Antag-Only Flag/Setting

[Fluffy]

So, this is just a thought I had, but might be interesting:

 

An Antag-Only Flag/Setting

 

What does it do?

Basically, you select your usual role (like physician, surgeon, hangar technician, officer and so on), you select your antag preferences (like currently, up to here) and then you can select this flag/setting.

 

If you do not select the flag, everything works as normal.

If you select this flag, the system will add you to the antags pool of possible users to play the antags, if you get the antag, you spawn (either onship or offship, depending on the antag), if you do not get the antag, you are kept in the lobby, and can join after the round has started.

 

Why I think it's good?

Various reasons I thought about:

• We have a general scarcity of antags, so anything that could get people to play them more, is likely a welcome addition
• A player might not be up to have the classic onship experience, and might only wish to play antag for that round, thus having this option is more likely to involve him in readying up as an antag, as it avoids him being pulled into the round even if he would rather only play antag for said round or latejoin
• It makes guessing what mode was rolled by "secret" harder; as it is now, you can count how many players are ready before the round starts, pull out your PDA and count the crew manifest, and reliably guess from there how many offship antags are present, and thus the gamemode to some degree of accuracy, this prevents it as you do not know if the player didn't roll antag or it actually spawned as one
• The normal method continues to work, so for those who are fine either way, that's not a problem or hinderance to their chances or experience
• Gives player more choices about if, when and what to play
• Gives onship traitors more options: you would like to ready up as a traitor journalist or a rev OM, but if you don't roll them, you'd rather play the barman? Now you can do it
• Might increase the readying up count in the lobby

[Captain Gecko]

Strikes me as a great idea to be honest, why didn't we think of that earlier...?

[Girdio]

While I'm all for getting more antags, and could definitely support something for that, I do have a question.

Would this replace antag preferences, or would that still remain? Basically, would people be put into a collective antag pool that includes everything for this to work, or would the current choice for people to pick what antags they play still remain?

Edited March 10, 2023 by Girdio

[Fluffy]

6 hours ago, Girdio said:

While I'm all for getting more antags, and could definitely support something for that, I do have a question.

Would this replace antag preferences, or would that still remain? Basically, would people be put into a collective antag pool that includes everything for this to work, or would the current choice for people to pick what antags they play still remain?

No, it would not replace the antag preferences, it would be an addition to it, the only thing it would do once selected is to say "hey if i don't roll the antag, don't spawn me, send me back in the lobby"

[Carver]

For off-ships, at least historically you could kinda do this by readying up with no crew role + return to lobby but having the off-ship antag roles enabled. Maybe you still can, idk.

While I generally like the idea, I have a few concerns:

Won't this make 'antag mains' potentially even more identifiable if John Doe is ALWAYS a traitor/vampire/head revolutionary when he's on? We already have something of an issue with people inherently distrusting characters when the player always has antag roles enabled, often leading to said character being an antagonist every 2 or 3 rounds. With this it's not unrealistic that you'll have characters that are, unironically, always antagonists.

As someone who doesn't like to ready up for a singular/limited slot if there's competition, such as the Consular/Liaison roles; Librarian/Chaplain; etc. (I'd include Command but it's mostly irrelevant for this example given it cannot roll for most antags): I would feel especially soured if that competition was someone who only wanted to use the role for the sake of antagonism. It would feel unfair to be competing for a one-of slot with someone who has no intention of actually playing that role if they're not an antagonist, to which I would genuinely argue that anyone with this particular setting enabled should be getting secondary priority at best for a slot.

[Fluffy]

18 minutes ago, Carver said:

Won't this make 'antag mains' potentially even more identifiable if John Doe is ALWAYS a traitor/vampire/head revolutionary when he's on? We already have something of an issue with people inherently distrusting characters when the player always has antag roles enabled, often leading to said character being an antagonist every 2 or 3 rounds. With this it's not unrealistic that you'll have characters that are, unironically, always antagonists.

Possibly? But the interactions you have with them would be that different than those who you know are traitor once every 2 rounds or so?

