Do *something* about cult

[DatSamTho]

As it stands, cult is an unloved gamemode, and for good reason. It is almost fundamentally anti-roleplay. It can be actually really engaging in early to mid game, but after that? After that, cult almost always goes one of two ways: 

a) Flops completely, with the rest of the round playing out as extended

b) Murderbones half the station

Now, why is that? In my opinion, there is one main problem with this gamemode: It has a preset objective. Yeah, seems kinda obvious, at least to me, when you look at it this way. In a server, where "playing to win" is frowned upon, exists a gamemode, with a preset "win" condition, which to get to, you NEED to go out of your way to attack other characters and convert them.

I believe there are two things that can be done to make this in someway better:

a) Delete Cult as a gamemode all together

b) Rework it in a substantial way, for it to better serve an HRP server

Personally, I would rather avoid the first option as we already have removed a lot of gamemodes from the secret rotation, which essentially puts them on the backshelf to be played once a month as a "FuNnIe JoKe", but then again, cult is barely ever played as is. Now how would it be reworked? I'm. . . honestly not too certain, it's currently in a very bad state, and would need some major work done, but any suggestions are of course welcome.

[Skull132]

A point of consideration.

Mercs became "More roleplay friendly" after we removed direct syndicate affiliation from them and removed the availability of nukes.

Cult still has the standard "You're absolutely evil" aesthetic plus they have a very clear end goal: which is murdering everyone with or without Nur'sie.

If those two could be laxed a bit, without completely removing the cult-y aspect of cult, maybe that'd help? But you'd need something to fill the void with.

[Zundy]

Could make it so the cults in the cult gamemode are cults of lore religions. Perhaps give them a snazy look based on which cult is chosen initally or allow them to spawn in religion specific gear based on what the cult gimmick the players are going for.

 

Edit: Could make it so cult can choose from a handful of religions if we don't want to make it so broad. Some religions are more aggressive then others in setting so it gives a nice mix of potental gimmicks ranging from the classic murder cult to a peace cult and everything inbetween.

Edited January 27, 2021 by Zundy

[Sparky_hotdog]

I'm going to start out by saying that tomkiel hit the nail on the head for me. For a long time now, I've viewed Cult as a good gimmick for an entirely different game mode, that was given its own game mode. And for that time, I've always attributed this lack fo creativity and freedom (and the resulting repetitive slog that are Cult rounds.) to the very nature of Cult being a cult...

 

56 minutes ago, Zundy said:

Could make it so the cults in the cult gamemode are cults of lore religions. Perhaps give them a snazy look based on which cult is chosen initally or allow them to spawn in religion specific gear based on what the cult gimmick the players are going for.

Then Zundy said this, and I have to say, it got me thinking. What if we made cult into this hypothetical mode I previously mentioned. Personally I think forcing people to use the lore religions might put us in a situation where people get annoyed about someone "ruining" the lore they like, so what about making it more creative. I'm thinking give the cult the option to choose a Domain (obvious inspiration from DnD), which would essentially work a bit like a Wizard's spellbook. It's then up to the players to decide which god they want to follow, so if you had a bunch of taj fanatics who wanted to do Bloodmoon 2 because they're all nutjobs they can, but equally some less lore-savy players (or others) could make up their own god.

[Butterrobber202]

I definitely think cult could be improved by making it more generalist, but I wouldn't want their evil powers removed either, if we had more "good" powers then the choice of morally is simply left in the antag's hands.

[Zundy]

1 hour ago, Sparky_hotdog said:

Then Zundy said this, and I have to say, it got me thinking. What if we made cult into this hypothetical mode I previously mentioned. Personally I think forcing people to use the lore religions might put us in a situation where people get annoyed about someone "ruining" the lore they like, so what about making it more creative. I'm thinking give the cult the option to choose a Domain (obvious inspiration from DnD), which would essentially work a bit like a Wizard's spellbook. It's then up to the players to decide which god they want to follow, so if you had a bunch of taj fanatics who wanted to do Bloodmoon 2 because they're all nutjobs they can, but equally some less lore-savy players (or others) could make up their own god.

Yeah I can dig that.

[Roostercat]

A while ago there was a suggestion to implement something called Corruption Cult. In a nutshell it essentially makes it so that instead of having to force people into conversion with violence  various items and abilities slowly made crewmembers exposed to them more insane over time, with the crew having ways to lower this corruption as well. I don't remember ALL the details but the suggestion is somewhere on the forums still and I think its a step in the right direction. 

The above suggestion of using our own in universe lore religions as cult is also based as hell though.

[DatSamTho]

50 minutes ago, Roostercat said:

A while ago there was a suggestion to implement something called Corruption Cult. In a nutshell it essentially makes it so that instead of having to force people into conversion with violence  various items and abilities slowly made crewmembers exposed to them more insane over time, with the crew having ways to lower this corruption as well.

I feel like the problem with that, might be that the mechanics for that would be very game-y, so unless it was implemented in some really smart way, I don't really see that working all that well.

[Doxxmedearly]

It would certainly be more feasible to remove the "end goal" for cult as well as giving them more leeway in exactly who it is they worship (Something I've always advocated for) than it is to bring back the extremely loose idea of "corruption cult" that never really got any solid ideas into it before fizzling out. This alone would help people sort of feel out fresher ideas.

[Butterrobber202]

53 minutes ago, Doxxmedearly said:

It would certainly be more feasible to remove the "end goal" for cult as well as giving them more leeway in exactly who it is they worship (Something I've always advocated for) than it is to bring back the extremely loose idea of "corruption cult" that never really got any solid ideas into it before fizzling out. This alone would help people sort of feel out fresher ideas.

It wouldn't be hard (on paper) to create end goals for each religion we allow to be selectable in our lore. The problem would be coding it. 

 

Example, Moroz Holy Tribunal and Qeblak have Psionic themes, so instead of summoning Nar'sie the end goal could be a "Psionic Awakening" for that brand of cult. We could go through the other religions and find something appropriate for them as well.

[DatSamTho]

4 hours ago, Butterrobber202 said:

It wouldn't be hard (on paper) to create end goals for each religion we allow to be selectable in our lore. The problem would be coding it. 

 

Example, Moroz Holy Tribunal and Qeblak have Psionic themes, so instead of summoning Nar'sie the end goal could be a "Psionic Awakening" for that brand of cult. We could go through the other religions and find something appropriate for them as well.

That's the thing, end-goals aren't really a good thing. It brackets players into playing a certain way with little wiggle room.