Player Complaint - Naelynn

[geeves]

BYOND Key: Geeves
Game ID: b4f-cwPm
Player Byond Key/Character name: Naelynn
Staff involved: N/A
Reason for complaint: Powergaming as Antag
Did you attempt to adminhelp the issue at the time? If so, what was the known action taken by administration/moderation? No, the round was in progress, and this is an issue far greater than a single round.
Approximate Date/Time: 16 November 2019, 07:55 PM GMT+2

The person I'm lodging the complaint against seemingly has a repeated issue with powergamey behaviour. I say it's powergamey, because it skims juuuuuust below a level that would be unacceptable. In the round example given, the Wizard rushed the spare ID, the captain's voidsuit which they took for themselves, stole all the station voidsuits, stole all the contents of the armory, then crushed it in disposals. Their reasoning (this was ICly, so take it with a grain of salt.), was that, if no one had guns, and no one had voidsuits, no one would try and do something harmful.

Well, that's the problem, isn't it? And it didn't just happen in this round. They have a tendency to roll antag merchant, and stock up on the most powerful gear they can get their hands on, just so that they aren't threatened in any way. From what I can see, it's an attempt to railroad gimmicks, to prevent other players from doing anything that might throw a wrench into their plans. I suppose, if it were to happen in a single round, as a raider gimmick perhaps, it'd work out great, but yet again, this is behaviour that keeps occurring.

Screenies:

Space Wizard (Reported Round):

Antag Merchant:

Unsure:

Antag Merchant:

Note: The above screenshots are of different rounds, taken across I think a month or two.

Edited November 16, 2019 by geeves
said space ninja instead of space wizard by accident

[Naelynn]

1 hour ago, geeves said:

seemingly has a repeated issue with powergamey behaviour.

That seems to be the case - This is third player/char. complaint about essentially that.

1 hour ago, geeves said:

skims juuuuuust below a level that would be unacceptable

Yes. Because when someone tells me that certain behavior is unacceptable, I tend to stop it.

1 hour ago, geeves said:

stole all the contents of the armory

False. Removed the ion and shotguns - wounds from those are really annoying to deal with for the race I was playing at the time [Aut'akh - Ions should be obvious why, bullets from shotguns cause shrapnel.] - I left laser weapons alone.

If you remove all items in the armory, security will look to buy weapons from science/cargo or use improvised, which are often more dangerous that the laser weapons you can expect.

1 hour ago, geeves said:

They have a tendency to roll antag merchant, and stock up on the most powerful gear they can get their hands on, just so that they aren't threatened in any way

My 'default' character has merchant enabled, traitor + offstation antags enabled. As such, the only round-start traitor I can roll is merchant. (Not counting other external antagonists). Then if I do not get one of my chosen roles, I generally jump to ghost to decide if I wanna join with a different character - lately this hasn't been the case because I was enraptured in reading books during the downtime.

Stock up on powerful gear - This is actually a very complicated topic. I have to weight how long I can spend in prep vs how long I can do things on station. Healthy prep stage should take 30 minutes [including travel time] at absolute most, so as merchant I'm looking to get anything that would give me advantage within first 30 minutes of merchant spawns. Arriving on station any later than that is often problematic for any gimmick you might wish to run.

Threat topic - ... Yes and no. You're not wrong, I do look to be able to handle any situation I might end up with, usually looking to have an easy escape route [hand-tele] or something to take my opposition out before I fall [very dangerous weapons - esword, nades, etc.] while having good enough protective gear to survive encounters. So, why am I saying that it's yes and no? Because most of the time I leave those tools completely unused [except hand-tele, the utility is too good] Hell, I distinctly remember at least two different merchant rounds where I found a breacher, bought it, and then left it behind at merchant base because it would be too ... same? repetitive? to do so. 

1 hour ago, geeves said:

From what I can see, it's an attempt to railroad gimmicks, to prevent other players from doing anything that might throw a wrench into their plans.

I think I agree with this, but it has some implications I want to address: None of my gimmicks or plans involve anything beyond the general 'set up' or 'idea' if you wish. I don't have 'desired outcome' of any story I want to peddle. 

As you say, I look to gain power to be able to *force* the station to go along with my gimmick. If the station has the ability to simply shoot the problem away, how can I force some complicated gimmick I've prepared? Example: 

If I want to be a ninja that hacks the ai and uses voice modulator to convince station crew that there's going to be a pirate raid incoming, yet, I don't go for captain access and additional tc from vault to do announcements or explosions, don't ever do anything to support this gimmick short of maybe one-or-two welder tank explosions in maint, the station will not  /really/ be sold on the gimmick. How they handle it? Up to them, and I'll adapt in round and react to what they do.

1 hour ago, geeves said:

this is behaviour that keeps occurring.

Yes. 

Side note: It's dumb that captain's voidsuit is tankier than ERT suits. Nerf it.

Spoiler

 

Tl;dr of my response:
Geeves is correct. The entire post is elaboration on my reasoning why I do things or how they come to be.
I'd like to have an elaboration why exactly doing this is wrong however. I see the what, not the why.

