We need to have a proper discussion about Antagonism and Roleplay

[BurgerBB]

Emphasis on proper discussion. I don't think I've ever seen a proper discussion about this sort of thing as discord usually goes a mile a minute after a round, and OOC is usually filled with salt.

Bad antagonism seems to be a problem on Aurorastation and I think it really needs to be dealt with either mechanically, with conversations with antagonists, or clarifications on the rules because it seems that the rules are never enforced. Here's what I notice that happens almost every round with respect to the round type.

Heist/Raider/Merc/Whatever

Scenario 1: Merc team rushes spare ID on a speeder bike. They shoot on sight any security members. There is no roleplay based action between the crew and the antagonists. Security ends up killing them all one by one before the hour mark.

Scenario 2: Merc team kidnaps crewmembers and makes exclusive bargaining deals with command. They torture the few kidnappers they capture and hide in their shuttle for the rest of the round. Security eventually finds their ship and kills all of them.

Scenario 3: Merc team falls in a hole and dies.

Malf AI

Scenario 1: AI spends the next hour and a half researching things and following default laws, occasionally shocking doors and draining room of air. Metagamers blame AI, AI blames hackers and/or the jews.

Scenario 2: AI does literally nothing but research all round. When the shuttle is called, they will make the shuttle hard to reach by shocking doors, blowing up APCs, creating barriers, or bolting airlocks.

Ninja/Wizard

Scenario 1: Spends the entire round engaging in rigorous ChairRP exclusively to command and/or security.

Scenario 2: Rushes spare ID using teleport abilities and whatnot. Follows a boring, personal objective like raiding the vault or assassinating the Captain or the Head of Security. Never roleplays with the crew. SSDs when caught.

Rev/Loyalist

Scenario 1: YOUR PAY HAS BEEN REDUCED AND WE'RE MAKING CUTS TO SOME DEPARTMENTS.

Scenario 2: Loyalists/Rev send out an unbelievably stupid fake CentCom message and the crew spends the next 2 hours believing whether or not the message is real until the Captain says "Fuck it, just ignore Centcomm messages."

Scenario 3: Loyalists or Rev have to pick up the slack of the other side, as the other side is doing nothing.

General Traitor

Very rarely this gamemode goes wrong in a predictable way. If anything goes wrong, it's usually having to do with escalation of conflict or breaking antagonism rules.

Cult:

Scenario 1: There is little communication and/or leadership between cult members. Usually, lone cult members start doing stupid shit that gets them caught and/or killed.

Changeling:

Scenario 1: Changeling roleplays very little or not at all with their victims. They walk up to them, paralyze their victims, drag them to maint, and absorb them one by one.

Scenario 2: Changeling just goes around stealing DNA passively from other players. Less roleplay, more focus on extracting genomes.

Vampire:

Scenario 1: Vampire uses deception ability to silence people. They suck the blood from them. Tell them they fell and hit their head. Medical spends the next hour handing out iron pills while groaning OOCLY. No roleplay takes place except for the paranoia of a blood thief.

Scenario 2: Same as above, except they go hulk and murderbone security trying to take them down with tasers and stun batons.

Another problem is that most times, if not always, the roleplay created by antagonists is exclusive to one department, and almost always it is security and command since they're the ones who handle that sort of thing. Medical and Engineering usually get the shaft and have to deal with the gameplay effects (Wounded security, damaged station) of an antagonist wreaking havoc on the station. The only good round I've participated in that wasn't an event was when a rich command-level catbeast bought the station and made everyone pledge their loyalty to him, while also hosting a grand banquet for his marriage. I'm not asking for that amount of effort in rounds, I'm asking for a solution to two core problems that happen in almost every single bad antagonist round: Selfishness in RP and Selfishness in Action.

Selfishness in RP would just be doing chair RP with one single person, or having your actions only affect the roleplay of a few small members in a very small departmental bubble. Selfishness is super noticeable in one-antag rounds (Ninja/Wizard) or antag leader rounds (Rev/Loyalist/Cult/Merc/Raider) but less notable in other rounds with multiple, usually solo, antagonists such as traitor. Selfishness in Action would just be spending the majority of the round pursuing your self-assigned objectives (raid the vault, murder security if they get in the way) or pursuing your mechanical objectives (ABSORB EVERYONE'S DNA) without providing some benefit to other players.

Possible Solutions

- Antag bans/warnings for bad antagonism. Warnings/bans are usually only handled out when the antagonist murderbones people, but not when they break the rules on antagonism and conflict.

- Introduce some sort of karma system that players can influence by rating people's ability to play antagonist. People with low karma have a less likely chance to get an antagonist roll than people with high karma.

