Cult Changes

[Sparky_hotdog]

So this is an idea I've had fermenting in my brain for half a year now, and with me having lots of free time in the summer, I thought I'd take a stab at it. However, its a pretty preliminary and abstract idea right now, so any ideas/feedback/criticism would be helpful in making it more concrete.

Introduction:

Spoiler

So Cult's always been one of those problematic game modes, at least as long as I've been playing on Aurora. I did take a break for a few months recently, so if the problem was resolved then feel free to shut me down here. If not, then here's my take to explain where I'm coming from with this.

I think one of the major issues Cult suffers from is lack of creativity, with the common gimmicks being pretty worn out at this point. But I don't think this is the antagonists' fault, as Cult feels very restrictive in what you can run with and do. The idea was touched on here, which is where I initially thought of these changes. Also touched on there was the concept of Cult having an end-game being part of the problem; That is to say, as a Cult, you can literally end the game by summoning Nar'sie.

 

Goals:

Spoiler

So what do I want to do? Well:

• Remove end-game, replace with late-game: The Nar'sie rune is a major problem point imo, as it often limits where Cult can go (as it can feel like that's always your objective) and feels kind of cheap, to the point where a lot of Cult's just don't use it. Instead, replace it with a number of powerful, but not game-over-by-default runes.
• Expand the deity the Cult worships beyond Nar'sie: As a server that has some really great lore, and which often has its best moments when lore feeds into an antagonist's gimmick, the fact that Cult exists completely in a vacuum lore wise needs to be addressed. So allow the Cult the option of choosing their deity.
• Not just a Blood Cult: Feeding off the above point around deities, choosing from different "domains" (as I've called them in my head) of Cult could help to open up more opportunities as well. I think this would fit a lot better with most of the in-universe religions as well, as most (though not all) would feel out of place as a blood cult to me. This would also allow expansion of Cult as a mode in the future by adding new domains, in the same way that new traitor items are added. Domains would have access to different lists of runes, like Wizard spellbooks (I haven't seen any of the new technomancer stuff yet, but I assume it's similar)
• Build-A-Cult: Something that also feels like it hinders adding to Cult is the fact that from round start any Cultist can draw all the runes in the game. By allowing the Cult to choose runes to know, and gaining more runes as they recruit more members, this would potentially solve that, as well as limiting the power of the aforementioned late-game runes.
• Cult Leaders: This sounds like a buff to the initial cultists, but would actually be a nerf to recruited cultists, as with the focus shifted more to expanding the Cult, things could get a bit out of hand. Essentially leaders are the only ones capable of choosing new runes for the Cult. I wondered if this could somehow be used to make the game more fun for people who get force antaged, as that's an issue I don't think can be fixed.

 

Domain Ideas:

Spoiler

Blood Domain (i.e. Nar'sie/Raskara): Keeping this one relatively similar to as is. Of all the domains I've got in my head right now, this is probably the loudest, as the others feel like they thematically work better for more of a peace-cult (Not to say its impossible with Blood, just harder.). Also had the idea of demon summoning runes for this one, in different levels of scariness (simple mob vs ghost spawner).

Insanity Domain (i.e. Lovecraftian Esque): Probably working a bit how corruption cult was suggested to, though with recruitment instead of death as the end of the track for going insane. Maybe also giving access to some psionic-like abilities, though I'm unsure.

Light Domain (i.e. Holy Tribunal): Your holier-than-thou, angelic destroyer kind of cult. Probably focusing more on being friendly to the crew and recruiting, at least to start with.

Shadow Domain (i.e. Messa*): Probably the one I'm least certain about working, as it would likely be focused a lot on stealth, which can be pretty unengaging.

* Maybe? Not a Tajara lore expert, sorry

 

[Carver]

I would potentially hope for some form of Death Domain that makes use of skeletons and undeath, but that's my love of necromantic themes speaking. Despite what people may say, there is also absolutely nothing wrong with stealth.

[OffRoad99]

An Insanity Domain looks nothing short of spectacular. If it allows people across the station to hallucinate, with hallucinations worsening as the cult progressively becomes more powerful...I'd be in.

