What the hell is tg stations design philosophy even?

[doom2hellonearth]

I'm seriously confused on what's even the mindset that maintainers have. They remove cloning, but keep useless fluff roles like the lawyer and just reply with "improve don't remove". Alot of the maintainers have straight up admitted they don't give a shit about what the community thinks and would prefer to go by "their vision" of a game they barely even play. So what's the point of adding major gameplay changes when the people who make and approve said changes don't play nearly as much as L̶o̶s̶e̶r̶s̶ the playerbase, in addition to the fact that it's clear that community feedback isn't their main focus?

[Armhulen]

[Armhulen]

now repeat that for every change you get mad at that ends up massively improving the game, i still get nightmares about old medbay

[doom2hellonearth]

Cloning could've been easily balanced out by having it just be researched kinda like how medbay stuff is now. This also implies that nanites don't make getting hurt inconsequential

[Qustinnus]

you weren't even here when cloning was here

[doom2hellonearth]

you weren't even here when cloning was here

as far as you know

[cybersaber101]

Isn't the new hip thing to complain about combat mode? or maybe tesla/singulo? Anyways TG is open source and doesn't have a sole focus with it's 100 open pr's at any given time state so asking about it's design philosophy is fruitless.

[Farquaar]

TG is open source and doesn't have a sole focus with it's 100 open pr's at any given time state so asking about it's design philosophy is fruitless.

I would actually disagree with you there. The maintainers are more than free to close any PRs that don't match with the direction they want the game to head towards.

It's a lot like evolution. Many mutations (PRs) come into existence, but only those that improve reproductive fitness (are compatible with the maintainers' vision) persist (get merged).

[Nabski]

I miss when chemical names actually related to real life medicines.

salbutamol is the shit they put in inhalers
Charcoal is a real medicine and Multiver is just some bullshit.
Libital is just bullshit to let people have a naming scheme!

I don't even disagree with the rest of the medbay changes, they add gameplay depth even if bone gel and stasis beds are silly.

Spoiler:

I absolutely miss mass injecting people with medicine overdoses on the old beds

[Farquaar]

I miss when chemical names actually related to real life medicines.

salbutamol is the shit they put in inhalers
Charcoal is a real medicine and Multiver is just some bullshit.
Libital is just bullshit to let people have a naming scheme!

Personally, I don't mind the standardization of chemical suffixes. It's just a couple suffixes that irk me, like "uri" and "ver". They sound like brand names, not names for chemical compounds.

[cacogen]

You would like it even less if it was centrally planned, so to speak. Who do you think would be doing that planning?

Reviving people and healing people are now such tedious processes doctors don't even want to deal with a drunk guy critting themselves repeatedly, or a rage cage, let alone a real emergency. The changes to medbay gave doctors more to do (although they don't always want to do it) but force everyone else to sit out for longer or simply not get back in.

Death used to be a lot more consequential than it is now, even with cloners. But the idea that the game benefits from most players sitting out is misinformed to begin with.

[oranges]

actual serpico moment

[Armhulen]

Cloning could've been easily balanced out by having it just be researched kinda like how medbay stuff is now. This also implies that nanites don't make getting hurt inconsequential

There is no way one button revive is good game design, and if you make it complicated you just get the revival process we have now anyways

[Mothblocks]

I'm seriously confused on what's even the mindset that maintainers have. They remove cloning, but keep useless fluff roles like the lawyer and just reply with "improve don't remove".

cloning is bad content, lawyer has no content. we can add more to the latter and make it fun, we can't design the former to be good.

Cloning could've been easily balanced out by having it just be researched kinda like how medbay stuff is now. This also implies that nanites don't make getting hurt inconsequential

you're naive, and don't know anything about the way medbay works right now to be fun. and no, it doesn't--nanites blow too.

So what's the point of adding major gameplay changes when the people who make and approve said changes don't play nearly as much as L̶o̶s̶e̶r̶s̶ the playerbase

the maintainers don't write code, they review it. most of our code comes from outside contributors.

and would prefer to go by "their vision" of a game they barely even play.

call me crazy but i think for the entirety of this month i and many others are going to be playing quite a bit more than you

[TheFinalPotato]

The codebase is adrift, the maintainers direct it, but we don't decide the exact direction it goes, that's up to the contributors as a whole.

