not gonna lie we should definitely merge CAAs (i am not biased)
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I’m mostly trying to help other people be aware of the changes, I don’t think putting the GitHub stuff in the bottom of the channel list on discord is transparent enough (should honestly replace the player pr input channel so people see every pr instead of selective ones). I’m doing this here because I want it to gain some traction and try to encourage more players to give input. Maybe people will check out other PR’s I haven’t mentioned or finally make a GitHub account and give feedback. Admittedly, probably not the best choice to include my rant about the silver slime gutting into this thread but I just want to try to give more avenues to see stuff about PR’s and that PR has been on my mind.
It’s just a bit frustrating seeing someone make a PR that overexatrates a issue, object all criticism or input without giving a different/better reason, and then it gets approved anyway.
I am aware of the irony of complaining about #pr-player-input selectively choosing PR’s, while my 5 day updates will be selectively choosing PR’s to post links to and discuss about. I don’t have much a defense to that beside that I will be trying to show more stuff that impacts gameplay.
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I honestly don’t want to respond to this to try to prevent most of the talk of this thread becoming about that particular PR, but I’ll answer it anyway as a swan song. I thought that other coders/maintainers/contributors needed to have some kind of comment/approval of the change instead of leaving a gameplay decision to just one person. Like senior/headmins have had to get together before for rulings about the server, but shouldn’t there be at least some talk within a pull by other contributors approving/not approving of changes to gameplay itself?
It’s kind of discouraging to see, just seems like anyone who is able to code and has the contributor/maintainer roll is able to make about any changes they want and not even require approval from their fellow contributors/maintainers. When players get upset, the only answer they get is:
and nothing is actually resolved, the cycle repeats and things begin to sour. They just need their code approved and changes are made with no questions and little fanfare, and even the #PR-player-input channel on discord is ultimately meaningless. Which is why I hope that this thread doesn’t get locked down or anything because I at least want to give it a try for a few months to have players give more input on github, in the sight of contributors and not get buried in discord, and maybe change the current climate and have contributors take input more seriously and be more open to input instead of shutting down all criticism and making changes just because they can.
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If you are against this topic then you are the problem.
Yes most people don’t follow on what’s going on over the code side of things. Amazing, isn’t it? Shocking even!
We just get notified sometimes in the lobby screen when joining the game or sometimes in the pr player input channel on discord where voting means nothing.
Most of these changes are too sudden and it is too late to voice an opinion.
Did you notice how much negative responses coders get when they post about their PR on the forums instead of stealthily implementing it like they always do?
There’s a problem here and I’m just pointing my finger at it for you to finally notice
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It’s nobodies problem but their own if they can’t be bothered to check up on a public repository every once in a while.
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Okay, maybe we shouldn’t make umbrella statements like this and keep this discussion civil.
In all fairness, I do believe we could do something better than /tg/ in that the up voting and down voting feature exists. It is a good gauge on whether a code change should just be another improvement or deserve more scrutiny. For example, the Yellow Slime core nerf received five thumbs down to three thumbs up, meaning out of the the eight people who bothered to read the PR, and have access, 62% of them do not approve a merge (including myself):
I do agree with a bunch of the PR’s listed above, Gateway, Law Uploading Changes, Achievements, but PR’s that have a decent or majority negative opinion should probably be 100% voted in #pr-player-input.
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Write code yourself if it bothers you that much. Generally there’s an agreement that some things while unpopular are terrible for the game.
If developing for Bee was a popularity contest like you suggest it would be far far worse than it is now.
Or read the change log that shows up in game. Or the automated discord channel, or any of the development channels.
Okay c*ders
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Not a democracy :^)
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most people who see a pr they like will go “Huh neat” and then go on their way
mosy people who see a pr they even slightly dislike will do a thumbs down
People really only do 
if it’s a PR they REALLY like so you can’t really count those
I mirror this 100%
If you want your voice heard go post on the PRs in question with detailed concerns and criticisms. Everyone needs to understand nerfs are going to happen sometimes though, especially to Xenobio right now.
If you just post “no, bad” it does nothing.
If you post some potentially unintended side effects they’re likely to be fixed right away or even potentially shut a PR down.
Example:
- I made blood slippery because everyone unreasonably ignores the station being painted red and walks through it like it’s normal.
- It was pointed out that this will utterly fuck miners in a nonsensical way.
