Remove the paranoia game mode

[Scheveningen]

Preface preface: In case nobody was aware, Paranoia is Malf+Ling+Traitor. None of these antagonists are replenished as they are removed from the round.

Preface: Antagonists are interesting. Each antagonist in the round in some way or another is an "actor", no different from any other player-character which by themselves is also an "actor" on the stage. An antagonist, as an actor, has a specific set of attributes that can either make or break their impactfulness in a given round.

These attributes are thusly, in a manner oversimplified so I don't need to write a stupid essay again: Motivations, escalation, background. An antagonist as a result makes their impact on a round by executing certain acts that makes sense based on their motivations, they escalate with whatever means they have based on their supposed previous experiences as a character, and the antagonist's self-defined background establishes context for their in-round attitudes. The antagonists are designed to clash with the non-antagonists, ultimately, due to their differing motivations and character goals.

When more than one antagonist is added into the mix, you add additional variables or actors onto the stage to influence events to play out as they would on the center stage. Since every actor in some way is interacting with another, the more actors you have on a given stage, the more nuance of who is effecting what seems to appear.

It eventually becomes an intriguing spiderweb of action and reaction between the actors. And if allowed to carry on past that by adding even more actors into the fray with conflicting agendas on the stage, it becomes much more convoluted on the center stage and there may even be some individuals shouting over another, making it difficult for both the audience and actors to interpret what exactly is occurring with so many events happening at once.

Premise: The above essentially describes the problem with paranoia. Because of how many antagonist actors are put into a round at once, especially considering not all of them are even working towards the same agenda (such as the case with heist, mercenary, cult, despite the small problems with those game modes), almost every paranoia round is an incomprehensible mess of antagonism based on opportunism rather than based on a goal of driving a narrative. One might say that this isn't an issue if we assume good faith and the best possible play will happen, despite the reality indicating that the general experience with the paranoia game mode is that it is a mess of a game mode that favors quantity of antagonists over quality of antagonists.

Because of this general experience that happens, and the expectation that things will go badly, people have a tendency to not play at their best when they anticipate the worst will inevitably happen. "Chin up!" is not an appropriate response to this issue, as people unhappy with a specific facet of the game are not going to immediately change their tune just because they were passive aggressively told that nobody likes a Debbie Downer. I don't find that this is an appropriate way to address people's displeasure with the paranoia game mode.

Argument: Personally, I think paranoia should go, from both the secret rotation and from being able to be voted in.

I should establish that I do not hate paranoia (I am mildly annoyed with it at worst), nor do I have a distaste for the individuals who vote for the paranoia game mode. My opinion is, at worst, that perhaps people are a little misguided to think that they will enjoy paranoia because it is innately chaotic, but voting for a game mode for any reason isn't a bannable offense, and it isn't the problem. The fact that a bad option for the staunch majority of people's enjoyment even exists in the first place, seems to be the problem.

The fact of the matter is, paranoia lacks the crucial structure that other game modes seemingly possess in greater quantities because the various antagonists meshed together make narrative sense. Most people I've spoken to enjoy intrigue more than they do enjoy paranoia. Even some people find value in crossfire over paranoia, which is surprising, since crossfire is either loved or loathed and is easily one of the most divisive subjects that is often discussed in OOC or in the discord.

And yet, why remove, not rework? "REWORK, NOT REMOVE!" is a past battlecry voicing distaste for previous sentiments that wanted to remove essentially every feature from the game a certain crowd of people did not like. While this is a reactionary movement to a particularly irrational and unreasonable status quo, and thus itself not particularly all that bad, let me list the reasons why paranoia should be removed.

1. Reworking paranoia will either take too much time, end up being a band-aid solution, or it will be far more likely we'll be back discussing this topic on the board than it is that the main detractors of paranoia will be happy with a hypothetical paranoia rework.
2. Paranoia is a damn mess, for the most part, filled with antagonist combinations that are innately designed to be particularly selfish or pursuing their own individual goals at the same time, and generally are not required or expected to work towards a mutual arrangement. Not even the lings. You can backstab lings if you'd so like. From a singular character's perspective, however, it is impossible to decipher what is going on, and due to this easily established confusion stacking the round in the paranoia antags' favor, people can die for simply not understanding what is going on.
3. On the flip side, when the paranoia antagonists do team up, it ends up being traitors and changelings with a malf abusing machine overload on their side. Given the nature of how oppressive all three of those forces are at once, even if this occurrence is incredibly unlikely and would only happen once in a blue moon, it would inevitably lead to an incredibly unenjoyable experience for anyone other than the lings, traitors and the rogue station synthetics themselves.
4. As is the case with all voted game modes that are not secret or extended, there is often a very subtle and unpunishable degree of metagaming and preparation that happens during voted paranoia. This is not a paranoia-centric issue, but rather an issue with vote results and votes for game modes not being obfuscated in general.

