[Dismissed] Antag whitelist for special antags

[BurgerBB]

With the summertide rolling in, and the fact that regulars are absolutely still garbage at antag despite being here for 1+ years, I strongly believe that there should be a "Special Antag" whitelist for special antags. Aurorastation is known to have a problem with bad antags, but for some reason this issue is still unsolved because of how political the topic is. The time based-whitelist is an actual joke and doesn't stop anything, hell, when I first played AuroraStation, I played for a round, fucked off for a month or two, and ended up having every time-based thing unlocked just because of that.

Special antags being the following antags:

- Ninja

- Wizard

- Merc

- Raider

- MALF

These are all rolls that require an intelligence higher than 2 IQ. More times often than not, rounds like these end up being garbage solely for the reason that the player doesn't have any experience and admins are usually way too forgiving for these players, some way more often than others. I strongly believe that in order to play any of these antag roles, you need a grasp on how to actually play traitor; which includes knowing how to actually drive a story and knowing how to play your damn role. It makes 0 sense that you need a whitelist for a CMO, yet a MALF AI with 0 experience with traitoring can still be a thing. A bad MALF can do a lot more damage to everyone's fun than a bad CMO who doesn't know how to do anything medical or RP related.

I've included merc/raider in there as well because there is a serious issue with mercs being REALLY bad when it comes to teamwork, among other things. At the end of every bad merc round, I always see 3 random names I have never seen before, and kyres.

Ideal plan:

- Code whitelist system.

- Implement whitelist system, leave it off for the time being.

- Tell everyone who's interested to make a special antag whitelist.

- Turn on the system in 3 months.

I pray to all the gods in the known universe that this doesn't become just simply a discussion thread that fades into oblivion like 100% of all other threads that deal with the topic of bad antagonists.

[LanceLynxx]

I believe a blacklist system is more effective in this case. Antagban consistently bad antags. Whitelist antags will cause the modes to be less frequent due to requiring whitelisted players to start in the first place. So even mixed will be fucked with. Never mind that it would be come another clique of "antag regulars" who might also burn themselves out if they roll it all the time due to creative blocks.

at least bad summertide antags cause at least some mayhem. Unless you want extended to be played more. Which is what would happen.

massive -1 due to not really solving anything, just making it worse.

[BurgerBB]

"Antagban consistently bad antags"

Keyword consistently. I've seen so many new players do utter and absolute fucking shit as antag and warnings can't be given "because they're new".

[Saudus]

I agree with the idea of an antag whitelist for many of the reasons burger lists. I have 2 worries however.

1, which antags to require whitelist. I think malf/wiz/ninja are definite inclusions for the whitelist and Changeling/traitor/vampire shouls definitely not be included. Cult/merc/rev/raider are very debatable. A bad cultist can out the entire thing and screw it up. Burger already listed issues with merc/raider. A bad rev can derail the gimmicks.

I would say merc and cult ought to be whitelisted too. I always assume some sort or discipline from those roles from a realism point, but expect many might disagree on cult. Raiders being a bit more silly and loose than mercs seem like the entire point of it to me basically.

2, gamemode probabilities. The gamemode probabilities would be heavily related to if this is good or not. In summary reguar traitor and traitor mixed modes ought to be made more probable to give people training. I also think autotraitor is much harder as it disrupts your RP flow and progress.

Even if these things were left ignored I would still +1 this. I think it worthwhile to at least test.

[Scheveningen]

Not a fan of whitelisting antagonists. Blacklist stopgaps supposedly already exist to prevent pubbies from being able to play certain team-based antagonist types until the timer runs out after they first log into the server from one set date in which the blacklist ends.

[LordFowl]

This is a policy decision. Moving to the appropriate subforum.

[AmoryBlaine]

I'm for it, but this shouldn't be based on whoever is simply the most mechanically robust. THE MOST important factor of ANY antag, is that they RP and provide for the round as a whole.

