Remove technomancer from the secret rotation

[Lordnesh]

On 19/03/2020 at 04:56, Shadow7889 said:

I believe the issue isnt the game mode but a lack of creativity in said play style. Improving on the wizard role would be better. Editing spells and even adding new ones that can help drive rounds better might be a good idea. It's hard to keep coming up with new ideas when you play the same thing over and over.  That's why I barely do merc/wiz/weeaboswordmaster anymore. 

I recently came up with, what I believe to be, a very interesting wizard gimmick. One that doesn't even use the dreaded fire ball.

[Flamingo]

Anyone who knows me can attest to the fact that I despise wizard as a gamemode. It doesn't even have anything to do with the mechanics of them. I simply hate them thematically in a science fiction roleplay setting. It shatters my immersion and I generally end up ghosting and observing if they are overly ridiculous. That doesn't mean that every single wizard sucks and can't have a fun gimmick or engaging roleplay experience, but the majority I've played with were not that.

 

That said, I don't support their removal from the secret rotation, or as a gamemode. As Alberyk and Garnascus have mentioned earlier in this thread, removing things continuously will simply distill our roleplay into fewer and fewer modes that people will grow sick of. I support the rebranding of the wizard to a more period appropriate flavor, such as Technomancer or some other "futuristic magic man" equivalent. Many of the spells that the wizard possesses now would work just fine in a rebranded wizard, and could mechanically be the same with only minor alterations to their names or casting styles.

 

I am not sure how a rebranded wizard would look exactly, but I am confident that the community can crowd-source a sufficient naming scheme and flavor for them to be better than the current iteration. As a side note, I'd 100% support the porting of Technomancer in order to replace the wizard, but I do not have the technical skills and knowledge to do it myself, and I can't justifiably put all of that work on some poor developer to do at the whim of the community. Our best bet is to pay geeves hope that one of them feels strongly enough about it to take it upon themselves.

[Omicega]

On 15/10/2020 at 01:56, Omicega said:

Wizard is absolute anathema to a high roleplay environment. It boggles my mind that the lore writers and staff team as a whole here have gone to such lengths to craft such a high-quality roleplay environment and maintain its integrity over all these years, only to let it regularly get dumped on by the clown fiesta that is wizard. I don't even really care that it's low-impact on its own; to me, any round type that has wizard in it is just straight up worse off for it.

There is nothing immersive about Mungo the Magnificient materialising on the station at 12:15 to grab the spare and then cast STAUN EI and whatever the EMP blast spell is over and over and over for the next two hours. It's just a pain in the ass. Every other game mode I can think of at least has some justification to fit into the lore -- even ninja, which is a close second to wizard in terms of how bad the gameplay is -- but wizard provides nothing either to those looking to click on things until they die (just one antagonist, albeit an obnoxious one) or to those looking for a good story.

My thoughts haven't changed, but I will bump them again at Danse's request. There are rare exceptions to wizard rounds being bad (I just came out of one) but the overall sentiment still applies, and it isn't worth wading through the 9/10 funny meme ones to get to the one that's actually halfway passable and conducive to a high roleplay server.

[NerdyVampire]

What do you think about giving the wizard an option to be more of an occultist? Add a new spellbook that spawns them a bag full of trinkets which can be sold/given/traded to crew members or hidden around the station, and like anomalies actually grant some small magical effect or boon?

This would at least give them a new option to be neither strictly peaceful or antagonistic, and it would be easier to conform to the setting as a strange merchant or whatnot.

It's more work than simply removing it, but I can imagine having an enjoyable round with this. Small activateable/passive boons: heat-vision, short-range teleport, small emp, telepathy, small magical weaponry? Point is, let the wizard deal this stuff out without having to sell their soulsouls and people can at least get a bit on board.

[Camellia]

I'm sure wizard can be rewritten and rebranded.

Whenever I've played Wizard, I've generally done something passive or tried to at least. I remember one round where I was searching for an apprentice and disguised as a janitor blasting this song through my headphones;

I then found @Ramke and gave Freya apprenticeship after we spoke about kindness and the stuff and, with that in mind, we spent the last half of the round practicing magic.

I also remember the time I was a peaceful necromancer and brought back a guy from death as a skeleton (and ahelped to get him aooc) and we acted out a play that I made out on the fly

-- and everyone seemed to enjoy it.

I think the only time I've ever been hostile was when I messed up a scroll and teleported into a restricted area and everyone came rolling at me with guns at the ready.

I feel, it really depends on the Wiz, I think we should work on fixing rather than removing. Regarding the Wizard Federation though, yeah, a bit silly, I could work on writing something if people want, I have a free schedule for the next few(?) weeks.

