/tg/Station 13

From my own headmin candidate topics and chatter, I have noticed an increased number of wordless interactions that are brought forward by pointing. You point to door, you point to person and that was it, you wanted the door open to print things, probably. For things on Manuel, pointing is grab someone's attention and then say whatever you were meaning to say as of late, that isn't the case. Anyone that watches a mime, they only point and use :airlock: emoji from the PDA to ai, that sequence is missed opportunity for meaningful communication.

So I want to propose a crackdown on pointing emote of all things. Whether that answer is from code base of a cooldown on the spam or talks with folks to open more with their words. I want to see a world of less Reider interaction, who got QC'ed for that exact reasoning and well pointing has come back again. This has promoted a fast no interaction roleplay style that is on "low or medium" roleplay servers.

Thoughts towards the solution?

Pointing is extremely convenient, this isn't a MUD, if you don't type W to move left, you literally have to CRUSH the A key on your keyboard, which makes running dialogue "Hey can you stop for a mAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA" if you hit enter, or position your cursor all the way to the left if you're from the triassic period and use arrow keys.

Pointing is convenient 'cos you use your feet to talk.

Life is made of little concessions. A change in rules to open a precedent that says "you must strive to communicate verbally" followed by someone "being banned for pointing instead of being verbal" sounds like a meme.

Reider was QC banned for using his baton, not his index finger, to communicate.

I think this is better solved by cracking down on type baiting.

It's not the pointing. It's the *not talking.*

MatrixOne wrote: ↑Fri Apr 04, 2025 10:05 pm It's not the pointing. It's the *not talking.*

I think it's relevant to try and talk about that, and how to encourage it with the carrot rather than the stick.

Call me pessimistic but finding a scapegoat in pointing means people will just not bother either pointing or talking.

It's a tough one. I'm not sure we can effectively work against human nature. The nice thing about MRP and LRP is that it creates a clear divide.

The pointing type of player is interested in the mechanical, and wants to get the materials and do their stuff. They're playing a game.

The talking type of player is interested in getting something but also in the interaction. They want to be themselves immersed in a situation, and have a short interaction with someone as they're going about their shift.

We can't change these motivations. They're innate. If you try to shove the mechanical player into having to interact, they're not gonna have a good time, it'll be a chore, it'll be unfun. If you put me in a server where people ignore or run past me any time I try to chat them up, I'll feel like something is missing, it'll be unfun.

I like that we have two servers that encourage these separate play styles. It lets people choose what's fun for them. The problem comes when players have to go to a server that doesn't suit them because their preferred server is out of pop. Then, you run into these issues. Players are compromising. I don't blame them. They want to play the game.

My code-solution to this was to make pointing less accurate at longer ranges. You could point at something near you no problem, but pointing across the screen would be wildly inaccurate and could mean anything - just like real life.

So long range pointing would always need some sort of words to go with it and give the point context.

If someone asks me for something by pointing, I just say something like "Can I help you?" until they use their words. A code solution seems kind of clumsy to what is functionally a server culture issue. The mime example that you gave does sound really awful though, I feel like that's failRP by manuel standards.

Timberpoes wrote: ↑Sat Apr 05, 2025 1:01 am My code-solution to this was to make pointing less accurate at longer ranges. You could point at something near you no problem, but pointing across the screen would be wildly inaccurate and could mean anything - just like real life.

So long range pointing would always need some sort of words to go with it and give the point context.

As much as that might be kind of funny, I feel like a pointing cooldown is probably about as effective and less likely to cause headaches with players having to guess at what point their pointing distance becomes unusable. I don't think making a communication method less usable is a solution to people relying too much on it compared to other methods of communication. At that stage, what is even the point of having that communication tool in the first place?

That said, I do have a few concerns that it might be a tool valuable to people who are ESL, and making it worse could impact their ability to properly communicate. I think a lot of this is stuff that simply needs to be handled through IC interactions.