- Remove wizard/ninja completely and implement the equipment in autotraitor. One-traitor gamemodes are almost always shit because they rely exclusively on that person's ability to roleplay and play.

- Rework changeling (Only can be coded when all the planets align, and on a bloodmoon.)

Thoughts?

[Doc]

I haven't formed much of an argument for or against much of the OP yet, but I do have some additional points I'd like to raise at the beginning of this conversation.

Being a decent antagonist is really hard.

Not just being a good antagonist, either, but even just a decent one, is really hard.

This is said from my point of view, however: as antagonist, ideally, I would involve at the better part of two to three departments at the least. Other antagonist players may not see this as their goals. While I might find it very difficult to come up with and accomplish a gimmick or goal that makes me feel like a good antagonist, other players can and probably do. This leads back to your two central points, the "selfishness" of antagonistic players.

When I begin a round as an antagonist, my immediate thought is, "what am I going to do to engage people with me?" It doesn't matter what antagonist (though to note, I generally only play external ones and traitor,) I am at the time, my first thought is to find a way to, preferably, engage the largest portion of the station I can.

Depending on what antagonist I get thrown, I might have no idea what to do. Having felt that myself I'm not really sure I can ever fault another group of antagonists for not being able to come up with a detailed or effective plan as to how they will do that themselves within, say, fifteen minutes. Contracts are limited in number and in scope, only available to certain antagonists who have uplinks, and to be frank, some if not a large portion of them are bad in my opinion- in this case meaning they would not help stimulate RP if they were pursued.

[Garnascus]

Warnings/bans are usually only handled out when the antagonist murderbones people, but not when they break the rules on antagonism and conflict.

 

First things first i want to address this point you made. There are some things to understand about how we as a staff team operate. We do not just hand out bans. This is especially true for first offences. As long as you're not intentionally griefing its almost impossible to get banned for a first offence. Added to that we have a decent staff to player ratio and we tend to be pretty light on bans. It has been more effective in our experience to curb problematic behavior with a few notes and warnings and then heavy bans if the behavior continues. As such the overwhelming majority of ahelps end with just a note or maybe a warning. This isnt because we are unwilling to ban people its because most just dont have a history of bad behavior. That being said theres definitely been more than a couple times where we have went "yo.... why havent we permad this nerd yet?". I certainly will not pretend we are above criticism.

 

Bad antagonism seems to be a problem on Aurorastation and I think it really needs to be dealt with either mechanically, with conversations with antagonists, or clarifications on the rules because it seems that the rules are never enforced.

 

I can completely understand why people could think this. There are significant issues with this statement though. The biggest one in my opinion is that we as staff can generally only react to a problem. We all have lives and other interests and just cannot sit around and observe everything that goes on in the round. Even when an issue does occur all we can really do is attempt to correct the behavior for the future. We cannot really undo the antag who shot up medbay for no reason. Outside of malicious grief we tend to just let the round continue as is. The reason for this is it becomes even more of a hassle when we try to retconn an event half the server witnessed. Suddenly everyone has to forget it and it disturbs the round flow way worse than if we had just left it.

Another thing to keep in mind is that while we are not omniscient we do have access to a great deal of information. During an ahelp we can examine attack logs, we can PM players and we can do our best to seperate the facts from the fancy. What may appear to be gank or "bad roleplay" from your perspective might end up being a carefully crafted machination by the rounds antagonist. We generally cannot even elaborate on the specifics other than "sorry but its legit THIS TIME" due to IC in OOC issues.

 

Another problem is that most times, if not always, the roleplay created by antagonists is exclusive to one department, and almost always it is security and command since they're the ones who handle that sort of thing. Medical and Engineering usually get the shaft and have to deal with the gameplay effects (Wounded security, damaged station) of an antagonist wreaking havoc on the station.

 

Yeah this is a good point. Unfortunately thats just kinda how the game works. I dont think its reasonably possible for us to force antagonists to be creative enough to involve a large portion of the station. You're lucky if you can involve one of them. This is a lot easier to do though if you are an extremely powerful antagonist. good wizards or ninjas can do a lot of stuff. Those roles are very rare for an individual player and they require you to "git gud" with the mechanics of them.

 

Selfishness in RP would just be doing chair RP with one single person, or having your actions only affect the roleplay of a few small members in a very small departmental bubble. Selfishness is super noticeable in one-antag rounds (Ninja/Wizard) or antag leader rounds (Rev/Loyalist/Cult/Merc/Raider) but less notable in other rounds with multiple, usually solo, antagonists such as traitor.

