[2 Binned] Doing Something About Cult

[Scheveningen]

Yes, like I have reiterated countless of times now, the current concept of cult is really not suited for a RP environment. And if not the concept, then the execution. What's the point of giving the cultists only one word whe they're going to try and figure out all of them right away? Why not give them a bit more RP-oriented variety in their runes? As far as I know, all of the runes have some mechanical impact. Why not make a few decorative ones you can use to disguise other runes in between? Why not a voice changing rune? I dunno, a rune that doesn't feel like the cult is trying to powergame their way through, maybe. Give the cult more options to be a more RP-oriented cult and the players will actually try to use those options.

 

You haven't really made much of a coherent case to support that aside from "Bahhh the cult only has gank tools and the cult only uses gank tools, never to create fun and only to win."

In which case it really stops being a "hate the game" issue and more of a "hate the playa gaming the system" type issue.

[TrickingTrapster]

That IS my case. The players have no choice to use the gank tools because the cult has nothing but gank tools. Give them roleplay tools in a roleplay game, you know, where the focus of a roleplay game should be. Shocking, I know.

[Scheveningen]

That IS my case. The players have no choice to use the gank tools because the cult has nothing but gank tools. Give them roleplay tools in a roleplay game, you know, where the focus of a roleplay game should be. Shocking, I know.

 

that's where you're wrong buddy

[TrickingTrapster]

Okay, not shocking, then. But my point remains. Almost nothing the cult can do is RP oriented, mechanically.

[Scheveningen]

that's your opinion

[sonicgotnuked]

Yeah, cult is just a shitty game mode. I mean, I get cult all the time and everyone is confused in AOOC about our little gimmick. All I do really during every cult I get is get masons and research the words in 20 minutes. It is also EXTREMELY easy to meta due to every time you draw a ruin, you give yourself a bruises.

[Nanako]

cult is honestly a pretty good gamemode, lots of content and relatively few obvious issues. Its fairly flexible about how you RP it, ive seen some interesting cults

Its not perfect, nothing is. but it certainly doesn't need disabled or rewritten from scratch

[Shadow]

It doesn't have to be rewriten, thats true.

But some changes would be nice.

You know, more cult-y stuff.

You can summon shit with 2 bloody lines.

Maybe change it to actually look like runes? (Implying we have spriters that want to actually work :^) )

Or maybe change some runes, what they require, how they are peformer, etc.

Bring in some new wind.

[JKJudgeX]

I like cult but both of the rounds I've played this week where I was a cultist someone IMMEDIATELY spawned a cult sword and showed it off to the crew by attacking people, thus starting aggressive validhunting and making doing ANYTHING pretty much impossible. Also, on one of those runs, someone gave us a fake word - none of the runes would work, and in both cases also at least one cultist didn't supply their word at all...

So, my problem with cult is just that people hunt down cultists pretty hard, and I don't really know a fix for it, but I wish there was something. I really feel like the bruises all over the body from doing rune research are SUPER OBVIOUS TELLS, and those could be done away with as they don't really add anything... Another thing is that SO MANY TIMES I've RP'ed trying to convert someone on the down low and they've outright refused, and even sometimes immediately narced, so, I feel like I need to really force-convert people, but then they cry about it after the game and that always sucks...

Three things come to mind:

More camera-blind hiding spots to do rune research available to all access would be good.

A little more pushback against people "randomly" roaming into the few somewhat hidden areas that exist would be nice... like, why is the RD randomly walking to the back of the library every 30 seconds, and more than once I've seen people just randomly stroll into the empty chapel and open the confession booth while I was in there...

I don't want to say "whitelist cult" because we'd never have enough to play, but, can individual antag type bans be given out? I don't understand the logic of "instantly grab paper and spawn weapons"... if you don't make an effort to share your words, and you blow the roundtype intentionally, you should probably be banned from that type of antagonist.

Otherwise, when it goes well, I love cult. Most of what I said kinda applies to Rev, too.