[Rabid Animal]

It's good to see some ideas for cult floating around, I agree with the idea that cult needs some love. It's one of my favorite game modes but its also very used up and has seen very little changes over the past 8 years.  The lazy mans solution is to port deity from bay, (which actually covers quite a few of your suggestions here) but I think the two are different enough that that doesn't fix much other than "oo, new content," and essentially functions as an entirely different mode with similar themes. (that said I'd like to see it ported regardless)

I had an idea (part of a WIP) for cult as well that focused a lot on something similar to what you've laid out as domains, though a bit more abstract. Destruction, Reality, Corruption; each with their own "end game" (see; deities) that have different requirements to get. I get why having an endgame can stunt rp, but I like to think of it as giving additional tools to players rather than railroading people towards specific paths. I think having certain paths not include summoning a deity but obtaining power or etc. is a fantastic idea but I'd like to see more detail.

I mention this because I think it's super applicable to your domains idea and could be expanded upon to include themes I've missed or vice versa. See specifics in the spoiler below;

Spoiler

NAR-SIE, ANNIHILATION INCARNITE

 

Nar-sie is focused around destruction, she consumes the world and her spawn are mechanical in nature - a result of the material she tears apart and reforms. Her cults dedicate themselves to building elaborate shrines so that she may imbibe in their excellence. When she is summoned, the station is sacrificed to her ceaseless hunger.

She requires 9 cultists to spawn, but she will not appear unless the area surrounding has been properly prepared for her - she requires the surrounding floors and walls to be made of runed metal.

This is mostly the same as before, though it requires players to build a shrine to this god. Nar-Sie is the vanilla cult. She is difficult to summon because she is a round ender.

 

 

RENON, BUTCHER OF TRUTH

 

Renon shifts reality itself, it doesn’t have a physical manifestation, being entirely incorporeal in nature. Where it is summoned, a massive rift in the veil forms, and from it flood demonic entities from other realms. It’s reality shattering nature spreads out from this tear, and slowly more rifts will form, summoning lesser demons. These rifts can be repaired simply by attacking them with any weapon - larger rifts have more health and can take more of a beating than smaller ones. The main rift can be destroyed, but doing so is dangerous due to the mobs that will surround it.

It requires 8 cultists to summon in a square pattern around the rune, and the demons summoned will not attack cultists. Ghosts can spawn in as certain, more powerful, demons if they wish to. 

Ideally this is still a dangerous god to summon, but not as round ending as Nar-sie. If the station uses their heads, they can shut the portal and capture the cult, but at what risk?

 

 

DAR’VAK, THE 11TH PLAGUE

 

Dar’Vak is a corruptor, his summoning process is to sacrifice a cultist to become his avatar - their body would warp and distort into a horrifying mass of flesh. (Personally? I would port and reskin (and rebalance) the /tg/ blob for this) It grows slowly as it attempts to manifest its true form and corrupts all it touches. It’s main gimmick is to ‘infect’ the denizens of this realm into his spawn, planting cancerous seeds that eventually consume their host and leave a horror in their place. His cult focuses around laying a foundation for his ‘nest’ and propagating his spawn.

He requires 5 cultists to summon, in a + pattern on the rune. The one in the middle will be sacrificed and control the blob that forms. He can be killed, and protective biohazard equipment will prevent his corruption from reaching you.

The idea is to help out cultists unable to maintain or gather members, balancing out the lower summon requirement with a killable, albeit still dangerous, god.

RE:

On 15/07/2021 at 04:12, Sparky_hotdog said:

Shadow Domain (i.e. Messa*): Probably the one I'm least certain about working, as it would likely be focused a lot on stealth, which can be pretty unengaging.

I think a fix for this could easily be to make the cult more obvious the more shenanigans they get up to. See; casting spells, having members, summoning gods, etc. We already have themes with the veil in place, so expand on that. Give ghosts more visibility (though I'd like to see their sprites changed so IC you're not seeing your co-workers ghost cause they're observing). Give the station a reddish tint. Make the cultists have red eyes. All stuff within that vein of thinking.

 

ANYWAYS. Not meaning to derail too much, like the concept. Needs to be fleshed out a lot though.

[Shenaanigans]

I'm definitely a big fan of the idea of giving cult more variety, because I do agree that the gamemode suffers most from extremely restricting flavor that always results in rounds going the same way-- IE an inevitable murder fest, even if the cult attempts to start peacefully since all their mechanical weapons are all very violence and gore focused. That being said, I do have one big reservation about encouraging this kind of discussion. Who's going to code it?