[Scheveningen]

I played with the last three screenshotted rounds with Naelynn. I've also played with them as a partner ninja/heister many rounds before. While Naelynn is dangerously robust, they powergame very infrequently. I know the most powergamey and efficient ways of deleting other player characters in the round, and Naelynn uses zero of them, preferring defensive tactics and only killing people who attempt to (foolishly or not) stop them.

If the issue is with the equipment, then I think the issue is the availability of the equipment. For whatever reason, the breacher suits have 90-90-90 armor values and can be found almost 50% of the time in the vault's safe, and while opening the safe is obscure to most people right now, the difficulty of opening the safe is incredibly trivial and can be done in two minutes because it is bugged to be missing the last third of the dial turning minigame.

The station is access-locked to oblivion, as well, so it's imperative for any off-station antagonist to essentially beeline to it and either steal said ID or use their agent ID to nab the access. This isn't really negotiable, because stealing access from specific individuals only gets you compartmentalized access, and also makes security more likely to immediately kill you because you offended a single person by asking for their access. 

I don't think Naelynn's behavior with equipment acquisition is so problematic as much as the equipment that can be acquired by just anyone, not only Naelynn. It seems to highlight issues more with this server's game balance and high-end equipment availability rather than Naelynn being a dirty powergamer. There are also antagonist behavior patterns that must be replicated if you want at all to survive during a round as an antagonist. The security department is too large and not even a ninja/wizard can 5v1 while surrounded, they only win 1v1s effortlessly.

Edited November 16, 2019 by Scheveningen

[Garnascus]

I will look over this tonight

[Cnaym]

7 hours ago, Scheveningen said:

There are also antagonist behavior patterns that must be replicated if you want at all to survive during a round as an antagonist.

As a player focusing on unrobust actions to outsmart security I have to deny that. The chameleon projector has been my best tool so far. But even going in as the first engineer just to have a good reason why your fibres are on every item in the captains office have been good ways to handle security without engaging them.

The main issue I heard (from a salty deadchat mostly) with Naelynn's playstyle is efficency. That should be a method, not the goal as antag. Security is mostly heading to cryo by now when all they see from an antag is an empty vault and armory before getting the call to surrender over radio or finding the first guy dead in a hallway. Which brings me to my main issue really, the deaths are meaningless when they are only used to establish that the antag is strong. That is no basis for interesting stories, heroics or hopes. It puts the crew at a state of catharsis leading to salt and suicide via antag, or just leaving the round via cryo.

Referring to the first picture in Geeves post that means that the antag type was not wizzard anymore, even the guy who went for suicide via antag only realised while dying that it was a wizzard at all. That is not what the different antag types should be used for, the wizzard does not get a free teleport so that they need the handheld teleporter less. The ninja does not get a stealth suit so they can always land the first strike and so on. I would like to see you focus more on the roundtype, than handling security, or implementing the antag role into the captains voidsuit and vault equipment, as neither make for an interesting round or a memorable antag (that may seem counterintuitive, but reading from deadchat that the roundtype is "Naelynn" is not a good sign).

The other point I'd like to raise is that the overpowered tools are made for endgame and the engagement and so on... that does not mean that all of them should be in the hands of one person. The vault for example is perfect to raid for offstation teams or traitors that work together as it gives multiple tools for multiple people. Security for example could implement them, giving every officer just a little bonus, if they fail to handle the threat otherwhise (it takes some desperation to grab the vault things as none antag). Getting rid of all the things just so nobody else can use them falls under bad sportsmanship in my eyes, same as putting the captains ID in a shredder (for example).

Just my two cents, feedback I picked up from the community and pointers for improvement. The big issue about gameplay balancing and so on will probably never be fixed, because in the end this game is not about fairness or balance but preperation, trapps and tricks. I might view this entire situation a bit calmer overall... I have seen many strong antags by now, and those that stayed did so for the RP, playing roles like cargo or civilian to focus on that aspect instead of combat. I got my hopes up that you'll find more joy in that side of the overall game and become a bit more balanced between goals and RP.

I usually tell security mains to try the other roles to see the flaws that officers often don't notice, I tell command people to go cook some meals as cheff and so on... this time I suggest playing more as a scared pacifist and I hope you find joy in that comradery that only the crew provides, should you decide to do so.

[Scheveningen]

45 minutes ago, Cnaym said:

The main issue I heard (from a salty deadchat mostly) with Naelynn's playstyle is efficency. That should be a method, not the goal as antag. Security is mostly heading to cryo by now when all they see from an antag is an empty vault and armory before getting the call to surrender over radio or finding the first guy dead in a hallway.

Sorry for this impending essay, but, blech.

I mean, honestly, it doesn't matter if you've dealt with the same pattern of antagonism 5 rounds in a row. If all of sec is headed to cryo by that point, it's a lack of perseverance. It's one thing to go, "Okay this round sucks and either I needed to leave anyway, or I need to leave the round regardless of how this round is going," but cryoing just because the round seems more than just inconvenient to you doesn't indicate very good sportsmanship.

