On Validhunting

[Frances]

I wonder if I'm alone in this aspect, but I've seen a fair bit of validhunting on the server as of late. I was wondering if we could open a discussion about it. Basically, try to understand what validhunting is, who's doing it (if anyone), and why they're doing it.

First, as a refresher, "validhunting" as a term attempts to designate players who go out of their way excessively to hunt/disable/kill antagonists. Basically, "valids" are valid "kill targets", such as anyone who you know is an antag, hostile to the station, or just read WGW over comms. I'm not too concerned about the LRP or MRP definitions of validhunts, but on HRP, validhunting could (I believe) be classified as anybody who goes out of their way to defeat antags against common sense. (Not against what makes the round most fun, but against common sense, yes. I can expand on that if anybody asks.)

On this server, I don't know if validhunting has always been an issue (I ran into very few cases as an admin), but I am under a strong impression that it has become now, if only from the sheer amount of complaining I see people do. I saw a lot of antag players claim that they don't plan to take hostages anymore or even expose themselves publicly to the crew/threaten them, because a lot of players seem to have no concern for their lives or the lives of others (or for what could actually make the round interesting) and simply opt to rush the antags as well.

This also applies to security as well, not only non-sec crew doing sec's job.

For the sake of example, here's a list, in no particular order, of a few events I've witnessed in the past week or two:

 

• Security trying to rush a man holding another at swordpoint by burning through the walls of the room with thermite, resulting in the hostage instantly being killed
• A detective trying to inject a nonviolent, hardsuited wizard with a syringe of sleeptox while the wizard was in the middle of negotiations with the crew
  
• Security ignoring an antag's demands, resulting in a person being blown up via explosive implant, then ignoring further demands from the now-murderer, resulting in the entire station being blown up
  
• Security/the station as a whole consistently ignoring nuke operatives, no matter what (I've never seen the demands of nuke ops actually being met, to the point that ops themselves quickly give up on their demands and simply resort to blowing things up)
  
• A lot of the crew downplaying or completely ignoring any sort of threats on the assumption they might be a bluff (rather than on the assumption they might be true)

 

Why do these things happen? I frankly don't know. It seems to me that they only end up with antags (or crew) dying pointlessly, no RP being made, and lots of people being upset. Anyway. I don't want to make this post too long, so I'll end it here. But basically:

-What are your thoughts on validhunting?

-Have you seen it?

-Have you engaged in it yourself?

-Why do you think certain actions that could be considered validhunting are acceptable or not?

-Why do you think people engage in these actions?

-Do you think validhunting is an issue which needs to be addressed on the server, and if so, how could we address it?

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

It's dumb and needs to stop. Security officers are mall cops and should be defecting or bursting into tears the moment they're ordered to go fight a bunch of commandos.

Personally I've created permadeath rules on all my characters, which let me tell you makes me a LOT more cautious on their safety.

I mean, I'm not going to share these rules lest they be used against me, of course.

[SierraKomodo]

There's certain people who I will absolutely refuse to play as any ind of antag AI when they're online, for the sole reason of validhunting /and/ powergaming by these players. I had a round a few days back where I was playing AI. I wasn't even an antag. Said AI, Kunai, has quirks, errors, and glitches from time to time. had to go AFK for a bit, so I decided to post up the announcements like I usually do saying there was a fatal error and it had to shut down for a time. I came back to find my core open, and that I'd been carded by the chief engineer. I don't think anything was event actually /said/ prior to my being carded.

It really needs to be handled and toned down.

[Japak121]

All of this, yes. My favorite is when nuke ops threaten to destroy departures before an emergency shuttle is called (which is entirely valid when escape pods are an option of escape) and everyone still goes to departures because 'they're bluffing' and/or the crew meta believes admins won't allow it (they will, i've seen, because it's a credible threat). That's idiotic.

People don't seem to realize that the admins WILL ALLOW the antags to kill hostages/detonate bombs if they make a credible threat with realistic demands.

[Frances]

And I just ran into another pretty direct incident of validhunting.

Tajaran, antag, pissed against humans, basically trying to play the whole spiel of the "coworker who gets fed up and brings a gun to the office one day". I walk into the sec lobby, see a member of sec (who I know to be a good roleplayer) walk in and sit on a chair, and decide to pull out my gun (after a bit of buildup so it doesn't come literally out of nowhere) and take them hostage. I yell at them not to move. The sec officer proceeds to unbuckle, pull out their taser, and run around. They immediately get shot down by reaction fire.

