ParadiseSS13
Excludes roundstart or unrespawnable observers from voting on crew transfer
What Does This PR Do
Excludes roundstart or unrespawnable observers from voting on crew transfer. This is an alternative to #29377
Why It's Good For The Game
Observers should have very limited effect on the round at most, and they shouldn't be able to hold crew hostage for 30 minutes.
Images of changes
Testing
- Ghosted in various ways and could only vote if I was just a dead player
Declaration
- [x] I confirm that I either do not require pre-approval for this PR, or I have obtained such approval and have included a screenshot to demonstrate this below.
Changelog
:cl: tweak: Excludes roundstart and unrespawnable observers from voting on crew transfer /:cl:
While I'd much prefer this over eradicating the ability to vote, I still take issue with this.
Roundstart observers are the same as any other observer. They chose to be a ghost, and doing this at the start of the round doesn't entail anything less than what anyone who dies gets to do. Nerfing roundstart observers is discouraging players who don't have the time to dedicate to an entire 2 hour round and would rather watch all the ss13 chaos at once on their own time, and what does the community gain from that? Not to mention there are roles that depend on roundstart observers. Namely holoparasites, wizard apprentices, and nukie reinforcements/borgs.
While I'd much prefer this over eradicating the ability to vote, I still take issue with this.
Roundstart observers are the same as any other observer. They chose to be a ghost, and doing this at the start of the round doesn't entail anything less than what anyone who dies gets to do. Nerfing roundstart observers is discouraging players who don't have the time to dedicate to an entire 2 hour round and would rather watch all the ss13 chaos at once on their own time, and what does the community gain from that? Not to mention there are roles that depend on roundstart observers. Namely holoparasites, wizard apprentices, and nukie reinforcements/borgs.
If you are any of those roles it doesn't affect you. This is only for ghosts. And if you are a roundstart ghost by the time the round end vote starts the only way you're going to play the round is if some biohazard just rolled as the round was about to end, which is exactly where the continue votes were causing the most issues.
If you are any of those roles it doesn't affect you. This is only for ghosts.
The main point is that roundstart observers are just as important and equal to the ghosts that died, and shouldn't have their vote revoked just for observing. Respawnability already defines whether or not someone should participate or affect the round, whether you suicide, ghost, or otherwise leave improperly, or if you decide to turn on antag hud after dying. Maybe consider expanding what disables someone's respawnability to make more cases where players shouldn't be able to participate and vote.
And if you are a roundstart ghost by the time the round end vote starts the only way you're going to play the round is if some biohazard just rolled as the round was about to end, which is exactly where the continue votes were causing the most issues.
But isn't that how it's meant to go? They're going to want to extend the round so that the biohazards get a chance. It's fun to watch, and even more fun to play. Rolling something as rare as xenomorphs and blob just for it to get shut down by shuttlecall after 2 minutes is not fun. As has been brought up multiple times, we should push back such major rolls to a time where they won't overlap with shuttle call.
But isn't that how it's meant to go? They're going to want to extend the round so that the biohazards get a chance. It's fun to watch, and even more fun to play. Rolling something as rare as xenomorphs and blob just for it to get shut down by shuttlecall after 2 minutes is not fun. As has been brought up multiple times, we should push back such major rolls to a time where they won't overlap with shuttle call.
It's not really rare, and I'd much, much, much rather the round just be over and not need to churn through Biohazard Round Extension #99999. I am entirely burnt out on Biohazards, they take fun rounds and make them terrible. I do not have fun watching people get rolled (whether that's the crew or the ghosts), and I do not have fun watching a stalemate back and forth when I just wanted the goddamn round to end, which are the only two ways late Biohazards can go.
If you are any of those roles it doesn't affect you. This is only for ghosts.
The main point is that roundstart observers are just as important and equal to the ghosts that died, and shouldn't have their vote revoked just for observing. Respawnability already defines whether or not someone should participate or affect the round, whether you suicide, ghost, or otherwise leave improperly, or if you decide to turn on antag hud after dying. Maybe consider expanding what disables someone's respawnability to make more cases where players shouldn't be able to participate and vote.
And if you are a roundstart ghost by the time the round end vote starts the only way you're going to play the round is if some biohazard just rolled as the round was about to end, which is exactly where the continue votes were causing the most issues.
But isn't that how it's meant to go? They're going to want to extend the round so that the biohazards get a chance. It's fun to watch, and even more fun to play. Rolling something as rare as xenomorphs and blob just for it to get shut down by shuttlecall after 2 minutes is not fun. As has been brought up multiple times, we should push back such major rolls to a time where they won't overlap with shuttle call.
It's true that both the timing and lack of resolution options for biohazards are issues. And they will be handled. If it was up to me biohazards would prevent the shuttle from leaving entirely and Dsquad would get automatically called if crew fails to nuke the station and run away. Alas other solutions would need tobe found.
Either way, observers shouldn't get to vote to hold players hostage for their amusement. The current situation with late rolling biohazards has highlighted it well. This is a game, not a stream, and the players come first.
As it is, voting for round extension very rarely happens. And when it does I think it's because a majority of the alive or dead crew want the round to continue.
I've never seen it succeed, but I'm guessing once in a blue moon observers conspire to vote extend just to torture the crew? Maybe because they think it's funny. I've seen them try a few times and fail. And that was a needle in a haystack occurrence.