 

 

This one is a really complex issue. I have seen it happen hundreds and hundreds of times in my over two years of doing this job. Whenever an antag tries to focus on "more people" or "the whole crew" they almost always just end up being an awful peace antag or they do things that nobody ends up noticing. In short spreading a wide net just dilutes the antagonist stuff they would get up to. Antagonists must in some way act as an "opposing force". Antagonists must escalate properly and they must have a goal or a reason behind their murder and chaos. As long as those conditions are fufilled i dont really care what you do. I am generally super uncomfortable in telling people EXACTLY how to roleplay. "you need to interact with MORE people than you currently are" its already incredibly difficult to antag as it is.

Now that being said i can and DO encourage antagonists away from... lets say "less than healthy" gimmicks. so no please dont pretend to be station inspectors for the ten thousandth time and please dont play as your normal crewmember but with super powers. "i bullied this one dude" isnt really a satisfactory fufillment of the opposing force clause. With AOOC being a thing now you can talk amongst your team to think of a plan or a general goal and you can even ahelp for some guidance. The latter there admittedly has mixed success. I certainly am not the creative sort.

In short i would say that you have good points but all of them are giant and complex issues. None of them are as simple as "punish bad behavior" or "stop being selfish". I think we could definetly do things to encourage good behavior.

[alexpkeaton]

Being a decent antagonist is really hard.

Not just being a good antagonist, either, but even just a decent one, is really hard.

 

This cannot be understated and often gets lost in the pile of salt that often accompanies formulaic antag play.

I think some formulaic play is due to a simple concern:

What can I do to not get caught/killed early on?

Malf AI's slowplay. Wiz/Ninja's engage with only a focus group of a few people for the entire round. Cults act alone over communicating (openly or not). Heisters/mercs blitz attempting to catch security off-guard and remove them from the round.

A lot of it can be seen as a fear of validhunting on the part of security or crew. If you admit your antagness in any way, shape or form, there is the possibility that you will get robusted by a powergamertrying to get their valids. It is far more likely to happen on, say, Paradise Station, but you can get served as a valid salad just the same on Aurora. And admins can't turn back the clock and they typically won't rejuve you if you get robusted for bonkers reasons after making yourself vulnerable via your gimmick. They might sanction the idiot who powergamed, but your round is still over just the same. So, in formulaic and/or cautious antag play, I see a concern over someone spoiling the party and hedging one's bet, so to speak.

I think clear enforcement of powergaming and metagaming rules needs to happen to open up more creative antag play. Security needs to give antags more breathing room instead of trying to twist the regs to bring in antags for meta reasons. Non-security need to be dealt with for unrealistic antag hunting, and harshly.

Today a CT admitted being a vampire, it was a novel approach. I didn't see her become hostile and yet security was busting down the door to arrest her for... I'm not sure what, honestly. (I did not see what went on earlier in the round, so I might have missed an important cause of all this) If there was truly nothing to bring her in on, that would be where admins or mods should have stepped in to say, "dude, being a vampire isn't a crime, back off." Instead, sec came knocking and eventually was delivered a beatdown courtesy of the vampire's coworkers. Ironically, the vampire did not participate in the violence and instead treated injured security personnel and saved at least one from death. Yet, security never left her alone for the remainder of the round.

I think we need a "golden rule" for antag play. Treat other antags as you would want your own antag characters treated. Engaging RP. Realistic escalation. Benefit of the doubt. Give someone a chance to talk their way out of a situation and not use the speech bubble as your meta indicator to ambush them with your taser. Keep them in a round if at all possible. Return them to a round when at all possible. Speedy processing. Warnings for first offenses when possible. Fines for second offenses when possible. That is the sort of play that can drive creative antag storylines, but it takes buy-in from everyone.

[Scheveningen]

I think we need a "golden rule" for antag play. Treat other antags as you would want your own antag characters treated.

 

Antags don't deserve special treatment beyond what they deserve in-round based on what they've already done in the round to justify any sort of action.

I've always said that without a dedicated amount of individuals who are not only creative and entertaining to interact with to start, randomly picked antagonists always go to ruin because you cannot expect a mediocre player to get anything done, they will make critical mistakes and flop, forcing the round into extended whether that was the intention or not.

I would rather have antagonists that make the station their bitch round-after-round while still interacting to an interesting degree with the crew on a regular basis than having to deal with mediocre antagonists at all. I've honestly seen better antagonists out of organized event rounds rather than what we see currently on normal rounds.

[Rushodan]

I believe this is a possibly unpopular opinion - but why not re-add green text for antags? Give them an objective to work towards that is either optional or extremely vague on how the antag can approach it. Lore wise the organisation that send the antag to the station wouldn't just be like 'okay... do... /something/ illegal'. Would probably help with the rounds where an antag literally does... nothing.

Also peace-tags majority of the time make the round boring as fuck - in my opinion and the opinion of many people I have spoken with on the discord. Perhaps it needs to be clearly defined in the rules that as an antag you are there to spice up the round, cause conflicts for the crew to solve instead of finding your erp buddies in cargo or med and just chilling with them. I agree that sometimes a peace tag can be done well.... but that is rare and normally the round ends up being extended with a lot of the crew being disappointed.