[Garnascus]

Never ever ever ever ever ever gonna happen. Sorry.

You are not going to meaningfully improve the antag system with a whitelist in place. As someone who deals with ahelps surrounding all of these antags i can tell you that the overwhelming amount of problems with the roles comes from inexperience. Inexperience with how the mechanics of that specific antagonist work. In the ninjas case its how the RIG modules work and what modules are good choices since the game does not really do a good job of communicating information to you. At least not to the degree in which your choice is meaningful. Same problem with wizard. The only solution here is just to play the game and the role more often.

Also i do not necessarily know about the rest of my team but i sure as hell do not want to deal with another whitelist system. Dont try to make me do actual work.

[Saudus]

You are not going to meaningfully improve the antag system with a whitelist in place. As someone who deals with ahelps surrounding all of these antags i can tell you that the overwhelming amount of problems with the roles comes from inexperience. Inexperience with how the mechanics of that specific antagonist work. In the ninjas case its how the RIG modules work and what modules are good choices since the game does not really do a good job of communicating information to you. At least not to the degree in which your choice is meaningful. Same problem with wizard. The only solution here is just to play the game and the role more often.

 

The mechanics point is very true. I am terrified of trying ninja/wiz because of their mechanics and me wrecking a round. A good way to actually improve this is to encourage people to host themselves a server and test the different antags, a small "how-to-host local server" could do some good for this.

[Coalf]

Alright, let's take it form the top.

Issue 1: Publicity and the role of an antag.

 

Look at the gamemodes you posted, all of them are a public enemy with perhaps the exception being Malfunctioning AI, now what do I mean by this?

They are KNOWN, people KNOW these characters are antags and people KNOW that THEY are the enemy, unlike ling, traitor, revolution or cult there is absolute zero doubt that these people are the bad guys.

This results in security hanging on their neck the entire round or atleast orbiting them the entire round waiting to jump on the opportunity to shit down their neck (#notallsecurity).

This style of play is COMPLETELY different from anything presented by traitor/ling/rev etc. People can be fucking brilliant rev's but suck absolute dicks at wizard and vice versa, the two gamemodes aren't complimentary they work complete opposite of each other, same with traitor.

Further there is the personal bias, the "The antag didn't play with me ergo he's a bad antag".

Or the famous "Complain about peacewizard the entire day and then play peacewizard myself because it's actually fun"

Or maybe the "I died to the antag so he's a bad antag because he was supposed to hold me as a hostage even though I keep spamming resist"

None of these are bad antags yet there is plenty of people on this server who would consider this bad antagging.

Antagonists roles should PREFERABLY provide fun for AS MANY PEOPLE AS POSSIBLE, however you are NOT ENTITLED TO BE INCLUDED IN THE FUN.

 

Issue 2: The Curve

 

Here is the second issue with your argument, the disgusting grind to get what you want.

Let's create a hypothetical scenario of a player named SteveHD, now Steve fucking loves Wizard but he isn't allowed to play one since it's whitelisted.

Now for SteveHD to get a whitelist he is required to play one of the gamemodes which he isn't a fan of or at least is indifferent to, he doesn't care much for those gamemode and they're just a means to an end for him. He doesn't really know what to do since he's used to playing wizard, he fucks up constantly, plays like a wizard by being extremely loud and public about it and is in general bad at traitor even if he was a good wizard.

We also have HankH who is completely new to the server and wanted to try that fancy wizard role, sadly he can't and thus he opts to roll for traitor.

FranklinPM wants to play malf, he basically does nothing but spam AI because he likes to fuck robots IRL. Of course FranklinPM isn't really affected as he simply keeps rolling Traitor AI of course he's still angry since TraitorAI is Malfunctioning AI but extremely shit and due to not having all his powers he just isn't as effective and can't do the thing he'd usually do like threaten the station with a nuke, send fake CC Announcements or blow up APCs.