Anyway, that's my opinion. I don't find that paranoia is particularly the most problematic issue, but on the occasion where it is voted, I find myself particularly unmotivated to play a round of Space Station 13 on this server, when I would rather like to be able to play when I find time for it. I just don't think everyone's round must be guaranteed to be nothing other than suffering and having to deal with an oppressive amount of antagonists ripping the station in half due to the sheer saturation of malicious actors involved. Perhaps other people feel the same? Let me know what you think.

[GreenBoi]

Paranoia isn't in Secret rotation period. It hasn't been voted in months, until last round.

[Scheveningen]

It's pretty terrible nonetheless. It shouldn't exist as an option as-is.

[ben10083]

Just popping in to point out that paranoia is also a roundtype that has CCIA not respond to faxes and ebs (due to malf), so the addition of ling and traitor makes any centcom assistance impossible and could lead to a round where security is dead, command is dead, cargo and/or engineer has a autism fort, and antags have free reign.

[Itanimulli]

5 hours ago, ben10083 said:

Just popping in to point out that paranoia is also a roundtype that has CCIA not respond to faxes and ebs (due to malf), so the addition of ling and traitor makes any centcom assistance impossible and could lead to a round where security is dead, command is dead, cargo and/or engineer has a autism fort, and antags have free reign.

It's almost as if an abundance of antagonists is the entire point.

[BurgerBB]

In 99% of cases, an abundance of antagonists with different goals and objects usually leads to a shit-tier round with very little escalation. More often than not, there are more bad paranoia rounds than good ones.

[Brutishcrab51]

Yeah but like, it's not in Secret rotation. If the majority of people vote for Paranoia, it's because they want antags and a fight.

[Bear]

Put it in the secret rotation imho

[BurgerBB]

1 minute ago, Brutishcrab51 said:

Yeah but like, it's not in Secret rotation. If the majority of people vote for Paranoia, it's because they want antags and a fight.

This is never the case. People vote paranoia because voting for insane gamemodes is a meme. I guarantee if there was a gamemode added that was the equivalent of /tg/'s warops, people would vote for it.

[Kaed]

I personally don't see that much of a problem with the round type, I've never really hated anything except crossfire.

 

[Brutishcrab51]

You know, I don't actually know what Warops is.

 

Still. Democracy prevails, if people vote for it, it's because they want a wild time. I know the Paranoia round you're talking about, and I got absolutely murdered during it. I also didn't vote for it. Still, I had some fun. It was fun.

[BurgerBB]

1 hour ago, Brutishcrab51 said:

You know, I don't actually know what Warops is.

 

Still. Democracy prevails, if people vote for it, it's because they want a wild time. I know the Paranoia round you're talking about, and I got absolutely murdered during it. I also didn't vote for it. Still, I had some fun. It was fun.

WarOps is when Nuke Ops declares war and everyone gets all access and arms up to defeat the incoming nukies who have like 500 TC.

 

I wasn't in the paranoia round but I was in the voting for it. 6 people voted paranoia, 4 people voted extended, 4 people voted secret. There were about 20 players ready. I don't see how that is fair.

[Xelnagahunter]

19 hours ago, BurgerBB said:

I wasn't in the paranoia round but I was in the voting for it. 6 people voted paranoia, 4 people voted extended, 4 people voted secret. There were about 20 players ready. I don't see how that is fair.

It's perfectly fair. While the game mode isn't in the secret rotation, there is no doubt in my mind that people who vote secret don't give a shit what the round type is. You are trying to place the argument that 8 people didn't want paranoia, but I only view that as a vote of 6 to 4, not 6 to 8 since secret people usually are just trying to get something other than extended most of the time. Not saying that my account is 100% true or accurate, but it's how I see things.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

I like it as an option. More people want it than don't when its voted for. We never unintentionally get paranoia. 

You know what you get going in. You can always choose to not play with us if you dont like the roundtype that much but wanting to take it away from all of us is really butts.

[Carver]

The only thing I dislike about this round type is changeling, but I'd remove changeling from every mode given the choice. I wouldn't mind seeing malf+traitor+some on-station antag role that isn't vamp or ling being a replacement, otherwise I wouldn't really remove it. Not quite worth the effort if it's not in rotation.