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Regarding Forced Antag Drafting


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So a bit of history.

Last year, we decided to start messing around with code which handles antagonist selection. Specifically, a piece of code which forcefully drafted people who voted for the winning roundtype was removed, and some other changes were made. Following this, we saw a marked flux in the status quo of what round types go through and what fail. The spread of round types played started to suffer, according to our observations. The other changes mentioned were reverted in early December, late November. And the situation did not get better. So, now we've reverted the last change and are about to find out what's gonna happen!

With this said, to make the barn big and red, here is what has happened:

  • We reintroduced a mechanic which, on the condition that the currently winning round type does not have enough antagonists to start up, will forcibly draft into antag roles everyone who voted for the winning round type.
  • This mechanic was reintroduced with the primary goal of having the played round types be more varied, by virtue of more round types getting passed their voting requirements.
  • This mechanic was reintroduced under the premise that it did not prove an issue before.
  • This will mean that you are likely to be chosen for antagonists that you would rather not play, specially when voting for secret. We understand that this may appear inconvenient, but we trust that most of you are able to see the necessity of antagonists in the grand scheme of the game, and are willing to play a less-than-desireable role some of the time.

We will, of course, monitor this change. Primarily seeing how the round type spread is gonna work out from now on. Along with the disgruntlement of the playerbase, of course.

Administrative policy on this matter (and how easy or hard it is to get out of forced antag status) will be clarified by Alb and Garn.

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antags should be easier to play than ever, by efforts of myself and my fellow devs. i trust that the playerbase can handle playing a role they might not know all about. if anyone struggles with an antag because they find what to do or which ability does what confusing, contact me on discord, so i can streamline it. the new player experience is something i'd like to work on, and new people playing antags is a part of that. anyhow, don't gank, have fun.

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5 minutes ago, DiscountDan said:

I for one support this in full. Antagonists contribute to the round and add a certain spice to the game for me. If I have to play a cultist or a ninja from time to time (despite my qualms with it) I'll do my duty, Cap'n. Thanks for the notification on it, boss.

This is my perspective on this change with different antagonists. 

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I highly support this as well, it can help with diversity in round type (AKA less failed round starts because no one had those antag selections enabled), as well as make secret somewhat of a guessing game again, instead of cycling through tator and its variants as tator seems to be the most popular antag type.

I have no issue with playing things like cultist or revolutionary if that means that it'll be better for the other players in the round as a whole, and it'll in my eyes, encourage people to try and come up with more entertaining gimmicks for the less popular game modes since if they make it more entertaining in general, they'll likely have more fun playing an antag they normally dislike.

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very cool and good, more antags is better, for one can not become robust without practical experience

if you desire a gamemode, surely it isn't that much of a stretch to participate in the round as that mode's antag

however, I foresee potential issues with people not wanting to be antags, and thus not voting, resulting in a lower amount of votes in general. this could also potentially bait newer players if not fully elaborated. perhaps in the voting menu, some big ol' text saying "voting = you could be the antag" would be nice albeit it is not necessary by any means

but in summary yes very good i like this idea

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Just now, JamOfBoy said:

however, I foresee potential issues with people not wanting to be antags, and thus not voting, resulting in a lower amount of votes in general. this could also potentially bait newer players if not fully elaborated. perhaps in the voting menu, some big ol' text saying "voting = you could be the antag" would be nice albeit it is not necessary by any means

Age restrictions still apply. So new players won't get antags we consider to be "too complex".

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My only issue was raised on discord, but bears repeating. Currently the drafted voters does not check the restricted jobs for the gamemode, meaning we once again have head of staff antags. (This is bug will fix)

Otherwise, I'm hesitant but optimistic about this. More variation in roundtype is great. More people being antags is good. I'm worried about gimmick quality but honestly for the most part it can't go much lower than it already is. 

Edited by Doxxmedearly
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1 minute ago, Doxxmedearly said:

My only issue was raised on discord, but bears repeating. Currently the drafted voters does not check the restricted jobs for the gamemode, meaning we once again have head of staff antags. 

This is likely a bug with how restricted jobs was implemented.

The novel code that I introduced is effectively a copy of how the original draftee list was composed, ergo, it does the exact same thing. So the code implementing the job restrictions is the code to look at to figure out why it's broken.

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I myself have been guilty of opting out when I voted and it picked me as renegade, but I agree with this change. I will try my best tho. If you never want to play antag, then you can just not vote or vote extended.

 

but the round progressed where being a renegade would of added to it. So yeah, give it a chance I suppose. 

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Being able to opt out this time is good. Yet I have to shake my head about some things posted here. Why people should be willing to play something they do not want or actively avoid I cannot understand. Neither how something good should come out of such a situation. 

For me and some others this just means now to either exclusively vote extended, not vote and/or not ready up anymore. Definite improvement over the last time.

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On 24/03/2020 at 01:47, KingOfThePing said:

Why people should be willing to play something they do not want or actively avoid I cannot understand. Neither how something good should come out of such a situation. 

We can see why by using an analogy: the antag player pool is a social circle that doesn't expand. Over time your antag players will dwindle because on HRP almost nobody wants to play antag at first. This is one of the few cases where making people do it will actually be an overall benefit by increasing said pool.

Also, it's not exactly nefarious - if you want antags, you're expecting to be entertained by antags in exchange for sometimes entertaining people as an antag. Seems fair to me.

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I can see where you come from, and with the first part you are mostly correct. Yet:

1 hour ago, MattAtlas said:

Over time your antag players will dwindle because on HRP almost nobody wants to play antag at first.