StacyHK looves traitor and is really good at it, hell every round with her is a blast. However she can't play traitor or at least not as much because it's constantly full with players who are rushing to get as many traitor games under their belt as possibe so they can apply for their own role that is whitelisted.

Of course SteveHD being the failtraitor he is gets either no feedback or negative feedback, he doesn't get his whitelist, he quits.

HankH is one of the tens of people who are new to this server and the game who have visited over the summer, this means his rounds as traitors tend to be poor and people start making complaint threads that he's stealing "their" spot and they can't get their whitelists, eventually a player makes a suggestion to whitelist traitors to improve the server quality. Hank leaves the server moving onto Paradise where he can have fun and sell propane.

FranklinPM happens to be excluded from 84% of gamemodes since Traitor AI is only available during Autotraitor or Traitor, of course due to literally everyone who wants to be a special antag having to play every other gamemode now to get feedback his chance of getting traitor is even smaller.

StacyHK died in a car crash.

Of course ther would have to be traitor in the first place!

 

The gamemodes colored red REQUIRE a whitelisted individual to be present or they CANNOT start or be played.

And of course don't forget our friend extended which happens to be the second most voted gamemode after secret, in which you literally cannot GET traitor.

 

 

Overall this is based on a lot of opinions and annecdotal evidence.

You're on a different timezone, I'm on a different timezones, my experience is that antags tend to be overall average-good with the individual noobie or some such learning how to play said antag.

It is also impossible to accomplish, literally, every single thread would devolve into ad hominems, shouting matches, annecdotals and unsupported evidence as the only way to prove someone was a bad antag would be to review an entire round.

The whole fucking thing in a .txt document with no visual ques, good fucking luck.

"But staff is present"

Yes staff is present but we cannot remember every single antag round that has ever happened, many of us ghost or sit in the lobby listening for ahelps or actually play the game, leaving us open to our own personal bias.

Hell some of us ARE the antags and I've seen multiple staff members do thins which I personally didn't like as antags, oh yeah personally there is that word again.

Tl;dr this is not only improbable but actively distruptive and server sinking.

[Coalf]

Addendum:

If you want to properly fix this issue, turn blacklisting from

"X hours since first time logged"

to

"X hours played"

This would actually be effective in giving people time to learn the game mechanics themselves rather than jumping into these gamemodes.

[Scheveningen]

That's the more ideal solution imo.

Although at first glance from a new player perspective (hypothetically) it might be silly. PLAY 24 HOURS OF THIS SERVER TO UNLOCK NINJA. ACQUIRE FIRST GREENTEXT OF THE DAY BONUS AND COLLECT IMMEDIATELY.

[Sytic]

I hate bad antags. Usually I can robust them into oblivion, or they try to be robust and implode, or manage to actually walk two steps into Security and die. Does that mean we should fucking BAN them? No. Everybody should get the chance to learn from their mistakes- punishing someone for trying to be an antag is just crude.

[Banditoz]

Okay. Say we add an antag whitelist. What questions would we even put in it?

[BurgerBB]

Never ever ever ever ever ever gonna happen. Sorry.

You are not going to meaningfully improve the antag system with a whitelist in place. As someone who deals with ahelps surrounding all of these antags i can tell you that the overwhelming amount of problems with the roles comes from inexperience. Inexperience with how the mechanics of that specific antagonist work. In the ninjas case its how the RIG modules work and what modules are good choices since the game does not really do a good job of communicating information to you. At least not to the degree in which your choice is meaningful. Same problem with wizard. The only solution here is just to play the game and the role more often.

Also i do not necessarily know about the rest of my team but i sure as hell do not want to deal with another whitelist system. Dont try to make me do actual work.

 

Inexperience which can be solved by taking the time to bother to read the wiki or play the game for at least a month. I literally cannot give a shit how new of an antag you are, if you haven't bothered to put the effort in to actually know how to play your roll, then don't play at all.

 

Alright, let's take it form the top.

Issue 1: Publicity and the role of an antag.