I also think someone just using a simpler, faster communication method is mostly not a huge deal. I have far bigger issues with people wordlessly engaging in more impactful behaviour like engaging in random violence and B&E without having typed a single word for a decent part of the round.

As a Terry gamer, this is a non-issue. We at the security officers' union already have a solution for non-verbal shitters. If any policy is introduced here, it should be MRP-only.

TBH i myself just fluoride stare people that communicate by pointing and tell them to speak, refusing to do anything until they do.

Adding a pointing cooldown would be a significantly unpopular PR to the extent that I would prefer Timber's "solution" purely because it would be funnier to see someone spraying *point arrows in a cone vaguely centered around their intended object

Jacquerel wrote: ↑Sat Apr 05, 2025 2:30 pm Adding a pointing cooldown would be a significantly unpopular PR to the extent that I would prefer Timber's "solution" purely because it would be funnier to see someone spraying *point arrows in a cone vaguely centered around their intended object

Yeah ship it this is funny

Inaccurate pointing won't help anything, it'll only cause fewer conversations because people stop to listen when you point at them because they know you want to get their attention. If you're inaccurately pointing at some random wall then they have no reason to stop. Trying to code a bandaid solution to human beings refusing to communicate to one another is not gonna work, it'll only make things more inconvenient.

If a cooldown is intolerable, I simply do not agree with any code change to worsen pointing as a communication method for the reasons I already mentioned. This should stay a policy issue. I very much do not think making parts of the game worse to combat low bar players is a sustainable solution.

Pointing is the fastest way to grab someones attention, which is relevant when the person you want to talk to could very well walk away before you finish typing. It would be very silly to punish people coming to the logical conclusion of using pointing whenever they feel it works better. Also its a creativity skill issue if you see it as disrupting RP because someone refusing to use their words and choosing to rudely point *is* an opportunity to roleplay.

PS. the only way to "fix" something like this is to have admins reward people for rp'ing in ways that they enjoy so other people can see it and follow suit. However, I know it is not feasible because admins will not even get on to vote during headmin elections

Are coders really going to patch out pointing silently at things because it makes gameplay too fluid?
Please spend your time doing literally anything else aside from violent crimes.

gas mask fov looking ahhh solution

edit: not to reiterate what has already been said by the plenty of people above, but "inaccurate pointing" is just dumb. a cooldown would be fine, as long as it isn't like a Two Second Cooldown. (something akin to the way tf2's voice line cooldown works, and perhaps a bit less stingy)

if the solution you're trying to solve here is "make people point less" then incentivizing people to have to spam a million points to point at what they want to actually point at seems like a really dumb angle. if you do the inaccurate pointing PLUS a cooldown, then people will not use it for what I think is the best case scenario: someone pointing at someone in the distance that's walking away to get their attention to talk and interact with them. wordless nrp apes will still be pointing at the general direction of The Insulated Gloves. they don't give a shit about your time

wordless nrp apes will be wordless nrp apes. can we not try to brainstorm shit ideas to make the experience for genuine roleplayers worse

dirk_mcblade wrote: ↑Sat Apr 05, 2025 7:55 pm Are coders really going to patch out pointing silently at things because it makes gameplay too fluid?
Please spend your time doing literally anything else aside from violent crimes.

no we were just talking about how that's a bad idea and stupid
but if people keep running around like wordless apes someone is going to make a PR eventually I'll need to close and if you keep doing it people will keep making them until i'm asleep for two weeks and someone else merges it
so it's probably in your best interests to figure out if there's any way to square that circle without code changes

If you notice a trend of someone just running around doing nothing but speaking in single words and pointing at things, I would consider that below our bare minimum for RP requirements and would ask you to ahelp it. Would need to be an active trend for us to do anything about it, but we've talked to people about it before. If you do this and are at least making it clear that you just play a kind of quiet dude then we can work it out.

