Remove flavortext

[gbasood]

Since this basically exists to include OOC info in IC, it's dumb.

It makes it easier to metagame to check if a player is really a ling, because staticnamers have it set, and lings don't.

Also, players with stolen IDs can't impersonate the person they stole the ID from because flavortext for BOTH players

Also I feel like it really, really doesn't belong and the amount that it actually contributes to FLAVOR for characters is basically non-existent.

Resolves #2648

[gbasood]

Oh, and from a review standpoint, I think I changed the queries for client prefs correctly, but because of what happened last time someone fucked with that, someone should review it.

[ghost]

Couldn't you fix flavor text to work when disguised as someone or transforming into them as a ling or having no flavor text when unknown?

Wouldn't it be better to fix something than outright remove it, anyone can remove things quite easily.

[NigglyWiggly]

Yeah, what Solarious said.
Why just rip it out entirely when it could be fixed to actually work right.

[PJB3005]

No, even then it doesn't fix all of the issues.

No matter what you do it's gonna be a problem.

[ghost]

Removing things because they cause problems is a bad thing to encourage. Personally I don't care too much about flavour text but if this is removed how long until silicons are removed? After all silicons cause lots of problems for the admins and always will.

[gbasood]

Removing things because they cause problems is a bad thing to encourage

Okay, so what's the actual redeeming quality of flavortext? I've only ever seen it used to pin memes to characters's examines. And we aren't a High RP server so yeah that's basically all it will be good for

[ghost]

Sorry that's probably a pretty dumb argument, I just dont believe removing features should be done when they can be rebalanced or changed to fix them.

[gbasood]

Okay. And again I'm saying WHY would we want to fix it? It's not good.

[Aurx]

As a player: It's a fun idea, and is pretty nice. Would be nice to keep around, arrpee is a good thing.
As an administrator: It's a ticking time bomb just waiting to blow up into metagaming and bug abuse. I'm sure people are already using it as an exploit and just haven't been caught yet. It should be disabled until it's fixed, unless somebody's willing to jump right on fixing it.

[ririchiyo]

1. I don't really care about this being removed or kept; but a reason to keep it would be that it could actually add more descriptive words to a person's character if people actually cared enough about it. So I'd view exploitation of this to be more of an administrative issue than anything else.
2. UPDATE THE SQL FILES WHEN YOU MODIFY ANY DATABASE RELATED THINGS

[ghost]

There's little redeeming qualities to many things, vending machines for example, a lot of pda features. The department messaging console that I've never seen used on any server. Flavourtext is at least used by some people, sure it's mostly just memes or character descriptions but what's wrong with that? It doesn't affect the game in anyway and allows people to further describe their character if that's something their into. Low rp is a minimum requirement for rp not a maximum limit on it.

[gbasood]

@ririchiyo Be more specific on which files, I already added a migration file???
@SolariousGabriella @Aurx But no one uses it for RP. At all. Ever. It's a neat idea that our playerbase does not and will not use for what you guys want them to use it for.

[gbasood]

Also, the "fix" to this is not easy. For changelings it's actually easier, we can store the flavortext of absorbed mobs
But for ID impersonation? Nah. Nope

[ririchiyo]

@gbasood SQL/players2.sql

[ghost]

I saw ONE person use it to make a detailed description of their character, it's probably used a lot less because it's hard to find. Nobody clicks general settings for anything other than setting their antag settings up. If this was moved to the main page of character settings I think it'd be used a lot more frequently and seriously.

[gbasood]

Okay, so let me ACTUALLY outline what'd be required to "fix" this.

• IDs would have to know the flavortext of their original player's mob at any given point in time. Not viable whatsoever, because that can change at any point and we'd basically have to end up keeping a reference to the player themselves the entire round and that's majorly dumb.
• Agent IDs would have to look up if a mob with the name exists in the round that has a player that has flavortext. Since mob names can change in so many different places, this is an overly complex solution for a problem that doesn't need to be solved. We could store an associative list of all mobs and their flavortexts but why would we do that seriously
• Changelings would have to store the flavortext of absorbed mobs. Not unviable but dumb.
• Unknowns would have to return null on print_flavor_text(), which is the thing I was going to do before I realized it doesn't fix most of the occurrences of flavortext where flavortext shouldn't.

All of this to fix a short line of text that is not used for RP on our server
So yeah, this is what I want to remove it instead. It's not used, not useful, and not actually good flavor.

[ghost]

Flavour text is a nice RP addition to the game, but it just doesn't fit on /vg/. We're at a state of balancing RP and powergaming, and the balance between the types of players is never going to shift to a point where we become any type of server where flavour text is going to add to the RP feel of the server.
A lot of the characters who DO have extensive flavour texts are just imports from other more RP orientated servers where it's sort of important. Most cases of flavourtext on our server are like 1 liner jokes and memes and are not needed at all.
If you care about RP and your character so much, set up medical and security records for yourself. But then, no one actually does this on /vg/ and removing flavour text isn't going to change that either.

