't even discount the changes that happened under other headcoders. The box defenders are never a majority on these changes, and so there is a slow creeping normalisation that I find very difficult to combat.

For you to come out and act like this is a thing that's happening on purpose is actually pretty scummy, and I'd appreciate if you apologised because I can only swim against the tide so much, so to be shit on for not swimming against it enough is really annoying. Especially in light of the fact that the only time I've actually ever seen you defend box against anything is right at this moment.

[Rohesie]

Box is my favorite lowpop map. And not only mine, since it's consistently the third choice among players after Meta (the all-time favorite) and Delta (the highpop map).

In comparison Pubby is another lowpop alternative chosen half as much, Donut is widely disliked and its mapper has publicly declared to have lost motivation in continuing maintaining it, and Kilo is disabled due to OoM issues, even if it's widely praised.

While other maps have these saturated environments and pinata maintenance, which is not necessarily a bad thing, Box offers the cleanest and simplest design while not feeling empty like Donut. It's a square center with a regular cross expanding outwards from each cardinal direction for central hallways and you can get to any department from them. It has a mazey maint, which is what maint is about. It's very easy on new players: arrivals is west, departures is east, security is north, engineering is south, bridge is at the center. Just travel the through the main hallways and you get anywhere.

None of the bugs or issues are game breaking. And with the exception of a single double-apc the rest are mostly subjective balance concerns that can be tweaked if people feel are very relevant, but ultimately are just quirks of the map.

We should be removing Donut (this one is not even controversial) and Pubby instead.

[BeeSting12]

I'm not sure why maintenance has to be easy to navigate. It's not a secondary hallway, it's a tunnel meant for engineers to use to maintain the station. This is also the third most popular map: why not remove the low pop stations such as Pubby and Donut instead and call Box the low pop station?