TrickingTrapster

"first, you started complaining." Me stating it was lame was me stating my opinion on it, not directly complaining about the event. I did not take my opinion into account when I wrote the warning. "you don't know that" Actually, based on a sentence Catnip himself said, I am pretty sure of it. He said he would be fine with it /if you ahelped/. But you did not, so the logical conclusion is that he is not fine with the way things went down.

"if they chose". Remember that people have to stay in-character. The crew was passive with a reason, they have both no experience in combat nor experience with vampires. While the latter is obvious to everyone, I don't think you get the first part. Non-security personnel are not expected to have any combat experience, so they most likely do not unless their second job is security. This was a huge problem that round in general because you were both the only security officer until Nanako arrived AND the vampire. While your concept of a tyrannical vampire can work, I think it would have worked a lot better on a more well-staffed shift. Deadhour is a delicate thing when antagging and your execution of it was a little sloppy from my point of view. No command staff didn't help either, especially after you got the spare ID. "I'm not attacking you" Okay, but if you aren't, "Using your mod privileges to vent your frustration" is a poor choice of words. "complained about it in looc before taking it to ahelps". I was trying to explain to you why you can't do that without having to resort to my "mod privileges" as you call them. However, as I saw it, you immediately shot into the defense and started to what I can only describe as lawyering your way out of it. "a bwoink from him would have been more neutral". I'm pretty sure you would have still received a warning, since you didn't ahelp about your arguably questionable antag decisions.

"but if I ahelped beforehand.". Yet you didn't, which makes it an issue. I don't get why you expect a crew of, what, 4 people left, try to engage a person with supernatural powers and his thralls, who are all armed to the teeth with the tactical armory's contents. "using your mod privileges to vent your frustration". Stop assuming I did this over a personal gripe. You're trying to attack me personally here, that's not very nice. "should've let him handle talking to me". Catnip was just as involved as I am, being your thrall ordered to keep everyone off the shuttle. It would not have made much of a difference. Like he said, he would have been fine with it /if you ahelped beforehand/, which, may I remind you, you did not. The earlier statements were more of a breakdown for the round than about the warning itself, to give a bit of context. The bit about only killing Nanako and such.

To clarify a few things: This reflects on the round before the one this screenshot was made in. It was a vampire round, during deadhour. He was having a "gang" of thralls beating everyone up he didn't like ICly, which yes, wasn't against the rules, but I personally didn't like it. It had some buildup, he killed the rest of sec until he was the only sec left and just terrorized the crew. Then, when the shuttle came, he "banned" it, not letting anyone on it. This is where I drew the line, because it just destroys end of round roleplay. Yes, it made sense for him ICly, but so does escaping for captured criminals and we don't allow that either during that time. In my eyes it falls under "indirect EoR grief". My sentence about it not being his call was referring to him stating it didn't fall under eorg. The other staff on at the moment was SirCatnip, whose character was thralled. I can't speak for him but I'm convinced he shares my opinion.

I'll be down with that too, arrow. Just something to prevent sign language in complete darkness since it's complete bullshit imo.

Can I add to this? One, if you completely remove the vocal chords, you can't just "rearrange" them and get them a perfectly fine voice. Maybe add some implants at robotics? And two, if you can do these in-game, maybe add setup options so characters can start out mute? (I'll finally stop fucking up by forgetting to set sign language.)

Maybe you could copy a bit of code over from the fax machines. You can notify PDA's of things: Just add the PDA's you want to send to to the list, and type the message. I don't know, I'm not a coder.

So, this just came to me out of the blue, but what if we implemented group chat into the PDA's? So you can send messages to more than one person at the same time. Not sure how viable this is for the coders, but it's certainly an idea. Maybe even go with invites and stuff, so you can add more and more people into the same group chat.

So, quite simple, this. Sign language is very cool and everything, but people being able to sign to eachother in 100% darkness just shouldn't be possible. Maybe change the sentence the person does below a certain light percentage to, "X signs/gestures but it's too dark to see it." Nothing high priority or game-breaking, just something that irks me.

Ron, really. Those gamemodes CAN work, yes. But the majority of the current players' mentality is too focused on robusting the station and thinking "the RP that follows from this is good antag RP". Not exactly the right mindset. Let heisters spawn with merchant jumpsuits, a bag of money, less killing and more stunning tools. Let the mercs spawn with something that lets them infiltrate the station rather than straight up robust into it. Let converted cultists earn their books by doing a rite or two. Add some more RP-oriented mechanics and make these gamemodes less purely about their mechanical gimmick. Those are several solutions that don't overly drastically change the gamemode but add enough things to give players something to think about. Heck, even better: Give the heisters a bank account! A way to rob money without having to forcefully shove people into ATMs. Have them sell scammy things. I dunno. Something other than guns though.

I have been pushing for option C several times, UM. Though it seems others are really opposed to it for some reason.

Yes, that's what I was saying. Why are those there anyway? What's their use? Maybe a lot of the problem is solved if you make them less accessible.

I can see why this would pose a problem, but I've never really seen it happen. (Though that may be me not playing sec.) Another question you could ask is, why are there mesons everywhere they shouldn't be? Those should be in engineering and mining, nowhere else. Just putting it out there.

