(Timed?) Removal of Ghost Writing

[EvilBrage]

During a cult round last night, I was more or less constantly followed by a ghost of someone in particular who decided to, whenever I was near anyone, spam blood writing on the ground that OMG HE IS ONE OF THEM DO NOT HELP HIM. This was far beyond annoying, and was actually a contributing factor to the rather rapid deterioration of the round in question. Creepy things happening during a cult round is fun, but the fun deteriorates very quickly with each use. It also more or less gives the round type away OOCly in a secret scenario. Could we limit or even remove the ghost writing after death?

[K0NFL1QT]

I've never seen Blood Writing used well. It's either chucklefucks going 'rekt scrub' or roleplayers who think that spooky blood writing is enough evidence to bust a character over.

[Frances]

Are these events ahelped? Because that seems to go very clearly against our rules of playing average and balanced (ghosts). And since it's not an issue I was even aware of, I'm wondering if it's something we could simply try curbing, by disciplining the people involved.

[Valkrae]

I always try and do something along the lines of

"THE FORGOTTEN SHALL RISE, AND BLOOD SHALL RUN THE HALLS"

or

"AVE GLORIOSA IN NOMINE NAR-SIE"

[Guest]

I may be one of the chucklefuckers, and for that I apologize, and will change how I play ghost on a cult round.

[TishinaStalker]

This has probably been one of the things that has bothered me the most. Blood pool shows up, "EVERYBODY GET TO IT", and then we have spoopy ghost writing all over the floors. I guess I've never really minded one or two when the round type blatantly says cult instead of secret, but sometimes it gets to ridiculous levels. During one cult round, there was a small bloodbath outside of the bar, and one ghost wrote at least four times "Jaylor is one of them" I personally believe that this little mechanic is either abused to high hell to fill the place with spoopy ghost writing, or used to do some weird form of IC metagame. One thing that I could recommend, is that if a mechanic like this is to stay, then to restrict it somewhat like messages in Dark Souls where you can only use words already determined by the game. Some messages that could be seen in Dark Souls with the use of orange guidance soapstones being: "Good luck", "Danger ahead", "Touch tail", etc. Ultimately, I think that would be somewhat annoying to code in though. Still, just my two cents.

[EvilBrage]

Are these events ahelped? Because that seems to go very clearly against our rules of playing average and balanced (ghosts). And since it's not an issue I was even aware of, I'm wondering if it's something we could simply try curbing, by disciplining the people involved.

Yes, the administrators online at the time were asleep. I disagree on that second point, however - I believe it's a function that detracts from gameplay, even in the event that it's used as it was intended.

[Jakers457]

I would like it to stay as it is, and if we do get chucklefucks then kick or ban them temporarily due to it being HEAVY ROLEPLAY server, where this shouldn't happen. I mean, if I find myself as a ghost during a cult round with my body undiscovered or with unfinished business, I will attempt to write things like 'shuttle dock... notes... find' or something vague, as if it pains me to touch the physical world and hope the crew notice the blood text. I mean, if you get murdered or die in a horrible accident, it's nice to be able to roleplay as a ghost and still as your character without having to wait thirty minutes to be a new character, a cruddy mouse, a pAI or Maintenance drone just to keep your involvement in the round.

We shouldn't be chopping away features, no matter how minor they are, because of chucklefucks abusing them. Because with that mentality, we'd be stripping away a lot of features, which seems fine if those features aren't ones you like or ones you're not a patron to, but ... then you'd need to consider the people who utilize the feature properly, and how you'd be doing one over on them, no matter how minor.

[Jakers457]

I would like it to stay as it is, and if we do get chucklefucks then kick or ban them temporarily due to it being HEAVY ROLEPLAY server, where this shouldn't happen. I mean, if I find myself as a ghost during a cult round with my body undiscovered or with unfinished business, I will attempt to write things like 'shuttle dock... notes... find' or something vague, as if it pains me to touch the physical world and hope the crew notice the blood text. I mean, if you get murdered or die in a horrible accident, it's nice to be able to roleplay as a ghost and still as your character without having to wait thirty minutes to be a new character, a cruddy mouse, a pAI or Maintenance drone just to keep your involvement in the round.

