Make Dying a Thing Again

[Resilynn]

Here are a few scenarios that have happened in the last couple of months or so.

I'm CMO.  A detective traitor decides to shoot me point blank in the head with their revolver.  They fire six shots, I still haven't collapsed into pain crit.  I have to type 'rest' and pretend to stutter to be even a little bit believable.  

I'm a journalist following security around.  I go to examine an officer and notice they have the 'yank out object' option that means they have shrapnel.  It's been 30 minutes since they were shot.  I ask about it, they tell me 'lol yeah' in looc and keep going about because bullets don't matter.

I'm CMO and an officer calls me to come sedate a ninja.  He explodes next to us.  We both walk away totally fine.

I'm cargo tech and I fall. I have internal bleeding, but my internet cuts out.  I come back 20 minutes later and I'm still in cargo, and I still have internal bleeding, but my fellow cargo techs have been feeding me vending machine food so I'm fine.

 

I understand no one WANTS to die, but dying gives the game meaning, and we already have cloning if you DO die.  I understand antags don't have access to medical and so the odds are stacked against them, and I'm all for ways to make it harder to die as an antag.

But it's ridiculous that we're so floaty and invincible these days.  We keep making it harder and harder to die as we get upset about dying, but dying SHOULD be upsetting, and it should be possible.

I don't even know what exactly to suggest, which is why I'm opening this- I'd like everyone to make suggestions for what we could do to make dying even possible half the time.  You should not be able to just ignore shrapnel.  Internal bleeding should not be able to be staved off with raisins.

[AmoryBlaine]

3 minutes ago, Resilynn said:

I'm CMO and an officer calls me to come sedate a ninja.  He explodes next to us.  We both walk away totally fine.

This is like, really hit or miss. You can survive a blast barely even hurt, and in other cases get torn to a pile of gibs. And sometimes the turning to gibs thing happens to someone at the very edge of the blast radius, while people next to the ninja are fine.

[Happy_Fox]

14 minutes ago, AmoryBlaine said:

This is like, really hit or miss. You can survive a blast barely even hurt, and in other cases get torn to a pile of gibs. And sometimes the turning to gibs thing happens to someone at the very edge of the blast radius, while people next to the ninja are fine.

True. I've been within 3 squares of an explosion large enough to reach from the research chem lab to the top edge of robotics - injured but not gibbed. If anything the resulting pressure loss was more damaging.

[Roostercat]

There have been plenty of times where I, a Vaurca, should have ABSOLUTELY bled out but just kinda didnt, then again there are times where a single laser killed me. I still support this though as I have walked away from far too many situations just fine after medical pumped me full of drugs in about 30 seconds.

[BurgerBB]

I would be fine with dying easier if antags were better. Death is super rare, but when it occurs it's usually due to really bad antagging. I'm not talking about "They didn't roleplay with me!" bad antags but bad antags in the sense where lings sting you and absorb you without a word 5 minutes into the round, or a vampire that drains too much blood, or raiders who think the TTV bombs are breaching devices and end up killing everyone in a proximity, or the AI pulling a cuban pete and bombing APCs because they think they're hilarious.

 

If dying was easier then you're going to see a lot of people like me who will stop giving antagonists the benefit of the doubt and go along with less gimmicks. People complain a lot about crew choosing "fight" more often than "flight" in dangerous situations, but if it is easier to die then you're going to see more of that.

[Pratepresidenten]

Ive always been a fan of making certain things extremely deadly. Especially in hostage situations.

What we have now is very sad.
You can knife someone in the throat twice, they will live with moderately responsive medics.
Revolver doesnt headgib anymore in a chokehold, nothing does
You cant snap someone's neck

There isnt a whole lot of weight to any hostage situation as anything can be defused with tasers, teargas or flashbangs before the hostage taker can kill their hostage.

[Guest Menown]

I too have trouble dying. Let us please make things more dangerous, like grilles.