[Tequilajoe]

I find cult to be tremendously annoying at times, particularly when I get stun-talisman'd and converted 10 minutes after I join. But I have to disagree with the suggestions, because I feel that cult doesn't bind you as tightly as you say. I have RP'd many, many different ways when I was forced into the cult. Sometimes I join in the carnage, but there have been rounds where I don't assist at all, I merely carry on with my day and let the other cultists have their fun. As long as you aren't directly impeding other cultists as a cultist, nobody will care what you do. I find vampire to be FAR more restrictive: If you're made into a thrall, you're forced to follow your vampire's wishes no matter how inane or idiotic his commands can be. While I do enjoy vampire, I think being a thrall would probably suck hard. And don't even get me started on cortical borer.

Other gamemodes can be even more punishing: traitors and changelings usually gank to kill, and stash your body somewhere where it might never be found, at least cult usually gives you that option to join.

I just don't think that you're making a very good case against cult, when its much more forgiving than other gamemodes.

[TrickingTrapster]

Except no, you're not given an option, the only option you are given is join before or after you die from them trying to convert you because they will soulstone you afterwards anyway if you die. The literal message that appears when you get culted is, "there is no you, only the cult". That's pretty damn restrictive. Sounds like it's stripping your character's personality off, really. As for vampire, at least they have to do some RP to get you someplace they can make you a thrall and don't leave you with a sense of "well this is bullshit". Also, I have tried to do whatever I wanted several times during a cult round, but I either get bitched at for not doing anything or not knowing what I'm doing. And, tying in to one of my major issues with cult, why in the holy mother of fuck do fresh converts suddenly know EVERYTHING. From drawing runes to the correct incantation pronuncication to suddenly being able to use swords effectively. And before you say "that's the magic", no, because if that were true the first few cultists wouldn't even need to convert others. What I think would be a huuuge boost to cult would be an initiation or acolyte system. Vamps need to build up blood, a traitor needs to set up a situation, a changeling needs to set up their target, heist and merc need to set up their cover. But cult? Nah, you know everything suddenly. Fuck that.

[Arzion]

Let me slide into this discussion and post my opinions.

Cult is a station overtaking gamemode, which means that cultists have to rush to convert everyone and summon nar'sie or be a certain amount of cultists on the shuttle when it departs. That was the original intention, fast-paced interesting action gamemode where the crew is tasked with neutralizing the cult ASAP while the cult has to do their aforementioned objectives. Now the actual problem is word-hunting, an extremely tedious downright horrible process where a person has to use trial and error to find all the correct words. This is supposed to be a balancing mechanic so that the cult doesn't steamroll everyone at round-start, but the process is so painful it pretty much leeches all fun out of the person trying to find the words. It is not unheard of for cultists to give up word-hunting because of how annoying it is.

Now onto the actual matters, cultists are also heavily restricted by the no-gank rule. Ganking refers to immediately murdering people with no prior RP, which can lead to heavy difficulty trying to fight the Captain and Head of Security. Good news is, Security are not loyalty implanted like in most other servers, so they can be converted. Cultists are supposed to be a sudden type of antagonists, antagonists that have to strike fast, lest they will be blown out and will have a much harder difficulty. Peace cult almost never works due to heroic whiteknight employees that are like "nah man you gave me all the valid reasons for me to follow you into your workplace but I won't because I meta-know you're a cultist due to your massive amounts of tiny bruises", so cultists are forced to go aggressive to gain convertees. However, this aggressivity leads to people making a fit about being required to actually do something instead of bar-RP-ing with their meta-friend Tajaran. Rounds are usually slow, and antagonists put it into circulation. Team-based antagonists are best at doing this, but they are under much scrutiny most of the time. Complaining about cultists suddenly converting you and sharding you if you die is understandable when you repeatedly refuse rune-conversion and are going to blow them out to Security once you escape.

[sonicgotnuked]

I agree with the points mentioned above, sometimes the word hunting can be fucking hard to do because you need to spot the ruin color pulses, but that can be next to impossible due to how sudden it is and you need to be able to spot diffrent shades of red. (AKA some people can not do it biologically, mainly males can have trouble due to females having a biological advantage from evolution to see different shades of color) Mason scanners make it more tolerable but I honestly think that the word hunting is really fucking dumb, at least make the correct ruins more noticeable.