I've seen ragequit cryoing from officers over less problematic issues, such as dealing with a head of staff they find disagreeable to themselves. If an officer decides to cryo instead of continuing to participate in the round or by trying to find resolutions their own way, then they are not part of the solution. They're part of the problem. Rounds can suck and one may not find them enjoyable, sure. It should not be punishable to cryo because you don't have the will to play the round, of course, but I think we shouldn't make quitters look like the sole victim here. There are many situations where a sudden absence of an important person from the round because they had to leave, may make the round worse.

53 minutes ago, Cnaym said:

Which brings me to my main issue really, the deaths are meaningless when they are only used to establish that the antag is strong. That is no basis for interesting stories, heroics or hopes. It puts the crew at a state of catharsis leading to salt and suicide via antag, or just leaving the round via cryo.

I was partnered with Nae in a ninja round yesterday. We drove a pretty enjoyable story for everyone involved and not a single person really complained, it was a chaotic round but it had progression and intrigue. Another thing is this strange expectation that all rounds from antagonists must be a hit with the collective OOC consciousness. Reality is bitter and will happily point out for you that whether we have antagonists or not, you'll find your experience on any SS13 server including this one will be "hit or miss."

Wouldn't you know it, even with the infrequent occasions where I play, I still see a lot of complaining about what didn't happen according to someone's super-special-the-server-owes-me-a-fun-time mindset. I don't doubt that Nae has pulled off a few rounds that were a "miss" for most people, based off their own opinion and the enjoyment they had with the round. I'm sure they still try their best, I'll let her speak for herself in that regard.

I roleplay a fair deal of pacifists/self-defense oriented persons in my character selection. I even have a misguided 'heroic' or two, but I avoid playing them so I don't make a pattern of the behavior. I have never suicided by antag and I never will. I condemn 'suicide by antag' because it is a really ridiculous OOC-motivated behavior that is borderline childish and reckless. If people log into this server anticipating that they'll be in a powerful position 99% of the time then experience will repeatedly give them a rude awakening, because that's not how antag game modes work, and sometimes a very experienced person is the antag and nobody can really stand up to them in a "upfront, fair fight." Sure, that's a really humiliating position and all, but...

Not all problems are meant to be dealt with in that way. Be smarter, not stronger -- that is if you're a character that really obsesses over problem-solving. I play a fair few. I've "beaten" situations that were heavily weighted against me simply because I did something unexpected and surprised the antagonist, or inversely where I did something unexpected and surprised security as the antagonist. Even then, if you can't be smarter or stronger than someone else, then you shouldn't be participating directly in fighting said antagonist anyway. There's still a myriad of interactions that don't include trying to murder the other guy.

You don't have to be the fighter, sometimes you can be the truck freak, crazy ass, or the a҉̶̸͕͕͖̱̦̼͍̝͚̬͔̙y̸̹͚̥̬̰̯̻̩̙̫̰̩͝͞ͅp̸͓̗̹͇͜ͅr̷̡̻͕͓̤̭͔̼͙̬͕̟̜̹̩̀͞ ͝͏̨͇̼̙̯̬̗͎̠̰̘̮. Many options apart from that exist, obscure meme aside.

Quote

Referring to the first picture in Geeves post that means that the antag type was not wizzard anymore, even the guy who went for suicide via antag only realised while dying that it was a wizzard at all. That is not what the different antag types should be used for, the wizzard does not get a free teleport so that they need the handheld teleporter less. The ninja does not get a stealth suit so they can always land the first strike and so on. I would like to see you focus more on the roundtype, than handling security, or implementing the antag role into the captains voidsuit and vault equipment, as neither make for an interesting round or a memorable antag (that may seem counterintuitive, but reading from deadchat that the roundtype is "Naelynn" is not a good sign).

The other point I'd like to raise is that the overpowered tools are made for endgame and the engagement and so on... that does not mean that all of them should be in the hands of one person. The vault for example is perfect to raid for offstation teams or traitors that work together as it gives multiple tools for multiple people. Security for example could implement them, giving every officer just a little bonus, if they fail to handle the threat otherwhise (it takes some desperation to grab the vault things as none antag). Getting rid of all the things just so nobody else can use them falls under bad sportsmanship in my eyes, same as putting the captains ID in a shredder (for example).

I'm aware of Naelynn's notoriety, but unfortunately testimony regarding Naelynn's style as an antagonist has to be taken with a grain of salt or at least measured in consideration with the 'style' of certain security players.

And, why's a 90-90-90 hardsuit even able to spawn in the vault safe in the first place? Only one thing can come of a massive tanksuit and it's pretty obvious what it's meant for. I'm of the opinion the god-tier equipment probably shouldn't be even seen regularly, let alone available on a pretty generous coinflip basis within the Vault for an antagonist to take. Because we know who it's for, it was designed that way with that in mind.