[Jakers457]

One of the biggest issues I find with antags is different people demanding different amounts of roleplay before they die, or enough time to valid you while you're typing. Despite the lack of objectives, I find Aurora's way of antagging to be incredibly restrictive. I'm always worried about how loud or aggressive I go as an antag because I don't want to run into the issue of killing someone who'll get upset and ahelp me for not giving a b-movie style monologue so they might have a chance to whip out a gun and rub their johnnies over a valid kill. I agree with roleplaying and creating a story, but there's a different between your character acting in accordance to the situation and basically saying Omae Wa Mou Shindeiru.

[Scheveningen]

I will agree that peace antags are awful. I used to think otherwise but a slew of awful peace-antag gimmicks have changed my mind recently. Why ready for antag if you don't plan on antagonizing? I find that to be very strange of people to be doing.

[BurgerBB]

-garn's post-

 

It's a VERY complex issue that is very difficult to solve through simple babysitting, which is why I'm asking for suggestions because I honestly don't have a real solution to this problem. It's going to take the community to fix something like this because, yes, I agree that you can't just ban people for being a terrible roleplayer.

Asking admins to intervene is, I agree, too much because of your points provided. The only feasible and realistic solution I have in my head is some sort of way for players to self-moderate themselves, with some help from the admins/mods. I had an idea where players can rate antagonist's ability to play that specific antagonist, with separate ratings for skill and roleplay, and a comments section like how most games have a "report" button. It's the equivalent of a note system but for players to provide positive or negative feedback on an antagonist so admins can look at a player and go "Hey this guy is a terrible antagonist." or "Hey this guy is well-received when it comes to antagonism." especially when there is an adminhelp about an antagonist.

It's a lot of work coding wise, and it can be abused like any report system.

[NoahKirchner]

I'd really like to see team based antags, raiders and mercs in particular, have their rule of engagement slightly loosened. As it stands, shooting anybody is likely to lead to a full scale clusterfuck rather quickly, and as a result you don't see many merc gimmicks that go hostile (Or they're quickly shut down by security.) Dying is fun when it's part of a narrative, at least in my opinion, and I rarely see death on the Aurora that isn't over-zealous security officers trying to play hero.

When it comes to greentext incentives, those could perhaps be randomly generated from a button where you could pick one as opposed to being forced upon you. If I'm a ninja, for example, and I can't think of a gimmick - bam, steal the nuclear authentication disk, assassinate the HoS and steal something from the vault.

Furthermore, wizard really needs a way to escape confrontation that doesn't involve murder if they don't have jaunt or lichdom. After talking with Alberyk, I see that the ability for all wizards to Jaunt is a bad idea, but maybe giving teleport scrolls unlimited/greatly increased usages but a decent cooldown could work? Or giving them a teleport as opposed to jaunt with a cooldown or at the expense of all of your magic power, similar to the ninja's teleport.

To fix the rev issue of someone making an absolutely ridiculous announcement and fucking up the round could be remedied with a rev voting system when it comes to announcements. All head revs get to vote on whether or not a specific announcement is reasonable, and if yes outweighs no it gets sent, otherwise it gets denied. This would stop people from making announcements before a consensus was made, and if you give it to loyalists too, it could encourage stronger overall gimmicks which everyone is interested in.

All the solutions I've got for now.

[BurgerBB]

I've been playing with a bingo sheet I made and it's absoultely scary how much this bingo sheet fills up.

 

[BurgerBB]

I notice that every malfai round seems to be the same.

AI stealths itself and does literally nothing for 1 hour.

AI gets research levels in, starts shocking doors and blaming it on hackers/greytide/whatever

Crew can't say the obvious because muh immersion

AI goes full asshole at the 1 hour 45 minute mark

Shuttle is called

AI prevents people from going on the shuttle.

People get on regardless

We all kill ourselves OOCly

[LanceLynxx]

my 2 cents

starting antagbans nilli willy for bad antags will lead to simply a few players being antags, no one else will want to antag if the requirements are absurdly high

[BurgerBB]

I think there needs to be a concrete definition on what proper escalation of force actually is. I've seen mods, admins, and players defend shit-level antagonism because they felt they interacted enough with the crew. Just because an antag spent 2 hours interacting exclusively with command and security doesn't mean they're allowed to spend 10 seconds ganking someone who wasn't involved in your gimmick.