- Making no-slip boots widely available to miners was a no-go
- PR closed
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[quote=“DatBoiTim, post:32, topic:18032”]
Write code yourself if it bothers you that much. Generally there’s an agreement that some things while unpopular are terrible for the game.
I would if:
- I knew how to
- If I had the time to learn
I rather be fully hands on with this but at this point unless I went back in time to learn code I can’t do jack shit. Closest I am able to do to code is putting up code bounties, but I hardly know how that works/decent prices to put up. And I doubt that it would be allowed or taken if for example, I made a bounty for reversing part of the silver slime PR to just spawn one item, and just remove gatfruit and roboburgers from the pool of things that can spawn. Even then I doubt that is allowed because then people would just try to drop massive bounties on any change done, good or bad.
I personally am starting to do that and just want to encourage more to do so. At this point I just want feedback if to just abandon this thread, and start completely over to refocus on my goal: Getting more people to give active feedback into PR’s and at least having some kind of knowledge that it’s worth it to leave feedback in the first place. Because you can give me all the advice about:
but that entirely relies on a coder actually caring about that feedback, nothing was was actually answered within the silver slime PR and only one comment was made by Zesko.
I just want to feel like comments count more, which I’m trying to get more players to leave comments on PR’s so it’s more than just a handful of people on a PR and then maybe with more attention comments will feel like they actually mean something.
Wanted to end this by re-asking how to make this thread seem less drama inducing. I honestly am tempted (and this isn’t some kind of a wink for a admin to close the thread immediately), to just ask for the thread to get closed and start over. Not include any mention about my personal frustrations with the handling of the silver slime PR, and just post about PR’s on the thread as another avenue for people to see PR’s (that haven’t been completed and merged yet, and isn’t all the way down at the bottom of discord) and discuss about them. I’m not satisfied with how PR’s are shown as the changelog when joining the server shows things that have been added into the game, and not currently in development, and the channel that shows all the actions on github is not visible enough to me (I will continue giving the fair critique about it not being under the important things tab and replacing #pr-player-inputs at the top of the channel lists until someone moves it up there). Honestly I can’t gauge how many people actually use github, as for a solid chunk of PR’s it-
Honestly as I typed this I went to check a few more points on Github I was going to mention but at this point I don’t understand this anymore. Literally most of the PR’s have a good amount of activity going on with it and the silver slime PR just has me a little peeved. Because despite all the advice people can give, constructive criticism from people, and even criticism from other contributors bad PR’s can still be accepted because it relies on said coder who made the request to close it. You can’t really complain about a change because people will just think (or it actually will) just lead to drama that changes nothing, and I can’t do jack shit about anything because I will be literally working out in isolation and limited WIFI access, and just flat out don’t have the time to learn how to code and be able to actually try to change things instead of only able to try to get other people to give a damn. How hard is it to at least ask for some more oversight or require input from other coders about things, I’ve been here long enough and was a short-time admin so I know if you just leave it 100% up to the players nothing is going to get better (just look at how terrible the player council was years ago, can’t even vote on the right people to give it a chance to succeed). I just don’t like this one individuals behavior and only reaction to comments about their PR (even though the comment they replied too itself isn’t good) and I don’t know what the proper channel is to complain about it and have it actually mean something and have some kind of ending that isn’t, “Cope non-coder”. I have also the biased belief that nothing should be removed or just gutted to the point of being useless, and that there are more creative ways to deal with it you just have to put in the effort to think and do them (but I know that is ultimately to the attitude and commitment of that coder). I’ve completely changed my though process but still just leaving everything said above this paragraph stay anyway, though some of it will just be repeated anyway.
I also want to state that I don’t agree with statements like this:
I just should’ve avoided entertaining about the idea of “stealth implementation” since things are relatively public, I say “relatively” because like I’ve stated multiple times I will only consider the github channel on discord fully visible if it was put up under the important category like it should.
I just finished what is probably the last final I’ll ever have to do and I’ve been extremely stressed out, anxious, and slightly unstable for two weeks, leading me to being extremely active on the forums (more than usual) and not being the best I can be. I think I want this thread closed after just asking the last three questions of: What do other coders who’ve been commenting on this thread think of the slime PR and is it that hard to ask for the github bot channel to get moved up under the important category and replace the #pr-player-input channel, and how should I go foreword to give criticism or discuss what I think is bad PR that has already passed? I just want to know if anyone disagrees with how much the silver slime PR crippled and maybe into how it was handled by zesko, ultimately I think nanoburgers should be removed and at least decrease the number of items it spawned to a number not under like 4. The last question is probably discord, but even if other coders agree that it isn’t good PR would there realistically be any way for it to be edited or reversed after it’s been approved outside of the coder who did the PR to allow it?