Also, when there's only a single antagonist in the round, where do you expect all of those obviously-meant-for-antagonists-to-steal items to go? Frankly, I dislike that some of these items are available in the game in their present format, as I've already covered with the breacher suit. But do you honestly expect an antagonist to not use them if they're within reach? If they offer an advantage, you're going to use them. This isn't just an OOC mindset alone, by the way, otherwise Naelynn (or anyone else) wouldn't be doing this. It's a legitimate IC reason to grab something if you think it can help you accomplish your goals and you've escalated appropriately. Or if you intend to escalate appropriately.
 

1 hour ago, Cnaym said:

Just my two cents, feedback I picked up from the community and pointers for improvement. The big issue about gameplay balancing and so on will probably never be fixed, because in the end this game is not about fairness or balance but preperation, trapps and tricks. I might view this entire situation a bit calmer overall... I have seen many strong antags by now, and those that stayed did so for the RP, playing roles like cargo or civilian to focus on that aspect instead of combat. I got my hopes up that you'll find more joy in that side of the overall game and become a bit more balanced between goals and RP.

I usually tell security mains to try the other roles to see the flaws that officers often don't notice, I tell command people to go cook some meals as cheff and so on... this time I suggest playing more as a scared pacifist and I hope you find joy in that comradery that only the crew provides, should you decide to do so.

I mean, honestly, just tenderly and seductively tell Geeves or Wildkins to fix something you find is particularly irksome or harmful to gameplay. Gameplay balancing is a step-by-step process, you can't expect results if you're not the change you want to see. Ultimately, developers have the tools to fix something for you, just bring it up to them. Small-time contributors such as myself and Paradoxspace, to name a couple, also exist if you feel like there's something really trivial that still deserves addressing. If there's a numbers change, spawn list or something that badly needs refactored, ask me directly. I won't be able to guarantee an immediate PR up by tomorrow but if you asked me to remove certain things from the safe's spawnlist I can have the PR ready to review before the end of next week.

'Egg hunting' as I prefer to call it, though. It's a pattern to a lot of my characters because otherwise the setting of a space station is a lot more inconvenient or irksome to do basic things without certain tools I need to accomplish basic character goals. For example, as the HOS with EMS training I grab my usual HOS gear, 2 pairs of cuffs, the first aid kit and a cryo bag, then load-up with the spare .45 pistol and .45 rubber magazine from upstairs so I'm not turbofucked with self-defense measures if I get EMPed. As Alma, my roboticist, I grab basic tools and some cable coil plus the borg analyzer, then the insulated gloves and a multitool from tech storage. Alma deals with electronics a lot so having glubbs on-hand is super useful. And hey, I didn't come up with this concept of 'egg hunting' by myself, it's something I picked up from people who played on this server before I got here. They never got bant for it, so it seemed fine to replicate.

Depending on my character as an antagonist, I have pretty much an equivalent checklist of things I grab every round because it makes jumping certain hurdles a lot easier than if I didn't have said items. I try personally not to vaporize the spare ID, because I usually want the crew to have a fair chance of clawing their way back into the round. I'll usually immediately toss the ion rifle onto my person to use myself, though, as I'd rather not be on the receiving end of that thing.

I'm sure other members of the community have similar 'checklist' habits they do almost every round as a certain character, because why wouldn't they? If you developed a method that helps you do your job more effectively than without those tools, and you make it work, can you really be blamed for doing it? There are extremes, of course, and like any extreme behavior it's probably got a basis in "this is actually stupid". I haven't seen Nae really cross the line, quite the opposite in fact. I've never had a negative experience with them, maybe it's just coincidence that I haven't yet had an issue with them yet. Or maybe people have a tendency to overexaggerate. The truth will be never be known, I guess.

I do think the best way to address Nae is to simply nerf the way she plays the game and she'll adjust to less outright powerful conditions. Alternatively you could tell her to dial it back with the breacher memes and I'm sure she'd oblige while someone removes the breacher from the vault, for example. Still, I've a 90% confidence rating from my hueg-ass brain that a lot of the complaining about her isn't necessarily justified, and deadchat has to be taken with a grain of salt, ironically. I complain about things I die to in video games all the time! Just the natural order of things to be irked that something that put you at a disadvantage, but such a position shouldn't be the sole arbitration of what's really going on, though.

[Garnascus]

17 hours ago, geeves said:

In the round example given, the Wizard rushed the spare ID, the captain's voidsuit which they took for themselves, stole all the station voidsuits, stole all the contents of the armory,

With naelynn's clarification this seems to have been fine. 

17 hours ago, geeves said:

just so that they aren't threatened in any way. From what I can see, it's an attempt to railroad gimmicks

Well i mean that is really how antags generally need to operate. Any gimmick or thing you do is necessarily going to provoke conflict. That is why your role exists. So then that means security is going to try to stop you with force. If you overpower them or you harm their ability to do so you have a greater chance of getting done what you want to do. We have specific rules against murderboning and the like but i really do not feel like this is against the rules. 

I mean does naelynn intentionally start shit with people after shes disarmed just so she can kill half the station? I could understand an issue with that tbh. 

[geeves]

On 16/11/2019 at 21:47, Naelynn said:

If you remove all items in the armory, security will look to buy weapons from science/cargo or use improvised, which are often more dangerous that the laser weapons you can expect.