[Korinra]

Part of the problem is, if you use antag weapons/abilities, people seem to IMMEDIATELY know what you are for... some odd reason. So stealth becomes the best tactic. Know what makes for bad "RP"? Being silent. How many times does a person in a blue pointy hat show up and people start shouting about "Wizards" over the comms? Sorry but what the fuck is a wizard? If you see an antag, try describing what they're DOING.

"Hey there's some guy here with no ID. I swear to god it looked like he vanished!"

But even that is code for "Ninja/Wizard" and everyone goes to code red. What if the guy talking is just a loony bin?

The best round I've ever been in for an antag was a vampire round. I got caught by a vamp, and when I went to medical I described it as "I feel really weak for some reason, I think I overexerted myself moving heavy stuff". They kept asking questions that would LEAD to vampire (as they already determined it was blood loss), but I led them on with useless facts like, "Oh how did I overexert? I had to move a field generator, those things are huge and heavy". IC there's NO excuse for claiming vampire, so they just got frustrated, and asked me to leave. Meanwhile OOC I knew WHO the vampire was, and even got caught by her and her vampire friend a SECOND time, because ICly I had no clue. The best part was, she blinded me AFTER he wiped my memory. I started trying to plea with HIM that SHE was a monster, meanwhile knowing OOCly HE was a vampire too. The officer who was there also bought into it and acted SUPER confused, because logically speaking I looked crazed, but the terror was real enough to warrant suspicion during the code red. Meanwhile the male vampire played it off claiming "We ALL heard the voices, me included!", which just further confused the officer.

To me, a bad antag is someone who is so blatantly the bad guy and so vocal about it, that the crew can't deny he's the bad guy, and manage to capture him in like 10 minutes, or someone who ends up doing NOTHING as an antag. A good antag is stealthy long enough to secure the victory THEY need, then either escape, or blend into the crowd in the shuttle (or take the shuttle alone). A good antag doesn't need to RP with everyone, but should RP when appropriate. Here's a fun thing for an antag to try. Got someone captured? Tell them your whole plan before killing them. Do a 'bad guy' monologue, ESPECIALLY if it's the CSI/HOS/Detective you've got. "You were so close to finding me, Mr. Anderson, but you made a critical mistake. You thought I didn't expect you to get this close!" That would be a hilariously 70's style RP, but to get to that point would nearly be luck. Plus with the invention of suit sensors, it's hard to RP like this, because before you could finish, Medical is already reporting to Security where their missing Detective is. This is why it's easier to just capture/kill, then hide the body and move on.

The best I've ever done for RP as an antag isn't really great, but it offered closure. I was tasked with taking someone's leg off. I stun-penned them, dragged them into maintenance. Then I took off his headset. I tied him with cable cords and said, "Sorry mate, you're parents owe someone very powerful a lot of money... so don't take this personal right?" I chopped off his leg, then welded him in a cabinet. I ditched my gloves and changed uniforms, careful to destroy the evidence by incinerating it, thinking that the only way to find me would be if someone thought to check the incinerator, and went back to my work. I mean, I did my goal, I TRIED to RP, but because no one ever found me to be the criminal in question, there was no more RP I could bring to the round. I did my job fairly early on, and the rest of the round felt like Extended. That's kind of why Autotraitor at least helps by ADDING more RP scenarios, but each one might only involve one specific person. There's not really a way to make MOST roles involve big groups.

[Scheveningen]

giving a cadet a gun is fine. that's one more gun an antag has to contend with. get gud.

[ReynTheLord]

The problem isn't just antags. As someone who plays security a lot, I see the issue as a cycle. Antag goes in deciding to roleplay and play High RP. Someone decides to disregard RP and rush the andag and robust them. Antags fear this might happen again or happen to them. Security decides not to do that. Next round, antags act either super cautiously or super aggressively out of fear of validhunters coming in and fucking up their day because "lul valids", And either delays round, causing people to want to hunt out antags out of boredom, or goes in fucking guns ablazing, causing people to want to validhunt to avoid being killed. Move onto next person who wants to RP as antag, and the cycle likely repeats. Even if there's nobody too validhunty on, an antag might gun down everyone, and someone might start being validhunty. It's a problem on both sides.

Hell, a good lot of sec players have urges to validhunt, As seen as my time pretending to be a biesel government inspector. Most of them, in LOOC, At least if I remember correctly, said something along the lines of "I'ts so fucking hard to not shoot you right here, right now", along other things. Additionally, I've had an experience when, After trying to RP as vampire, and succing once and fucking up, The rest of the officers arrested me, of course. I was brought to medical eventually, for some reason, to examine my eyes and see why they were flashing. Meanwhile, the fucking psychiatrist was trying to straightjacket and muzzle me and haul me off to his office for being insane, while he clearly saw the flashy bs and saw the scans were clean. I had to flash him again and again to keep him off of me. He eventually shot me with a syringe dart and got arrested, but at that point, security decided to hand me over to medical, where I got my eyes cut out. FYI, the person I succed? not dead, perfectly fine. Assault at most. They decided, instead of blindfolding me, or just cuffing me normally, to have medical cut out my fucking eyes. Yep. They cut out my eyes. And I spent a chunk of the round near dead, eyeless, and in cuffs. At round end, I think I was still arrested, dead, or left out of stress. All "Valid'. Frustrating as hell.