 

Look at the gamemodes you posted, all of them are a public enemy with perhaps the exception being Malfunctioning AI, now what do I mean by this?

They are KNOWN, people KNOW these characters are antags and people KNOW that THEY are the enemy, unlike ling, traitor, revolution or cult there is absolute zero doubt that these people are the bad guys.

This results in security hanging on their neck the entire round or atleast orbiting them the entire round waiting to jump on the opportunity to shit down their neck (#notallsecurity).

This style of play is COMPLETELY different from anything presented by traitor/ling/rev etc. People can be fucking brilliant rev's but suck absolute dicks at wizard and vice versa, the two gamemodes aren't complimentary they work complete opposite of each other, same with traitor.

Further there is the personal bias, the "The antag didn't play with me ergo he's a bad antag".

Or the famous "Complain about peacewizard the entire day and then play peacewizard myself because it's actually fun"

Or maybe the "I died to the antag so he's a bad antag because he was supposed to hold me as a hostage even though I keep spamming resist"

None of these are bad antags yet there is plenty of people on this server who would consider this bad antagging.

Antagonists roles should PREFERABLY provide fun for AS MANY PEOPLE AS POSSIBLE, however you are NOT ENTITLED TO BE INCLUDED IN THE FUN.

 

Issue 2: The Curve

 

Here is the second issue with your argument, the disgusting grind to get what you want.

Let's create a hypothetical scenario of a player named SteveHD, now Steve fucking loves Wizard but he isn't allowed to play one since it's whitelisted.

Now for SteveHD to get a whitelist he is required to play one of the gamemodes which he isn't a fan of or at least is indifferent to, he doesn't care much for those gamemode and they're just a means to an end for him. He doesn't really know what to do since he's used to playing wizard, he fucks up constantly, plays like a wizard by being extremely loud and public about it and is in general bad at traitor even if he was a good wizard.

We also have HankH who is completely new to the server and wanted to try that fancy wizard role, sadly he can't and thus he opts to roll for traitor.

FranklinPM wants to play malf, he basically does nothing but spam AI because he likes to fuck robots IRL. Of course FranklinPM isn't really affected as he simply keeps rolling Traitor AI of course he's still angry since TraitorAI is Malfunctioning AI but extremely shit and due to not having all his powers he just isn't as effective and can't do the thing he'd usually do like threaten the station with a nuke, send fake CC Announcements or blow up APCs.

StacyHK looves traitor and is really good at it, hell every round with her is a blast. However she can't play traitor or at least not as much because it's constantly full with players who are rushing to get as many traitor games under their belt as possibe so they can apply for their own role that is whitelisted.

Of course SteveHD being the failtraitor he is gets either no feedback or negative feedback, he doesn't get his whitelist, he quits.

HankH is one of the tens of people who are new to this server and the game who have visited over the summer, this means his rounds as traitors tend to be poor and people start making complaint threads that he's stealing "their" spot and they can't get their whitelists, eventually a player makes a suggestion to whitelist traitors to improve the server quality. Hank leaves the server moving onto Paradise where he can have fun and sell propane.

FranklinPM happens to be excluded from 84% of gamemodes since Traitor AI is only available during Autotraitor or Traitor, of course due to literally everyone who wants to be a special antag having to play every other gamemode now to get feedback his chance of getting traitor is even smaller.

StacyHK died in a car crash.

Of course ther would have to be traitor in the first place!

 

The gamemodes colored red REQUIRE a whitelisted individual to be present or they CANNOT start or be played.

And of course don't forget our friend extended which happens to be the second most voted gamemode after secret, in which you literally cannot GET traitor.

 

 

Overall this is based on a lot of opinions and annecdotal evidence.

You're on a different timezone, I'm on a different timezones, my experience is that antags tend to be overall average-good with the individual noobie or some such learning how to play said antag.

It is also impossible to accomplish, literally, every single thread would devolve into ad hominems, shouting matches, annecdotals and unsupported evidence as the only way to prove someone was a bad antag would be to review an entire round.

