Clockwork Cult (now off of rotation, suggestions go in this thread)

Tue Mar 20, 2018 7:10 pm

Bottom post of the previous page:

last time there was a round when the clocks converted the entire crew except for 3 people and waited 10 minutes through the headache inducing finale, i put up a vote asking if anybody would mind if i just hard ended the round next time that kind of thing happened and it was overwhelmingly in favor it

needs to be fixed

Xhuis · Post by **Xhuis** » Tue Mar 20, 2018 7:11 pm #392742

With all due respect, did you even read what I posted in even a minimal amount?

Tue Mar 20, 2018 7:14 pm

Xhuis wrote:With all due respect, did you even read what I posted in even a minimal amount?

i know youre tired of it so it wasnt necessarily directed at you. if anybody could touch up the finale and maybe make the time scale i would be happy with it. i am giving feedback on the mode itself not on you, sorry if it comes off that way

Oldman Robustin · Wed Mar 21, 2018 5:00 am

We just entered a freeze so its pointless to discuss now anyway.

Xhuis wrote:As I've said elsewhere, my inspiration for cc has been dried up for quite a while. I've been pretending I could still hop in it whenever I wanted, but I honestly immediately lose motivation whenever I code for it, and have since just after Eminence came out. Coding gamemodes is boring as shit and completely thankless. Not only that, but when it comes to balance, I've always been weak, and similarly dry on ideas. I still think CC's fun and in a playable spot, which is why I've allowed myself to do other things that I enjoy in the meantime, but were the admins to make it admin-only ala devil with how controversial it is right now, I wouldn't whine about it. I'm okay either way, though I still don't want to see it gone completely from code without a legitimate reason.

In short, yes, I know it's got problems. I shit on people who act like children about them, but as people have rightfully pointed out, there are legitimate issues with the mode, and I've never tried to hide that. And while I'd love to fix them and make it more fun, I'm dry on motivation, ideas, and reasons to work on it. It's either I try to fix it and have people scream at me for not doing it perfectly, or I stay out and have them grumble about it plus be able to do things I enjoy. It's an obvious choice! I don't think I should ever have picked cc back up - I think it's better off now than it was when I revamped it, but the tremendous baggage and large target on your chest that comes with maintaining a gamemode is frankly something I don't think I have the maturity to handle long term. I'm way happier working on small projects and additions, especially as I stray away from coding and ss13 as a whole.

I can definitely relate to you on that. I know I gave you a hard time (you were also pretty defensive about anyone else touching anything) but its because I desperately wanted to see you stick it through and make the necessary changes to keep the mode alive. Since I started playing here in 2012 we've had 0 new mode survive in the long run. I didn't create blood cult, but bringing it back was a goddamn herculean task and even two years later it's still such a huge headache. I think there's a nasty cycle when people only make an effort to lobby about a mode when its got a coder working on it, so the people who make the questionable decision to create a mode will get absolutely dumped on. If Revolution didn't exist and someone coded it up tomorrow, I sincerely doubt it would ever get close to merging but now people barely even bother to discuss it - outside of OOC bitching when we get another 5m round - because they know that nobody is listening. If you experience bad gameplay with Clock Cult and bad gameplay with Wizard, do you visit the customer service desk with a coder working hard to appease everyone or do you visit the desk that's been empty for years and just consists of a room with a dildo tied to a ceiling fan spinning around at face-level?

Best of luck - I wish you'd stick around and keep at it but you're probably making a much saner decision.

Kel-the-Oblivious · Wed Mar 21, 2018 5:05 am

Despite all its flaws, I have enjoyed Clock Cult quite thoroughly, both as the cultists and as the crew. Yes, there have been a few boring rounds, where one side crushed the other overwhelmingly, but it can be said the same for every round, there are always great rounds and terrible rounds. I am sorry to hear you have gotten burnt out, and I wish you the best in whatever you decide to work on in the future.

Xhuis · Post by **Xhuis** » Wed Mar 21, 2018 6:11 am #392985

Honestly, I don't even think it's burnout on SS13 in general. I haven't just up and left the community, and I haven't stopped active work on cc due to being jaded or unhappy. I've just kinda lost motivation to work on the same thing so much. If I were burnt out in general, I wouldn't have made a massive addition in the form of traits. CC just saps my creative energies since the initial phase of "let's see how this mode can be" has worn off and it's now a slog of balancing and sifting the good complaints from an endless sea of bad ones. I just enjoy other things more nowadays.