We shouldn't be chopping away features, no matter how minor they are, because of chucklefucks abusing them. Because with that mentality, we'd be stripping away a lot of features, which seems fine if those features aren't ones you like or ones you're not a patron to, but ... then you'd need to consider the people who utilize the feature properly, and how you'd be doing one over on them, no matter how minor.

[LetzShake]

In response to a mechanic being abused, we shouldn't go "destroy the mechanic!" Just make/enforce a rule about it. Ghost writing should be treated as In-Character, so anyone who does stupid immersion breaking shit should be punished.

[EvilBrage]

We removed clowns and mimes.

[cianan1212]

I personally use ghost writing to express the emotions that my character felt when he died such as "Betrayal","Fear" and "Hatred".

[Jakers457]

We removed clowns and mimes.

 

Clowns and Mimes made no sense on a Research station, and were only really placed there for the juvenile humor that Space Station 13 is known for on most servers. While on the other hand, ghosts speaking from the afterlife on a Cult round where Cultists are slowly pulling the seams of reality apart makes more sense. Especially when they have the magic to manifest ghosts and create shades.

When the clowns and mimes were removed, it only really hurt the chucklefucks who wanted nothing more than to be a comedic genius and leak their brains all over the station floor through many mental prolapses, that they so overly enjoyed. If we destroy this mechanic, then we're mainly hurting the decent members, who of which use it to roleplay after being taken out of the round. So, the main opposition will be that of the roleplayers rather than the chucklefucks who will simply find another means of breaking the immersion.

But if we are to validate this logic then, let's remove Hydrophonics, they only grow space weed. Let's remove Cargo, the majority of Cargo usually don't even do their jobs and so forth. The fact of the matter is, their will always be people abusing a mechanic or job, that is something inevitable with games, and online ones at that. To simply remove a mechanic because you dislike it and experience griefing with it, would warrant a lot of abuse worthy mechanics to be removed from the game. Then you may aswell play a serious rp server on Gmod, in which you stare at a table and pretend you're in a seat, drinking coffee.

[duck]

Hi. Ghostwriting originally required 10 cult members, but I reduced it to 1 since we were still mostly lowpop way back then (And you couldn't write without converting half or more of the server.). Now that we're like consistently in the fifties, it'd be easy to bump it back up so they can only write midround if you'd like. Would like to hear thoughts on whether it should take ten or fifteen or twenty or whatever.

Also, the slippery slope is a logical fallacy for a reason. Because one thing causes consistent problems doesn't mean we have to remove everything else that's vaguely annoying.

that said. i'm kind of terrible and unapologetically one of the ones who writes dick planet everywhere because terrible.

[Guest]

Our configs are currently set to three, it's a server side change that would take 1 minute to implement. No need to rebuild or recode at all.

[duck]

Amazing. I thought it was 1 though. Preeetty sure the original value was 10. It seems like a nice place, though if we keep having fifties, maybe 15-20 would be better.

[LetzShake]

Clowns and Mimes made no sense on a Research station, and were only really placed there for the juvenile humor that Space Station 13 is known for on most servers.

 

Morale, the same reason there's a bar.

Of course it never turned out that way.

And as for the cult limit on writing, I think 10 might be a bit high. 10 people is enough to end the round, ultimately. Sure we get 50+ people during the day but how often do you get that, plus a decent cult, plus security not metagaming and putting all the cultists in jail for having books?

[duck]

I figure we get ten cultists every time we get a stealth stun-and-convertspam cult. So, like.

every cult round recently.

[EvilBrage]

You can resist the cult conversion, though, so it's closer to RP-Rev in that you can't just force people to join you. And without actual objectives, cult is actually a worthwhile round type if the cultists know how to work within the new boundaries (and lack thereof) correctly. As for the mimes and clown correlation to chucklefucking, people could do that just as easily with assistants. They weren't removed because it's any easier to screw with the station as a clown or mime - it was because of the stigma associated with them. Unlike your other examples of hydroponics or cargo, it takes actual effort to use them in a manner that can ruin someone's round, as opposed to a butthurt player who just died spamming blood writing to let everyone know that one person in particular is a cultist.

Yes, we could ahelp instances in which this happens, but we could've ahelped instances in which clowns or mimes grief like any other individual, but they were removed instead.