The whole fucking thing in a .txt document with no visual ques, good fucking luck.

"But staff is present"

Yes staff is present but we cannot remember every single antag round that has ever happened, many of us ghost or sit in the lobby listening for ahelps or actually play the game, leaving us open to our own personal bias.

Hell some of us ARE the antags and I've seen multiple staff members do thins which I personally didn't like as antags, oh yeah personally there is that word again.

Tl;dr this is not only improbable but actively distruptive and server sinking.

 

For a post complaining about anecdotal evidence this post contains a lot of... absolutely nothing. Purely meaningless hypotheticals that I think severely over exaggerate everything to a silly level.

[BurgerBB]

Okay. Say we add an antag whitelist. What questions would we even put in it?

 

1. Have you read the wiki on traitor roles?

2. How would you rate your ability to roleplay as an antag?

3. Do you have experience as antag in the past?

To pass for 1 you'd need to say yes and prove it.

To pass for 2 you'd need to be honest and the feedback in the thread will reflect it.

To pass for 3 you'd need to be honest and have other people prove it.

A lot of people seem to be under the impression that you're going to need to play 10 traitor rounds in order to get a special antag whitelist which isn't the case. All you literally need is one round, and if you're decent, you'll get a pass. It seems like this idea is now dead in the water given how the host literally said "this isn't going to happen" and coalf is still meming. This gives me immense depression because this is another issue that seems like it won't ever be solved.

[Coalf]

For a post complaining about anecdotal evidence this post contains a lot of... absolutely nothing. Purely meaningless hypotheticals that I think severely over exaggerate everything to a silly level.

Dang, left that point in there, thought about deleting it.

Glad you pointed it out the single thing that you could defend yourself against and accepted the rest of the feedback as correct.

[Mofo1995]

How am I supposed to learn how to play any of the any of the "special" antag roles if they're stuck behind a skill gate? Should unrobust people really be blanket banned from antagonist roles with heavy doses of new mechanics? The wiki does not effectively teach someone how to wizard or vampire, being good at these any at roles requires knowledge of how their mechanics work. Reading the wiki isn't good enough, because while it might tell you what things do at face value it doesn't, list all of the mechanical hard coded values on everything. "XYZ spell does exactly 20 brute damage" etc. The wiki guides aren't powergaming compendiums, they're just a list of what options are available. If they just listed the best combos and exact coded damages or effects, then all rounds would just devolve to the same streamlined antag templates over and over again. After all, you don't wanna be peace wiz and lose your antag whitelist. Gotta make sure there's at least an hour of combat before security players adminhelp and get it stripped.

Admins forbid a mistake happen and accidentally cut an antag short, lest they get bwoinked for not meeting the fun quota.

Edit: Like, do we really wanna say to people "Oh yeah you have to go play on another server for awhile and antag it up there where the mechanics might be different then come back here." or "Oh yeah, you have to download a private server and test everything out then come back when you think you're ready." Getting auto-traitor every once in awhile is not going to teach you how to be robust in special roles, because the special roles all have novel mechanics which are specific to them. And even then, just outright being robust is not going to deliver the most outright fun experience to everyone. Getting gunned down by a merc or fireballed by a wiz with no interaction because they're in combat-RP mode isn't always fun for me. The challenge provided to security should not be the end all be all measure of how good an antagonist is.

[Scheveningen]

A lot of people seem to be under the impression that you're going to need to play 10 traitor rounds in order to get a special antag whitelist which isn't the case. All you literally need is one round, and if you're decent, you'll get a pass. It seems like this idea is now dead in the water given how the host literally said "this isn't going to happen" and coalf is still meming. This gives me immense depression because this is another issue that seems like it won't ever be solved.