Ten minutes later, I get ahelped because admins received information I killed this person while they were afk.

I'm not saying this to rant, I feel quite emotionally neutral over the whole thing. But I'm sort of baffled, and terribly terribly disappointed, that I see veteran players engage in this kind of behavior. And it's a good sign that the community as a whole could benefit from a good discussion on what kind of interactions with antags (as well as what kind of antag plans) make the round fun or not, because a lot of people seem not to know this (or simply don't care).

[Cassie]

Validhunting is a form of powergaming that slips under the radar. It is gotten away with quite often because it can be passed off with "well, they are an antag/suspicious person, this was the most efficient step to take!", when in reality the most efficient step to take is to actually roleplay when you can - it's a roleplay server, not tgstation.

Validhunting should be actively discouraged because it causes antags to lose OOC trust and to be more stealth/aggressive just to stay in the round which is not good.

One example I have seen of it was when I was playing my IPC Dendritic, several IPCs had died due to this wizard. This wizard had EMP pulses that had been disabling IPCs. That said, the wizard was attempting to roleplay, but used EMPs when guns were drawn, meaning any nearby IPCs would die.

So, we found the wizard holding an IPC who attacked it hostage in a room - along with two dead IPCs, so people were trying to defuse the situation. Suddenly, while RP is going on a security guy thinks tasers can go through glass windows so he runs up to the reinforced window and shoots it - the tasers don't go through but my IPC does end up dying because the wizard used a EMP pulse in response.

[Frances]

One thing I'd also like to point out, is that validhunting feels extremely difficult to curb atm, because

1. It most often involves antags and people dying, aka no IC incident reports

2. It often happens in ways that are subtle enough that ahelps/direct intervention can be hard to enforce

3. It's not always easy to pin down on a single individual - sometimes groups or entire departments will be responsible over series of decisions

It feels to me like it's a lot more of a "current" or mindset than a specific set of actions very specific people engage in. And the question is, how would we even begin to address that?

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

Currently the decks are stacked in favour of the crew. If a crew member murders an antagonist, they are justified by "defending myself!" or "He's antag!"

If an antag kills someone, they have to justify themselves to the admins. We've neutered antagonists, and this is a powergaming method of taking advantage of that.

What we'd need is long-term policy shifts, and a more lenient look on antagonists and murder in general. I mean, even changlings get shit for killing people, and eating the crew is literally their entire reason to exist.

I cannot, as it stands, become a serial killer and stealthily murder the crew, or go through threats that involve mass death without admin approval, without being boink'd.

The crew, however, can freely and happily slaughter entire nuke teams, or straightjacket-muzzle every traitor and rev ever.

[Eliot Clef]

It's dumb and needs to stop. Security officers are mall cops and

 

We've been really good about not looping back into this absurd idea for a while. Can we not?

Also, yeah, this validhunting nonsense has been a bigger problem recently. I don't think it's actually a significant increase in this behavior in regulars, but rather, a consequence of summer and therefore getting more new players. As people have been noting in-game, there's a lot of new faces recently.

The increase in violence, and for that matter, in violent games modes is pretty easy to attribute to this.

[Guest]

I'm not saying this to rant, I feel quite emotionally neutral over the whole thing. But I'm sort of baffled, and terribly terribly disappointed, that I see veteran players engage in this kind of behavior. And it's a good sign that the community as a whole could benefit from a good discussion on what kind of interactions with antags (as well as what kind of antag plans) make the round fun or not, because a lot of people seem not to know this (or simply don't care).

 

This literally is a rant post.

You bring up an issue that was already resolved just to piss on the flame, expecting to put it out.

Abloobloobloo, you want security (mind, not individual players, you're targeting the department as a whole, AGAIN) to give antags a chance. Guess what, I pulled a fucking taser on you because I had a riot shield designed and made to deflect bullets. For whatever mechanical reason, the riot shield didn't deflect any of the headshots when you were pulling for a validkill because 'muh internal racism allows me to shoot up security 4noraisin except that I have an antag title.' I dropped the issue because I ended up being rather neutral about you hunting for a reason to shoot up and decapitate a security officer.

What does this have to do with the topic? You came after me in the lobby, not me after you. As soon as you show any sort of hostility against security, expect to get a fucking response.

I tire of your otherwise pathetic and self-victimizing antics, shown not only here in this thread, but the one over here. You find it absolutely necessary to bring personal gripes to the public because 'they need to see' whatever you think you want them to see. Oh look, another thread. A-bloo-bloo-bloo-bloo. More playing the victim. This kind of behavior is utterly detestable and it needs to stop. These kinds of threads NEEDS TO STOP. They bring up 'problems' under false pretenses as well as otherwise questionable motives.