They used to have to, Nanako. Now it's an extra they can utilize, or they can just "Hey look at this weird stuff *CONVERT*". Feels like the incredibly easy way out.

My point about robustness is that it's not roleplay, it's mechanics in a program. If you say "Being robust is roleplay because it makes messages" you're on the wrong track. You click on people. ERMAGERD ROLEPLAY. No. It's not. If you think it's roleplay you're bad. I get that it's necessary in fights and such, but having entire gamemodes centered around mechanics rather than actual roleplay really ticks me off. Contrast it to malf AI: Their hacking of APCs and turning them blue actually incites and encourages roleplay about why it happened, whereas the heisters' and mercs' guns just incite running and being taken out of the round and trying to make sure you're not getting taken out of the round at all costs. I think this ties in a bit of why the community stopped doing fear-RP: They're gonna get shot anyway, either by sec officers rushing it or the hostage taker saying fuck it because they got bored or it takes too long. Or, you know, by walking down the hallway and meet a trigger-happy intruder. I think a good way to describe it would be, that these gamemodes have it backwards. Other gamemodes build mechanics around the roleplay they can provide, these three gamemodes use their gimmicky mechanics and there might be some roleplay surrounding it. The point of this thread, sorry if it's vague, is to find some ways to make these three gamemodes more enjoyable in general. I really don't get how picking up a gun and clicking on players is either fun or creating roleplay. If I wanted to do that there's literally just about twenty shooting games I could pick from.

A bomb? What a shame. Anyway, yeah, I support this. Maybe give people something else to whine to NT about other than OH NO NOOKS.

Yes, but all head whitelisted players are able to play captain, so those players do have the option to use it. That's what I meant with "players".

Ehhh, Berry. Let's keep in mind here that hostage situations, armed intruders and things like that are not standard ICly. The players know they will happen frequently but lore-wise those things almost never happen (on the station anyway). Then why would there be the payment system for those situations? Armed criminals is about skimming the line, I think. Hostages should not be taken as standard procedures with rewards and fines attached.

I can see this work. Whitelisted players should already know to be responsible players, or they would not have been accepted in the first place. Plus, this gives players the option to punish all the non-ahelped bullshit. I support this.

I know we can't change people's mentality, at least not over the course of a day, but we can certainly give them a nudge or two in the right direction. And, right back at you: If security is knocking at their door it's either the cult not being stealthy about it or security metagaming too hard. And, if you say those mechanics are "needed for balance" you've just proven the point I've made in this thread: These gamemodes are too focused on robustness. Also, I know I can't opt out of death in regular rounds, but in those rounds people actually have to put effort into the situation surrounding my death. Mercs, raiders and cultists get free tools for doing so and now you're telling me they get a free pass to do it too. I'm not buying that.

Pfff. Four to six hours, huh. I'm interested, but I'm not sure I can keep to that timeframe (mostly due to RL issues). Though I would definitely give it a try.

Okay, cool. Mercs have tools. So where were they the last 9 merc rounds? Pretty sure they mostly revolved about "OH NO HOSTILES WITH GUNS". No paperwork, no stealthgame, just... Sec chasing them while they cause mischief. I really fail to see how that is engaging RP for the crew. Only a few times have I seen merc go well, and even then only when a competent player (usually an admin, even) takes the lead and tells them what the fuck to do. I really think this needs to change. "You either join or die from not joining.". It's the entire problem I have with cult. It's not fine, since it's almost not reversible because the chaplain is /never/ involved in cult rounds. Maybe give some appeal to joining the cult? Like I mentioned earlier in this thread, how about some initiation rites? How about seperating the starting cultists, the head cultists if you will, from new converts, which would start out as initiates. The head cultists would have to teach them how to draw runes, how to correctly make the incantations while drawing the runes, etc. It still doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me that freshly converted cultists can perfectly draw and chant for runes right from the get go only because they have a book. If Nar'Sie can teach that in the split second it takes to convert someone why is there even the need to only teach a single word per cultist? For me, there's just zero appeal to playing cult as it is now.

Funny thing about that, it already IS the rule for antags to create RP and not play to win. A rating system would be nice, but my point still stands: The three gamemodes I have been ranting on in this thread have /too much emphasis on robustness/. You know what a very good way would be to improve cult? Instead of making the cultists have to drag someone on a convert rune and use it, have the person themselves use the convert rune to convert to the cult. That way you're both certain they will do their best to aid the cult AND it gives some incentive to RP with them to get them to like the cult and do it out of their own free will. Instead of pushing someone, cabletying them, dragging them to maint and spamconverting them. Mercs and raiders just need more tools than just guns.

I also think part of the issue is the antag players not being given enough tools to create situations like that, bedshaped. All they spawn with is... Voidsuits and guns. Maybe give them some tools to fake paperwork, send a faked centcomm message or two without requiring admin intervention? In short: Making it a little easier to create a good situation to RP in instead of having to wrack their brains over how they will be convincing enough for players not to start metagaming because "Oh no red suit with guns".

This sounds nice, but I have two questions. Were you planning to do this in "sessions" (getting the players together at specific times and do a burst of RP) Or just keep it going on a forum thread? And secondly, how "safe" will this be? If someone's character dies, can they be cloned or are they out of the game? Or will dying not be a part of this?