A new breed of traitor...

[Not Megatron]

These new traitors aren't going to take you hostage, they're going to blow your head off in maint.

These new traitors aren't going to re-consider their plot as you give them your heartwarming speech, they'll shove a shotgun in your mouth.

These new traitors aren't going to plan how to avoid capture only to make a slip-up and get caught by the long arm of the law, they're going to call you a retard and explode 5 minutes into the round as you're discussing if vests on green are valid.

What? It's not like being a rando means you get to turn into a greytide. The same people that were rolling traitor turning that coworker you see every day into a grenade flinging psychopath will still be grenade flinging psychopaths who decapitate you in maint, but it'll be more believable because they're not that coworker you see every day anymore, they're an agent sent by an enemy of the company. Why would they suddenly stop being bound by the rules?

On the contrary, I think a new type of antag would open it up for those who do try and make things interesting to do something entirely different.

To summarize, this is a mechanic that seems more like "You use it, I don't play traitor" mechanic.

Something for everyone else but you and your character so you have easy targets to plink away at who (in the hopes of creating mass destruction) include you in their RP just from the amount of ruckus they cause.

That's just a harsh accusation, and not true. I want to play traitor but barely ever can since my characters just Ain't Like That.

 

Skull had a much, MUCH better suggestion in the discord.

A) DIsguise kits to change your characters apperance.

B) Have a menu pop-up before the round starts that asks you if you want to play a different character.

The disguise kit thing sounds cool, as long as it isn't strictly appearance you can change as opposed to general identity

The menu idea is cool, and would end up requiring people to make traitor characters as you said at the beginning, but I don't think you wouldn't be able to use them for very long/often. Eventually people would wise up, either IC or OOC, and recognize that Fred Smith is nuts and often dangerous, which will probably end up affecting immersion because why does the unabomber still work here? and making a new traitor OC every time you use the last one will be a fucking pain.

The second thing would only work if the roundstart itself was delayed until the traitors choose, because otherwise people might metagame those crewmembers that arrive mysteriously seconds after the round starts.

I still feel that my version would introduce a little more variety than Skull's. A little push like the general goals of a faction might be all some people need to take their traitor in an interesting direction. God knows coming up with fresh traitor gimmicks is hard enough as it is.

While I do like the premise of this, there is one big thing that kills it for me.

As a frequent medbay player, it takes actual genuine effort not to immediately distrust new names. Most of the decent doctors are already well known and seeing a new surgeon/medical doctor/resident immediately creates a premonition of 'This person is probably going to be incompetent.' The same goes for any other department I've played in, but the medbay is my go-to example. While that isn't too harmful in its own right, I feel like this addition would likely reinforce it. A new name is liable to be either (a) incompetent or (b) a traitor rather than just incompetent. Even with the best attempts at remaining unbiased from metagaming / powergaming it does still influence people's judgment, and I fear this would just reinforce that.

I hadn't thought about this and it's an interesting point. The only solution that comes to mind is that it would be an extra level of challenge for random traitors to jump through. Random traitors ought to find it difficult to blend in because nobody has ever seen them before, so they'd naturally be subject to some suspicion. They'd have to put in extra effort by, say, adding a flavor text, or behaving inconspicuously to minimize attention.

 

Traitor rounds are great when people actually take advantage of character relations

They are, but traitor rounds are bad when people just don't, or just take advantage of the fact that people trust them to go off and secretly be a grenade-slinging psychopath when no one's looking.

 

Nobody is going to miss a rando dying, the same applies for the player playing that rando, they're going to be bombers, mass shooters and butchers something people ahelp quite a lot when it happens as it's hard to RP with a cardboard cut-out you were assigned 5 minutes into the round.

If the character assigned is given no effort, the player is not going to put effort into it either, as we can see in Mercenary/Raider where the "muh low RP" complaint comes in very often and imagine those type of 5 minute characters having to survive in a 2 hour long round with people who put literal MONTHS into their own characters.

People who RP poorly and go around randomly murdered people and being ahelped usually receive a punishment, and they're still going to get antag banned if they decide to be a shit. Nobody is going to miss a rando dying, sure, but once the much-beloved psychiatrist has been running around shooting people for the last ten minutes, people won't miss him much either, aside from some barRP "oh wow, who'da thunk?". A low-effort character doesn't automatically mean low-effort RP. Plenty of mercs make things pretty interesting with those 5 minute characters, even if some don't. But no one says we shouldn't have merc because of those that don't.