 

How is this supposed to fix a systemic antagonist issue if the requirements are so easily superceded? It's only dead in the water because you say it is, but I will say this:

The suggestion trips over itself because it posits to be the fix to an issue that's admittedly a substantial one: antagonist quality. However, the ability to judge whether an antagonist is a quality one or not is still judged from multiple individual subjective standpoints. When analyzed by an admin (a few of which already gave you feedback here as to why this isn't feasible), the only basis they have are two things: their experience and relevance with a specific nuance of roleplaying, and what the rules say about that nuance.

Because even an admin can find themselves tripping over the interpretation of the rules and what the "right" way of enforcing them is for any given case, it's hard to consistently help this issue as none of the admins on the team actually look for people to ban unless those players are outright griefing.

but c'mon man, in the end, this isn't something worth being tripped up about. There seems to be no end of subjects that give you immense depression, it's a bit theatrical.

[BurgerBB]

It seems like a lot of people are also under the impression that robustness and practice is the #1 issue, which is likely my fault because I keep bringing up "new players who don't know how to play."

When I include the word "play" in there, I am referring to actually knowing how to roleplay. Robustness isn't even a top 10 when it comes to why I think antags are garbage. Number one on my list is the fact that antags don't actually do anything to generate a story. You can learn how to actually do this skill by not playing a traitor role, which is why I'm scoffing at all the arguments that "oh it means they get to be traitor less and practice less."

[Pratepresidenten]

I think the whole whitelisting of antags is a bit hypocritical to be perfectly honest.

From my experience the regulars are the ones that complains the most about shitty antags, yet they're the ones that votes for extended, where, surprise, there are no antags.

I get that bad antags suck, and not everyone is comfortable with playing all the different antags, so there will be fuckups. Rulebreaking fuckups obviously gets punished at the expense of a death of a hullbreach, but there is a lesson learned.

Some people might need a little extra to get their RP going, and we shouldnt wall up what could be considered fun just because we have a few bad seeds. Everyone has to start somewhere, and we shouldnt ridicule someone for pulling a dumb, we should instead try and give constructive criticism so they can do better next time.

[Kaed]

I think the whole whitelisting of antags is a bit hypocritical to be perfectly honest.

From my experience the regulars are the ones that complains the most about shitty antags, yet they're the ones that votes for extended, where, surprise, there are no antags.

 

That's some pretty broad generalizations there pal. The people who vote extended generally aren't relevant to this thread.

I kind of like the idea of the round-controlling antagonists being whitelisted, myself.

[Skull132]

Okay. Say we add an antag whitelist. What questions would we even put in it?

 

1. Have you read the wiki on traitor roles?

2. How would you rate your ability to roleplay as an antag?

3. Do you have experience as antag in the past?

To pass for 1 you'd need to say yes and prove it.

To pass for 2 you'd need to be honest and the feedback in the thread will reflect it.

To pass for 3 you'd need to be honest and have other people prove it.

 

All of these questions would be bullshitted through with absolute ease. In fact. Any static interview is shit. The entire point of an interview as a tool of competency assessment is to drill into your head. And the only way you can do that is with live questioning.

Here's one major issue. High throughput manual whitelisting is oxymoronic. In order for whitelists to work, you need some ability to actually gauge the applicants. This requires time per whitelist. Time to read the application, to assess the applicant. What use is a whitelist if the few managers are swarmed with a metric ass of requests? Which they will be: the ability to play antagonist is very integral to the SS13 experience. There's a high need for them. And any whitelist system that's placed to oversee that need, if operated manually, will fail.

As far as whitelist systems go, consider that the lower the throughput, the more effective they are. Mod apps -- lowest throughput, most time per applicant, best consistency. Species apps, average throughput with average time per applicant, not too many complaints normally. Command whitelist applications, possibly the highest throughput, also the most complaints. I would personally say that the command whitelist and species applications are the highest throughput whitelist systems we should allow, with anything beyond that being impractical in not serving its purpose. It will literally just end up with everyone who knows how to eloquently phrase themselves getting it. And then the status quo not really changing, because this is not how you filter for this kinda stuff.