[TrickingTrapster]

Arzion, your point actually solidifies what I have been saying. What the hell is a mode that promotes fast-paced action doing on a server that is built on text-based RP? Such a mode will work a lot better on low or medium RP servers, but on a high RP server like ours, it just doesn't work that well. This is why I'm saying to remove or change it to better suit the high-RP environment. For example, having acolytes/initiates, which are basically half-converts. They cannot draw runes or remove them with the tome, but they can aid in incantations and receive the rune bonuses. You could set a timer on them, that, once it expires, say, 15 or 25 minutes, they can be "promoted", or "ascend" into full cultist status, which will require a rune. However, getting initiates will not require a rune, and instead works more like rev, where you just ask them to join you. This would obviously mean some balance changes to runes, you can't just rush some initiates and call up Nar'Sie, that will require more than 3 cultists. Same with the more powerful runes, say, summon cultist or manifest spirit, which cannot be used by initiates. The reason I think this is a good idea is because one, this will promote more less-forced RP, and actually encourage the cultists to "teach" their initiates during their acolyteship. As for researching words, well, the more cultists you get from initiates, the more words you will have, no? No need to rush words like that.

[Arzion]

My point solidifies and crumbles your point at the same time.

There is nothing stopping Security from perma-brigging everyone and confiscating all cultist items, or sending them off to medbay on the grounds that they went insane. There is nothing stopping people from refusing and shouting out for help when you try to convert them (which brings to the aforementioned aggressive method, which is under scrutiny). It already has been modified for a HRP environment, in that even forceful conversion, which was one of the core parts of the original cult, has to be consensual. It is already a mess due to the word-hunting system, the consensual conversion and the amount of risk cultists have to go through just to ask one guy to join them. It would not be better to "remove it", as I believe it can either be restored to the original spirit or modified in that it won't be tedious. Most of the time, cult problems come from the playerbase, some of which are your stereotypical villain-fighting all-xeno-loving workaholic white knights who have the super magical mental fortitude to resist the mental influencing caused by an ancient eldritch horror.

[TrickingTrapster]

And that is what it all comes down to, isn't it? If it's the playerbase's fault, change the playerbase. But we can't just do that. If we want to change the playerbase, we need to give the incentive to change. Which will not happen by keeping cult as it is right now. Besides, we keep getting the same players as starting cultists. Why? Because no one else seems to like playing cultist. Now why would that be? I think, that if we change cult to be less agressive, people will be more receptive to it. I know I would.

[Kaed]

Trapster, after reading this whole thread I think it's becoming kind of pointless to continue it. You have had slews of people express their feelings why cult is a perfectly fine game mode, what possibilities it has, and so on.

The problem isn't with the cult round type here, it's that you won't accept that other people disagree with you. You have rejected every argument leveled against your claims that cult is an awful game mode largely based on what amounts to opinionated conjecture. The people who disagree with you are also using opinionated standpoints though, let me be clear.

So here's my opinion here: Stop trying to make everyone here agree with you. Either they do, or they don't. I myself am of the opinion that if you can't handle your character's behavior, goals, or situation being changed to something you weren't expecting or desiring, then you shouldn't be playing on a high roleplay server. There have been approximately three people already who have pointed out that dying and/or ghosting are perfectly acceptable ways to escape the cult, but you either ignore or reject these points repeatedly because you don't like them, and you'd prefer we remove a game mode or change to to conform more to what you're comfortable with.

Other people like it. Some people don't. The people who don't like it, don't have to participate in antagonist activities. This is a game at the end point, trying to account for the tastes of everyone at the same time, which is frankly impossible. Go watch a movie, play a different game, eat a meal. Let the people who are having fun in the round type have their fun, and come back later.

[Scheveningen]

So here's my opinion here: Stop trying to make everyone here agree with you.

 

defer to signature please

[Nanako]

Oh hey this thread is still going.

I thought you guys might like to know i've added a new cult feature for next patch:

https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/1870

It gives them the ability to sacrifice small animals in order to upgrade pylons into weak defensive turrets.