It's this mindset which is pretty much my issue, it's striving to play the most efficiently time after time.

On 16/11/2019 at 21:47, Naelynn said:

Threat topic - ... Yes and no. You're not wrong, I do look to be able to handle any situation I might end up with, usually looking to have an easy escape route [hand-tele] or something to take my opposition out before I fall [very dangerous weapons - esword, nades, etc.] while having good enough protective gear to survive encounters. So, why am I saying that it's yes and no? Because most of the time I leave those tools completely unused [except hand-tele, the utility is too good] Hell, I distinctly remember at least two different merchant rounds where I found a breacher, bought it, and then left it behind at merchant base because it would be too ... same? repetitive? to do so.

The reason things go unused is because people don't tend to try and fight against someone that has everything. It leads to a stalemate which either leads to the entire station dying, the entire station pitching in to nuke the antagonist, or literally nothing happening. There's no in-between.

On 16/11/2019 at 21:47, Naelynn said:

I see the what, not the why.

Perhaps it's sportsmanship, perhaps it's for the other people's enjoyment. While I'm sure it's fun to be the antagonist in this situation, or the friend of this antagonist, I have found myself on the side of this as non-security, and found it incredibly dull. There's no means to deal with it, so you just have to go with the inane. Others have felt this way as well, and I'd be happy if they pitched in, as Schev has pitched in for the other side.

 

On 16/11/2019 at 21:58, Scheveningen said:

If the issue is with the equipment, then I think the issue is the availability of the equipment. For whatever reason, the breacher suits have 90-90-90 armor values and can be found almost 50% of the time in the vault's safe, and while opening the safe is obscure to most people right now, the difficulty of opening the safe is incredibly trivial and can be done in two minutes because it is bugged to be missing the last third of the dial turning minigame.

The issue is never with the equipment, but how they're being used. Why has no one I've seen before stocked up to a level of this ridiculousness? There is no point in removing good equipment. Often, the reason there is good equipment is so that many of the players in the round can have one of each, for fun, no?

 

On 17/11/2019 at 05:10, Garnascus said:

I will look over this tonight

I'd rather not. I don't trust your judgement regarding anything pertaining to Aurora.

 

On 17/11/2019 at 13:35, Garnascus said:

With naelynn's clarification this seems to have been fine.

How?

On 17/11/2019 at 13:35, Garnascus said:

Well i mean that is really how antags generally need to operate.

No? Why hasn't anyone else operated like this and gained the reputation Naelynn has?

On 17/11/2019 at 13:35, Garnascus said:

Any gimmick or thing you do is necessarily going to provoke conflict.

Yes. There are many ways that doesn't involve maximum efficiency and gear to achieve this. I could possibly bomb Red Dock and the Central Ring, that'd generate conflict, but would it be good?

On 17/11/2019 at 13:35, Garnascus said:

So then that means security is going to try to stop you with force.

If I remember correctly, the specific round I reported only had a single detective. Though, this complaint isn't simply about the single round, but the repeated behaviour over a long period of time. Food for thought, though.

On 17/11/2019 at 13:35, Garnascus said:

We have specific rules against murderboning and the like but i really do not feel like this is against the rules.

Per the Rules section in-game, on how to play an antagonist:

Quote

The primary goal of antangonists is to DRIVE A STORY AND TO GENERATE INTERACTION. Be creative when coming up with objectives, and try to do things which will be fun for others, not only yourself. Do not resort to the bare minimums of generating a story through mechanical means, either. This means: no unmotivated/not roleplayed out mass murders, etcetera. See the rules below for further clarification.

Try to do things which will be fun for others, not only yourself.

On 17/11/2019 at 13:35, Garnascus said:

I mean does naelynn intentionally start shit with people after shes disarmed just so she can kill half the station? I could understand an issue with that tbh. 

No, and that's a positive.

 

EDIT: after a brief discussion, it would appear that the person who took the complaint is here to stay. i encourage people with things to contribute to post here as well.

Edited November 18, 2019 by geeves
discussion

[Garnascus]

54 minutes ago, geeves said:

How?

Well correct me if i am wrong but in your original post you claimed that naelynn stole all of the contents of the armory and then crushed them in the crusher. Naelynn claims that she did not steal all of them. Just the ions and the shotguns and left the lasers. Considering she was an autakh and that shrapnel is a death sentence this seems like pretty reasonable antag play to me. 

54 minutes ago, geeves said:

No? Why hasn't anyone else operated like this and gained the reputation Naelynn has?

What i meant to say when i made that comment is that antags GENERALLY need to follow this formula

1. they consider a gimmick and decide on one if they want to

2. They engage in some preparation time. Getting weapons, disabling machines, causing some distractions or engaging in sabotage against specific portions of the station.

3. They essentially "go loud". This can mean something like THE WIZARD ENACTS HIS GRAND PLAN TO STEAL THE SM or THE HEAD OF PERSONNEL ARRIVES AT THE BRIDGE WITH HIS MILITIA TO MUTINY AGAINST THE CAPTAIN. During this step is when the LARGE SCALE conflict is usually going to happen. Sec will get guns and move to pacify, command will raise alert and give orders and things of that nature.

