Based on my understanding of the words creative/emergent gameplay:
Creative/Emergent gameplay is a type of grouped actions or (especially) play style different from the norm. In our case, using guns, explosives, flamers, and anything lethal to xenos and marines are considered non-emergent gameplay, from my understanding at least. Applying to this case again, fighting xenos in a different way, like nor using a gun or explosives to fight xenos is considered as creative/emergent gameplay.
What counts as creative/emergent gameplay, opinions or not?
Is removing such things a good idea or not? If it depends, elaborate if you can.
WARNING: I AM NOT HERE TO INCITE HATE OR AGGRESSION. BE CIVIL, BE SERIOUS.
I used Acid Gloop because I don’t know where this topic falls into.
I won’t comment on the “should we/shouldn’t we” because i think the answer is sometimes “yes” and sometimes “no”, but i do enjoy seeing emergent gameplay stuff. A fair bit is for mechanical advantages (sometimes more apparent than weedkilling), but i always find it really interesting. It kind of sits at the core of SS13, it started as an atmospheric sim and so trying to simulate all sorts of weird things feels fun.
Drinking a hot coffee and slamming back some meds to spacewalk without a suit would be an example, though it is so done and so trite now, it’s a staple and hardly emergent. Drinking cryox and letting yourself freeze in a shower to heal IB; that kind of thing. I have a hard time thinking up anything else here, specifically.
It’s always neat to see, even if I don’t get to see it for too long
Emergent gameplay is gameplay that “emerges” (often unexpectedly) from the parts combining in a certain way. So it’s the sum of its parts, not the parts alone.
Another way to see it might be, multiplicatively generative gameplay design. For each part that can interact with each other, they “multiply” (by the parts combining, it creates a new, unique “part”, which can then combine with other parts and be impacted by them in its own way) and each interaction becomes emergent gameplay. It’s a core part of why it’s important to design by width instead of depth sometimes - because it’s (to some degree) multiplicatively productive when you design with width to multiply with instead of additively productive.
Unique playstyles and new ways to use weapons to interact with other systems are emergent gameplay. So is strategy, tactics, and teamwork (A majority of emergent gameplay in this game comes from the “player rng” of skill, positioning, communication, and other random team differentials which output a new gameplay puzzle each time and keep the game fresh).
In short it is just finding a new way to use things already in game that isn’t widely known and is kind of unintentional by the devs.
Weedkiller checks all of those boxes, it uses old shit already in game for long, wasn’t widely known and was unintentional.
Stuff like that has to be removed in CM to keep balance. Vanilla SS13 doesn’t put that much pressure on balance, because it isn’t one half of the server against the other, but few antags against security and maybe few crewmembers, unless it is a blob, or something like that.
If something like that happens to be too strong, of course it has to be atleast nerfed, if not outright removed.
While I’m usually in favor for creative tactics, the recent emergence of weed-b as weapon against weeds is onpar with exploitation of unintended gameplay features. It’s part of a system that has been heavily overlooked and undeveloped, with someone finding out a mechanic that in all honesty would’ve been removed the moment a dev saw it.
This is onpar with using other ancient features that belong to base-SS13 in order to gain an advantage, botany simply fits the bill because honestly.. Who gives a shit about botany.