Obviously this doesn't count for mimes.

imo this is a culture issue that players need to participate in solving. when people point at me i'm out there like "it's rude to point use your words you drooling chimpanzee"

admins can check players general participation when they see point spammers by opening their logs and filtering by say. if it's a 1.5 hour manuel round and they've said 5 things then it might warrant a "hey bro this is the RP server" not a note or a ban but just a gentle reminder that you should probably do more than spam point at the chemist and *needs milk

there are situations where pointing is very important because you can't stop and type and it would be a shame to lose this on the code side.

I was at a party last night and as we were saying goodbyes I point spammed at some gushers that someone brought because I haven't had gushers in an eternity and it worked out great because it didn't interrupt with active conversation while still getting me gushers.

It turns out gushers suck and I just forgot this.

I didn't make it 1.5 hours speaking less than 5 words, but the dude sitting across from me at the fire did.

I just don't know if this has a solution that's not policy related, and I feel like most of the policy already empowers us to handle it when it actually becomes a problem.

I don't really have that big of an issue with people pointing at things. It's when they do it and don't interact with anyone else in any other meaningful way that I think it drags down the experience for others.

dendydoom wrote: ↑Sun Apr 06, 2025 1:02 am "it's rude to point use your words you drooling chimpanzee"

I know you don't mean this literally, this ain't a dig at you and it might come hugboxy and pretentious on my end to say this (I just see it too often and when I do it hits me like a freight train), but if someone calls me a drooling chimpanzee they could be telling me to do the genuinely best thing ever I will just not do it out of spite.

Vekter wrote: ↑Mon Apr 07, 2025 5:06 am I don't really have that big of an issue with people pointing at things. It's when they do it and don't interact with anyone else in any other meaningful way that I think it drags down the experience for others.

This is really the crux of it. Using the stick rather than the carrot just makes people abandon the entire concept. In this case, the concept of communicating at all.

conrad wrote: ↑Mon Apr 07, 2025 10:20 am

dendydoom wrote: ↑Sun Apr 06, 2025 1:02 am "it's rude to point use your words you drooling chimpanzee"

I know you don't mean this literally, this ain't a dig at you and it might come hugboxy and pretentious on my end to say this (I just see it too often and when I do it hits me like a freight train), but if someone calls me a drooling chimpanzee they could be telling me to do the genuinely best thing ever I will just not do it out of spite.

i do mean it literally. i play a character with borderline nonexistent social skills who is non-chalantly rude to people regularly. this is to create funny/interesting rp interactions. the things i say aren't directed at the player and i would hope that your first response isn't to take it as such in the context of an rp game. if someone runs up to me and jabs their finger in my face and starts pointing at things without saying a word im going to treat them like a freak (which is funny because i am the freak this is called irony i am very smart)

conrad wrote: ↑Mon Apr 07, 2025 10:20 am
I know you don't mean this literally, this ain't a dig at you and it might come hugboxy and pretentious on my end to say this (I just see it too often and when I do it hits me like a freight train), but if someone calls me a drooling chimpanzee they could be telling me to do the genuinely best thing ever I will just not do it out of spite.

Yeah it makes me sick to my stomach to even think about that someone could say that.

dendydoom wrote: ↑Mon Apr 07, 2025 1:21 pm

conrad wrote: ↑Mon Apr 07, 2025 10:20 am

dendydoom wrote: ↑Sun Apr 06, 2025 1:02 am "it's rude to point use your words you drooling chimpanzee"

I know you don't mean this literally, this ain't a dig at you and it might come hugboxy and pretentious on my end to say this (I just see it too often and when I do it hits me like a freight train), but if someone calls me a drooling chimpanzee they could be telling me to do the genuinely best thing ever I will just not do it out of spite.

i do mean it literally. i play a character with borderline nonexistent social skills who is non-chalantly rude to people regularly. this is to create funny/interesting rp interactions. the things i say aren't directed at the player and i would hope that your first response isn't to take it as such in the context of an rp game. if someone runs up to me and jabs their finger in my face and starts pointing at things without saying a word im going to treat them like a freak (which is funny because i am the freak this is called irony i am very smart)

Oh right sorry, I thought of it in the context of talking to the player rather than talking to the character.