One could think about why that is.

And while you are right it's nothing nefarious to play antags it's still a commitment many people don't want to do, for good reasons, obviously. I'd just say that if I ever get forced antag that I would ahelp that I do not want it and want it removed and rather disconnect than to be forced to be one. Expecting to be entertained by antags and me expected to entertain antags should only happen on my own terms, not by force.

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I play antags fairly regularly, if that means anything. That said, I tend to have gimmicks in mind, be set up in that mindset, and generally have a plan going in. Getting randomly allocated 'oh you're traitor now, have fun!' is frustrating imo. But, a considerably bigger problem is that the quality of antag has - in my mind - fallen dramatically. So often in AOOC it's 'I don't know what I'm doing', 'why am I this role?' 'what do I do?' and whilst I'm all for teaching new players, a lot of these people don't want to play these roles in the first place and so just go for the easy route.

 

So we get lazy gimmicks. After the last few days, my non-extended rounds have been the following: 

- Ninjas running around randomly shurrikening people without a word.
- Traitors suicide bombing medical and killing four people with zero build-up.
- Mercs stealing the Captain, not interacting with anyone, and never giving demands as they RP on their ship over two hours.
- Revs who do the most ridiculous shit and so never recruit anyone, with nonsense gimmicks everyone rolls their eyes at.

Yes we have more variety, but variety without quality is just..what's the point?

 

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4 hours ago, Lemei said:

I play antags fairly regularly, if that means anything. That said, I tend to have gimmicks in mind, be set up in that mindset, and generally have a plan going in. Getting randomly allocated 'oh you're traitor now, have fun!' is frustrating imo. But, a considerably bigger problem is that the quality of antag has - in my mind - fallen dramatically. So often in AOOC it's 'I don't know what I'm doing', 'why am I this role?' 'what do I do?' and whilst I'm all for teaching new players, a lot of these people don't want to play these roles in the first place and so just go for the easy route.

 

So we get lazy gimmicks. After the last few days, my non-extended rounds have been the following: 

- Ninjas running around randomly shurrikening people without a word.
- Traitors suicide bombing medical and killing four people with zero build-up.
- Mercs stealing the Captain, not interacting with anyone, and never giving demands as they RP on their ship over two hours.
- Revs who do the most ridiculous shit and so never recruit anyone, with nonsense gimmicks everyone rolls their eyes at.

Yes we have more variety, but variety without quality is just..what's the point?

 

This was completely expected and is pretty normal when most people don't play antagonists. Give it a few weeks.

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12 hours ago, Lemei said:

- Ninjas running around randomly shurrikening people without a word.
- Traitors suicide bombing medical and killing four people with zero build-up.
- Mercs stealing the Captain, not interacting with anyone, and never giving demands as they RP on their ship over two hours.
- Revs who do the most ridiculous shit and so never recruit anyone, with nonsense gimmicks everyone rolls their eyes at.

I ran into a stealth merc team during yesterdays bug hunt. The playing for objectives came from not understanding many mechanics and being scared of almost everything on an OOC level. I have voiced a couple issues with the current system already, but  having to explain every merc how internals work should not be a permanent thing, people do learn and get more easy with doing the funny stuff.

Then came tower defense... oh boy... Our team did not even manage to stay together, we just randomly shanked  people for their IDs and credits. I am not saying this is bad for starters, but good gimiks will be rare with teams being that random.

On the other hand people trying it out might lead to more regulars that then in turn offer good stories, so we'll see how it goes.

It just feels really wrong to me, having someone try out traitor due to the random chance, then getting punished for sucking at it. Recent case would be a cadet and a medical intern both being traitor and so unfamiliar with the mechanics that everyone involved just kinda panicked and started clicking until horizontal. RP goes out the window when people are scared or laughing their ass off and I hope this improves rather sooner than later.

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On the flip side.

It is debatable whether "You need a good gimmick" to be a good antag. IMO gimmick culture is cancerous and needs to die in a fucking fire. Just play antag, create a bit of a story, and voila. You're good.

People being disorganized is fine, this is the norm for new antag players.

Another fun thing to point out is the idea that bad antag players get "punished for being bad at antag play". Arguably, the more players play antag and the more familiar they become with the role, the more welcoming (hopefully) the whole playerbase becomes towards the matter.

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On 26/03/2020 at 10:50, Skull132 said:

On the flip side.

It is debatable whether "You need a good gimmick" to be a good antag. IMO gimmick culture is cancerous and needs to die in a fucking fire. Just play antag, create a bit of a story, and voila. You're good.

People being disorganized is fine, this is the norm for new antag players.

Another fun thing to point out is the idea that bad antag players get "punished for being bad at antag play". Arguably, the more players play antag and the more familiar they become with the role, the more welcoming (hopefully) the whole playerbase becomes towards the matter.

The drafting will kind of put players in the spotlight, cultivate their skills, and place them in uncomfortable situations. Generate a story, seeing it success or fail, then trying again when they role antag again. This will cultivate our dwindling antag players and hopefully getting new players improved. Balancing antagging is a game between story, winning, roleplay, and security. It is a fairly hard game and sometimes it collapses and you turn all interaction into a chasing match between you and security. We have multiple antags and sometimes rounds will progress with all parties being shot by security. That is ok, people will learn, and grow.

 

The rules should be clearly reflective of this matter, which they are, as you shouldn't gank while at least making an attempt to have other people enjoy the story you are creating. This is a very important function in this delicate balance we make.

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