[Asheram]

I personally feel that Antagonists and High-RP just doesn't work very well.

The ideal antagonist interacts as much as possible with the crew, ensures that as many as possible are involved, all while being interesting. What they can't do is make sense in an HRP way.

The majority of the antagonist roles are based around stealth, and attempting to do anything above is to intentionally break stealth.

[Itanimulli]

Question. If antags being so 'good' is the issue, what is the deal with all the people vehemently screeching "wE d0n'T N3Ed ANtaGs t0 RP!"?

[Coalf]

Ok let's go

The Merc Problem

I've talked about this before, even with you in the chat but I really don't remember what was said so sorry if I'll just repeat my arguments but I said it and I'll say it again, there is a lack of variety and authority.

Variety, what do I mean by that? Well having the privelege of being an admin, I see the Ckey behind every OOC/AOOC message and I have been seeing the same Ckeys over and over again.

Now this isn't an issue, humans work on trial and error and so they should logically get better, however it seems this evolutionary trait has failed recently as I see the mercenaries and Raiders attemping the same thing over and over and over again, particurarly your second scenario where the Intruders think that hostages are some kind of special "Gib me nuke" token when in reality the stupider you make demands the closer the baton. But why is that?

Lack of Authority, now again what do I mean by that? Well the issue is, there is nobody to take command.

The Mercenaries and Raiders may be specialized super teams ICly but the fact is there is nobody to tell them "DO X".

AOOC has lessened this a bit but the fact is every mercenary is his own Boss, this leads to every mercenary wanting to do their own thing resulting in them doing nothing at all but shallow-mellow hostage taking or station shooting tactics they usually execute as something more complicated would lead to clash of opinions. Tell me, how many times have you seen 3-4 Intruders co-operate and the Vox takes a bike and flies off to do something on his own? Or 2 intruders holding a hostage, 1 Intruder falling down every hole he can find on the asteroid and 2 of them surrendering as soon as they meet crew?

The Intruder Solution

A Mercenary Leader and a Pirate Captain, be it completely an RP role with a special name or perhaps an in-round elected player by mercenaries and raiders, I seriously think we need this.

Yes sure, we can get a "Shitty Pirate Captain" but in essence we can get a normal "Shitty Captain", perhaps this could be restricted to Head Whitelist players? I'll leave that up to the populus, but I truly believe the main issue of Intruder gamemodes is direction and command.

 

The Malf Problem

Malfunction is a tough nut to crack and I think that is due to the nature of the AI itself.

Let us say you fuck up as a Mercenary, perhaps you breached the wrong neighbourhood, perhaps one of your idiots fell into a crater, perhaps your master card was revoked whatever. What do you do? You run away.

Traitor? Run away and hide, ling the same, vampire the same, wizard? Ninja? everyone? Run and Hide.

AI can't do that, once AI starts going public it has two choices. Do or Die.

This leads to AI's being forced into absolute silence and "Playing dead" OR start shit and get absolutely destroyed 20 minutes into the round as it takes on engineer with an emitter.

The issue is there is also one goal to work towards, Nuke, no alternative. Do you not work towards nuke? Someone is going to appear and Ion you in the middle of your dictatorship RP as your borgs get flashed or blown with the press of a single button.

The Malf Solution

Borg console can no longer lockdown malfed cyborgs, HOWEVER they will still RECEIVE the message that they receive the lockdown command, this would allow borgs to "Pretend" to be locked down and thus not threaten their stealthing.

Blowing borgs should not be instant, give it a 5 minute timer where the console "Attempts to re-send command" during which an AI or borg can attempt to locate and destroy the console or console user. This keeps player creativity in regards to defeating the AI and at the same time gives borgs a fighting chance as honestly borgs are the alpha and omega of a good AI as they're essentialy its hands.

Two, Camera's become (almost) undestructable. Everyone can smack a camera and the amount of static fucks the AI, thus I propse the cameras itself DO de-activate, HOWEVER instead of providing a "static" mesh, they provide a welding mask mesh OR only give a 2-4 tile view range with the posibility of the AI to research a power to re-activate these destroyed cameras.

We keep the reason to why destroying cameras is good but don't completely curb the AI with it.