You can concept craft for hours on end and come up with some really wonderful ideas, but implementing any of it is ultimately going to take some big effort and skill with byond coding so, without that, none of this actually goes anywhere. Not to be a huge downer, rather a reminder that sweeping changes to a game mode don't just spring out of thin air.

[Rabid Animal]

 

32 minutes ago, Shenaanigans said:

 I do have one big reservation about encouraging this kind of discussion. Who's going to code it?

You can concept craft for hours on end and come up with some really wonderful ideas, but implementing any of it is ultimately going to take some big effort and skill with byond coding so, without that, none of this actually goes anywhere. Not to be a huge downer, rather a reminder that sweeping changes to a game mode don't just spring out of thin air.

The first step to anything is to discuss it, particularly with sweeping changes as mentioned. Discouraging discussion of ideas, no matter the size, just leads to stagnation, which I think everyone can agree is bad. THAT SAID; You're right. It doesn't come out of thin air. I'm a spriter, which is part of the equation, and I'd be willing to commission a coder (if one was willing) to actually work on something like this, because at the end of the day its a big enough thing that it wont get added unless someone is passionate enough about it to just do it, or if someone is being motivated to do it via other means.

 

Of course. There's always the lazy mans solution to just port deity.

[Sparky_hotdog]

On 15/07/2021 at 12:08, Carver said:

I would potentially hope for some form of Death Domain that makes use of skeletons and undeath, but that's my love of necromantic themes speaking. Despite what people may say, there is also absolutely nothing wrong with stealth.

A Death Domain was definitely on a list of potentials that I didn't suggest here. My ideal situation would be that the Domains system would be modular enough for anyone in future to add other Domains with future PRs. Depending on how long the bulk of this takes, it may be easier to release any more Domains in future, after the core concept is up and running.

 

On 17/07/2021 at 05:46, Rabid Animal said:

*snip*

I wasn't actually aware of Deity, and I agree it shares similar ideas. The main reason for going down Domains rather than just porting that imho would be to allow more lore-based gimmicks. With the final summoning concepts you mentioned, I think the idea behind most of these (minus Nar'sie) is basically what I would aim for with the "late-game" I mentioned; The sort of thing that would be likely to need an evacuation or ERT, but isn't necessarily a game-over.

As for the stealthier cults making more occult stuff happen the more they get up to, this is definitely a really good idea that I can get behind.

 

13 hours ago, Shenaanigans said:

Who's going to code it?

You can concept craft for hours on end and come up with some really wonderful ideas, but implementing any of it is ultimately going to take some big effort and skill with byond coding so, without that, none of this actually goes anywhere. Not to be a huge downer, rather a reminder that sweeping changes to a game mode don't just spring out of thin air.

I may not have made this entirely clear in my original post, but this was something I was personally planning and offering to code, and putting up a suggestion because, as you've pointed out, this is a pretty big project and I wanted to make sure any ideas or criticisms were heard sooner rather than later.

 

13 hours ago, Rabid Animal said:

I'm a spriter, which is part of the equation, and I'd be willing to commission a coder (if one was willing) to actually work on something like this, because at the end of the day its a big enough thing that it wont get added unless someone is passionate enough about it to just do it, or if someone is being motivated to do it via other means.

Related to my above reply: I'd be willing! And as someone of questionable spriting ability (I'm terrible at it), help on that front would be appreciated, if you're offering.

[Rabid Animal]

9 hours ago, Sparky_hotdog said:

With the final summoning concepts you mentioned, I think the idea behind most of these (minus Nar'sie) is basically what I would aim for with the "late-game" I mentioned; The sort of thing that would be likely to need an evacuation or ERT, but isn't necessarily a game-over.

Which is the intention, I think it can be expanded upon to not necessarily have a 'god summon' end game as well - and wrap it all up in the domain system. I'd hesitate on making the domains specific to religions in the lore 'cause it makes it a bit hard for /anyone/ to jump into it, which is why deity is actually better for that sorta thing since the god is whatever you say it is. Having it be open ended is generally better for RP anyways.