[EvilBrage]

The damage from neck slicing should be sped up significantly (cut it down to 1/4 of the time it currently takes) and should not take more than one attempt with a knife-sized, bladed weapon to make an individual pass out from blood loss. Point-blank shots from firearms just need to be fixed period.

It may also be worth considering revising weapon damage upwards and lining them up with one another to a particular degree. There's no reason a kitchen knife should do half the damage as a tactical knife simply because the latter has the word "tactical" in it - they're essentially nigh on identical weapons. There's no reason for .38 ammunition to do 20 damage while .357 ammunition does more than double and ignores a portion of your armor. If there's a question about which value to modify, take the lower one and revise it upwards.

[Brutishcrab51]

I uh, shot a Warden wearing the commissar jacket 14 times with a machine pistol (out of 20 shots fired total), all of them were lethal, and then went into hardcrit from six laser shots (and then died) in a Heavy Officer Vest with a helmet. He was brought out of crit and up to perfect health in under two minutes by a medical department of one Chemist.

 

Fighting feels like all the weapons other than lasers are peashooters. This sucks. It sucks.

Edited October 1, 2019 by Brutishcrab51

[BRAINOS]

i was shot five times in the head point blank and stood there screaming, and didn't paincrit til i was shot once in the groin.

it's pretty bad that nothing seems to be a real threat. it completely fucks with my immersion.

also, can we as a community chill tf out about dying in general? the bwoinks and ahelps surrounding antags doing things is an issue i can't ignore. i want bullets to hurt, and i want antags to not be so scared to use them. it's immersion breaking to get shot in the chest and be practically fine - and it's even worse that it took me over an hour and a half to get an armed assassin to actually attack me.

it sucks to die in this game, yeah, but it's mostly non-canon and the most at stake is an hour of our time. i want to be scared i might die in a round. i want to not be 100% sure i'll get through every situation.

most antags don't scare me because i know they're too busy twirling their mustache, terrified i will ahelp at any moment. i want to piss my pants when i'm cornered by armed mercenaries in mining.

these mechanics and an attitude shift re: antags would significantly add to immersion and even out the IC and OOC stakes.

[Doxxmedearly]

Pretty much everything BRAINOS said. I don't want antags to be afraid of killing me because constant bwoinks by people. 

As for the OP... Yeah. Wish it was easier. Wish medicine acted more slowly. Wish shrapnel and bullets did more damage. But I also empathize with the antag balance- It would kill a round to see a ninja, wizard, vamp, ling, etc (Basically everything except team antags or regular traitors) get downed quickly. It'd probably make people more shy to try those roles, because you already have the pressure of the round on your shoulders. So that's a big issue we would have to address for these changes. And I hope we can, as these changes are pretty sane and sensible.

Edited October 1, 2019 by Doxxmedearly
words are hard to type

[TrickingTrapster]

I'm kinda of against this. Not just because of the points doxx brought up, but because being dead is hella boring. So, let's say you die. Okay, plot for the round, great, whatever. Now, you either get to watch your body and see if you get cloned, waiting and hoping you can continue playing as that character (which in usual cases takes longer than a respawn timer or doesn't even happen at all because of unpopular roles needed for it), wait at least one sixth of a regular round's time (and that's not factoring in the time you've already spent as another character), all the while all you can do is watch and wish you were still playing. There may be some antags that can interact with spirits (like the wizard or cult) but since deadchat is just a glorified OOC for observers that has absolutely lost all meaning for RP purposes. So unless being dead becomes not boring and won't feel like a chore instead of feeling like you contribute to the round I'm going to go with a solid no against this idea.

[Doxxmedearly]

Dying is a part of a round. When you ready up for secret, there's an acknowledgement that you understand that antagonists may exist, and have permission to kill people (with proper escalation, etc). Sometimes you are caught in that. Sometimes you'll never see an antag. Sometimes you stare at your screen in paincrit for fifteen minutes. I know this discussion about death and antagging has happened in one of your threads prior, so I won't repeat the many points in it.