Grazyn · Post by **Grazyn** » Wed Mar 21, 2018 7:22 am #392993

I saw a server poll about clocks last week, how did it end?

factoryman942 · Wed Mar 21, 2018 9:00 pm

https://atlantaned.space/statbus/poll.php?id=191

not ended yet but statbus says it's 50/50 roughly

Post by **Armhulen** » Wed Mar 21, 2018 9:17 pm #393121

factoryman942 wrote:https://atlantaned.space/statbus/poll.php?id=191

not ended yet but statbus says it's 50/50 roughly

That's not that bad all things considered

ShadowDimentio · Wed Mar 21, 2018 10:10 pm

Armhulen wrote:
factoryman942 wrote:https://atlantaned.space/statbus/poll.php?id=191

not ended yet but statbus says it's 50/50 roughly
That's not that bad all things considered

On one hand, it means half the voters hate the mode. On the other, people are retarded about modes and love or hate them pretty much at random.

factoryman942 · Wed Mar 21, 2018 10:10 pm

well 50/50 isn't necessarily good unless we have similar results for other gamemodes
we've had some rank-in-order-of-preference polls before, but would you be able to make a multi-choice poll as a sort of "select all the gamemodes you enjoy" or something?

Post by **Armhulen** » Thu Mar 22, 2018 5:03 pm #393362

I'll make a poll for traitor, a fairly liked mode, and see the results

I'll also do changeling, a fairly disliked mode, and see the results

then we can compare this to what clockcult got

Post by **Armhulen** » Thu Mar 22, 2018 5:04 pm #393363

And I am really happy with just putting yes or no instead of yeah i kind of like it but...

gives me some numbers i can understand

Oldman Robustin · Thu Mar 22, 2018 6:33 pm

Armhulen wrote:I'll make a poll for traitor, a fairly liked mode, and see the results

I'll also do changeling, a fairly disliked mode, and see the results

then we can compare this to what clockcult got

Please do it for every mode so we can get a sense of where things stand. It doesn't have to be all at once but we're so starved for basic feedback data its ridiculous.

We've only tried to get general mode feedback once before but the methodology was atrocious and made the results all but useless. I think your simple approach of Yes/No to enjoying it will give us a useful baseline for seeing which modes need attention.

DemonFiren · Post by **DemonFiren** » Thu Mar 22, 2018 6:35 pm #393384

so why not do the preference voting thing for all modes as has been said before

EagleWiz · Post by **EagleWiz** » Thu Mar 22, 2018 6:50 pm #393390

DemonFiren wrote:so why not do the preference voting thing for all modes as has been said before

Yes/No is less effort, is idiotproof, and the preference voting doesn't tell you which modes people want gone.

ShadowDimentio · Thu Mar 22, 2018 7:07 pm

DemonFiren wrote:so why not do the preference voting thing for all modes as has been said before

Because it tells us the most liked/disliked mode, not how many people enjoy them. I might enjoy cult more than ops, but that doesn't mean I want ops gone.

DemonFiren · Post by **DemonFiren** » Thu Mar 22, 2018 7:32 pm #393406

ShadowDimentio wrote:
DemonFiren wrote:so why not do the preference voting thing for all modes as has been said before
Because it tells us the most liked/disliked mode, not how many people enjoy them. I might enjoy cult more than ops, but that doesn't mean I want ops gone.

uh
i get the feeling you don't know how this kind of vote works but my fever is preventing me from coming up with a good explanation
check back next week

Bluespace · Post by **Bluespace** » Thu Mar 22, 2018 7:59 pm #393412

cut the time before invasion by half
war should be auto-declared
remove the whole golem thing

congrats u fixed it

factoryman942 · Fri Mar 23, 2018 3:57 pm

171 yes / 178 no is final poll result
49% yes

onleavedontatme · Fri Mar 23, 2018 4:03 pm

factoryman942 wrote:171 yes / 178 no is final poll result
49% yes

I should make a collage of these 50/50 vote results to post whenever people complain coders dont listen to feedback

DemonFiren · Post by **DemonFiren** » Fri Mar 23, 2018 4:07 pm #393677

they only listen to feedback when it suits them obv

Stickymayhem · Fri Mar 23, 2018 4:53 pm

factoryman942 wrote:171 yes / 178 no is final poll result
49% yes

So 51% absolutely fucking hate clock cult and it's ruining ss13 for them and 49% can just about tolerate it.

factoryman942 · Fri Mar 23, 2018 5:01 pm

no, sticky
the poll is "do you enjoy clock cult", not "do you not completely hate clock cult".
for all we know, the 49% absolutely adore the gamemode, and most of the 51% are simply apathetic towards it. We don't really have a "baseline enjoyment" statistic for these.