 

53 minutes ago, Carver said:

I would feel especially soured if that competition was someone who only wanted to use the role for the sake of antagonism. It would feel unfair to be competing for a one-of slot with someone who has no intention of actually playing that role if they're not an antagonist, to which I would genuinely argue that anyone with this particular setting enabled should be getting secondary priority at best for a slot.

Why? They want to play that role, as antagonist, but still that role, they aren't second-class players just because they want to use it for a gimmick that makes the round (hopefully) more interesting for everyone, and does not change from the current status in which you'd have to compete for the role with someone who might just wish it in the hope to roll an antagonist; if anything, it advantages you: if the prefs he has are not rolled, or he himself is not rolled as antag, he will stay in the lobby and you will get the slot, instead of him getting the slot and spending the rest of the round half-assing its slot's job because that's not what he wishes it for, no?

[Carver]

My assumption is if someone readies for a role, they intend on committing to playing that role no matter if they roll antag or not. There is no point to showing who's readied for a crew role if such readies are misleading 'ghost readies' that disappear when that person doesn't get the antag role they want - I have as much disdain for this as I do for people who'll cryo if they don't get an antag role.

[Fluffy]

20 minutes ago, Carver said:

There is no point to showing who's readied for a crew role if such readies are misleading 'ghost readies' that disappear when that person doesn't get the antag role they want

- Avoid telling who is the onship antag is the most obvious one: "Hey I didn't see John Doe ready as Pharmacist 1 second before the round started and yet here he is -> he's playing antag"
- Involve others to ready up: "Hey look there's high pop better get ready as I might miss this slot in a high pop round"
- "Hey look if I ready up we reach 25 readies and we can get a combined antags mode", same as above, different possible reason to ready up
- "Hey there's X Y Z who are good at rev gimmicks, let's vote for rev we want a based rev round"

 

20 minutes ago, Carver said:

[...] I have as much disdain for this as I do for people who'll cryo if they don't get an antag role.

Funnily enough, this would avoid people cryoing if they don't roll antags, thus at worst, it's just a trade on when they disappear, at best it's a solution that promotes readying up, people playing what they wish to play, when they wish to play it, and if they had bad luck in rolling that, advantages others that don't want to play what was not rolled, but the "classic" role experience they readied up for.

Edited March 10, 2023 by Fluffy

[Peppermint]

All this does is encourage hub players to come, flag they want to frag, and then leave to do something else as soon as they don't roll it lol. Really bad idea.

Antag fishing is against the rules as is so trying to make it an official thing is certainly a plan. We have bought into 'what about the atags!!!!' for years now and server quality has not improved. If anything, I'd argue it's done the opposite.

Edited March 10, 2023 by Peppermint

[Carver]

I more or less summed up my view; If you're readying for a crew role, you should be committing to that crew role whether or not you roll antagonist. A feature that encourages the kind of people who presently leave if they don't successfully roll for antagonist is something I fundamentally disagree with.

[Fluffy]

4 minutes ago, Peppermint said:

All this does is encourage hub players to come, flag they want to frag, and then leave to do something else as soon as they don't roll it lol. Really bad idea.

To play any antag, to my understanding, you need to have played for a month, so any huboid that comes just for that, would not be able to set any antag to begin with, no?

Even if not, I also fail to see who in their right mind would try to roll antag in a map he doesn't know, on a server he doesn't know, but I really doubt that's even possible to begin with, as as aforementioned, I think our antags are locked behind a month of time.

 

10 minutes ago, Peppermint said:

and then leave to do something else as soon as they don't roll it

8 minutes ago, Carver said:

A feature that encourages the kind of people who presently leave if they don't successfully roll for antagonist

I do not see how it, in any way, encourages that.

Assuming such people are in any sizable capacity to even be worth mentioning, this would explicitly prevent them from spawning, go "ah I didn't roll it, fuck it" and either cryo (best case), SSD (average case) or self antagging (worst case).

If anything, this would prevent them from making the round worse than not having this option.

Since you can't force people to play, and I'm pretty sure noone would come here for more than a few rounds if the play they want it "haha frags go boom", I do not think this would do any harm, quite the contrary.

[Peppermint]

No, you need to have logged in a month ago. It doesn't track playtime, it tracks the first time you connected to aurora. 