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Yeah sometimes there’s unilateral code decisions made by freqeuent contributors and the support of maintainers well before the PR gets made.
Sure this is open source but there is definitely a degree of coordination involved.
And again, unpopular changes are sometimes need to address major balance concerns.
Development isn’t a democratic process, and likely won’t be here.
Nobody is born knowing how to code. It is not an innate skill, much like veterinary medicine.
You can always make time. It is on you to decide if coding is worthwhile enough to spend time learning. Sometimes that means sacrificing your free time. A lot of frequent contributors spend a lot of time trying to keep things running and make progress on important issues(bugs or otherwise). Nobody said coders found it fun.
It is also a public repository. You can check the commit history for Bee all the way back to when we split from TG.
We have a changelog viewable in game, many times it is the first thing seen on logging in.
Any lack of knowledge about changes sits on the user. Sometimes the wiki could be blamed, but that’s becoming less common with a wiki team.
That’s the beauty of Github. You can use a one button reversal with some Git clients.
It would also really help if you coders bothered to write down what changes you make in prs to the wiki so new players arent fucked so badly. No new player goes to the github for 3 hours aggregating all the changes ever made, they go to the wiki.
That doesn’t “sit on the user”.
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Changes to balance require the approval of two maintainers. All changes are subject to veto by head coder. No maintainer, or even the headcoder may merge their own changes without be subject to the same standards as a non-maintainer.
It’s up to a lot more than the original author. Maintainers keep the overall game health in mind and, again, sometimes nerfs need to happen. In direct reference to the silver slime PR that has you upset: It should not be trivial to completely replace a job as a different job.
With regard to two recent Xenobio nerfs:
Yellow slime core
Yellow slime cores are still good. I tested them myself and am a cyborg player - despite the dramatic nerf, a normal slime core still generates substantially more charge than non-intensive tool use consumes. Maximum capacity is lower making it outright worse for heavy tool use. It’s an option over normal cells instead of a direct power creep that’s better in every way.
Meanwhile hypercharged are a direct upgrade over basic cells, but sit in a similar category when compared to, say, bluespace cells. One fourth the max capacity, but a pretty decent recharge rate that can even keep up with moderately heavy usage.
Silver slime core
This one is going to be simple - yes the silver slime core makes random food and some of it still needed processing to become real food. They were still highly spammable to the point you could just ignore the non-processed foods and as a medical player I can fully understand the frustration of having your already simple job completely ripped out from under you by someone else who isn’t even supposed to be doing it. It can ruin a chef’s chance to interact with people who come up to ask for food. Some chefs wait to make food until it’s requested instead of lining the counter with so much food nobody even interacts with them.
Sometimes trying to be helpful is detrimental in ways you didn’t consider.
This is also very much the case in the end. Comments are considered, but at the end of the day players are not trusted to handle balance decisions most of the time. Players will almost always vote for easier, faster, and more optimal for them.
To paraphrase a great game developer
Players will optimize the fun out of your game if given the chance.
Instant gratification always wins the vote, regardless of its long-term effects. Shortcutting in a way that removes player to player interaction is nearly always bad for a social roleplaying game. This is why I continue to push that the ore silo is an overall bad influence on round flow. This is why public autolathes and massively overstocked public tool storage is bad for the game and we have no scarcity to fuel any sort of economy where people ask for tools in exchange for favors.
Trying to return player-to-player interaction and co-dependance is going to be a painful process, and it will completely chase people away who don’t want to rely on others because they’re powergamers that want to rely only on themselves (whether they want to admit it or not) instead of building a collective story as a group. I’m hopeful Bee will continue in this direction.
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I love how people always say that the ore silo is something critical to the game and makes the round unplayable without it, yet we’ve played without it for years because we just… filled crates with processed material and shipped them.
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Lol, people should just go to GH and comment there.
Its ridiculous to expect our very few maintainers to waste time by announcing/discussing every single change here.
The forums are a place for discussion, yes. But for actual change you need to use GH.
