With recent changes I would like to bring this up and get more of an idea that I will more than likely soon forget after posting this.
Does the community really have a choice in the vision and future for the actively changing game that is CM?
I would like to think that we as a community have some power to decide, but it comes down to my belief that we really don’t unless we go kicking and screaming.
It’s already been said that we are only following what the developers have put into play from only their views and their belittling excuse of, “If you don’t like it code it yourself to change it.”
In response to that statement it is known that most players aren’t exactly knee high sock wearing coders.
Do we as a community really have a choice? That is the question I leave you with.
Sure we have some leniency in choice, but how far does that go?
P.S.
I probably won’t respond to this afterward if someone tries to @ me about it.
I’ll probably peak in and see what people have said, but this is more of a curiosity question to me rather than a debate. Debate if you want though, I feel that’s good in a way, just stay civilized.
In my opinion we as a SS13 based community have two choices in terms of development. We can either.
1: Do whatever the hell you want if you know how to code
2: Follow a coherent vision from one or two individuals.
We are pretty much in the second category. Both have their strengths and weaknesses. I personally prefer where we are now as I feel a coherent vision is healthier for a game’s development than a free for all.
I agree we are in that 2nd category, but the beauty of the game is that it is open source and shouldnt (imo) have every recent merge be dominated by a single person. however if theyre the only one willing to ante up and do the work then it is a natural consequence.
I definitely don’t agree with every change but I think the game overall moves in a positive direction over time.
Maintainers don’t always go along with what the community is asking for but I do think they are trying to make the game as good as they can. They just think that players don’t always know what is best for the game (and they are probably right at times). Best you can do is give your honest feedback about how this affects your experience with the game and hope they take it into account. Sometimes they change their ideas based on the feedback, sometimes they think their idea is still the way to go and they go through with it anyway. It sucks when a change you don’t like goes through but it’s inevitable that that will happen sometimes, and I still think the game has gotten better over time. For every bad change there’s a bunch of good ones.
Also coding minor changes isn’t that hard (depending on what you want to change anyway). Just be brave and give it a try if you really want to change something.
I have been playing for something like 6 years. I think the largest issue of CM is that we do have “system 2” where we follow a plan by 1 or 2 individuals.
But this is only an issue because those 1 or 2 individuals keep changing around, burning out, flaming out, etc.
So it leads to really wonky and strange patch patterns.
For example, once upon a time research was changed and updated.
Then it was reworked entirely to go hand in hand with IOs finding beakers and the like.
Then IOs were removed with techwebs and it broke research.
Research was updated slightly so that beakers and stuff still could be found. And stims and things carried round to round.
Which was then removed
Then IOs were put back in after techwebs were removed.
Defcon was updated, removed with techwebs, which were then removed, and now we kinda have defcon back a little…
Comms tower was static on map. Then a mobile tower was added, then commtechs added, then the mobile tower removed, then a static tower readded…
Around and around in circles… we never quite seem to finish things… just get them 70% of the way before we move on.
And for the record I think its a problem because some individuals push their agenda hard despite what everyone seems to want
Techwebs being the best example. I think CM would be in a far far better place if we had just built on the original defcon system instead of scrapping it for techwebs.
Many others were also vocal with me about it, and we were ignored.
Now techwebs is dead and gone… all that effort wasted. And the result was the removal of defcon… which was a well functioning cool part of the game.
I dont have a solution for this issue though. All people in charge do it for free… so its their prerogative what they do.
the sys-admin vid heavily agrees with non-staff votes being “plebian” so yeah, even soldier’s remark is made a mockery of. its also somewhat bizarre i cant react at all to non-mentor staff posts. Grim was a fortune teller with the Mussolini meme about him.
Thinking back on it now, Devs have done things not too good.
One thing that can come to mind was the Fire Rate Slowdowns.
Nobody really liked what had happened but lived with it.
My main gripe was the murder of the M4RA.
They came back and fixed it however by increasing it’s damage with the tradeoff being the previous nerf to fire rate.
It’s not as if the Dev team can’t fix problems, they have to circumvent what is occurring at hand to sometimes find a goal.
It’s more or less the process they use to reach said goal that matters though.
Firstly, there’s the classic CM was best whenever I started playing (everything MOBA and onwards miiiiiiiid). But I really think it is wild when you consider how much stuff we’ve gained than lost over the years, and just the sheer volume of failed projects (Dropships 2.0 anyone?) or ones that just got forgotten.
I think the main thing is that our perception of the state of the game is largely based on how we feel about a couple people. As it stands, I’ve always found Morrow to be a good dude, and I tend towards trusting him to know what he’s doin on this stuff. And though of course not every change is something I like, the game being in good hands is equivalent in my head to being in an okay state. Now Harry I don’t know, but personally haven’t been done badly by him, so ultimately I just don’t worry too much about it.
But God love em, neither of them will be around forever, and its basically luck of the draw if next people in the slot are decent and try to maintain and grow, or say fuck it, “their game now”.
I’m trying to learn a bit of how to contribute to the game in terms of mapping right now, but I’ll never be runnin the show, so what power do I really have here. PR Feedback has always been a joke in whatever form, so I just kinda hope that things shake out alright, and learn to work around the changes. At the end of the day, I play CM for the people, and the actual mechanics are secondary.