No, this goes fundamentally against what traitor is. Traitor is supposed to evoke paranoia as you cannot trust your co-workers who have been with you for entire years. This is going to elevate that frustration partially or even fully.

If it helps to imagine rando traitor as another antag altogether, then do that. The sleeper agent traitors that we still have will still be there, evoking paranoia. Perhaps with that in mind, rando traitors could be sectioned into another roundtype altogether? I still think it would be nice to have an intermingling, however.

 

Further factions would do absolutely nothing besides providing an objective for people to bilndly complete to get greentext, imagine a traitor who just steals the teleporter and doesn't do anything ever again.

I never actually said the faction traitors would have objectives, I don't think it belongs in Aurora. Rather, they would have faction motivations, i.e., "We're the Sundowner Clan and we think technology is evil! Do whatever you can to return the Aurora to the stone age!"

Of course, the factions could be an optional bonus spin that players could opt to ignore in favor of their own gimmick.

[Coalf]

What? It's not like being a rando means you get to turn into a greytide. The same people that were rolling traitor turning that coworker you see every day into a grenade flinging psychopath will still be grenade flinging psychopaths who decapitate you in maint, but it'll be more believable because they're not that coworker you see every day anymore, they're an agent sent by an enemy of the company. Why would they suddenly stop being bound by the rules?

On the contrary, I think a new type of antag would open it up for those who do try and make things interesting to do something entirely different.

Correct people are not likely to break rules, however people are more likey to give less effort into roleplay if the character that they are is literally a cardboard cutout designed to die in the most violent way possible.

Wizard, Ninja, Mercenaries, Raiders all these roles start as complete randoes and usually act like gung-ho maniacs, nothing about this

"Opens new and interesting ways," it's just lazily shoving literally nobodies on the station to cause meaningless chaos for some arbitrary reason OR absolutely no reason at all.

 

That's just a harsh accusation, and not true. I want to play traitor but barely ever can since my characters just Ain't Like That.

I admit, I wrote that one like a dickhead I didn't mean "You" as in "You personally not megatron", I mostly meant majority of people who replied in the thread at the time.

Might or might not include you but my labeling wasn't to put you on the spot and I apologise.

Oh and to reply, make a character that is like that then

 

The disguise kit thing sounds cool, as long as it isn't strictly appearance you can change as opposed to general identity

The menu idea is cool, and would end up requiring people to make traitor characters as you said at the beginning, but I don't think you wouldn't be able to use them for very long/often. Eventually people would wise up, either IC or OOC, and recognize that Fred Smith is nuts and often dangerous, which will probably end up affecting immersion because why does the unabomber still work here? and making a new traitor OC every time you use the last one will be a fucking pain.

The second thing would only work if the roundstart itself was delayed until the traitors choose, because otherwise people might metagame those crewmembers that arrive mysteriously seconds after the round starts.

I still feel that my version would introduce a little more variety than Skull's. A little push like the general goals of a faction might be all some people need to take their traitor in an interesting direction. God knows coming up with fresh traitor gimmicks is hard enough as it is.

Yes, re-occuring antag rounds are immersion breaking correct.

But tell me, is it reallly any more immersion breaking than 5 completely random names appearing out of nowhere? If anything your suggestion is going to breed paranoia not for a SINGLE person but for an ENTIRE GROUP of people, new players.

New players start with barebones, not-up-to-snuff characters who you have never seen before and have a somewhat randomized but by the template apperance. Do you see the problem? New players is the last group we want to vilify.

"The crewmembers that mysteriously arrive at round start," mate that's half the crew, there is plenty of people who literally wait until the round starts to see what roles are available to fill. After every round there is a big influx of new players.

And from borgs we know that selecting template characters doesn't have to involve pausing the entire round-start.

Read the wiki then, you have factions there it's not hard.

A lot of this seems like laziness.