If observers did swing a vote to extend a round where a station was utterly lost just to entertain themselves. At that stage it should be obvious to everyone including admins that Dsquad is the way to go. Maybe if there are no admins online this could be a problem. But at that point I don't think it's even entertaining for observers anymore. The show is over. Maybe they vote extend just to make others suffer?
I may be missing something because I don't have any stats. But is this actually a problem?
EDIT: I just got the context for this PR. The Nukies thing. And the idea seems to be to stop non-respawn ghosts from voting. So now I'm conflicted. I'm cool with the PR as a compromise of the original PR. But I'm still skeptical about whether this PR fixes a problem that exists.
As it is, voting for round extension very rarely happens. And when it does I think it's because a majority of the alive or dead crew want the round to continue.
I've never seen it succeed, but I'm guessing once in a blue moon observers conspire to vote extend just to torture the crew? Maybe because they think it's funny. I've seen them try a few times and fail. And that was a needle in a haystack occurrence.
If observers did swing a vote to extend a round where a station was utterly lost just to entertain themselves. At that stage it should be obvious to everyone including admins that Dsquad is the way to go. Maybe if there are no admins online this could be a problem. But at that point I don't think it's even entertaining for observers anymore. The show is over. Maybe they vote extend just to make others suffer?
I may be missing something because I don't have any stats. But is this actually a problem?
EDIT: I just got the context for this PR. The Nukies thing. And the idea seems to be to stop non-respawn ghosts from voting. So now I'm conflicted. I'm cool with the PR as a compromise of the original PR. But I'm still skeptical about whether this PR fixes a problem that exists.
It does feel like this is all based off one screenshot where a bunch of jokesters said "extend the round to torture them" unseriously when ingame that has almost never happened legitimately. I've seen a few PRs get opened over one negative instance, and the only time I saw one get fact checked for "i ded plz nerf" was with the xeno nest PR.
I prefer this solution over complete nuking.
Observers are players, yes, but if you chose not to participate in the round I don't think you should be the one to decide that crew has to fight xenomorphs/blob/whatever for an hour when they clearly don't want to and it just results in the station getting nuked and everyone dies? Just my thoughts on it.
If crew extend the round, they're opening up the fact that more major midrounds will roll, and will possibly have to deal with those, but they get to mess around more with the things they've already done this round. I like for that risk to be on the crew rather than on the ghosts seeing that there's a biohazard that just rolled and they want the crew to deal with it.
Biohazards can make a good round either fun/bad depending on how it goes, or it can make a bad round awful, from my experience.
This all feels like it was caused by that ONE round, where I, as explorer, made a xeno (some lockbox xeno hugger) and allowed it to grow into a chest burster as such the round continued 3 times (I think) as the xeno hive (which was not announced due to being NON round spawned) killed the station.
I don't think this PR solves the issue you mentioned.
Here are my thoughts:
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People definetly vote to extend the round during biohazards. That's very common. As a matter of fact that is probably one of the only occasions where people vote to continue the round.
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Who votes to continue the round? Probably mostly people who want to play as the biohazard or those who want to fight it.
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With 2. in mind... how would one stop that from happening? Not by removing the ability of roundstart observers and unrespwanable people from voting. Roundstart observers are a minorty. They do not have the numbers to swing a vote. Unrespwanable people usually want the round to end because they want to play again. The ones that do vote to continue are the people that cryo after a biohazard is announced or that died/cryod during the round and are now sticking around in the hopes of rolling a midround. Both of these people are not affected by this change so I don't see how this changes anything.
PS: I'd love to see data on how many ghosts vs people that are in the round vote to continue during these rounds because all of the "people playing the round are forced to continue by ghosts" arguments seem to be basad on personal feelings, not data.
This pull request seems to be stale as there have been no changes in 14 days, please make changes within 7 days or the PR will be closed. If you believe this is a mistake, please inform a development team member on Discord.
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Since the beginning of the year:
- there have been ~1,500 rounds
- there have been ~280 biohazard rolls
- out of ~1,500 rounds, only ~40, or ~3%, have been voted to continue
- nearly ~80% of continued rounds, ~30, are biohazard rounds, but that only makes up ~11% of all biohazard rounds since the beginning of the year
in other words:
- people do not vote to continue the vast majority of rounds
- people more often vote to continue if there's a biohazard, but they do so in a significant minority of biohazard rounds
my bet would be that the continued rounds by and large involve biohazards which spawn late, and observers just want the chance to spawn in or see how the major roll plays out. if there are people who are voting continue for biohazards just to antagonize or irritate the players in-round, i don't see this happening in large quantities or consistently, but it would be a mistake to ascribe motivations to people's votes just based on this data alone, and eliminating their voting power will not affect the course of the vast majority of rounds.
i think this problem would by and large eliminate itself if we fixed event timers. we shouldn't be surprised if people continue the round to see something play out that we've programmed to not proc until the round is almost over.
some caveats:
- multiple round votes are all stored in the same place and simply accumulate, so if a round vote happens more than once, we can't tell from the data what the majority was for any specific round vote
- it would take more effort than i'm willing to put into right now to correlate the time that a biohazard spawned with the map votes
- we do not store any info about a voter's state in-game, whether they're playing or observing etc., so we can't say if crew or observers are responsible for a winning vote
EDIT: this is also the kind of analysis i would like to see happening before a PR like this is proposed
This pull request seems to be stale as there have been no changes in 14 days, please make changes within 7 days or the PR will be closed. If you believe this is a mistake, please inform a development team member on Discord.