We are hosting a Q&A on both the Wallening and the way the codebase handles development and player feedback in general. Please enter a question you would like answered.

Ckeys are anonymous unless you are logged in as an admin.

Text responses are completely unfiltered.

• Player: Will there be an option to toggle the style?
• Player: Will there be another server for Wallening testing and feedback or will it just be forced onto other players?
• Player: Would you touch a poo for $20?
• Player: Why 48 pixels tall instead of 32?
• Player: On the Wallening - Why would you have, after showing such negative feedback from the playerbase, move forward with the project. To add to the previous question- Why, once merged, would you have fought so viciously for it after heavy player opposition?
• Player: Will something be done about the contributor metaprotection? Many of the discord server's most consistent rule-breakers and toxic speakers - Goof, Viro, oranges, etc - all have done actions that would have gotten them banned many times over if not for their status as prominent contributors. Similarly the same thing is happening again, with nobody that both worked on the wallening and stroke the flames getting faced any sort of administrative action. Why are contributors and mantainers immune to rule 1, Don't Be A Dick?
• Player: If the wallening falls through would you still try to merge the 3/4ths sprites for other parts such as the new blob tiles, wall mounts etc
• Player: why?
• Player: Does this coderbase understand the importance of negative feedback loops yet? I really think it doesn't and that the mistakes of the past will just be repeated. Perhaps you could elaborate on that?
• Player: Why force this through when the playerbase was clearly in disagreement, with hundreds of bugs? This felt very dystopian, and the behavior from staff in the github pull has lost significant trust in the tgstation maintainers
• Player: Why was the wallening given a hard deadline? Why was the testmerge not actually a way to gather community feedback if it was going to be merged regardless? Why does it [feel] (not the reality of the situation) like the entire PR was made by people who don't play the game?
• Player: In what way, concisely, does the wallening improve the gameplay on Tgstation, not including visual aesthetics if that somehow falls into gameplay
• Player: Some players have said that the maintainer team has been dismissive of the playerbase for a long time now, and that the Wallening is just a recent and particularly bad instance of that. Do you think that there is merit to that point of view? If so, do you have any plans to try and fix the relationship between the playerbase and maintainer team?
• Player: If the second attempt at Wallening fails and it doesn't seem to be possible to fix the issues players still have with it, will the project be scrapped?
• Player: make a new map editor
• Player: How do you ensure the coders will follow a code of conduct and improve their communication with the rest of the community?
• Player: Why did you do the Wallening?
• Player: Would you consider appointing a "PR" person for the coderbus to act as a liason between players and coders. I feel as if the wallening situation was born out of a breakdown of communication that could have been prevented if things like communicating were done more deliberately and clearly. To be clear, this wouldn't be a position put on an existing coder/admin but a separate role to facilitate better conversation between the groups. This person could be responsible for meeting with coders regularly to discuss what they're working on so they can make a blog/forum post to bring a more open channel of communication between the palyers and coders. They could also pay attention to the feelings of the playerbase and convey them to the coders.
• Player: Why was Melbert's wallening offet alternative PR not merged despite positive reception?
• Player: My wall of text was too long so you can read it here: https://pastebin.com/BwjjLsBh
• Player: How much do maintainers take into account feedback (whether that be constructive or destructive) from the playerbase when reviewing a change? At what point does one turn around and say, "Maybe this isn't the right thing to do"? Or vice versa, at what point does one turn around and say, "Maybe this is a good change after all"?
• Player: Developers need to maintain better public relations with our players and be willing to consider and walk back decisions based on majority community requests or expectations. The Wallening is one of many examples in which a change resulted in a high degree of backlash without any effort being put in from various maintainers or developers to articulate the exact direction, benefits or future these changes will take the game and in what positive end-goal and time scale they are trying to achieve this in. The aftermath was even worse, with some developers demonstrating open ambivalence to our possible community collapse, and an heightened distrust from admins, players and some developers not involved in the Wallening, as well as outside communities reliant on our code base. Whether they wish to accept it or not, they are community leaders and need to actually work with the community and promise them that they have the games best interests at heart. If that isn't immediately obvious, we will see the community fall apart. And if that happens, whatever code changes anyone on the project makes is entirely meaningless. The game serves no purpose if there is no audience for it. And if they can't accept that, then we, as a community, would be better off without them.