Call this response out as aggression all you want, but this is what I call calling you out for inane bullshit, attempting to fan the flames further of issues already resolved by administration and considered to be dealt with, and you want to keep on going to fling more shit at people? What shit are you smoking? This kind of behavior and conduct is not what I expected from a previous head administrator from this server. I expected you to know better in that these kind of ranting threads contribute nothing to the growth and nurturing of the community as well as this server.

[Guest]

In addition:

 

-No powergaming. Roleplay precedes over objectives - do not engage in behavior which would be unrealistic for your character in an attempt to win the round.

-No metagaming. This could mean using any knowledge external to your character (knowledge of antag types/items as a non-traitor, or knowledge of who is the traitor from OOC information) to give yourself an unfair advantage.

 

 

Validhunting is metagaming and powergaming. Why are you folks not using the complaints board for this, or using your F1 button?

[Frances]

While I am not interested in replying to 1138's post (seriously, I just reported it and am leaving it up to the admins), I would like to highlight that after being shot for trying to resist against my character (in this particular instance), he complained in deadchat and ahelped about being ganked while afk.

I don't expect mods to necessarily mention this fact here, but it is something to consider. As I'm being publicly accused of a few things I believe to be completely false, I'm quite partial to defending myself as needed.

Edited June 7, 2015 by Guest

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

lol aside from that post I have no intention of reading (because really) I'm going to backtrack on my "mall cop" statement.

Fiiiiiiine. I was wrong to say that, I suppose it was a moment of frustration - albiet, my other points stand. There are issues with crew members being... In LRP terms, unrobust. We've become more violent, but we've become more whiney about violence.

TBH I think we all need destressing sessions playing on Colonial Marines. It's therapeutic!

[Guest]

lol aside from that post I have no intention of reading (because really) I'm going to backtrack on my "mall cop" statement.

Fiiiiiiine. I was wrong to say that, I suppose it was a moment of frustration - albiet, my other points stand. There are issues with crew members being... In LRP terms, unrobust. We've become more violent, but we've become more whiney about violence.

TBH I think we all need destressing sessions playing on Colonial Marines. It's therapeutic!

 

It's really of no consequence. You're right in many instances.

You're right in that we've had a recent influx of security characters that do some mindnumbingly stupid things that would compare to violators of the Geneva convention and war criminals. You're right in that many security characters participate in validhunting. They actively hunt for reasons to robust the literal shit out of an antagonist, or just fill the brig cells with misdemeanors rather than giving people the benefit of the doubt and a warning.

The only part where I disagree is the assertion that crew can freely murder confirmed antags. I will say this, no, they cannot, and they should not. Security should not be murdering people, they should be detaining the bad guys and making sure they operate within due process to give even the non-crew member a fair 'defeat', in that while they do get popped into a cell at the end of the day, they ensure they get some roleplay leading up to the final sentence. Killing someone should be an absolute last resort for any officer or personnel member with arms.

Non-security should not be murdering at all. There is no reason why a scientist, secret commando or not, should be bashing a wizard's skull in with a crowbar while the latter is doped up on lethal amounts of CH just because.

You shouldn't escalate aggression unless you were escalated against first. Only then is it reasonably okay to fight back, but you shouldn't be aiming to kill anyone unless they're complete psycho fucknuts.

I also want to take back what I said earlier to Ffrances, but I want to say this. Bringing up that in this thread was absolutely unnecessary as it was resolved. Whether it's something to consider or not, you need to consider that what you say or do will have future consequences. I remember explicitly you telling people about foresight before, and I want you to consider that in the future (slight irony there) to avoid courses of action that do not directly benefit any discussion or direction. And I don't mean this in an aggressive way, ok?

[Frances]

I'm waiting for you to message me over pager. After that, I believe I have several things to say concerning this incident (and even your reaction in this thread) that directly relate to validhunting. I'm not out to fight you, and if you believe you actually have a reasonable explanation as to why this case is irrelevant, then you can explain it to me as soon as you want, and should have nothing to fear.

Until then, let's not clutter the thread any more.

[EvilBrage]

Here's a unique concept: What if the antag has a reason for killing you? I know it's hard to fathom, but bear with me here. Sometimes, it takes a little kick for things to take off in a direction the antagonist can foster intrigue from, and sometimes that kick is you, and you end up dying. If you have such an attachment to your character that you can't bear the thought of taking a timeout for a few hours from that particular character, then the attachment in question is not only unhealthy, but also detrimental to the server as a whole.