Lastly there I think needs to be a way to integrate the crew without having to slaughter them or borg them in my opinion. I think we could take an inspiration from Blob and Shodan, where perhaps if an AI absorbs enough data it slowly starts changing tiles and items around itself, weaving them with cabling providing certain boosts or abilities.

 

The Ninja/Wizard Problem

This isn't the same problem, the issue of Ninja is its weakness while the issue of Wizard is its vurnerability.

"But Coalf! Aren't those the same?" No

The thing is, Ninja himself is a very, very weak antagonist who relies on ambush tactics, traps and guerilla warfare, this for some reason is frowned upon by the community, mostly security players who get baited and outsmarted and end up floating in space belly side up. It has resulted in ninja's either being hated for being "jumpy bois with no interaction", which has led to people trying to play ninja like John Rambo and promptly getting annihilated by bullets.

On the other hand a Wizard HAS tools to easily shit on security, Fireball, Flesh to Stone, Magic Missile, Blind, Smoke, Runic Blade, Mutate, Drain Life, Phylanctery, BEAR GOD, Staff of Force, Staff of Change etc.

The issue is in his exposure, when a wizard appears on station and publicly starts doing some kind of tactic/gimmick/event idea, he is exposed FULLY to the whims of the crew.

One person decides they don't like your gimmick? All it takes for them is to punch you ONCE and you're the one going to get brigged. Someone doesn't like you? Time for them to agitate you the whole round by standing behind you and whispering insults. Have you moved into a department accidentaly? Woop Woop that's the sound of da police.

Most wizard rounds end by the wizard surrounded talking when suddenly someone fires a shot and the wizard is promptly melted by laser fire, if the wizard succeeds in escaping it is usually compromised of jaunting around hoping the shrapnel won't kill you.

The Wizard Ninja Solution

Break them, I mean make them completely overpowered, I cannot really think of any other solution besides "ADD MORE NINJAS". Guns are usually thrice as lethal as any spell the wizard can muster with the exception of Flesh To Stone which is the fucking strong.

If we absolutely bust them, I'm guessing more players will take an "antagonist" approach instead of "peaceantag" approach. Frankly I have no idea how to fix this one, it seems fundamentaly reliant on player leeway.

 

The Rev/Loyalist Issue

This is less of a problem with the gamemode and more of a problem with the playerbase not really caring what is happening to their character, the trick to this is to make an announcement that makes the player angry and not just a character.

For example the "No Shoes or Suits" CC command, which at first seemed innocent enough however it turned into literal gang-fights as roving Mafia groups beat up and took money from people who wore shoes, The "Women Get No Rights" round where legitimately the ENTIRE STATION was up in arms and fighting each other, the "Everything is Privatized" round where every department was a private entity and could buy other departments in which robotics became so beefed up with personnel they acquired through private means that they steamrolled security.

Again, something I just don't know how to fix, the issue in this gamemode is that people are uncreative or don't really have a good idea or that perhaps people just don't care about the subject presented. I don't think this is fixable through mechanical changes.

The Rev/Loy Solution

I don't know, perhaps giving Rev/Loy leaders limited Traitor Uplinks so they can attain weapons, suitcases of money or hacking tools to further their propaganda? That could help I think.

Maybe make it so that captain himself is simply un-loyable to prevent this "Revolution vs Security, Station, Command, Loyalist" thing that happens almost every rev round, since people simply have no reason to join the revs unless specifically associating with command takes away your benefits or if the CC announcement isn't really about money or your job but about something more deeper, more rooted.

 

 

Traitor

I agree, traitor is excellent mostly due to the fact it is impossible to actually meta. It makes use of IC relationships established previous rounds and has a wide array of tools allowing gameplay.

Solution to Traitor

I think that the "Voice Changer" should frankly be changed to "Cloaking Field Generator" ala. lifeweb, it is much too easy to identify people just by their clothes alone.

 

The Cult Issue

Again I think cult suffers from the same issue as Mercs, no authority role.

With every cultist being a de-facto equal, these rounds usually end up a fuck-fest with every cultist doing their own thing as you said alone because they either don't want communicate with others or think they're the leader and that they're saving the cult.

It usually ends up with whoever can summon the most Manifested Ghosts becoming the de-facto leader as they're a weapon factory.

Further issue is our playerbase, mainly people refusing to go along with the gamemode.

"You have no choice! Either you join or die!"

Yes, yes correct that is how Rev works too, except the revs won't murder you instantly just later. Yes that is how THRALL works on Vampire, a gamemode that I found is POPULAR amongst the people who hate cult for the same reasons they love vampire, that is getting them involved.

People spamming resist on runes forever until they die, ghosting from constructs instead of leaving their corpse, plain old executing the suspected cultists instead of imprisoning them all of these are things that happen, and it is quite a vicious cycle. Let me demonstrated.