DemonFiren · Post by **DemonFiren** » Fri Mar 23, 2018 5:47 pm #393711

another reason preference lists are preferrable

Dr_bee · Post by **Dr_bee** » Fri Mar 23, 2018 7:01 pm #393731

The game mode is saveable. The concept of fighting guerillas while preparing to raid a base is an interesting and unique idea for a game mode. Right now it is just muddled from its roots as a blood cult clone.

Hopefully someone will take over for Xhuis as I think the mode can be great if a little extra work is put into it to remove conversion and keep it balanced.

In the mean time it probably should be made admin-only until someone tries to fix the mass conversion issue.

Dr_bee · Post by **Dr_bee** » Fri Mar 23, 2018 7:03 pm #393734

DemonFiren wrote:another reason preference lists are preferrable

Use a Likert scale. it helps you understand exactly the level of enjoyment or hate people are getting. Just dont add a "undecided" option, as that is a cop out choice that leads to piss poor data.

Xhuis · Post by **Xhuis** » Fri Mar 23, 2018 7:51 pm #393750

Likert scale sounds good to me, especially because with a roughly 50/50 result like now people from either side are going to be arguing that the other side isn't in significant enough of a majority/minority to warrant its removal. As stated before, admin-only due to its controversy if the polls are fairly negative sounds fine to me. I'd still like to make it more fun myself, but everything I've tried has failed, so I feel like I'm out of options at this point. I can come up with ideas, but they're sapping to work on and if they fail it's just more wasted effort.

Stickymayhem · Wed Oct 13, 2021 6:17 pm

factoryman942 wrote:no, sticky
the poll is "do you enjoy clock cult", not "do you not completely hate clock cult".
for all we know, the 49% absolutely adore the gamemode, and most of the 51% are simply apathetic towards it. We don't really have a "baseline enjoyment" statistic for these.

yes that is the joke I was making

Post by **Armhulen** » Sat Mar 24, 2018 1:20 am #393842

ShadowDimentio wrote:
DemonFiren wrote:so why not do the preference voting thing for all modes as has been said before
Because it tells us the most liked/disliked mode, not how many people enjoy them. I might enjoy cult more than ops, but that doesn't mean I want ops gone.

omg dude

Xhuis · Post by **Xhuis** » Sat Mar 24, 2018 2:47 am #393870

Yakumo_Chen · Post by **Yakumo_Chen** » Wed Mar 28, 2018 7:16 am #394918

Clock Cult continues to be the most boring mode for AI, getting an entire ~10 minute span at the end where I get to do nothing but watch people jump in portals and only maybe come out.

Oldman Robustin · Thu Mar 29, 2018 12:10 am

Likert Scale or Yes/No

But for the love of god lets get some polls going for all the modes so we can get some real data in here.

Even 50/50 doesn't say much until we see other polls with the same parameters.

Between that and Statbus being offline/broken I feel like we're only regressing in terms of our ability to make informed decisions.

LifeReign · Post by **LifeReign** » Thu Mar 29, 2018 7:30 pm #395503

To be honest, clock cult was seriously flawed from the very start. It was supposed to be a defense-orientated conversion antag, which is just silly when you think about it. Conversion works best with aggressively grabbing converts to steamroll security under the sheer weight of the tide. Meanwhile static defenses are extremely easy to destroy in SS13, unless you cripple all explosive/mech/BoH construction capability, which again is an aggressive tactic. Moving the Ark off-station was supposed to give the clocks time to construct defenses, but we all know what happens instead.

Maybe it would've been best to have clock cultists spawn on station as normal crew, but have the opportunity to permanently abscond to Reebe to construct defenses.

Xhuis · Post by **Xhuis** » Thu Mar 29, 2018 7:33 pm #395505

I don't see any inherent flaws in the design, the concept just can't work with tg and I probably should've let joancult eventually get removed instead of making it fun again for a month or so

Shadowflame909 · Fri Mar 30, 2018 1:03 am

I guess you just need some sort of player gate. Xhuis, make something that'll prevent either side from getting too strong. So we can have a fair war.

Dr_bee · Post by **Dr_bee** » Fri Mar 30, 2018 1:56 am #395608

Shadowflame909 wrote:I guess you just need some sort of player gate. Xhuis, make something that'll prevent either side from getting too strong. So we can have a fair war.