As for why we make the decisions we do, that information is typically contained in the prs or design docs that kick things off. There's no central goal outside a nebulous "make the game/code better", with a focus on the long rather then short term, but we don't get selected for the job if our sense of design and such don't match with the rest of the group.

It's an opensource codebase with a hivemind directing it.

[Screemonster]

Cloning could've been easily balanced out by having it just be researched kinda like how medbay stuff is now. This also implies that nanites don't make getting hurt inconsequential

Cloning leads to doctors going "this person's injuries are too complicated for me to bother treating, just euthanise and clone them instead"

edit: and the fact that it existed meant it was impossible to even suggest improvements to the medical system that added any complexity at all because any suggestions were met with a wall of "if you make it anything more complex than braindead pushing a button on a sleeper then doctors will just kill and clone instead"

[cacogen]

There is no way one button revive is good game design, and if you make it complicated you just get the revival process we have now anyways

Hmm that seems like a false dichotomy to me

[doom2hellonearth]

Cloning could've been easily balanced out by having it just be researched kinda like how medbay stuff is now. This also implies that nanites don't make getting hurt inconsequential

There is no way one button revive is good game design, and if you make it complicated you just get the revival process we have now anyways

Someone's never played COD zombies

[doom2hellonearth]

I'm seriously confused on what's even the mindset that maintainers have. They remove cloning, but keep useless fluff roles like the lawyer and just reply with "improve don't remove".

cloning is bad content, lawyer has no content. we can add more to the latter and make it fun, we can't design the former to be good.

then why haven't you?

Cloning could've been easily balanced out by having it just be researched kinda like how medbay stuff is now. This also implies that nanites don't make getting hurt inconsequential

you're naive, and don't know anything about the way medbay works right now to be fun. and no, it doesn't--nanites blow too.

So then why'd they even get added? this just proves my point that TG's design Is a goddamn mess.

So what's the point of adding major gameplay changes when the people who make and approve said changes don't play nearly as much as L̶o̶s̶e̶r̶s̶ the playerbase

the maintainers don't write code, they review it. most of our code comes from outside contributors.

strawman moment

and would prefer to go by "their vision" of a game they barely even play.

call me crazy but i think for the entirety of this month i and many others are going to be playing quite a bit more than you

playing and observing the game are completely different things. This rebuttal doesn't do anything for your case aside from making you an asshole.

[Armhulen]

Cloning could've been easily balanced out by having it just be researched kinda like how medbay stuff is now. This also implies that nanites don't make getting hurt inconsequential

There is no way one button revive is good game design, and if you make it complicated you just get the revival process we have now anyways

Someone's never played COD zombies

not an argument sweetie

[doom2hellonearth]

Cloning could've been easily balanced out by having it just be researched kinda like how medbay stuff is now. This also implies that nanites don't make getting hurt inconsequential

There is no way one button revive is good game design, and if you make it complicated you just get the revival process we have now anyways

Someone's never played COD zombies

not an argument sweetie

You're right. It's an opening statement. Now boot up blacks ops and try to survive more than 3 rounds on 'five'. Then we can have this discussion

[Fikou]

he took serpico's bait

[Mothblocks]

then why haven't you?

for the same reason you haven't--it's not that important to me.

So then why'd they even get added? this just proves my point that TG's design Is a goddamn mess.

you underestimate just how old cloning was. it's extremely likely cloning existed before tg was even a thing. cloning, like a lot of our ancient features, was added because the person who made it thought it was cool. nowadays, scope as large as this is contained in design docs. nanites are a more recent example, and can be attributed simply to designers being fallible and not being able to get everything perfectly right.