A bit off topic but IMO way too many people RP as a rude non-chalant antisocial character and I feel it's become unique and distinct to actually be nice.

conrad wrote: ↑Fri Apr 04, 2025 10:02 pm Pointing is extremely convenient, this isn't a MUD, if you don't type W to move left, you literally have to CRUSH the A key on your keyboard, which makes running dialogue "Hey can you stop for a mAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA" if you hit enter, or position your cursor all the way to the left if you're from the triassic period and use arrow keys.

sayou chose hotkeys and you live with the consequencessa

I think we could benefit from adding a bunch of rune/emoji type symbols that behave in a similar way to pointing. The miner headset had the right idea, just a... not-good implementation, ergonomically.

You don't need to talk to be an interesting character, even though Mime does have a tendency to attract the point-spamming gamer. Being able to bind one-word emotes to a variety of runes would add a lot.

conrad wrote: ↑Mon Apr 07, 2025 8:01 pm

dendydoom wrote: ↑Mon Apr 07, 2025 1:21 pm

conrad wrote: ↑Mon Apr 07, 2025 10:20 am

dendydoom wrote: ↑Sun Apr 06, 2025 1:02 am "it's rude to point use your words you drooling chimpanzee"

[snip]

[snop]

Oh right sorry, I thought of it in the context of talking to the player rather than talking to the character.

A bit off topic but IMO way too many people RP as a rude non-chalant antisocial character and I feel it's become unique and distinct to actually be nice.

Ive noticed this more, and it makes sense kind of since this is a hellzone of a station where people are just going to be mean, but I remember when everyone was nice and I was the rude asshole that got beat up every day for being rude. time to turn the tables again!

Also I get the pointing communication thing. I once tried to mime out me needing something because I couldnt speak, but players couldnt use their 8 braincells to understand that me turning a tap and placing something underneath said tap ment "get me a beaker of water" and it was faster to point at a beaker and the sink.

conrad wrote: ↑Mon Apr 07, 2025 8:01 pm

dendydoom wrote: ↑Mon Apr 07, 2025 1:21 pm

conrad wrote: ↑Mon Apr 07, 2025 10:20 am

dendydoom wrote: ↑Sun Apr 06, 2025 1:02 am "it's rude to point use your words you drooling chimpanzee"

I know you don't mean this literally, this ain't a dig at you and it might come hugboxy and pretentious on my end to say this (I just see it too often and when I do it hits me like a freight train), but if someone calls me a drooling chimpanzee they could be telling me to do the genuinely best thing ever I will just not do it out of spite.

i do mean it literally. i play a character with borderline nonexistent social skills who is non-chalantly rude to people regularly. this is to create funny/interesting rp interactions. the things i say aren't directed at the player and i would hope that your first response isn't to take it as such in the context of an rp game. if someone runs up to me and jabs their finger in my face and starts pointing at things without saying a word im going to treat them like a freak (which is funny because i am the freak this is called irony i am very smart)

Oh right sorry, I thought of it in the context of talking to the player rather than talking to the character.

A bit off topic but IMO way too many people RP as a rude non-chalant antisocial character and I feel it's become unique and distinct to actually be nice.

yeah no worries - no apology needed! if you thought i meant it in an ooc way, then yeah absolutely. i would think they're a dickhead as well and wouldn't want to listen...

I'm not even sure there's anything admins can do here.

Pointing is just the most optimal strategy for getting someone's attention about any topic of interest. It literally spawns a magical fucking imaginary red arrow above the exact thing you click on that goes from you to the thing.

Words cannot compete with that. It's literally overpowered. Codebase please nerf pointing and buff speech. Thankies.