Like just starting with a certain amount of cultists with an ability to respawn with an energy cost?

the thing that Ive been suggesting for weeks.

Remove the kidnapping aspect from clock cult and you have 40 minutes of stealthy sabotage and stealing then a big fight with the crew having a numbers advantage and the cult having the defenses.

the focus was put too much on keeping conversion. ditch that and the mode can become its own thing with the focus being on the building and defense.

Shadowflame909 · Fri Mar 30, 2018 4:24 am

Yeah, what if clock cult wasn't a conversion mode? But instead, the opposite. It'd actually bring more into the ratvar versus nar'sie perspective.

DemonFiren · Post by **DemonFiren** » Fri Mar 30, 2018 9:57 am #395672

what's the opposite of a conversion mode?
a mode where the cult is stronger the more non-cultists are alive?

Not-Dorsidarf · Sun Jul 30, 2023 1:33 am

DemonFiren wrote:what's the opposite of a conversion mode?
a mode where the cult is stronger the more non-cultists are alive?

thats actually pretty interesting, gives the antags more reason to not go on a slaughtering spree and means that if they do, the actions of the last few crew have more impact

DemonFiren · Post by **DemonFiren** » Fri Mar 30, 2018 10:41 am #395679

let cuck cult tag crew as living batteries for ratvar energy or some shit
if these crew die the cult loses juice
then make power matter if it still doesn't

or do something else I don't know

Grazyn · Post by **Grazyn** » Fri Mar 30, 2018 11:23 am #395685

Or just let cock cult day like it should have years ago

Bombadil · Post by **Bombadil** » Mon Apr 02, 2018 7:53 pm #396594

Saw an incredible setup by clock cultists they made the portal room into an instant kill chamber using 4 watchers as you couldn't break into the place fast enough to not get killed. Balanced

Xeroxemnas · Post by **Xeroxemnas** » Mon Apr 02, 2018 8:33 pm #396615

Main problem with clockwork cult is that, similar to the current blood cult, a robust group of roundstart cultists is literally impossible to stop and they convert people way too easily. Blood cult is frankly even more OP in the sense that they turn implanted people into constructs so even implants wont save you from them. Conversion antags in general tend to be the most OP for obvious reasons and unless you powergame roundstart to stop them you are utterly screwed.

Xhuis · Post by **Xhuis** » Mon Apr 02, 2018 8:40 pm #396620

since my words are for the most part falling on deaf ears and the freeze prevents me from doing it myself, could I formally request one of the headmins to cut this from the rotation until either a. I have the motivation to work on it again or b. someone else picks up the mantle? I still maintain that the mode is feasible and worth salvaging but I'm sick of and fed up with all the shit people dump on me for the crime of existing and with an admin now losing his position because he was too childish not to restrain himself to blow up a round he didn't like I don't want to be associated with the cause of it for any longer.

BeeSting12 · Post by **BeeSting12** » Mon Apr 02, 2018 9:17 pm #396649

say what you want about me but im not childish. everyone was thankful for the rounds ending

Xhuis · Post by **Xhuis** » Mon Apr 02, 2018 9:28 pm #396659

BeeSting12 wrote:say what you want about me but im not childish

given your demeanor, uncaringness, and willingness to sacrifice months of working to be an admin just to end a single round, I respectfully disagree

Xeroxemnas · Post by **Xeroxemnas** » Mon Apr 02, 2018 9:41 pm #396666

>Did it for 20 dollars that he didn't even get.

How cucked can one man be?

D&B · Post by **D&B** » Mon Apr 02, 2018 9:47 pm #396668

Why keep it in when you can't stand working on it and nobody wants to touch this thrash heap almost half the player base and some don't enjoy?

BeeSting12 · Post by **BeeSting12** » Mon Apr 02, 2018 9:50 pm #396671

Xeroxemnas wrote:>Did it for 20 dollars that he didn't even get.

How cucked can one man be?

I turned it down. It's my duty to benefit the playerbase and I fulfilled it by saving them from forty minutes of boredom

Grazyn · Post by **Grazyn** » Mon Apr 02, 2018 9:57 pm #396674

BeeSting12 wrote:
Xeroxemnas wrote:>Did it for 20 dollars that he didn't even get.

How cucked can one man be?
I turned it down. It's my duty to benefit the playerbase and I fulfilled it by saving them from forty minutes of boredom

Apparently, you saved them much more than that, since your gesture ultimately lead to xhuis himself asking for the mode to be taken out of rotation