My only concern is balancing this carefully so that antags have some leeway in creating a unique round, instead of being shot once and downed. Otherwise I think making things more deadly is a terrific idea. Do I want to die? No. But I accept that it's a possibility and sometimes the odds don't favor me. It's a community RP effort and in one round my death might drive it. In another, someone else's death may drive RP for me. That's how we do it.

But I don't want to be shot three times in the skull and live every time it happens. That's absurd. 

Edited October 2, 2019 by Doxxmedearly

[Resilynn]

I personally think it’s boring to play with no stakes. 

[BRAINOS]

58 minutes ago, Resilynn said:

I personally think it’s boring to play with no stakes. 

this.

being dead is boring, but being unsure you'll actually escape with your life in a given situation - and trying to do everything you can to survive a dangerous situation is fun.

i'm not going to pull my whole department together and barricade over boarders who run around, twirling their mustache, but don't go after any of the crew. they're basically just visitors, then.

what we've got now encourages peace-antagging. i've had a couple cool rounds where i sat in the bar with a ninja, but those will never compare to rounds where a ninja has been haunting our crew all shift and throws the bloody corpse of our miner at the elevator door as we're hammering on the lift button, desperate to get away.

i want to get hurt and die in a round because of antags. fighting or running and in general being terrified of antags who outgun you and will kill you if you fuck up is a surefire way to drive intense conflict and force you to move and do things and band together with survivors.

i'll never support ganking, but the box for fair play seems to shrink when nearly every single death is met with an ahelp or a forum complaint.

i'll take being dead for 20 minutes tops over 2 hours with a wizard that uses their immeasurable power to do card tricks in the holodeck.

[Natiform]

48 minutes ago, BRAINOS said:

but those will never compare to rounds where a ninja has been haunting our crew all shift and throws the bloody corpse of our miner at the elevator door as we're hammering on the lift button, desperate to get away.

god, i remember that round. the miner's body being flung at us almost made me shit my pants


my thoughts on this have already been said in this thread and i agree 100% with there being higher stakes. the actual fear of possibly dying makes the game much more exciting. games need to have consequences. antags need to not be scared about doing antag things.
 

[Nantei]

On 30/09/2019 at 18:48, Pratepresidenten said:

Ive always been a fan of making certain things extremely deadly. Especially in hostage situations.

What we have now is very sad.
You can knife someone in the throat twice, they will live with moderately responsive medics.
Revolver doesnt headgib anymore in a chokehold, nothing does
You cant snap someone's neck

There isnt a whole lot of weight to any hostage situation as anything can be defused with tasers, teargas or flashbangs before the hostage taker can kill their hostage.

Snapping someones' neck is actually extremely difficult, even if you are a very strong person. I don't think killing hostages needs to be easier. Being a hostage is fairly miserable, and killing the hostage is something I feel hostage takers should basically never do, unless the hostage is essentially asking for it by bitterly fighting and ignoring fear. It spites the hostage and punishes security, but security isn't the one being punished, the person playing the hostage is. Throat slitting should be a more intense bleed for sure, though. 

Regarding the suggestion, though, I am not sure what to suggest? People hated old shrapnel so now it's very easy to ignore, perhaps rightfully so. Increasing the pain would help. 

Explosives would need tweaking to be made more consistent, although in general I hate gibbing. I would rather explosives killed me straight up than gibbed me.

Although the other issue with lethality I feel is... cloning is often never done unless a CMO is present. Having played a decent kick of CMO, I almost never saw anyone even suggest it unless I broached the subject, and often had to do the psychiatry portion myself. Fixing our garbage psych system to remove the extreme mechanical issues would help loads, literally dying of loneliness is idiotic, but that's a different thread.

