Make Cult Unresistable

[Snakebittenn]

“When an evil eldritch god is trying to infiltrate your mind and enslave you but you are a waifu nurse that would never hurt her friends so your mind is impenetrable” - MattAtlas

It's kind of ridiculous that this is still a thing in a conversion based gamemode. Resisting the conversion rune should only buy you time, not be a perfect (well, nearly, you do get killed at the end) counter to an elder god. The expectation of a secret round should be to play along. barring being suddenly ganked the minute you exit cryo (That's antag bannable). I guarantee the #1 reason for most resists isn't because 'I don't want to submit because RP reasons', it's 'I'm salty so I'm not gonna play ball'. It's very much poor behavior in these cases, and shouldn't be possible anymore.

[Karhast]

+1

MY BODY IS READY

[Roostercat]

Not a +1 or a -1, but my opinion is that this will only turn into a fuckload of drama over people 'throwing' or being accused thereof, or people half ass playing because they didn't want to be forced into playing cultist. I personally think the rune should just kill someone after a certain number of tries.

[Robotic Potato]

+1 that being said it'd be nice if you could resist, but not indefinitely. Maybe 3 resists at max, or like you said a timer. So forcibly converting someone maybe takes like a minute and a half or something compared to people who give in immediately joining.

[Hepatica]

-1 Some people don't abuse it and actually have legitimate reason why they'd be able to resist. If anything it should be a "you can resist x many times" type of thing, to give people a chance instead of "got you on a ruin gg you're cult now". I feel like that would be far too abusable

[Guest Menown]

10 minutes ago, Roostercat said:

Not a +1 or a -1, but my opinion is that this will only turn into a fuckload of drama over people 'throwing' or being accused thereof, or people half ass playing because they didn't want to be forced into playing cultist. I personally think the rune should just kill someone after a certain number of tries.

This is it right here. Not everybody wants to be antags, it's why they have it disabled. Having it kill would be better, and adding something that uses corpses would be great, like a stronger cult version of a simple_mob flesh golem or zombie that works like an attack dog.

[MalMalumam]

Perhaps it should be dependent on whether you have cult turned on in your preferences?  If you have it turned on, you get a dialog stating you have it on and you can either submit or use the dialog to turn it off.  If you have cult off in your preferences, you get a dialog stating you have it off and you can either resist three times before being killed, or use the dialog to turn it on.   Also you should get killed after a certain time period anyways just to prevent turning the preference on and off to try to work around the resist limit.

Being able to make guard dogs or something out of corpses seems like a neat idea.  Constructs are supposed to be what you do with dead bodies, but if they just don't want to play cult at all, instead of just insisting that their character can't be converted - or if the cult is not smart enough to know how constructs work -  then that won't work either.

I would say not everyone wants to play along with a secret round.  I know I like to, but some people just want to be bystanders, and I think it's possible a good portion of these people are the kind who keep OOC turned off and don't engage in the forums or discord, so we don't hear from them. 

Gahhh, I need to update the wiki.  Bleh.  If a change like this goes through, please ping me on the discord.

Edit:  Another factor is that when you're not very robust or not very good at RP or just new to cult in general, your first approach to conversion might just wind up being "gank and yank".  Which sucks for the victim and is no fun, and was asserted to be the reason behind not being willing to convert by a number of people.  I asked around about this, and the consensus *appears* to be that people are much more willing to hit "submit" if at least a modicum of RP/effort is put into the conversion attempt.  I.e. - lure the victim into a trap, or tie them up and have a proper ritual with chanting or something.  Even the hardcore anti-cult person I talked to said they'd hit submit if they got a "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Nar'Sie R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn" in a dark RP ritual.

Edited September 1, 2020 by MalMalumam

[Carver]

-1, it already kills people who resist at a decent pace. If someone truly doesn't want to be a cultist and they're forcibly converted, then they'll either afk, cryo, half-ass their role or worse - purposely be rather obvious to accelerate the round's end.

[MalMalumam]

Yes, it takes 40 seconds to 2 and a half minutes to get someone to 100 burn damage, so it's decently quick to seriously injure someone.  Given brainmed though, I'm not sure how long it takes to kill?  The rune does do brain damage at later stages, but that could take anywhere from 6 to 33 minutes to kill on its own.

Wait, hold on, I just saw a proc in the code, /datum/antagonist/cultist/proc/appraise_offering() ...

    if(!cult.can_become_antag(target.mind) || jobban_isbanned(target, "cultist") || player_is_antag(target.mind))

        to_chat(usr, SPAN_CULT("You get the sense that [target] would be an unworthy offering."))

    else

        to_chat(usr, SPAN_CULT("You get the sense that your master would be pleased to welcome [target] into the cult."))

Is this already implemented?  This should be made front-and-center obvious to anyone who draws a convert rune... like, make the act of drawing a convert rune point out that "Appraise Offering" is a thing they can do.  I can't tell if this proc covers whether or not a person has cult turned on in their preferences.  Edit:  Either way, it should probably give a different message if they simply have their preferences off - "You get the sense that your master is interested in [target], but first you must convince them of the worthiness of His cause." or something like that.

Edited September 1, 2020 by MalMalumam
cult preference should be separate message

[Butterrobber202]

me when vampires are more powerful than Nar'sie himself if that have 150 blood and Enthrall unlocked

[niennab]

Making the cult unresistable is likely just going to end up with converted players entering cryogenics shortly after.

