Discussion of Specific Design Concepts
This page is a list of design concepts that have been explicitly approved or disproved by Beestation leadership and the reasons as to why.
- Additional species that are just human/animal hybrids will be rejected (Humanoid species which aren't human/animal hybrids are probably fine, this will be looked at on a case-by-case basis).
- Additional species should offer a unique enough gameplay experience when compared to a human character.
- Species changes may be rejected for any reason, especially when they apply to moth/felinid.
- Due to the nature of species changes, they must be approved by a maintainer. This is mainly due to the fact that once a species is in and characters are created around that species, changing it in a significant way or removing it will affect those characters which may lead to some upset amongst players.
- Gamemodes which heavily impact the flow of the round are often seen as fun and more interesting by the majority of players, although these chaotic rounds need to be kept in moderation.
- In general, we want gamemodes to create stories and bring players into interacting in interesting ways. This interaction may come from being forced to cooperate with teammates in order to achieve an objective, an enemy which you cannot talk out of performing a certain action isn't inherently bad for interaction and the creation of narratives.
- A balance needs to be achieved with minor antagonists that can be reasoned with and antagonists that have a global impact on the round which may force combative scenarios.
- Conversion antagonists should not have mechanically optional conversions. The ability to accept/reject antagonist opportunities leads to frustration on the antagonist's part, results in players completely ignoring/rejecting the narrative of the round and players who take the antagonists are more likely to be those that do not consider RP scenarios.
- Gamemodes which currently impact the entire station will not have their goals altered so that they are no longer station-wide threats. For example, nuclear operatives will not have their goal of destroying the station replaced with the goal of assassination.
- Gamemodes with a station-wide threat that encourage combat should strive to generate stories and interactivity, the following means should help provide some ideas of how to achieve this:
- Allow for defensive positions to be formed, meaning that resistance bubbles can form later in the round when the threat is station-wide.
- Discourage gameplay styles that revolve around a single person killing. If killing/conversion/capture is involved, it should require multiple people to complete.
- The more accessible the mechanics are to new players, the more interaction you will get. There should be options for players who are less skills in combat to play supportive roles which require working with the rest of the team.
- Does this antagonist require player-on-player interaction in order to defeat, or does this antagonist have teams which need to interact with each other in order to be effective?
- Gamemodes where a lot of people are naturally going to die should try to avoid keeping a large portion of players out of the game for extended periods of time. Players can be brought back with effective use of ghost roles, revival potential or shorter overall rounds once the chaos breaks out. (This mainly applies to points in which regular crew are forced to defend the station and their departments, code red/delta scenarios).
- Conversion based antagonists should be easy to understand for a new player being converted into them, and there should be a clear indication of actions that they can perform to help their team
It is important to understand that removing greentext will not remove goal-hunting behaviour from players. Even without a reward for completing their objectives, win-driven players are given a goal then they will work towards it and attempt to complete it. The ideal solution to goalhunting would be to make the player goals align with the goals that we want them to have. This intrinsicly requires rethinking how objectives work in order to be more open in order to allow for engaging RP methods to be effective at completing them. Removing greentext may be a part of some reworks (See objectiveless Changelings proposal), however will not alone solve any problems.