Edited October 2, 2019 by Nantei

[NewOriginalSchwann]

Hello, I'm here to support this suggestion in its entirety. Today I shot a man in the head (with .38 rounds) six times and he didn't even collapse into crit, or even start stammering. As a malformed caveman that craves human suffering frequent security player, I want combat to feel dangerous and maybe die. Taking a bullet to the head should cause a significant amount of damage, assuming you aren't wearing any armor. You shouldn't be standing up perfectly fine after taking three .38 bullets to the cranium, and the fact you can do so really cheapens the thrill of the (valid) hunt versus the bad men.

[TrickingTrapster]

I don't mind dying in a round by itself, honestly. Just the fact that you have to bore yourself to death until you can finally play again is why I am vehemently against killing in general. "Oh hey but a death drives the story" Yeah that's great and all but I can't enjoy the story unfold when all I'm doing is watching and all that happens is me wanting to be part of that story instead of watching it. If you give dead players something to do that isn't boring themselves to death I can guarantee you that people will make way less of a fuss about it.

[CampinKiller]

Some of the most enjoyable rounds I've played in involved my death or an actual fight to avoid a death.

@Resilynn will recall a cult round where he had to frantically save Price's life after his arm got cut off, followed by holing up in Virology and waiting for an ERT to arrive, constantly under threat, and culminating in a massive fight as the shuttle left with the innocent crew that involved all of command being killed. That was probably my most enjoyable death in SS13, and there are many more times where it has been fun to fail. Dying happens, it's a game, and yeah, it can suck, but if you can't find something else to do for 20 minutes, I'd be concerned.

[N8-Toe]

I love this, and it's something I have been saying for awhile. Damage and health right now is very "floaty", and has a negative effect on the game, on roleplay, and the overall experience. Danger creates caution, tension, and apprehension. all things that encourage roleplay. And I will say the truth that is people do not fear RP as much as they can, but people will play  cautiously. If a single bullet or two can put you on the floor, you are going to be less likely to try and toolbox them, or run at them with a spear. Making things more deadly will make unga dunga violence a less viable  option, will encourage in my opinion more RP, and will help us tell better collaborative stories.

 

to address other points separately

on hostages: if the hostage taker has a gun to the hostages head and shoots them. that should kill them more often then not. With the current "hostage meta" Security has near ultimate leverage in the form of numbers, Tear gas, and the floaty health system. Sec can just lob a tear gas grenade and bank the hostage can take a shot or two. and that Is just bad play. having hostage situations have a higher risk of the hostage dying can do nothing but improve the RP around them. 

 

On dying being boring: I will also say I think cloning should be removed, but yes. when you ready up you agree to the risk you might die IC. but I'd be for the respawn timer being lower. 

[Carver]

The more lethal antags are, the more inclined one might be to kill said antags before they can kill you. By all means, add lethality, but don't complain when someone kills the antag who tried to kill them. As long the lethality goes both ways I see no issue.

[TrickingTrapster]

A risk of dying IC is fine by itself. But dying shouldn't feel like a punishment just because today's antag decided to antag you.

[Sorokin7]

More fragility would ad a lot more, ill tipe my reason below.

Edited October 5, 2019 by Sorokin7

[Sorokin7]

Speaking as someone who plays sec a bit I have to say I wish there was more of a risk of death.

When dealing with antags officers rarely fear getting into direct confrontations because the chance of getting killed is slim and so doing agressive play as apposed to tactical will always yield better results. The risk reward is just too much in favour of an officer than it is for the antag.

 Awhile back it was a ninja round and he wanted to kill the hos. Per chance I came across them in a hallway during a tense confrontation. I pulled my .45 with rubber bullets on him trying to bluff him into leaving but forgot to set one of the aim things and my gun fired reflexively the rubber bullet dinked harmlessly of his ninja suit and he cleaved me in the head 4 times with an axe, the hos shotgunned him and cuffed him while he was distracted.

I was still well enough to walk half way to medical and i probably could've made it all the way despite collapsing if i didint come across the ninja again later.

 

It would ad a lot to the gameplay if there was more a risk of death, it would make people think twice about dealing with all sorts of trouble as well as giving secret a lot more weight and risk.