I leave Nar'sie in as is because she doesn't actually get summoned often anyways, and the proposed changes make her even harder to summon - she's a rarity and she's meant to be. Which makes it really novel when she does get summoned. Plus she's pretty iconic and I'd hate to see her properly removed.

 

8 hours ago, Sparky_hotdog said:

Related to my above reply: I'd be willing! And as someone of questionable spriting ability (I'm terrible at it), help on that front would be appreciated, if you're offering.

Yeah I actually have a handful of sprites already, I have a rough design document too - though I quoted a huge chunk of it already and I haven't put a whole lotta thought into it other than the gods, yet. This is a project I've wanted to pick up for a while but I wanted to have something really solid to work off of before suggesting anything so, kinda stagnated lmao. Its definitely not a small project.

[Sparky_hotdog]

10 minutes ago, Rabid Animal said:

I'd hesitate on making the domains specific to religions in the lore 'cause it makes it a bit hard for /anyone/ to jump into it

I think a solution to this would be to have the cult make two decisions prior to being able to start any proper shenanigans: Choose a Domain, and Choose a Deity (entirely independent choices). This would circumvent two issues, the first being, as you mentioned, people less great with the lore can still play cult, but also the fact that most Deities can probably be worshipped in different respects based on how you view them (and this typically becomes the case more-so when you get to cult level behaviour.) So you might have a round with a bunch of cultists who choose to worship the Holy Tribunal's Goddess as a Light Cult, then another round where the cult also worships the Goddess, but as a Blood Cult, and then another round where you find some newer players making a typical Nar'sie Blood Cult.

 

17 minutes ago, Rabid Animal said:

I leave Nar'sie in as is because she doesn't actually get summoned often anyways, and the proposed changes make her even harder to summon - she's a rarity and she's meant to be. Which makes it really novel when she does get summoned. Plus she's pretty iconic and I'd hate to see her properly removed.

I'm on the fence with Nar'sie, though I definitely wouldn't remove her from the code all together. Making her a very late-game (i.e. Most of a high-pop round have been converted late-game) could be an alternative I suppose.

[Rabid Animal]

4 hours ago, Sparky_hotdog said:

have the cult make two decisions prior to being able to start any proper shenanigans: Choose a Domain, and Choose a Deity

I'd have to think on that real hard to formulate a good opinion, I think, but my kneejerk reaction is;

1. There are multiple antagonists so getting people to coordinate on a choice that effects the whole rest of the round might not be the best idea, particularly when it comes to TWO choices. I'd have god summon requirements be unrelated to domains, and have it so once one is summoned you can't summon another.
2. Having players railroaded into a domain, even if you get to pick it, begins to feel like a reskinned version of what we have
3. This sounds like an overly complex way of doing it BUT to be fair my ideas are way way worse in that regard.

Hear me out;

What if research was brought back? Make it so cultists have to discover their spells, but instead of learning the words - we instead focus on tasks more related to domains? The more tasks they do, the more 'loyalty' they'll get towards that domain. The types of spells you can get are directly tied to that loyalty, and if you start working with other domains you'll loose loyalty towards the others. You can either work towards a lot of low level spells from a lot of different domains or work towards high level spells in one domain. This is an extreme spitball, so apologies if it sounds pretty rough.

Pros; Flexibility
Cons; Perhaps too complex, possible power gaming combos

 

4 hours ago, Sparky_hotdog said:

So you might have a round with a bunch of cultists who choose to worship the Holy Tribunal's Goddess as a Light Cult, then another round where the cult also worships the Goddess, but as a Blood Cult, and then another round where you find some newer players making a typical Nar'sie Blood Cult.

I'm still super against connections to lore gods, I think players should be able to do that on their own if they'd like - and we can leave the gods nameless to facilitate that. Otherwise it feels like gatekeeping to me, which is big bad for an antagonist role. Let players come up with their own gimmicks, give them the tools to do so, don't railroad a gimmick by having those connections in place.

I'd also like to see the game-mode remain very horror focused, to be honest. It's kind of what its built around, which is why in my original proposal for gods they were all very spooky themed in one way or another. I also think leaning towards outright holy or light themes would result in some really boring peace cults that might as well be an extension of the chaplain. (I say all this in contradiction to the gimmick railroading above but I think there's a middleground somewhere, and if it was to be truly open we'd just port deity lmao)