So what's the point of adding major gameplay changes when the people who make and approve said changes don't play nearly as much as L̶o̶s̶e̶r̶s̶ the playerbase

the maintainers don't write code, they review it. most of our code comes from outside contributors.

strawman moment

how, the people who "make" the changes are often not the maintainers. writing code is not in our job description.

playing and observing the game are completely different things. This rebuttal doesn't do anything for your case aside from making you an asshole.

call me crazy but i don't think you're able to do either right now

[Mothblocks]

You're right. It's an opening statement. Now boot up blacks ops and try to survive more than 3 rounds on 'five'. Then we can have this discussion

me and arm just played cod zombies together to do this and it was very easy

[doom2hellonearth]

You're right. It's an opening statement. Now boot up blacks ops and try to survive more than 3 rounds on 'five'. Then we can have this discussion

me and arm just played cod zombies together to do this and it was very easy

pics or it didn't happen

[Mothblocks]

we're already done playing and now we're playing apex legends and we just won

[Armhulen]

CATCHING DUBS LIKE NO TOMORROW

[doom2hellonearth]

we're already done playing and now we're playing apex legends and we just won

This is mayro krat

[doom2hellonearth]

CATCHING DUBS LIKE NO TOMORROW

Cringehulen can't even use quick revive in zombies. Sad!

[wesoda25]

Not entirely relevant but this thread is just the umpteenth rehash of something people far more intelligent have asked in the past so I don't really care.

Roles like lawyer are great because they have no content. It's a roleplay role and entirely up to the lawyer to decide what they want to do with it.

[doom2hellonearth]

Not entirely relevant but this thread is just the umpteenth rehash of something people far more intelligent have asked in the past so I don't really care.

Roles like lawyer are great because they have no content. It's a roleplay role and entirely up to the lawyer to decide what they want to do with it.

Roleplay role on a lrp server. What an addition:^)

[imsxz]

hi ive long since stopped playing the game(unrelated to design changes) but im 99% sure, after a tiny bit of thought and consideration, absent of all bias or opinions, that Oranges just didn't like how "singleplayer" old ss13 felt. And trust me, as one of the larger singleplayer ss13 players, the game had a really fuckin big issue where 1 person could take over an ENTIRE round antag or not really easily. A lone security officer could solo wipe a cult in under 30 seconds with a few flashbangs, ONE stun baton, and a shotgun with slugs. Not an over-exaggeration or even a rare occurrence, just wait until Fred Best or Mike Murdock logged on. Might still be the case, I haven't played in a hot minute, I wouldn't know, but I know it definitely isn't as easy as it used to be.

A lot of the changes that Oranges pushed for and or approved made it much more difficult to take on the world. Medical used to be easy to the point where you could delete chem machines roundstart and only the chemists and a few CMO players would ever bat an eye. You could instantly heal 200 brute AND burn with 1 beaker, including on dead people, with no downsides. You could stuff your bloodstream full of healing chems that would leave you set for most of the round.

Don't even get me started on combat or the amount of backlash that there was for every damn change for it. Batons used to hard stun with 1 hit instantly, slipping used to hard stun you for like 5 seconds, and you could drag people that you stunned at full speed. On top of that, the most common antags had antistun abilities that made trying to 1v1 them without lethals pretty much hopeless. Not to mention stuff like the frying oil cannons, explosive spear throwing, old genetics, etc. A lot of that really broken garbage that every good player used had BACKLASH when it was removed. You people are fucking masochists honestly. It used to be SO fucking easy to just wipe a station.

As a rather experienced ss13 player, I feel like I am moderately qualified to say that most of the changes that got huge community backlash was from the ones that nerfed singleplayer gaming. Yes, including cloning, you won't convince me that it's a multi person thing, anyone(me) could hack 1 door into sci and upgrade it to autoscanning as soon as mining deposited 1 silver for the parts, where you could then PRESCAN YOURSELF and get cloned as soon as you die.

tl;dr oranges hates me

p.s. oranges for the sake of my ego let me know if i was right or not in my guess(or call me an idiot if you've already said that this is your design philosophy before)
p.s. idk why yall adminned fikou hes actually one of the dumbest motherfuckers ive ever met

[wesoda25]

Not entirely relevant but this thread is just the umpteenth rehash of something people far more intelligent have asked in the past so I don't really care.

Roles like lawyer are great because they have no content. It's a roleplay role and entirely up to the lawyer to decide what they want to do with it.

