they're in the walls peanut [reserved]

[iwishforducks]

Bottom post of the previous page:

waiting for the admin complaint to drop in the mean time please enjoy this picture of a possum



if you're so curious: https://discord.com/channels/3268221442 ... 4708694119

[Jacquerel]

thats true its a very nice possum I am sorry

[iwishforducks]

Thank you. I forgive you. Here's another picture of a possum.

[Agux909]

I never pay attention to threat levels. I love basking in ignorance and just going with the flow of whatever is thrown at the station without any prejudice of how the round might go. I pay so little attention to it, that I actually had to go to the wiki like, a couple days ago to superficially refresh what each star means. And I have already forgotten most of them. If I go Captain or acting, I will merely relay the star level to the crew as courtesy, while me myself, I'm mostly clueless of what it means. And I don't care.

I personally can't say I'd enjoy the game more by actually knowing what kind of potential combination of antags there might or might not be in a round.

All that being said, I do feel like making a complaint for an admin goofin on the buttons on a greenshift would be a bit silly. Good and bad events exist, leaving some concise and constructive feedback on the proper thread should suffice.

PD: your(?) possum is beautiful

[DATAxPUNGED]

you will never be able to convince me that greenshift announcements are a good thing. they aren't.

what kind of paranoia-laden roleplaying game starts its round with an announcement that there will be no paranoia today?

it sets unrealistic expectations that nothing should happen on both sides of the aisle: nothing should happen so i don't want to play vs nothing should happen so i better not see any excitement disturbing my bar rp.

don't tell the crew anything. if it's 45 minutes in and no antags, then you should relax but there should still be that "what if..." in the back of your mind. if that's gone completely then we're doing ourselves a disservice.

Very true let's remove alert announcements entirely; Except Midnight Sun (which i believe is the highest one?), the OH FUCK from that is lovely]

...Hm, actually, what if we kept all alerts EXCEPT greenshift. You know how alert levels can be sometimes one up or down than what it actually is, and even completely wrong sometimes? Make every greenshift be that

[Jacquerel]

Every single shift Nanotrasen confidenty announces that today there isnt going to be any problems

[EmpressMaia]

nothing ever happens

[dendydoom]

As captain I enjoy hiding the threat level from most of the crew because realistically only your security and 1-2 command staff should be aware of the danger, and everyone else should be on a need-to-know basis.

this is incredibly based and is more or less what i'm trying to get at. i am generally against people having large amounts of pre-set expectations about what a round "should be" because in many little ways it encourages the development of a codified set of expectations around easily definable situations ("oh it's z threat level, command must do x and y or else they're bad command!")

i'm of the belief that this game is at its best when people engage with situations emergently as they arise and don't just defer to rote behaviour born out of a culture of pre-set expectations around mechanics.

the way the game enforces its own internal consistency in lieu of a gamemaster (as you'd find in other ttrpgs) is in our heavily simulationist approach. many items and roles do not exist because they tie into some gameplay loop, they exist because they have a necessary function within that simulated reality. players' ability to engage and manipulate things within that space are levelled out and made ripe for experimentation because players start from the same position every time and nothing impactful carries over that could restrict players' choices (rounds reset, every player has a chance to obtain any job every round). to me it's important that we use this as a strength to encourage new, unexpected ways to use the space rather than enforcing pre-defined paradigms around an expected culture of behaviour.

of course, the trade-off here is that you must take the risk of having your expectations not met and your time wasted. i think it's out of our sense of shared values around fair play and good faith that we can recognize when someone is misusing the space in a malicious way to deprive others of what should be a regular experience. beyond that, it's almost a case of this being the nature of pick up games in general. if you wanted a much more curated and stricter space with more pre-determined expectations around behaviour and procedure, then my only real input around this would be to set up a smaller, more curated session with hand picked players. then you could just play it like a ttrpg.

tl;dr: for the way our game is set up, unpredictability is beneficial as it forces players to engage dynamically and creatively, avoiding rote, pre-defined actions that maximize efficiency.