In general, i see cult as the most defensive of our antags, and this is a step towards encouraging that kind of gameplay. I may take more in future.

What i'd like is for cults to do less roaming the halls stabbing people, and a lot more taking over a section of the station, and turning it into a temple to nar'sie.

Where possible, they should be capturing people - alive - and bringing them back for conversion or ritual sacrifice with lots of pomp and ceremony

I'm open to ideas on how to reduce their ability to hunt down civilians for sport, and to shift towards a more defensive focus

I definitely agree that random murderhobo'ing is not good antagging, and isn't fun for anyone.

[Lohikar]

things

It is worth noting that this has not been merged into development yet.

[Surrealistik]

The last thing Cult needs is even more power, especially when Manifest Spirit is still degenerate.

In general I think it could use a complete rework.

[TrickingTrapster]

Eh, Kaed, not really. What is happening is, I presented my idea, and people presented why they agree or disagree with it. I then respond explaining why I do not agree with their reasons for disagreeing, which prompts another response, and so on. Of course, the entire point of a suggestion is to get people to agree with you to make it happen. I don't get why you're going against that.

As for a response to your opinion, well. I find there to be a difference between choosing to play something, and being forced to play something. I would completely and utterly hate xeno gamemode, but luckily our server doesn't have it enabled by default, so I don't have to. As far as I am aware, cult is literally the only gamemode outside of wizards being pricks that, here's the word again, FORCES you to play something other than you signed up for. A wizard using horsemask? Your character is still your character. Mercs or heisters kidnapping you? Your character is still your character. A changeling transform stings you? Your character is still your character. Cult converting or soulstoning you? OOPS sorry now you cannot be your character anymore. And I think that is the biggest reason people, subconciously or not, metagame against cult. They signed up to play their character in differing situations, not get transformed in a slave that has small to no RP potential(constructs). And, if you think my earlier initiate/acolyte idea doesn't work, alright, you can think so. Let me present another idea then, to change cult. How about balancing it so that there is no need for conversion at all? Just the starting few cultists being able to hold their own against the crew.

You also said something about doing something different when it happens. I have a few problems with this. One, I appreciate when antagonists put effort in "getting" my character. Except then, my entire want for RP is utterly decimated and I can't play anymore. This then, has wasted both my time, the cultists's time, and the cultists' effort. If I keep playing however, it's a slog and it will be subpar and no one will like it. My second problem with it is, I set time aside to play this game specifically. NOT watch a movie, get a meal, etc. Now this time is going to be wasted because of an arguably terrible mechanic in an arguably shitty gamemode. Besides, 30 minutes is just too long to be incredibly boring, yet not long enough to do anything fun at all. And the fact that you cannot be cloned when you get soulstoned is also 100% shitty in my opinion, even when you ghost to get out of it afterwards.

[Kaed]

I think I would agree with some of your points there, Trapster, particularly the one about being uncloneable when they soulstone you. I think that bit is a little excessive that your body is dusted on use. I also don't really like that sacrifices gib the targets - I think it should just deal a lethal amount of damage, not make you explode into a fountain of comedically excessive gore. I've never actual seen any other concept of human sacrifice that involves exploding the victim, it's usually just killing them ceremonially. I suppose the intent of that was specifically to make them unclonable, but why exactly is that necessary? As far as I can tell, it's simply this way because it was always this way. Perhaps it needs to be re-evaluated - I think, for instance, it would be much more interesting if instead of instantly gibbing them, it simply paralyzed them and began to deal chunks of damage every few seconds. Then they could scream and stuff while the cultists circle them chanting I'A I'A NAR NAR or something. If you get them off the rune before they die, they survive. It would also, obviously, alert any one watching the health monitor and give them a chance to be saved if someone sacrifice ganked them and/or forgot to turn off their sensors. All in all, it would make for a more interactive experience than 'click rune, gibs'.

The soul stone might just set their variables to dead when it works, instead of destroying their body - they need to be dead or dying anyway, so it's not a huge change in code I expect. It's possible this would just encourage people to ghost instantly and hope they're cloned later, but eh.