This shit happens all the time, we get tickets for it a bunch and fotm hub folks coming to play antag to speed run getting banned is a constant thing.

[Fluffy]

37 minutes ago, Peppermint said:

we get tickets for it a bunch and fotm hub folks coming to play antag to speed run getting banned is a constant thing.

And wouldn't this help in that? If they do not roll antag, they would not be in the round getting banned by self antagging

I also think it's a general sense that features are thought around people that play normally, not those who join to break the rules?

[Peppermint]

Since when? If that were so, science wouldn't have been nerfed into the ground. Things are balanced around the lowest common denominator who will abuse them.

And no, it wouldn't, because they get banned playing antag as they have no link to the actual game. Encouraging more arcade-y antag rounds is how you end up with MRP, of which there are many servers already. I don't see how pushing in that direction too is a good idea.

[Fluffy]

37 minutes ago, Peppermint said:

Since when? If that were so, science wouldn't have been nerfed into the ground. Things are balanced around the lowest common denominator who will abuse them.

- Phoron fire/flood
- Tesla ball that can be released
- Singularity engine able to destroy the entire ship
- Custom PKAs able to murder entire teams in heavy armor

the list of counter examples is long, we don't balance around the lowest common denominator, we balance around the lowest within rules common denominator, I think

 

46 minutes ago, Peppermint said:

Encouraging more arcade-y antag rounds is how you end up with MRP, of which there are many servers already. I don't see how pushing in that direction too is a good idea.

It doesn't, it just says "For this round I'd like to either play antag as this and join immediately, or not play antag and join as something else / latejoin / skip this round.
This is all it does.

[NerdyVampire]

I kinda like it. If I feel like spreading some action, I would rather be thrown back to the lobby and grab a ghost role, than join in a job I don't actually want to do. But it is circumstantial, so not sure how much use it will see. Maybe there is a real demand? I dno.

[Scheveningen]

On 10/03/2023 at 18:00, Fluffy said:

- Phoron fire/flood
- Tesla ball that can be released
- Singularity engine able to destroy the entire ship
- Custom PKAs able to murder entire teams in heavy armor

- constitutes as catastrophic station/ship damage that requires extreme reasoning for this escalation else it is against the rules. even venting the ship for offense needs a reason.
- see above.
- singularity doesn't exist by default setup. and if you unleash this you are still griefing because the singularity does not behave well with multi-z. don't do this as your gimmick.
- custom PKAs need extreme mining investment and direct access to hard phoron. essentially requires you rob the operations hard storage as research, given that hard phoron is difficult to acquire these days.

that aside, antagonists are not the core focus of this server. it is characters. antags create conflict in order for the actual characters of a round (the crew) to test their ability to interact with a problem and resolve it. in many cases, antagonists are so frag hungry that they just get shot to death on first contact. no surprise there.

i oppose any change that makes antagonists more relevant than they are currently; which is already by a fair bit, given the leeway presented to them to attention-seek in any given manner.

Edited March 16, 2023 by Scheveningen

[Fluffy]

10 minutes ago, Scheveningen said:

- constitutes as catastrophic station/ship damage that requires extreme reasoning for this escalation else it is against the rules. even venting the ship for offense needs a reason.
- see above.
- singularity doesn't exist by default setup. and if you unleash this you are still griefing because the singularity does not behave well with multi-z. don't do this as your gimmick.
- custom PKAs need extreme mining investment and direct access to hard phoron. essentially requires you rob the operations hard storage as research, given that hard phoron is difficult to acquire these days.

That is the point I was addressing, which is, we don't balance around the lowest possible denominator, we balance around the lowest possible within rules denominator. That is exactly the point of the examples.

 

11 minutes ago, Scheveningen said:

that aside, antagonists are not the core focus of this server. it is characters. antags create conflict in order for the actual characters of a round (the crew) to test their ability to interact with a problem and resolve it. in many cases, antagonists are so frag hungry that they just get shot to death on first contact. no surprise there.

i oppose any change that makes antagonists more relevant than they are currently; which is already by a fair bit, given the leeway presented to them to attention-seek in any given manner.

I don't see how any of this is relevant for the proposal either, as it would not make them any more or less relevant (nor different) than they currently are once they are spawned (?)