If someone wants to keep flavourtexts, go through the effort to make sure it works properly, until then we should remove it.

[NigglyWiggly]

IDs would have to know the flavortext of their original player's mob at any given point in time. Not viable whatsoever, because that can change at any point and we'd basically have to end up keeping a reference to the player themselves the entire round and that's majorly dumb.

Get your ID stolen, change your flavor text to "This is not me this is someone impersonating me they stole my ID"

I assume the idea would be that they'd get the flavor text you had when they took the ID.

[gbasood]

@NigglyWiggly Actually to be 100% unmetagameable you'd have to update the associated entry every time the flavor text changed or a mob's name changed

[ghost]

Has somebody ever used the flavor text to metagame something? Do people actually use this feature to justify killing someone that is a ling?
I ctrl f'd the banpage for flavor and found nothing, if it hasn't happened yet in years why are you worried about it happening now?

"set up medical and security records for yourself. But then, no one actually does this on /vg/"
people do sometimes set up medical records, I've seen it like 4 times so it's quite popular.

[gbasood]

4 times
quite popular

Wait how big do you think our playerbase is
It has been exploited for metagame before. It isn't about SETTING the flavortext that's the biggest problem, it's that if you examine someone and they don't have flavortext or don't have the right flavortext for that staticnamer it means they're a ling/impersonator.

And checking if someone used that to metagame is basically impossible.

[ghost]

4 times and I don't play medical so I hardly see the records or check them. For me to see it 4 times means it was more popular than I'd assume. About half the playerbase would never use this outright as it doesn't give a bonus in game or anything, Assuming about 30 players on at average, 15 not being counted. 4+/15 ain't a bad count.

[kol1th]

cult's broken you can use ghost blood writing to metagame can we remove that too?

[ghost]

kolith if you legit though that was an issue you'd make an issue for it, stop being such a retard

[ghost]

Can't we uh put flavour text in the DNA datum?

[Kurfursten]

Since it's feature removal, should probably run a server poll on it. A lot of people don't look at github.

I've never used flavortext myself, but stripping out customization leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Sood's hangup appears to not be lings or husks since that's an easy fix, but agent IDs/stolen IDs. Those don't hide hair either, though. So in the same way that you'd "need" to change your flavortext you'd "need" to find a mirror and copy someone's exact hairstyle out of the hundred or so we have. And dye it (not possible?)

I'd hate to lose hair too because someone might metagame that "I know what Sue Bowchief's hair looks like, your mime mask must be a voice changer"

[Intigracy]

The general consensus for a long time has been to remove it.

Since January 2015 this has been an issue.

#2648

[Kurfursten]

If there's a general consensus to remove it then a clear-cut answer on a server poll will be easy to obtain, right?

[gbasood]

clear cut answer
server poll

That said I'm not against a poll by any means
But I will repeat that just because players want to keep something doesn't mean that's a good thing

[kol1th]

With this, (from http://ss13.moe/forum/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=2768&start=10 ,2nd to last post.)

[7:08 PM] ChocolateMoose: Titles and Nicknames should be saved for their IC notes

There seems to be a conflict with what administration wants and this PR. Thoughts?

[gbasood]

My thought is that a name like that doesn't belong in IC in the first place unless they're a clown/mime
And I'm pretty sure that name IS a clown's name

[Kurfursten]

I don't think it has ever been policy to take a bad solution over the right solution just because "there's a PR for the bad solution". If sood is right, there's no reason to worry anyway because player polls will show that a general consensus is to remove it anyway. I'm not being sarcastic - there's a possibility players DO want flavortext gone, and if that's the case, I'm with you 100%.

So let's gather the data instead of coderbusing this. The PR will still be there in a few days, it's not on a timer.

[gbasood]

You keep talking about what the players want being the "good" solution
Poll away

[mrpain666]

It looked stupid anyways.

[SkowronX]

Merge post haste

[Exxion]

OK I agree that we should remove it, but I'm not going anywhere near that merge button without a player poll, or at least a few server votes

[ComicIronic]

Because this is a terrible feature that would never have made it into the codebase in the modern standards system, it gets 3 days to run a server vote. If there isn't one, it's getting removed, and anyone that wants it back can make the PR and fix it.

[Aurantiaco]

arrivederci my dear linguini

[NigglyWiggly]

NICE GOING CLUSTER

[NigglyWiggly]

No, genius, I'm talking about that lovely little conflict tag.

[Kurfursten]

Are we pretending like the secret repo conflict tag is invisible or something for meme purposes?

[Intigracy]

It was added after merge.