I've noticed a trend lately that particular players seem to consistently jump to the conclusion that all antagonists are terrible and it is their OOC duty to stop them. When called out on this behavior, the general administrative consensus seems to be that "they didn't do anything wrong in particular" even though the player may have a very long history of such complaints. Sure, perhaps the letter of the law was upheld, but now we have this trending issue and no one can explain why. FFrances even pointed out that these are veteran players partaking in this sort of activity - and when others see that this is acceptable behavior, they will begin to do it as well. There's nothing wrong with being robust, else antagonists would simply have a "kill" button, but you have to think about what your character would say or do realistically. No one in their right mind is going to defensively employ lethal force (intentionally) unless they're in some serious danger.

Also consider this: when an antagonist tries to coerce an individual into a compromising situation and you fight them tooth and nail, what options are left? Kill you, or let you go - and I guarantee you option #2 is rare indeed. The best antagonist moments I have are with those who play along, and ultimately they're the victims who have the most fun as well. When you adopt an OOC mentality that you must stop the evil antags, you're only degrading the fun for yourself and others.

And for what? So you can continue the amorous and indifferent-despite-all-the-gibs-around-them adventures of Gary Stu and Mary Sue?

[Frances]

I spoke to Delta, we solved our different. All is well, and I learned a thing I did not know yet.

It seems like the main point that didn't carry through was that the reason why he (in the example I posted about) rushed me while I was holding him at gunpoint was because another sec officer walked in, and he feared the sec officer would try to rambo - he thus panicked and tried to save himself. It didn't necessarily make a ton of sense ICly, but I think it's very representative to another problem the community is facing.

Which brings me to another big issue in validhunting - the lack of faith people have in antags or non-antags. And I've heard it from both sides. Antags that do/don't do certain things because they think sec is shit, and on the flipside basically anyone that refuses to take antags seriously because they expect everything antags do to result in failure and frustration.

Hm. Seems kinda circular.

Anyway, even though some people will always act a little crappy (and should probably be reprimanded or taught better), wouldn't we all be much better off if we actually tried to put some hope into the people we're playing with, instead of assuming for everything to go wrong and take the risk of contributing to the mess ourselves?

[Guest]

Can confirm we both cleared up our differences and what occurred in the situation. I regret posting what I did on the first page, and a lot of it was driven by a misunderstanding of what took place and what I should've communicating with them before that happened.

Anyway, given what's occurred, I do want to back FFrances' points on regarding some players (including me, and I've learned something from this) making decisions or playing in a way where they're not really focusing on interacting with the opposing side, but rather to avoid losing/focusing on winning in every situation. That was Frances' definition on what she thought was validhunting and I mostly have to agree there.

[Tainavaa]

It's going to keep happening unless we police behavior more heavily. But in doing that we will also be restricting people who legitimately have a reason for robusting. If it isn't actual restriction, then people look at those who have been reprimanded in some way that are in a similar (but not identical) situation and think "I don't want to get in trouble for this..."

I've seen it several times and I have been guilty of that myself. And despite explaining to these particular players why their original decision would have been a perfectly sound one I'm met, in response, with "Yeah but just in case..." and it frustrated me to no end.

Valid hunting, I've noticed, has become more prevalent since we've started laxing on behavior. Right about the same time people have been doing things much more actively that I personally wouldn't say was fitting for a heavy roleplay server.

And with that, I can't help but think that if you give people an inch they will desperately grasp for a mile. Validhunting is an issue. But I don't think it's a particularly easy one to solve without inadvertently punishing people with roleplay in mind.

Also, what EvilBrage said. Sometimes, people need to die.

[Guest]

Generally speaking, I consistently played RP cult for a long, long time. In most of my cult rounds, I didn't even outright kill/convert someone too agressively without asking them about it in LOOC.

Then, security decided to meta on my habit of making virology a cult fortress and started sending an officer my way literally every fucking time I went inside.

Since then, when I become an antag, I generally do very small and un-antagonistic things like walking around with odd clothes, having a British accent (Yes, I had a captain pull a red e-gun on me because I had a British accent.) and so forth.

Then, I powergame and try to kill as many officers as possible, with no RP at all.

I have to say, I don't feel any guilt at all and I don't feel like I'm doing the wrong thing.

Security will not roleplay with antags. We've got countless threads, complaints, shitstorms and the like about Security not roleplaying with antags.