• Player: Do you believe it's possible to protect the community from a mass exodus like before, and if you do, what do you think the solution is? I guess also: Do you think regular dev updates in the form of a newletter or video to showcase wallening progress and getting feedback would be feasible? (This may ease people's wariness as time goes on and if it's on a test server, people can hop in and try it out. Also, it may be good to include perks in the updates that might entice players to WANT the new stuff.)
• Player: What was the primary reason to shift everything upwards without adjusting hitboxes (or where you have to click to use/activate something)?
• Player: are people involved in wallening blind?(no offence) because i can't believe that nobody involved didn't see how weird it looked in-game during 4(?) years it was in dev.
• Player: Why was it released without test? It made playing when wallening was around a unpleasent exprience.
• Player: why are wallening firelocks are unclickable in closed state
• Player: How many people are working on optimizations instead of new features and bug fixing?
• Player: Was TGMC walls ever considered instead of the current wallening walls. If so, what made you choose the current wallening walls instead of TGMC walls?
• Player: Will you be taking community input more serious?
• Player: Why is Github feedback from non-coding players frowned upon? Everytime I see a dislike count in 40+, comments being hidden and such, I think of forty people who cared enough to follow development and give feedback, not ill will.
• Player: Considering the fallout of this and the descision to eventually revert the walls, what would you say was the main point of failure in the whole development process? And what would be your suggestions to prevent them in the future?
• Player: Why you suddenly ask playerbase for feedback?
• Player: Why
• Player: Maybe implement stuff on test servers for BIG changes (like the wallening), make it last a couple of days? Incentive might be a raffle for an antag token at the end of the test period for those who gave feedback etc.
• Player: Why?
• Player: thoughts about actively borrowing features from downstreams?
• Player: Assume the shift-to-see-mounts solution is unable to be used. How do you see the issues with southern wall mounts - and non-north wall mounts in general - being fixed? e.g. buttons, posters, etc
• Player: Is it viable to have a head coder election by players?
• Player: What is the team's solution to objects being obscured by the top of the wall?
• Player: Why tall walls?
• Player: Soo this is mostly 2 questions that came to mind 1: The wallening backlash will affect the future development of the codebase in some way? 2: What is the next TRUE Big thing that is being planned after the wallening?
• Player: In no particular order: - I assume it's gonna get answered/explained but how does the process look exactly? - Negative player feedback, what happens when it is ignored? How do I the player can still do anything then? - If there is no way for me to act, do you intend to create a way for players to still act if their feedback is (initially) ignored? Other than being told "annoy MSO maybe that will work"? - Let's hypothetically assume that I made a shitpost PR reverting wallening, with a meme attached and whatnot and received a gitban, how and where can I appeal it? - Also let's hypothetically say I have ideas for a real PR, is there someone I could talk with to present the idea? Ask about like some principles that should be followed? For context I'm thinking virology like "what is a good symptom" or what symptom effect should be avoided/are boring or is straight up barred (like if I recall, just straight up healing symptoms)
• Player: Is actual roof mechanic gettin added to the Wallening update too?
• Player: why was the wallening so buggy even tho it had been in development for 4 years ( thats from the oldest post about it i could find)
• Player: Is actual roof mechanic gettin added to the Wallening update too?
• Player: Due to the non-professional nature of development for TGstation, there's no one who's in charge of communication. This has lead to a lot of communication by people who are good at coding and design but not at talking to players, and has left a lot of good coders to suffer abuse from the playerbase because there's no one who's good at diffusing it. How do you plan on solving or mitigating this problem going forward?
• Player: How does the maintainer team plan on handling both interdepartmental and intradepartmental communication in the future? It often felt like one hand didn't know what the other was doing, and when it came time to communicate things to, say, the mapping team from the maintainer team, things felt incredibly messy. How can we avoid this in the future?
• Player: How would you guys think of a compromise of 32x32 walls with the same style? This would fix a lot of issues people have with the Wallening while keeping the pretty sprites (Just shortening them)
• Player: Do the coders even play the game or are you just doing stuff for the sake of doing something? Every "update" I expect /tg/ getting a little worse.
• Player: Would something that doesn't need the walls extending past the bounds of the initial tile be possible? Perhap something like TGMC walls?