So if any "whitelist" for antags is to ever be considered, it should be automated. Anything else is impractical and unfit for purpose, as explained above. One idea would be to refactor the very lax time based system we have atm (it literally just counts days since you first connected) to count your play time. Which can be done with a bit of heuristics applied. It'd at least ensure a basic familiarity with the game and server environment before stepping off into antag wonderland.

And at the end of the day, you're still going to have to face the facts that:

• Banning on first offence does not happen. Aurora's moderation, since its inception, has had a pseudo policy of warnings leading up to harsh bans. That is to say, we give people the benefit of the doubt the first time, and expect them to get better. Second, third, fourth case at most would lead to a ban. But you have to consider, this is for an individual, so for all you know, you might be getting annoyed by multiple different people, all getting their first warning.
• There was supposed to be a second point but I forgot.
  
• However, since I started a list, I might as well pad it out.

[BurgerBB]

As far as whitelist systems go, consider that the lower the throughput, the more effective they are. Mod apps -- lowest throughput, most time per applicant, best consistency. Species apps, average throughput with average time per applicant, not too many complaints normally. Command whitelist applications, possibly the highest throughput, also the most complaints. I would personally say that the command whitelist and species applications are the highest throughput whitelist systems we should allow, with anything beyond that being impractical in not serving its purpose. It will literally just end up with everyone who knows how to eloquently phrase themselves getting it. And then the status quo not really changing, because this is not how you filter for this kinda stuff.

 

And that's why we need this system. Antag whitelist applications will have a lot of feedback.

There is no system that would completely eliminate bad antagonism. There are still regulars who are absolutely garbage when it comes to being an antagonist, and even further, there is a really lax definition on whether or not an antagonist is bad or good according to staff. I recall several situations where I ahelped a shitter antag and staff have replied with "it's okay tbh" including but limited to:

- A MALF AI stealth nuking the round, and then while people were actualling roleplaying in the holodeck, locking everyone in and then activating carp which proceeded to put people into crit. It was okay because "well no one died and the AI needed to escalate"

- A raider posing as a crewmember, asking to be let into cargo because there are raiders out there I knew oocly they were a raider occly but I let them in anyway to see what would happen. I was then promptly whipped into crit, and had my PDA, ID, and Radio stolen. I would've bled to death if I did not print a radio headset from the autolathe. This was okay because "they didn't kill you and it provided conflict" despite the fact that I was in surgery longer than it would've took to actually kill me and the conflict being jack shit.

- A mod, or an admin, can't remember, deciding to choose the wonderful gimmick of going around and cutting everyone's limbs off as ninja. This was deemed acceptable because no one died.

- Multiple occasions of shit-tier MALF players throwing their cyborgs under the bus because they were unable to provide an actually interesting gimmick.

With a antagonist whitelist it will allow people to give and take feedback when it comes to previous antagonist encounters so that antagonists and hopefully prevent antags from being bad in the future.

[Saudus]

I see this almost as much as a way to protect new players from our community as anything else.

Antags like ninja, wizard and malf are a bit complicated and are central to a round they are in. Mercs being total idiots in terms of team play feels a bit off brand for them but they at least have backup and usually one or two experienced players to help guide them.

It isn't very fun to watch new players play complicated and important antags, fail, and then get salty garbage thrown on them in OOC. When at least I started playing SS13 I checked ALL the antag boxes I could and would not have had a fun experience failing hard and then having people be very salty and trash me.

Also, if you've gotten whitelisted for command or a species then as far as I think you've already shown enough RP skill (even if it is a very different kind). I get that we don't want more whitelists and the extra work really, and this ought to save hell of a lot of time. Is it mechanically possible for say Wizard+Ninja+Malf being locked but unlockable via either a special antag whitelist AND/OR a species/command whitelist? The antag whitelist really doesn't have to be very complicated either. I consider the actual time played counter to be just as good as the low complexity whitelist as we'd use for this otherwise.