[iwishforducks]

Without expectations there is nothing to subvert in the first place.

Without expectations is to be without context. Without context there is no reason to care. That's a hyperbolic statement, of course. Yes, breaking expectations gives way for good memorable moments. But if you want to live in a world where there's simply no expectations of command... Then why care about command at all? I would very much expect command to host social events when it's a greenshift, and for the players to participate. And I would expect command to really get their shit together when a black orbit announcement drops, and for the players to get into survival mode. It was very memorable seeing people running around like chickens when black orbit announcements actually meant something. (Though honestly half of the blame is on modern dynamic these days...)

If for some reason the game can just drop 10 traitors without much of a notice, then it would be pretty fucking emotionally draining after dealing with the 7th traitor only for another one to be called in. It's just so much more bearable when I know a round is just going to drop a shit ton of antags at me. If I, a sec officer, hears a black orbit announcement and go into full self-preservation mode of just making sure the brig and command stands- fuck the rest of the station, I'm looking out for number one- is that not for a much more intriguing story? Okay, well, what if the game did tell me it was black orbit... And it just never spawned a single antagonist. Why would I care about what the game says anymore at that point? Why would I not just apathetically sit around until something happens?

There's genuinely so much agency that goes into what you decide to do when that announcement drops. I mean lolswat is indeed "Based" for what they do as captain. I can also respect captains that simply don't announce the threat level as a conscious decision. And if someone's response is to literally alt-f4 when the greenshift announcement drops? Then that's fine. Sometimes the round just isn't for you. If people end up alt-f4ing too much about something then maybe it's time to reconsider that in our code.

► Show Spoiler

this is besides the point, but I do feel like I need to state that it really is fucking awful when greenshifts were announced back-to-back. God that was awful. Everyone hated it. I hated it. I can understand the hate for announced greenshifts because of that, but I feel like announced greenshifts truly are fun in moderation. They give a lot of opportunity for hosting events that would otherwise just take too much effort in the presence of game-sanctioned griefers.

Anyhow, at first this was going to be a direct response to dendy, but I'm gonna be real honest I can't parse a stance from you (as per usual. sorry this is mean but I gotta get that off my chest... i HATE your essays...). Are you saying that reports being unpredictable is a good thing? Like I can vaguely agree that unpredictability is good, but without any kind of opinionated stance it's just a blank statement. What do you mean by "i think it's out of our sense of shared values around fair play and good faith that we can recognize when someone is misusing the space in a malicious way to deprive others of what should be a regular experience"? Like is this generally just about griefers? I simply just do not understand.

I mean, I guess I agree with the whole tid-bit about expectations and going and setting up your own group? (lol like 20 different google docs of rules moment on skyrat lol)
But is this even directed at anyone here??? Who ARE you saying this to? Why was this included????? Like what??????? I DON'T UNDERSTAND YOUR ESSAYS DENDY

[dendydoom]

sorry if my post was confusing. it was not some announcement that i'm seeking changes to command or threat reports or anything like that. if i did, it wouldn't be in some derailed peanut thread.

i was just thinking out loud about the nature of the sandbox and what behaviours are beneficial to it and how those behaviours are encouraged.

when there are set expectations around procedure, then those expectations become oocly enforced through the culture of the game. if a captain were to refuse to announce the high threat level, then there might be players that OOCly want admins to intervene in that because they consider those procedures so ingrained into the fabric of the game that diverting from them is the same as breaking the rules.

my argument is that when there are regular opportunities for people to act without precedent, they will be more focused on playing their character naturally responding to whatever is happening rather than keeping in line with OOC expectations of procedure around certain events and situations.

to some extent, command and threat reports play into this, but this was just an example that was conveniently to hand.

Like is this generally just about griefers? I simply just do not understand.

this was was just to recognize that sometimes i must rule against behaviour which supports the very thing i'm representing in this thread. sometimes behaviour which follows the internal consistent logic of our game world and its characters is so disruptive to the ooc enjoyment of players that we have to choose to put a stop to it.

[Timonk]

necro