Also I thought the current rune damages you each time you say no until you die, right?

[Karhast]

Most culties don't really have the time or inclination to watch people stubbornly die of burn over the course of ten minutes because death is slow. Most culties would be happy if they could recruit a whopping three people total also, but that's not currently happening either. 

[Valkrae]

-1, I would immediately attempt to ghost/cryo if forced to play as Cult. There's a reason I have it turned off in the preferences. Make it kill, or as someone else mentioned, have it turn them into a simple mob. 

There's no reason to try and force people to play something they don't want to play.

[Pratepresidenten]

Seems like a pretty simple fix to me, really.

The will of nar'sie becomes absolute, what happens is:

You have your cult prefs on: You get a choice to resist once or twice before you're forcibly converted.
You have your cult prefs off: You die instantly when conversion is attempted.

Bingo bango, no suffering and frowny faces icly or oocly. Short, sweet and to the point!

[Zundy]

What prate said but maybe you die on the third attempt. That why there is a little opportunity for your character to epicly resist the cult and be saved (potentially). So in both situations, on the third try you WILL either convert or die.

Edited September 1, 2020 by Zundy

[Kintsugi]

Player agency and choice is an important component of maintaining an HRP environment. Hard -1 from me. Nobody should be forced into playing an antagonist role if they have no desire to do so, and this is a principle that exists for every antagonist role on the server. I don't see why cult should be any different. If you absolutely, desperately want to make it so you cannot resist cult conversion, then make it so a ghost can take over a character who refuses to convert.

[MalMalumam]

Hmm... @DanseMacabre, now that you mention it, there is a way for cultists to do that already:  the Revival rune.  Take a dead body that you want to insert a ghost into, take another dead body that you'll sacrifice to power the ritual, and bam, a ghost standing on the rune is now a brand new cultist, with a fancy new body to boot.

Though having to get another dead body for it first does kinda suck.  Oh well.  *Shrug*

[DronzTheWolf]

inb4 the "You consent to cult by playing the game" gang come in to shit on everyone saying "Player agency is good and we should keep it."

[ThelonTV]

1 hour ago, Pratepresidenten said:

Seems like a pretty simple fix to me, really.

The will of nar'sie becomes absolute, what happens is:

You have your cult prefs on: You get a choice to resist once or twice before you're forcibly converted.
You have your cult prefs off: You die instantly when conversion is attempted.

Bingo bango, no suffering and frowny faces icly or oocly. Short, sweet and to the point!

This. +1

[Carver]

1 hour ago, Pratepresidenten said:

You have your cult prefs off: You die instantly when conversion is attempted.

How to turn the conversion rune into an extremely cheeseable weapon used in 1-tile hallways/doorways in 1 easy change. It should take a solid minute long of having the person stuck on the rune if it's going to kill in one move, else it will be cheesed in combat and used as an objectively better sacrifice rune elsewhere.

59 minutes ago, DanseMacabre said:

then make it so a ghost can take over a character who refuses to convert.

The one idea that's somehow worse than just dying. If being forcibly converted takes away player agency, this manages to do it even worse by saying 'you no longer play this character'. I'd genuinely rather be force converted and just cryo than this.

[Karhast]

I guess we're also removing the entire gamemode that is borer and nerfing vampire into the ground then. 

Edit: nobody uses the sacrifice rune, my guy. Literally nobody. It is a non-concern. 

Edited September 1, 2020 by Karhast

[witchbells]

Oh, no. This isn't a good idea at all. Forcing people to play antag when they don't want to results in a number of things happening,

 

1. They will immediately cryo. Staff can simply tell people not to do this, which leads to my next point.

2. They will either throw the round or be a pisspoor antagonist. People will put effort into things if they care about them, which is why we implemented antagonist preferences and the vote draft in the first place. Forcing players into a certain role (a role that requires responsibility and skill at the game, at that) will result in little good being done other than a sense of short-lived satisfaction for whoever converted the poor sod.

 

I also wholeheartedly agree with Danse's statement on player agency.

 

Just use the darn sacrifice rune if they won't cooperate.

 

[MalMalumam]

Alright, so how about this?

Cult preference on:  "Submit or resist?  (Your cult preference is on.  You will be able to resist for thirty seconds before being forcibly converted.)

Cult preference off:  "Submit or resist?  (Your cult preference is off.  You will be seriously injured and forget the events over the last fifteen minutes in two minutes if you resist!)

[Soultheif96]

-1

I am going to say no on this matter given from both experience and insight provided here. Mechanics already show that either you submit or not, and when you do not, you will get hurt, leading to your death as you continually resist.

Some characters like the most unshakable in their faith would rather die than to submit to what they believe is a vile false god, some characters have morals that conflict with what they witnessed and endured from the occult practices and refuse through sheer will.

Others would break easily given reason to join or are weak-minded. Nevertheless, it will still be a no from me, Chief.

[Vulcenus]

7 hours ago, Carver said:

-1, it already kills people who resist at a decent pace. If someone truly doesn't want to be a cultist and they're forcibly converted, then they'll either afk, cryo, half-ass their role or worse - purposely be rather obvious to accelerate the round's end.

this, stop trying to enforce recruitment into your sword gang just because you got slapped by the crew in 2 out of 50 rounds of murderbone cult