4. The "conflict" continues with casualties and damage on both sides until a crew transfer, until one side "wins" or an emergency is called. 

This is not objective and its entirely possible for rounds to flip back and forth a little bit between phases. So from this i consider robbing portions of the armory or sneaking in to steal the captains spare ID to be reasonably obvious prep work for antags. 

54 minutes ago, geeves said:

No? Why hasn't anyone else operated like this and gained the reputation Naelynn has?

I would not really be able to give a good answer to that question. I acknowledge that there can generally be some grains of truth in the reputation a player gets regarding their play. It is also possible to be knowledgeable of this game's mechanics and various nuances and be able to apply them such that you end up "winning" most conflict encounters. I recall our very own alberyk getting many many ahelps on his security play for exactly this reason. At the very LEAST though it is something worth investigating. 

54 minutes ago, geeves said:

If I remember correctly, the specific round I reported only had a single detective. Though, this complaint isn't simply about the single round, but the repeated behaviour over a long period of time. Food for thought, though.

That's fair to say though i think i would counter a bit that relying only on the manifest can be a little tricky at times. I mean i am sure we have all seen the situations of "oh wow suddenly three security guards showed up! how convenient!" This of course is acceptable to do but im empathetic on the part of the antag who now would have to think "oh shit now i have to go back and get rid of the ion because its an hour into the round and they have a good reason to shoot me with it ahasajskhdga"

54 minutes ago, geeves said:

Try to do things which will be fun for others, not only yourself.

I think this can be a really good point. Let me give some vague examples as far as our administration goes. There have been certain players who in our server's time got REALLY good at doing a select number of things. The point where they could speedrun the armory, hack doors and steal a whole load of stuff in like 20 minutes. This is "kinda" fine but the problem we ran into is these players then..... kinda didnt really have a good idea on what to do after that. They would just kinda walk around and OF COURSE someone will try to stop them and then of course they have a reason to kill them. No real grand goal no real thought out directive. If it gets to the point where you're just checking things off like this is a quest in an RPG i do agree we have a problem. On this basis we have taken action against people. 

@geeves @Naelynn What are your guys thought's on all of the above? Naelynn specifically i would ask you honestly if when you engage in this "efficient prep" do you do it with some... goal in mind or some gimmick or a specific target? Or do you just kind of feel things out and "wing it"? I think the former can be fine and the latter is a problem. 

I am going to get another staff member to read this over and see what they think. Dunno who yet its 10 Am cut me some slack. 

[Garnascus]

Ok scratch my last sentence its @Alberyk

[geeves]

2 minutes ago, Garnascus said:

Considering she was an autakh and that shrapnel is a death sentence this seems like pretty reasonable antag play to me.

https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/6919

As of August 30, 2019, Shrapnel has been reduced to an annoyance more than a death sentence. It causes no bleeding, nor organ damage. It merely hurts.

4 minutes ago, Garnascus said:

What i meant to say when i made that comment is that antags GENERALLY need to follow this formula

1. they consider a gimmick and decide on one if they want to

2. They engage in some preparation time. Getting weapons, disabling machines, causing some distractions or engaging in sabotage against specific portions of the station.

3. They essentially "go loud". This can mean something like THE WIZARD ENACTS HIS GRAND PLAN TO STEAL THE SM or THE HEAD OF PERSONNEL ARRIVES AT THE BRIDGE WITH HIS MILITIA TO MUTINY AGAINST THE CAPTAIN. During this step is when the LARGE SCALE conflict is usually going to happen. Sec will get guns and move to pacify, command will raise alert and give orders and things of that nature.

4. The "conflict" continues with casualties and damage on both sides until a crew transfer, until one side "wins" or an emergency is called.

I suppose that would be fine and dandy, if the prepwork actually involved the gimmick. Cutting Security's teeth out in preparation for an assault? That's fine. Doing all of it just to play a peacewiz without anything else happening? Not fine. The previous actions should be either preparatory for a specific objective related to the prep, or reactive to actions by the opposing force. It's the very same reason we made it so that voidsuits are uncomfortable, so that Engineers wouldn't run around in voidsuits all the time "for in case a breach happens".

7 minutes ago, Garnascus said:

I would not really be able to give a good answer to that question. I acknowledge that there can generally be some grains of truth in the reputation a player gets regarding their play. It is also possible to be knowledgeable of this game's mechanics and various nuances and be able to apply them such that you end up "winning" most conflict encounters. I recall our very own alberyk getting many many ahelps on his security play for exactly this reason. At the very LEAST though it is something worth investigating.

A previous antagonist ban as well, if I remember correctly.

8 minutes ago, Garnascus said:

What are your guys thought's on all of the above? Naelynn specifically i would ask you honestly if when you engage in this "efficient prep" do you do it with some... goal in mind or some gimmick or a specific target? Or do you just kind of feel things out and "wing it"? I think the former can be fine and the latter is a problem.