Edited December 12, 2020 by Cylean

[Kintsugi]

Bump. As I wish to outright remove it from the rotation, I unfortunately cannot do this myself. It is something that the head staff must do. Let's just drop it and be done with it, please

[CourierBravo]

Bump, I have been playing on this server for five months and there was only been two wis rounds I found enjoyable, much less memorable. Maybe not remove it, but remove it from secret, or make its player requirements so that you have to have high pop for it to happen in secret

[DriedMilk]

A disappointing gamemode that basically takes the nice and delicate tailoring of Aurora lore, crumbles it and then shreds it into pieces before setting it alight. Removal from secret rotation would be enough, in my opinion.

[Wigglesworth Jones]

I cannot, off the top of my head, remember more than three or so enjoyable wizard rounds I've had in the last few months. Nothing kills my immersion more than seeing somebody in a bathrobe shouting "I AM BARTHOLOMEW THE FIREBALL SPAMMER" over the radio before proceeding to a.) cause mass chaos or b.) be peaceful and turn the round into extended.

[Caelphon]

Personally, a -1. 

 

Those that are plagued by lowpop (Europeans) typically don't have much to play with. Removing Wizard makes the already small pool even smaller. We basically get a consistent Vamp, Wiz, Burglar or Extended. Please, don't make europeans suffer even more than they already do. 

[Camellia]

So, proposition;

 

I'm willing to work on lore regarding a Wizard Federation revamp aka, the Hold Over Federation

This is gonna get whacky, perhaps, a bit uncharacteristic

 

the idea is this;

Off station antags (LIKE WIZ) aren't fun, wiz in on itself, isn't fun.

my idea is this;

The "SS13" Space Wizards are just insane and a splinter force of "arcane" sorcerers that have been on the run and are ultimately dead, for good, straight up. This order of agents went on a mass data disinformation campaign with some SCP like antiemetic agents being deployed, effectively retconning any type of "wiz" lore.

There were never wizards, there were only mad men that have been taken out back and shot pretty much.

This is a NON GOVERNMENTAL SANCTIONED organization that calls itself "Unity" (hehe funny name)

This is an organization of soulless technocrats, were hitting vibes like these;

Lore is that they are former "wizards" who turned to "magical" gadgets and other tech and use their talents to, most importantly, hunt down "reality" deviants. They have to remain a low profile and blend in with the crew, making these agents essentially traitors with more FOCUSED tools AGAINST antagonists.

Ideas are the following;
For cultists, they get blasters to deal with apparitions, they could possibly deconvert crew members (hey that's one reason why people don't like cult taken care of!) Vampires can get staked and "terminated" and Changelings can get shot with a silver bullet to expose their true form or what have you. Anti antag crew-aligned antag essentially, something that's new and unique and hopefully, something better with wiz. 

Edited December 17, 2020 by Cylean

[Kintsugi]

14 hours ago, Cylean said:

-snip-

Respectfully, I can't say I'm a fan. The objective of this thread is to get rid of wizard - not quasi-justify it. The last thing we need is to encourage the proliferation of magic or quasi-magic within the context of our official server lore.

 

Reworking the wizard federation is not necessary, as it is not real lore in the first place.

[SinfulBehaviors]

I completely disagree with removing it from rotation.

Every now and then, people like having a round where we get to be a bit LRP. After multiple strict secret and extended rounds, having a moment where we get to muck around a little bit is nice. Hell, if you get a good wizard, then the HRP continues, just not in a canon way. The issue is that people dislike Wiz because there aren't a lot of good wiz players out there. It's part of the reason people hate on Ling, too. Honestly, if we started removing things from secret that people complain about a lot, we'd end up with secret rotation being Burglars, Raiders, Mercs, Autotraitor, and nothing else. 

I don't think enough people genuinely hate wizard enough for it to be removed. Plus, if we did remove it from the lineup, I think Wiz rounds would end up being super rare. During high-pop hours I've only ever seen people vote for things other than secret and extended like...five-ish times, and two of those times, a Borer round and a Ling round, people ended up unreadying so it wouldn't actually go through, then secret won out afterwards. Relegating it to vote only feels like it would just dummy out the round type unless people meme hard enough, and that just kinda sucks.

[Camellia]

4 hours ago, DanseMacabre said:

Respectfully, I can't say I'm a fan. The objective of this thread is to get rid of wizard - not quasi-justify it. The last thing we need is to encourage the proliferation of magic or quasi-magic within the context of our official server lore.

 

Reworking the wizard federation is not necessary, as it is not real lore in the first place.

The thing is though, it isn't magick.

It's just gadgets that are advanced tech that counter the effects of magick.

Lore is that they never existed, so they aren't justified in being cannon, they were just nuts who did some act of mania and got shot for it.