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It’s nice knowing that there’s a vote between mantainers and contributors, and i’m not talking particullary about the xenobio nerf that’s been quoted a lot on this thread but what happens to me on GH is that it feels a little… strange when i visit some pr’s and most of the comments are from people that were contributors once but no longer or barely play in our server and they seem to heavily critize something and that leaves it open as a display of “yah sorry this is not on the agenda”, if those people still have a voice of vote (even thought in the end it lays now on Bacon and… uh the others maintaners) I feel like if they vote, it affects what gets in and what’s get not in a negatively way and i’ve seen that happen on a couple of pr’s.
Ofc i’m talking about PR’s that are good QoL, Innovations or features that people have been asking for or they were very positivy recieved on discord/forum/in game ooc
I obviously understand how they are stuff that are heavily broken that needs to be adressed(xeno, mining, etc) and you can’t simply decide it with X amounts of thumbs ups and thumbs down
On the other hand going back a bit on the word “agenda” i always thought that a little roadmap or some sort of… goals to reach would be nice to encourage more activity and to start getting a feedback on topics early on, while this ultimately is not a democracy on what gets in or not, i’ve seen and participated on a lot of open source projects where they this sort of stuff coming from a head developer
It could even be something as smaller as
"Right so current goal/project is to:
- Remake economy
- Scrap kitchen and replace it with a school
- Introduce cars" and pinpoint the rest to the things we already have available (go here for gh, go here for guide on coding and bounties, go here for ideas) etc.
Edit: as a final thing, Yes, people who are interested in these stuff should visit the GH which is, As Ruko said a couple of posts above, the main place where mantainers will check for feedback and i shouldn’t need to state it but jusr in case: Yes, even thought those contributors might no longer play in our server i’m not in any way making their contributions less, they’ve all helped a lot through different times and i’m grateful that they took their time to contribute here, i just had to mention what i said above and hope that Bacon and the other mantainers are aware of who’s who and their activities and interest on our server.
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The server does not have a set agenda of any sort (that I’m aware of at least). Each person has their own idea of what is best and the code marches forward on the approvals of one or two maintainers depending on what kind of change it is. Code progression will always be at least somewhat chaotic due to this and if something slips past that sees enough distaste it will then be removed later. Chungus suit is one such change; while it got the approval of the maintainer it needed to merge, it got far more disapproval after the fact.
My personal agenda is:
-
Improve and expand upon necessary player-to-player interactions
-
Slow down the overall pace of the game so that players can’t run out of things to do in thirty minutes when good rounds last an average of 90-120.
-
Reinforce server rules and admin expectations through mechanics instead of expecting players to know they aren’t supposed to pick up easily obtained item #42
I specifically aim to achieve these by:
-
Removing features labeled as QoL which actually just serve to remove interactions between departments, which simultaneously adds opportunities for RP while also slowing down the rush to endgame. These include public autolathes,
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Reducing the isolation of certain jobs and mechanically tying them to regular trips into the main hallways of the station where normal crew interaction can take place.
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Reintroduce departmental co-dependance which will give players a reason to care about other departments and work with them instead of ignoring them because they have nothing to mechanically gain from it.
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Add scarcity back into the game for items which should be reserved to their related departments so that those department specialties have actual weight, which feeds into the above point. This will also make it much harder to “accidentally” powergame by taking items which are publicly/easily available that you are expected not to take by admins.
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Add intuitive failsafes to ensure that rounds which do not have adequate staffing don’t fall on their face which aren’t abusable when adequate staffing is present.
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Make door hacking and other forms of breaking and entering substantially more difficult than it is currently, either via scarcity of the required tools or layering a difficult minigame on top that has to be solved more than once at the start of a round. Asking for access and supplies shouldn’t just be the option admins tell you to do, it should mechanically be the easier option than taking it yourself.
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Make it easier for antagonists to have an effect on rounds in ways that aren’t killing to reinforce that they are, in fact, expected and capable of RP as well. With scarcity and co-dependance, minor sabotage becomes a driving factor in rounds and stealth antags can be more than someone mysteriously vanishing. Co-dependance also means that when someone vanishes they’re more likely to be noticed as missing.
Who else agrees with me on all of these points within the team? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I’m moving one PR at a time while I have the spare time. Chance are every point won’t be agreed upon, but I want to chip in to pushing Bee into the server it states it is trying to be. A newbie friendly community centered on roleplaying and gradually further and further away from being outdated tg that attracts all the ssethtiders.
I miss Golden, but that ship has long since sailed.
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