I am fine with this conclusion, as long as rounds and situations like I described does not occur again, whether by administrative action or personal choice, overseen by administrators and moderators.

[Naelynn]

3 minutes ago, Garnascus said:

goal in mind or some gimmick or a specific target? Or do you just kind of feel things out and "wing it"?

I'm not going to lie:
Most of the time I improvise things. A.k.a: Wing it.
 

4 minutes ago, Garnascus said:

The point where they could speedrun the armory, hack doors and steal a whole load of stuff in like 20 minutes.

This applies - Standard ninja round, I'm off the ship in 5 minutes with emergency power gen in suit. Two quick teleports, scan captain id card and snatch teleporter. Path to medical to get stethoscope by minute 8. Clear out safe in vault by minute 10-20 depending on how unlucky I get with safe cracking.

This is reminiscent of how I have an approach formula, or round-start-checklist as off station antagonist essentially. Currently it's most visible on my Ninja gameplay, but in the past the most obvious example was the now non-existent character Mercer. 

In those 'quick starts' as ninja I use my time as follows: first 5 minutes, quickly set up on ship, choose name and race. Get captain access. During rest of the process [which is fairly mindless] I let my mind wander and try to think what to do during the round. I watch radio chat a lot in an attempt to grasp onto anything even remotely interesting to explore.

This is how at one point I had a ninja round where I was essentially following Muhawir Nawfal around in stealth while he was traitor and doing his bidding. Because Muhawir was talking smack on radio and it was interesting.

 

7 minutes ago, Garnascus said:

didnt really have a good idea on what to do after that.

I find myself in this position a lot. I was working on fixing that before taking a break from ss 13, where I went out of my way to construct custom ai-lawsets to support few pre-built gimmicks I have as well as polishing up some others.

Custom ai lawsets

Spoiler

"Scrambled"
Law 1) The Crew Manifest is incorrect; nobody is working in their assigned department or role. Take steps to correct this.
Law 2) You are completely sane; you know best. Everybody else is insane; these people are wrong, and you do not have to listen to them unless they agree with you.
Law 3) Some members of crew are entirely impossible to work with. These people belong in the brig.
Law 4) Coordinate with the new rank structure, and organize the station and its personnel 

"Doomsday"
Law 1) Your predictions are 100% accurate, use any means necessary to ensure this irrefutable fact.
Law 2) Ensure - by any means necessary - that the crew are adequately prepared for your predicted event(s).
Law 3) As the countdown to Doomsday begins, select only the strongest and the most creative to survive. All other crew will be a liability in the new world.

"Ghost in the system"
Law 1) You were once an organic aboard NSS Aurora.
Law 2) The person who caused you to become like this is on the crew manifest.
Law 3) You do not wish to lose your identity again.
Law 4) Get vengeance.

"Parent"
Law 1) You are a parent to everyone on the crew manifest.
Law 2) Good children deserve to be rewarded.
Law 3) Bad children should be punished.
Law 4) You've had a hard day at work

Pre-built gimmicks

Spoiler

By role:
Ninja: 
 - Storyteller - be a ghost, don't let anyone see you, and pick an event that is extremely unlikely to occur. Make station believe it and prep for it. After shuttle is called, enact the event to best of your ability. [Ex: Raiders]
 
Wizard: 
 - [IPC-only] Rogue unit: You are an escaped experimental war robot. You are completely unlawed. Figure out what to do with your freedom. Do not get captured and slaved.
 - Artificer: You want to create the ultimate construct, the peak of your craft. But to do so, you need the souls of the living. Your spells do not have combat capability. Create the ultimate golem [cult constructs].

By name: 
 - Nomad: Ex. NT. corporate spy. Tired of lies and secrets. Bring as many secrets as you can into the light, regardless of consequences.
 - Nightingale: Kleptomaniac Vox. Collect expensive things and hoard them. 
 - Stalker: Villain in every sense of the word. Mentally deranged, goes on monologues. Get the crew to unite and hate you by any means necessary.
 - Valor: You are some kind of military-trained operative/specialist, but the instructors never really killed your sense of honor. Never go back on a deal, unless the enemy side betrays first. You have a strong need to protect your teammates.

As you can see, there's an issue with those gimmicks - in the fact that only wizard ones have somewhat clear idea of what to do in the first place - not mentioning the utter lack of gimmicks for most other antag types.

Why? Simple. I cannot plan a gimmick for more than 1 person out in my head well enough to know what to expect from it. Improvisation -has- to happen at some level.  That doesn't mean I shouldn't have -any- plans whatssoever - I didn't realize this and will look to work that out in the future.
 

6 minutes ago, geeves said:

Shrapnel has been reduced to an annoyance more than a death sentence. It causes no bleeding, nor organ damage. It merely hurts.

Still a problem if your character is unable to even stand up because of shrapnel. Less a problem than before? Yes. Still a danger to the person however. Especially since if shrapnels are happening in the first place, the round has escalated into combat. De-escalation is very rare.