People are going to then get sick of Merc, Burg, etc, as sinful said and will likely want them removed due to a bad few apples, that's why it would be better to rework it then just completely remove something.

Better to at least try something new once and make a verdict after.

[Daemon]

On 15/12/2020 at 10:34, Bejewledpot said:

high pop for it to happen in secret

I completely forgot about this - wizard rounds always tend to happen if deadpop chooses secret and most of the time its neither interesting or just plain sucks, as the station is too barren for the wizard to do anything, I agree with this. 

[Scheveningen]

I support this until it is properly reworked.

[Butterrobber202]

Once I was a big fan of wizard, but now that I'm cultured :tm:, I have to say I'm pretty much all in favor for removing Wizard from the rotation, it's an out of place gamemode that can easily be substituted with Loner in most cases. Most Wizard gimmicks make me want to blow my brains out.

[Camellia]

I get the sentiment of not wanting to remove stuff because then people get sick of it but as of late we've had the same quirky Bluespace Engineer or we have a random wiz start screaming. disrupting RP knowing full aware everyone was chill and wordlessly throwing stuff.

That isn't RP friendly, Magistake is okay because its more cultivated but wiz is just a hold over.  

[CatsinHD]

See, the thing with Wiz is that in the right hands it is amazing. I point to the time someone made Nated as a wiz and started an ALA war and stuff. That was fun to no end. Then you get the normal rounds which are interesting at the least even if it follows the same format and is one of like 4 types. Then you get the shit I dealt with last night. A Unathi wiz just zooms around the station throwing shit. No talk, no rp what so ever. Security had a horrible time because they were a Unathi and could tank two full laser rifle dumps before dying by themselves in command. The worst part is that the second you try to retaliate they deploy smoke and blind you. It was below lrp, it was no rp from the wiz.

I would love to keep wiz if it didn't have such an unreliable and wide range of quality. When a manifest of 15 crew goes down to 3 with most of that 15 12 who left are ghosts, you have a bad gamemode and sadly it happens too much.

 TLDR: Replace wiz with Magistake and Loner. Loner just feels like a higher RP version of wiz. Like a slightly less wizardly like technomancer. I've said my piece. (I have not had too much experience with loner aside from like one round)

[limette]

I'm another person who enjoyed that Unathi Wizard round the other day, and it made me confident wizard should not be in the secret rotation; it has more room for no-RP gimmicks than any other gamemode, and almost incentivizes them with its WACKY!!! nature. I've had too many wizard rounds at this point where it was just 'lets chase the wizard for 2 hours.' Now, I've had the same experience with other antags; namely ninjas and burglars. But I've also had far more interesting experiences with burglars at the least. With wizard, I've only enjoyed one round and that was because the wizard was dead an hour in. I have yet to see a gimmick that extends beyond 'you're a statue now', 'blind and run', and 'FIREBALL FIREBALL FIREBALL.' In fact, I believe my second round here I got fireballed by a wizard within 3 lines of meeting them as a poor miner. Had I not been familiar with the SS13 format and this gamemode, I probably would have just fucked off at this point because that's the least engaging RP in the world, and this tends to be most wizards.

However, with Loner in particular, I can't think of a round I found actively a chore to play. There's been some boring ones, sure, but I've yet to find a loner that pulls anything of the same sort. I think loner should just be considered a replacement to wizard, given nobody's going to port technomancer any time soon.

I've heard there are interesting wizard gimmicks, to be fair, but in my three weeks of playing here (not the biggest sample by any means) I've seen none of them and instead only situations that make my character suddenly very sleepy, as well as apparently everyone else on the station. This probably reads as a saltpost, and it definitely is one.

Edited February 19, 2021 by limette

[Garnascus]

Only way i will ever support this is if we have a new mode to replace it, something like technomancer or maybe something we create for ourselves. Like a "devil" game mode. As far as i am aware anyone is free to code this. 

[Butterrobber202]

2 hours ago, Garnascus said:

Only way i will ever support this is if we have a new mode to replace it, something like technomancer or maybe something we create for ourselves. Like a "devil" game mode. As far as i am aware anyone is free to code this. 

I really feel Loner should be the replacement.

[CampinKiller]

20 hours ago, William Murdoch said:

See, the thing with Wiz is that in the right hands it is amazing. 

So was malf, yet malf got removed because 99% of malf rounds were terrible, same as 99% of wizard rounds.

[Carver]

Is this not already addressed by the dynamic mode system? I recall Wizards being either tier 2 or tier 3 in that.

[Caelphon]

Again, I will literally fight people with my bare hands. Europeans/Australians are stuck with the same consistent gamemodes, don't make it already smaller. Unless you play during these times, I do not believe you'd understand.