However, I have to disagree with you on the matter of 'choosing to play' something. Like I said before, this is a baffling mindset to me. This is a server where there are antagonists, and you are choosing to play on it. By entering on a round that's not extended, you are participating in it. You can't just expect your character to exist in a comfortable, safe bubble where nothing happens to them or changes the status quo of their round. When you are converted to a cultist, your highest priority simply becomes the furthering of the cults goals. You seem to be under the impression I think that 'There is no you, there is only the cult' means you have to just chuck your entire character out the window and go from being, say, a nurse to a frothing psychopath. It's always been up to the player how they respond to antagonist goals, though - in the said nurse example you could covertly smuggle medical supplies to your cultists, provide them with care and support when the rest of medical won't, and any number of other nonviolent methods of support. You could even argue with them against starting to kill the crew en masse, if you feel your character would have a compelling reason not to resort to violence. I could even see justification to kill/disable/sedate another excessively violent cult member if you feel that their actions jeopardize everyone in the cult - it's not like the cultists are a hive mind, they can disagree with each other and have infighting.

The only behavior that would really be out of line would be something actively betraying them to security because you just want to screw the cult over.

There was someone else earlier who commented how silly it is that cultists inevitably start getting covered with mountains of conspicuous bruises. This is because using cult abilities does small bits of brute damage. But, I think there's an easy fix for this - just have it subtract some of your BLOOD every time you use an ability or make a BLOOD RUNE. I mean, that doesn't leave a wound, and if you overuse your own blood making the BLOOD RUNES then you'll start to suffer the normal bloodloss penalties. After all isn't Nar'sie the Geometer of BLOOD, and the lore say you're drawing all this with your own BLOOD?

(I'm not sure why no one has come up with this idea yet)

[TrickingTrapster]

Yeah, soulstone is shitty and needs to be made unshitty. On that note, I still think cult can use a few more RP oriented spells. As far as I know, every single spell in the cult book has a strictly mechanical use. Make a few flavor spells, to give the cultists the option to, oh, I dunno, RP in a RP game a bit more with their gimmick. Things like sounds, ominous lighting, ghost projections. Something to instill fear into the crew and have them say LOOK HERE IS YOUR SALVATION rather than GET OVER HERE FOR GREENTEXT YOU. This would also allow for - dare I say it - Enjoyable Peacecult. (Slander!) I have the firm belief that any type of antag can be done without maining or killing anyone, as long as people are creative and get some time to RP it. Usually though, one or both are absent, causing most people to make memes of the situation.

Onto the second matter, I feel like I need to explain this a bit. Like with your suggestion on the malf updates, my great big concern here is there is no reliable way to turn people back once they are converted, leaving soulstoning and being forced to become a construct when you REALLY don't want that to one side. I know the chaplain can do this mechanically, but I have seriously NEVER seen a single cult round where that happened. Which is partly a good thing because it shows people don't metagame, and partly a bad thing because not enough emphasis is put on it. Maybe give the chaplain some more importance? Feel disturbances in the air? Even though that won't do much if there isn't one. There should be a more reliable way to turn people back, because right now, it's not technically, but practically irreversible, and that is why I have such a problem with getting converted. Plus, cult is really the only gamemode that forces you to work for them, every single other mode, with exception of vampire I guess, which is not an issue, allows your character to remain with their own goals while being a hostage/thrall/victim/whatever. Every other gamemode does NOT change your character, it changes the situation they are in. Cult, on the other hand, decides FUCK YOU and decides to change your character. That's just a huge no-go to me.

[Nanako]

Here's a small thought that comes to mind.

What if, once a construct is made, if its player ghosts, any other ghost can take over its body freely to inhabit the construct. This would mean you could ghost without feeling bad about sabotaging the round

Perhaps this'd be some small consolation, as it'd allow you to eventually respawn, or to play as a mouse/drone/posibrain/nymph/pai/whatever. Your character would still be gone but at least you wouldn't be forced to play something you dont want to.

I think a lot of observing ghosts would like to play as a construct, they're pretty powerful and fun.