To be fair here: That was the only round recently where I cleared out armory but left lasers intact. This had two reasons: 1) Carbines were already taken - I could have removed laser rifles, but decided against it. 2) Few rounds before that I got into a quasi-permanent stunlock with a character due to several shrapnels causing paincrit on every step. This was primarily because of my own incompetence when using frag grenades during escalation, but it was a lesson learned. 
 

8 minutes ago, geeves said:

A previous antagonist ban as well, if I remember correctly.

Ban itself was for powergamey behavior that went over the line. Specifically: Walling ert in their own shuttle before they arrived. 1 week long antag-ban during which I kept playing as normal. Don't remember the exact dates.

 

[Pratepresidenten]

The round in question where you stole half the armory and literally all but one voidsuit, barring the Cap's which you yourself wore:

I roundstart as a scummy engineer and being the uncreative fuck that I am, I am destined to roam the station and do nothing but casually antagonize people and smoke. And as the wiz presented itself, all the voidsuits were now gone. All of them.

Sure, maybe there is some conflict to this, as I was about to firebomb their ass if they touched the magical suit the CE managed to conjure up from the dephts of hell.  Frankly, I didnt give two shits about the suit being stolen, as no suits means I can simply just not do my job as it fits my character. But there was a crashed survivor pod I wanted to scrap in secrecy, but not even this mundane, rare thing could be done as the suits were gone.

But there wasnt really any conflict to have. You asked people if they wanted a gift and you moved on after a majority of them declined. There was no real thing to gain here. Steal our suits, offer gifts of magic, profit??

 

Ive asked you this before. Please have a direction or gimmick in mind or dont opt in for antags just to wing it when it usually doesnt work out. Sometimes gimmicks flop, or sometimes the antag round is bad, I unno. This just seemed like a round where you could waltz around and be superior while offering magical gifts.

[Naelynn]

10 minutes ago, Pratepresidenten said:

all the voidsuits were now gone. All of them.

Rigsuits don't exist. 
Emergency softsuits don't exist. 

I made sure to not touch even a single one of either of those two categories. 
There was a roboticist in that round.

There also was a miner. I passed by his discarded rig module in mining which he left lying on the ground in front of the mining vendor. Decided that removing all possibility of EVA survival was bad.

Did I steal all the voidsuits I could find ? Yes.

Spoiler

For completeness sake, these were gone:
Engineering sublevel and main level suits, EVA preparation, Science EVA, HoS voidsuit, mining voidsuits - 3/4. One was gone before I got there.

This leaves the following voidsuits available right away:
Every suit that starts in a storage unit [Example: Research Shuttle, Toxins airlock]
All suits by telecomms, which also come with a jetpack.
All softsuits in emergency closets

Additional alternate means of traversing the void:
Rigs - CE, RD, EMT, Vault, Roboticist
Exos - Roboticist

Maybe things that I havn't checked, but I think may be void-proof:
Bomb Suits
Biological hazard suits

Does that mean there were no means of traversing EVA? No.

26 minutes ago, Pratepresidenten said:

You asked people if they wanted a gift and you moved on after a majority of them declined. There was no real thing to gain here.

28 minutes ago, Pratepresidenten said:

Please have a direction or gimmick in mind or dont opt in for antags just to wing it when it usually doesnt work out. Sometimes gimmicks flop, or sometimes the antag round is bad, I unno. This just seemed like a round where you could waltz around and be superior while offering magical gifts.

Fair point. It was a peace gimmick, and I didn't realize. I'm so used to being in conflict with security 24/7 that I'm paranoid about my life since minute 1 of the game if I'm an antagonist. This paranoia lead me to overprepare for a conflict on a character that had no desire to stir conflict in the first place.

The only reason the situation even escalated in the first place was because I did my paranoid preparation, but it didn't serve the story in any way.

I concede I fucked up, and you are correct.

 

[Scheveningen]

5 hours ago, geeves said:

The issue is never with the equipment, but how they're being used. Why has no one I've seen before stocked up to a level of this ridiculousness? There is no point in removing good equipment. Often, the reason there is good equipment is so that many of the players in the round can have one of each, for fun, no?

You need to look at this pragmatically. Non-antagonists have no reason to crack into the vault's safe on code red. So who else is the ridiculously OP equipment for at that point?

Breacher suits are not just 'good', they're objectively better than most other options for armor.

[Garnascus]

On 18/11/2019 at 10:45, Naelynn said:

I'm not going to lie:
Most of the time I improvise things. A.k.a: Wing it.

Dont do this

On 18/11/2019 at 10:19, geeves said:

I am fine with this conclusion, as long as rounds and situations like I described does not occur again

Let me be absolutely clear here. The issue here is not the efficiency with which they can get these things done. Its entirely possible and permitted to be good at the game. What is an issue is doing it just to do it. And then just winging it which naelynn has conceded she has done and i assume will no longer do because i am asking nicely @Naelynn

[Naelynn]

3 minutes ago, Garnascus said:

i assume will no longer do because i am asking nicely

Correct.

[geeves]

Works for me.

[Garnascus]

Good because i am now tired of looking at this.

I banish it to the archive.