Roleplay role on a lrp server. What an addition:^)

this mentality is why you're banned btw

[Mothblocks]

Not entirely relevant but this thread is just the umpteenth rehash of something people far more intelligent have asked in the past so I don't really care.

Roles like lawyer are great because they have no content. It's a roleplay role and entirely up to the lawyer to decide what they want to do with it.

Roleplay role on a lrp server. What an addition:^)

lrp doesn't mean no rp

[wesoda25]

great post imsxz always got a good perspective

[Armhulen]

as one of the larger singleplayer ss13 players

what the fuck imagine playing a 50 player social deduction game for years all day and then posting "as one of the larger singleplayer ss13 players"

[imsxz]

as one of the larger singleplayer ss13 players

what the fuck imagine playing a 50 player social deduction game for years all day and then posting "as one of the larger singleplayer ss13 players"

i was the imposter roleplayer among you all also it was more like 100 players when i played sorry the games dying

[Armhulen]

as one of the larger singleplayer ss13 players

what the fuck imagine playing a 50 player social deduction game for years all day and then posting "as one of the larger singleplayer ss13 players"

i was the imposter roleplayer among you all also it was more like 100 players when i played sorry the games dying

deploy the graph

[imsxz]

there is clearly a negative slope in the past year or 2 the game will die if u dont get another sseth
edit: holy fk its so big!!!!!!

[cacogen]

A lot of the changes that Oranges pushed for and or approved made it much more difficult to take on the world. Medical used to be easy to the point where you could delete chem machines roundstart and only the chemists and a few CMO players would ever bat an eye. You could instantly heal 200 brute AND burn with 1 beaker, including on dead people, with no downsides. You could stuff your bloodstream full of healing chems that would leave you set for most of the round.

As a rather experienced ss13 player, I feel like I am moderately qualified to say that most of the changes that got huge community backlash was from the ones that nerfed singleplayer gaming. Yes, including cloning, you won't convince me that it's a multi person thing, anyone(me) could hack 1 door into sci and upgrade it to autoscanning as soon as mining deposited 1 silver for the parts, where you could then PRESCAN YOURSELF and get cloned as soon as you die.

I don't think anybody here is complaining about the removal of cloning because cheap strategies were nerfed. It would be fine if medbay weren't so slow and easily overwhelmed now.

[imsxz]

i started playing medbay right after cobbychem and it wasnt that bad unless the source of death was literally directly interfering with medbay or interfering with getting people to medbay. The main issue for me was always that interdepartmental cooperation generally became me breaking into places to cooperate interdepartmentally with myself due to urgency or incompetency(which was a lot). U can ask twaticus a lot of the rounds one/both of us would go afk because there was nothing to do lol

[Farquaar]

slipping used to hard stun you for like 5 seconds, and you could drag people that you stunned at full speed.

I still get PTSD flashbacks from this

[Omni]

>Read thread title
>"Yeah, that's a good question, it's complete clusterfuck"
>Enter the thread
>OP ranting about old medbay and cloning being better

[doom2hellonearth]

Not entirely relevant but this thread is just the umpteenth rehash of something people far more intelligent have asked in the past so I don't really care.

Roles like lawyer are great because they have no content. It's a roleplay role and entirely up to the lawyer to decide what they want to do with it.

Roleplay role on a lrp server. What an addition:^)

lrp doesn't mean no rp

If I wanted to roleplay TG would be the last place I go and I sincerely doubt that in the rate case you actually play the game instead of spectating you wouldn't be playing to roleplay either. Playing TG to roleplay is like using a biology book to masturbate. Nobody does it and anyone who does is looking in the wrong place

[Mothblocks]

i think it's the last place you'd go for another reason

[cacogen]

/tg/station teaches you the science behind roleplay

[Cobby]

Not sure why no one has mentioned this yet but we have design documents. For medical at least I have both high points and specific points that detail the design I want.

https://hackmd.io/@tgstation?tags=%5B%22Design%22%5D



Example is https://hackmd.io/@tgstation/BkNXSBfuI# ... Department

[Armhulen]

because were waiting on you to make it happen cobby you got this friend

[Mothblocks]

i mentioned the design docs

[Farquaar]

I vaguely alluded to what could be considered the design docs