• Player: Why do you think the Wallening was pushed so harshly?
• Player: What say should headmins have in resolving conflict regarding potential merges?
• Player: If player responce, is overwelming negitive will tallwalls be scrapped?
• Player: Is there actually any way to remove the change in the height of the walls, and keep the new sprite work?
• Player: Do you intend to abandon or revert wallening if the next test, later on down the line, yeilds the same negative feedback?
• Player: Have you ever considered making head coders votable, like headmins are?
• Player: What will happen to wall mounts that can really only be useful when viewed from One direction, Signs, Posters, etc.
• Player: How can the community provide more effective / less toxic feedback to the dev team?
• Player: When will the walls come back?
• Player: What was the reason the devs on Wallening decided to go for true 3/4ths instead of goon style?
• Player: Barring the PR, is there any documentation about the project that players can read?
• Player: What new map features do yall have in mind with the new perspective change, like half walls and things of that nature?
• Player: What do you think the culture in the maintainer team was like before the wallening? Has that been changed during this event or are people still acting the same?
• Player: I'm sure this has been asked, feel free to roll it into the other questions. When looking at feedback on something like this, what do you consider "actionable"?
• Player: Will future updates include character model updates to reflect different perspectives?
• Player: Would it be possible to make pr merging more democratic as in having the player base voting on if we should full merge something?
• Player: Is there gonna be a crystal-clear vote, like "do the PLAYERS itself want a new walls or no"? I know that people put in those walls a lot of effort, but let's be fair, some of the coders/spriters just did not play the game itself at all. And the situation around this update and how it was merged, was a complete, sorry for my language, shitshow. I also know that nobody ows me nothing, and people who can code doing it mostly for free. And i really appriciate it, i do. But if they didn't even play the game, with or without the wallening, why playeres have to? Thank you. Have a good one.
• Player: What are your thoughts on handling posters and paintings on non-south facing walls?
• Player: It often feels like mapping takes a backseat to the other avenues of development. Most recently the wallening really fucked with the map editor. So why is it that mapping often takes the backseat?
• Player: Is the development of the wallening going to continue or is it being scrapped entirely? Also, is there going to be a maintainer conduct created to guide coders in avoiding antagonizing players who express genuine feedback and concern?
• Player: How are you guys doing? Everyone okay over there?
• Player: I would like to know the thoughts of the lesson learned of hard deadlines for merges.
• Player: cheedar or cream cheese?
• Player: Its not a good idea to always listen to the popular opinion, but there should be a good reason to ignore it. My question is whether there is any sort of general design idea for this game. Many of the things addded seem disjointed and like there is no vision for how tgstation is meant to be played or enjoyed.
• Player: c*ders
• Player: Why are contributers of various standing still speaking about The Wallening as if the eventual merge of it is a sure thing, despite overhwhelmingly negative community feedback and all the other things that happened?
• Player: Repeatedly in the discord, "we don't design by poll" has been mentioned. Is this really a good idea? It seems to me that the development team are splintered and there is little cohesion. I think that TG may have an underlying issue with PR that needs to be addressed. Ultimately the players are the lifeblood of anything. DDOS aside, there has been a notable drop of users and I saw that some patreon contribs were stopped. I don't think that the staff should be strongarmed but I would like to know if the staff regret showing many users the door, and what they plan to do to bring them back. Kicking the wallening down the road is not a good idea. Are you going to commit to cancelling the project in totality?
• Player: How will you guys make coders actually check in with regards to massive gamewide changes so that we're not stuck between Merging something that isn't ready and Throwing away several years worth of work?
• Player: Why was the Wallening pushed so quickly and without proper response to commuinity feedback?
• Player: Why was the wallening testmerged for so long despite its numerous issues? How will you improve on this in the future? Why has terry not had the wallening reverted yet? How will you involve playerbase opinion in the future to avoid this again?
• Player: Had there been a project of this scale and timeframe attempted before?
• Player: How much of the community has to dislike or have problems with a pr/change for it to be taken seriously by c*ders/ma*nta*ners
• Player: How will the wallening be reimplemented?
• Player: How much money was wasted on code bounties for this? Seems like a scam...
• Player: Why does player feedback rarely get addressed reguarding code bounties?