 

People who RP poorly and go around randomly murdered people and being ahelped usually receive a punishment, and they're still going to get antag banned if they decide to be a shit. Nobody is going to miss a rando dying, sure, but once the much-beloved psychiatrist has been running around shooting people for the last ten minutes, people won't miss him much either, aside from some barRP "oh wow, who'da thunk?". A low-effort character doesn't automatically mean low-effort RP. Plenty of mercs make things pretty interesting with those 5 minute characters, even if some don't. But no one says we shouldn't have merc because of those that don't.

Well one plenty of people say we shouldn't have mercs because of the people that don't, hell Burger made a suggestion like a month ago to whitelist all special antag roles because of the people that don't.

Two, if that's how RP goes for a beloved friend going haywire than I am afraid the server is in the shitter.

Three, low-effort begets low-effort and the fact is it is easy to create a mercenary coolguy because guess what, he doesn't have to spend majority of his time INSIDE the station TALKING to people! This is why those characters would crumble! It would be extremely easy to spot an unfinished rando with a haphazardly constructed backstory!

And hell if people are CHOOSING to play complete randos to antag with I doubt they want to put much effort into the game anyways, if they did they'd just make characters with backstorise that allow antag play instead of boring normality.

 

If it helps to imagine rando traitor as another antag altogether, then do that. The sleeper agent traitors that we still have will still be there, evoking paranoia. Perhaps with that in mind, rando traitors could be sectioned into another roundtype altogether? I still think it would be nice to have an intermingling, however.

Doesn't the suggestion to make it another gamemode altogether kinda deconstruct your argument that it's better meta-protected than chosing a specific character from your selection? It would be extremely easy to spot 5 randoes when I vote for "Rando antags" gamemode.

Lastly I just realized, this won't even work! Traitor is the most voted gamemode yes, but AUTO-TRAITOR ! Not traitor! This entire system won't work with auto-traitor!

 

I never actually said the faction traitors would have objectives, I don't think it belongs in Aurora. Rather, they would have faction motivations, i.e., "We're the Sundowner Clan and we think technology is evil! Do whatever you can to return the Aurora to the stone age!"

Of course, the factions could be an optional bonus spin that players could opt to ignore in favor of their own gimmick.

People can read the wiki and do that themselves, if it's just a completely vague inspiration like that.

[Skull132]

tbh I'd love mechanics for being a persistent traitor character. And allowing yourself to get new identities and shit. Of course with metagame economy mechanics attached. Definitely better instead of just being able to click, "Ayy rando".

[Bauser]

One problem with a persistent traitor is that actions that happen to player characters aren't canon if caused by an antagonist. So you'd have a situation where canon is preserved for the traitor, but not for the characters he's interacting with.

"Say... Haven't I killed you before?"

[Jakers457]

If we had some kind of trading HUB that doesn't have the strangling constrictions of 'how would they be hired if they badboy'... maybe then we could interesting criminal characters with a level persistence...

But that aside, I think having options is better than having no options. I have perhaps one character, that I will use for antagging but at the moment I'm bored of the job he's qualified to, so having a randomly generated traitor within reason could be cool.

[Not Megatron]

Skull had a much, MUCH better suggestion in the discord.

A) DIsguise kits to change your characters apperance.

B) Have a menu pop-up before the round starts that asks you if you want to play a different character.

You know what? I sat on this for a few days, and you're right. Skull's suggestion would be much simpler, and in truth the idea to just make a traitor character had never even occurred to me, and they would really be much more interesting than a flooding of randos.

That being said, I still think we could salvage something interesting from my suggestion. I still like the idea of random traitors, and they could be included in the menu. Same character, a different character, or random. On other servers, a lot of the roundstart job messages have warnings in big red letters about the way the role is expected to be played, "Space Law is the LAW, not a suggestion, and as you said, a role like Rando McTraitor definitely has a lot of LowRP potential. If the rando had a similar warning, a lot of the problems you're expecting may be prevented. If it were presented as an especially challenging role (which it would be, if the player is dreaming bigger than School Shooting Simulator), people might be encouraged to play it with a higher standard.

I still like factions, but perhaps instead of being forced, a special verb could be available to randomly assign a faction. If someone is struggling to think of a gimmick, they opt in and get a free injection of inspiration (plus maybe some cool unique traitor items, maybe).

Is Skull's suggestion actually posted somewhere or was it just a discord message? I realized I'm not really sure what the details of the disguise kit are supposed to be.