Based on my observations, for as long as I have played an antag, security will not fucking roleplay with antags. Like, seriously. You can whine about this on the forums as much as you'd like, but it isn't happening. Nope.

Forget whatever RP gimmick you might have had, unless it involves force gloves and a revolver. If you don't, you'll just end up being disappointed. It is far more fun to valid kill the whole security team and have them whine in LOOC about how you didn't let them get their greentext, than it is to get silently stuncuffed and thrown in the permabrig for trying to roleplay.

Should a HRP server be based around valid hunting? It definitely shouldn't be. However, valid hunting is what you're going to get, so you might as well get used to it.

[Tainavaa]

Gonna have to agree with Invy here. That's why I like playing warden. Everyone is just a prisoner until they're released from custody.

You can't change people. You can only try and make them want to change.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

Ahhh, meta... the most insidious security tool. Ive had similar experiences. I remember a cult round where I was speaking to an engineer in the morgue as my shaman, who /always/ talks about spirits and death.

We ended up bolted inside and the entire security department along with the hos swarmed inside.. we werent doing anything at all, so she silently left without explaining anything.

Of course, security just has the most power to exploit meta for validhunting, anyone is susceptible.

I will say that I get good fun from the unathi officers actually, especially if I involve the two religions somehow. I ended up dueling other unathi as vampire CE and saying my powers were because im a rekting holy man. The officers rolled with it well and I never saw a cell or had to kill sec.

Which is good. We need to find a way to convince sec players that they can roll with an antagonist and get more fun than if they just threw them in a cell.

Basically unathi > human sry

[Tainavaa]

Except when you do get thrown in a cell. You're all equally scum once you enter my brig.

[Dreamix]

Validhunting?

Is brigging someone for 30 minutes, after seeing him standing near the bridge airlocks with a screwdriver and one of the ai upload boards (found in science, literally lying on the floor, officers were told about it), and having security/bartender's armor? Don't forget the second brigging, also, 30 minutes (charge was infiltration) + tracking and chemical implant. One player told me OOC-ly that security had "forensics reports", yeah, describing non-existent traces, fingerprints and fibers, because my character DID NOT entered the bridge, it was just standing with, mentioned before, board and a screwdriver. Also, this was extended. Also, there was no interrogations.

That was my little test/experiment. There was no self-antagging, since my character did nothing bad (considering the board was going to be returned). I just wanted to give security something to do, I wasn't even resisting arrest. IRC, there was +5 officers. No one even considered to interrogate me, and the first arrest (near the bridge) was just peppersprayflashpepperflashcuffflash. I couldn't even say "Huh? This is not what you think it is!"

Isn't security too eager to catch antags?

[Frances]

Validhunting?

Is brigging someone for 30 minutes, after seeing him standing near the bridge airlocks with a screwdriver and one of the ai upload boards (found in science, literally lying on the floor, officers were told about it), and having security/bartender's armor? Don't forget the second brigging, also, 30 minutes (charge was infiltration) + tracking and chemical implant. One player told me OOC-ly that security had "forensics reports", yeah, describing non-existent traces, fingerprints and fibers, because my character DID NOT entered the bridge, it was just standing with, mentioned before, board and a screwdriver. Also, this was extended. Also, there was no interrogations.

That was my little test/experiment. There was no self-antagging, since my character did nothing bad (considering the board was going to be returned). I just wanted to give security something to do, I wasn't even resisting arrest. IRC, there was +5 officers. No one even considered to interrogate me, and the first arrest (near the bridge) was just peppersprayflashpepperflashcuffflash. I couldn't even say "Huh? This is not what you think it is!"

Isn't security too eager to catch antags?

This is also a problem I've seen. A few officers are too eager to catch antags, but a lot... I, I just don't know what they're doing. On several instances, I played plainly unknown characters, and ended up in the brig simply for being in the wrong place, or because someone accused me of being near someone who died/something suspicious happening. I've been brigged, demoted, kicked out of departments (not even interrogated, though). And the silly thing is this usually starts with somebody outside of sec reporting something (like "help I just saw Bald Baldington with this person's body!") and then sec taking that person's word as gospel simply because they're someone they know and trust ("hmm, scientist McPopular just said they saw you murder someone, off to permabrig with you") without even verifying evidence.

You can't brig people without evidence. I ahelp it when it happens, but I feel like this is something that needs to get around until everybody that plays sec understands it, because I see it happen way too often for it to be normal. Even if you're internally 100% sure somebody did something bad, if you don't have solid evidence or witnesses, you can't brig 'em.