We have extensive, strictly enforced rules around metagaming, yet we also run an official Twitch livestream that players are opted into by default and forced to manually opt out every single time it triggers.
Why is there no persistent, toggleable option for CMTV, when the server already provides toggles for nearly every other optional system?
Instead, players are repeatedly interrupted with a countdown and a pop-up that demands immediate interaction. Fail to notice it, miss it during combat, or be busy doing literally anything else, and you risk having your perspective broadcast live, with very real in-round consequences. I hope you enjoy being out of the round for the next 2 hours. This is not a one-time choice. Itās a recurring tax on attention.
This is bad design.
Forcing players to babysit an opt-out button every few minutes is not a āfeatureā. Itās friction that actively undermines gameplay. Itās effectively a recurring pop-up that can get you killed or remove you from a round for hours, with no way to permanently disable it.
If consent or visibility is the concern, then the solution is obvious: a simple opt-in/opt-out toggle. Make the playerās preference persistent and stop compromising the players chase in active rounds with punitive UI choices.
As it stands, this feels like enshitification of the core gameplay experience. It is unnecessary, intrusive, and completely at odds with many other features in the game implemented.
Add a toggleable opt out button in settings, if that is somehow not do-able, make a ckey list of players who wish to opt out.
i canāt tell if youāre intentionally using chatgpt tone or if you have just ploughed this into 4.1 but iām not interested in reading ideaguys submitted this way
disclaimer: this doesnāt represent my opinion of the problem at hand, idc about cctv imo.
OPās connotations might be harsh in the way theyre presenting their idea, but nothing in their words signify anything hostile or toxic. And itās clear they did not use chatGPT to write this, they just speak in a unique formal way while using a lot of font changes. Theres no reason to throw someoneās idea aside just because the way they type.
Also not a fan of the ācreate a problem and then make the players fix itā mentality.
i am a contributor to this game with a lot of other commitments, and peopleās displeasure with how a system works does not entitle them to mine or any other maintainerās time. i did not discard it, i actively said this is a fine thing to have in the game. i just do not have the time to code it.
I can be rather brash at times. Writing this way is how I stay tactful when raising issues around other peopleās work without it appearing as an attack on it.
You are free to read or ignore whatever you like, but I am not going to change my writing style because you personally dislike it.
Yeah I really will never understand the logic behind this. If I posted a screenshot from my perspective of the round from thirty seconds ago, Iād get banned from the Discord and potentially the game itself. And yet, a live feed of what someone is doing with a thirty second delay is fine? Either we oughta remove the rule about no IC in OOC, or put a fat delay on the stream. The current implementation is contradictory.
Also, there are real in-round consequences to this. I have no doubt in my mind that xenos are checking for where survs are pre-drop, and CIC is watching it for flanks. It sucks to always wonder if the marines got lucky pulling back before a flank, or if literally ANYONE on the marine side looked at any xeno on stream and ruined the flank. Thereās no way for me to ever know, but it does take a bit of the joy out of the game. And the opt-out doesnāt do much because itās always viewing SOMEONE, and half the time that will be someone on your side. It just feels like yet another move away from off-meta strategies and creativity.
People could also metagame you through it but they could literally always do this. It doesnāt make it any easier, if anything itās more obtuse and more difficult to do than literally any other method you can do.
I personally donāt care for the CMTV stream myself and donāt really opt into it when it comes onto me. Itās still an interesting feature and itās hard not to view this as a serious critique of you not being able to opt out of it when we have things like this, as well -
As it stands, this feels like enshitification of the core gameplay experience. It is unnecessary, intrusive, and completely at odds with many other features in the game implemented.
Itās not that deep, and shitting on someoneās work like that is extremely rude and harsh for how inconsequential it is. It would have been just as easy to open the thread suggesting it politely rather than using your āformalā tone in the most argumentative way possible.
Right now itās a nothingburger because the twitch is 95% bots and the delay means the stream is only useful for gaining information you wouldāve gotten anyway from ghosting and opening the tacmap
In the future it may become an issue if we get more people from Steam (even though the value you get from using the stream is extremely low), but frankly speaking an opt-in or opt-out option is probably rolling out at some point anyways.
Wasnāt speaking about streaming, I was speaking about a screenshot in discord, which people do get bwoinked for sharing. That rule also seems contradictory, to be honest, but what do I know. We now have a constant live feed of what the other side is doing and who is playing at all times, which massively impacts game balance through an OOC tool.
It absolutely is way easier to metagame through this. The form of metagaming wherein people discuss information through a voice chat will never be stopped, I agree there, but this is a massive amount of OOC information that can sit in a browser 24/7. Itās far far easier to metagame here, and again, I think a great example of this is seeing surv holds and flanks. Thereās a reason sensors is so valuable, and this kinda negates that. Even small things like seeing the names of the specs so you can target them, or seeing who the queen is, can be immensely valuable.
I havenāt called it game ruining or evil or anything else, and I do appreciate that it takes a lot of work to make a feature like this work. However, in my opinion, it does reward a shitty behaviour, and thereās a really simple fix which is to lengthen the delay. A permanent opt-out would also be a good feature for people who are strongly against it.
I donāt care about meta, there are other ways to metagame anyway. But I am shy and thinking about 200 bots watching me makes me anxious, so I always opt out. Clicking the button every time is really distracting, thatās my main problem, I would gladly permanently opt out. But when you code it so yeah.
If you believe that is offensive, you are merely proving the point I was making.
If it is specifically the term āEnshittificationā, Iāll even give you the merriam-webster definition as it was the word of the year last year, just incase itās misconstrued as an insult.
Enshittification is an informal word used to criticize the degradation in the quality and experience of online platforms over time, due to an increase in advertisements, costs, or features. It can also refer more generally to any state of deterioration.
I was critiquing the feature not having an opt out feature, despite introducing friction for players actually playing (especially at low populations), causing degradation, as well as gesturing to all historical and current settings of this design having a feature to opt out. This is, I assume to gather more new users than to improve the current experience of the people playing. That fits the definition. Harry is exceptionally talented, he and many other contributors all do a service to the community, that Iām thankful for and Iām sure everyone else is too. But it does not mean that we should shy away from criticising certain design choices or additions. There have been many additions over the years which people have toiled over, which were mechanically and creatively marvellous but didnāt quite fit CM.
As for metagaming @basilherb , Iād argue itās much easier to metagame from twitch* for general information, itās more or less untraceable and doesnāt require you to be dead/ghosted. Weāve all seen situations where a 4 lessers have spawned mysteriously near a hive diver as soon as deadchat start cheering them on, and I dont think introducing the possibility for now both living factions to do similar, without an opt out at least, is the right way to go.
I always stream it when Iām playing synth just to see how long it will stay since it tracks whoever is doing combat + it makes people who are addicted to watching combat be forced to watch me staring at a chemistry machine (I forgor)