Newbie joins cult, attempts gimmick > Gimmick instantly shut down due to fear of murdercult > Newbie forced to go murdercult in order to not get shut down > People complain about murdercult and decide to not go along with gimmick > Newbie joins cult...

The Cult Solution

Just like Mercenaries and Raiders I propose that cult gets "Head Cultist/s" who gain certain advantages above others to properly direct and center the aim of cult as a whole. As unlike Rev there is no clear destinction who is "Head Rev" and who is just "Rev". So if you see a clear "Head Cultist" you'll know EXACTLY who to go to, to ask for advice or goals of the cult. And perhaps he could offer bonuses so the other cultists would be encouraged to seek him out and meet up instead of just using the communicate rune once and doing whatever.

 

 

The Changeling Issue

Changeling is a bad HRP gamemode, why?

Because unlike every other antagonist, changeling ENCOURAGES players to gank and silently murder other players in order to unlock more powers. This results in unneeded salt, flash+succ's, worldess murders in maintenance and zero escalation.

Sure you say "Just moderate lings!", but when we do that and lings attempt to roleplay and give leeway, the victims take advantage of it, the victims don't want to get silently murdered and never rediscovered so they'll go out of their way to inconvinience and shut down the ling as fast as possible.

The Changeling Solution

The final solution, remove it.

 

The Vampire Issue

Nothing to say about this, this is how it goes honestly. Again people being uncreative and not thinking ahead not having a clear cut goal besides "Get blood", just like changeling with "Get Genomes", except Vampires generates less salt due to how open ended it can be compared to ling.

The Vampire Solution

Again this has to do with player creativity and general mindset. Can't really offer anything up.

 

1) Garn adressed this, we DO talk to people. Usually or atleast in majority of cases it's fine for us to say "Hey guys remember you're antagonists" in AOOC for them to get the hint and I have yet to see a "paceantag", the worst I see is antags that are either way too good and never get discovered or antags who are afraid of going active. Perhaps we should consider talking to people about that.

2) You're asking a bunch of biased and emotionally involved people to evaluate someone who has actively been sabotaging their jobs/lives, this would curb experimentation even more or just result in everyone being downdooted to oblivion.

3) Skull is very much against just removing things and wizards usually ends up being the favorite of quite a few people.

4) This I agree on fully, changeling had no business being around as long as it has.

[Azande]

or antags who are afraid of going active. Perhaps we should consider talking to people about that.

 

Maybe if antags didn't have risk facing bwoinks over every single action, antags would be more apt to going loud. I've seen antags warned for beheading people or making their body unrecoverable, whereas other antags go on mass-murders and throw corpses into space and don't have a word said to them (possible staff favoritism here? *gasps in spanish!*)

I'm not going to kill someone if they're going to get cloned. It defeats the purpose of me going out of my way to risk arrest and HuT if I'm not allowed to remove them outright.

When I'm told that as Malf AI, I'm not allowed to blow up the people in departures or vent them, that are literally taking an escape shuttle away from me - I'm not going to want to be a Malf AI anymore.

I'm not going to target someone if I'm going to have to spend the next ten minutes explaining to a moderator why it's reasonable to slit someone's throat when you grabbed them, told them not to say a word, and then they proceeded to scream your exact location and 'HELP SECURITY' completely ignoring you , or then being forced to recount the exact reasoning and methods of your last three murders (despite all three being incredibly roleplay focused, having the player's permission to remove them first in LOOC, and none of them having any issues with their deaths) - it's just not worth the time or energy to actually put effort into antagonism.

Perhaps the community needs to start talking to the staff about how the rules are enforced disproportionately, in-cohesively, and sometimes outright arbitrarily. It's time for staff to sit down, and have a lengthy discussion on what deserves what kind of punishment, what rules incur which punishments, etc. When one admin warns a cultist for beheading a few people, but another tells me in an ahelp that my random, without interaction or roleplay, sprint up and run off beheading and then the beheading of various other's is 'valid', there's an issue in how rules are enforced.

[Korinra]

I'll agree with Azande to a small degree. I don't see the favoritism myself but that might be because I almost NEVER antag. The bottom line is, yes there should be a set and clear "this is ok and that isn't" mindset for rules.

Death: Is it ok/reasonable to kill a character? I think it should be with no conditions. An antag should not have to worry about being antagonistic.

Killing people on a shuttle: I don't really care about this one, because the round is ENDING. If you REALLY care at that point, I have to wonder why. Once the shuttle is called, the round WILL end in 15 minutes, whether you live or die.

Atmos/Fire/Etc...: If you REALLY want to try to kill the entire crew, and drain all the oxygen on the station... well there are hazard O2 lockers, there are engineers willing to fix it, there is a surplus of oxygen tanks (that honestly SHOULD spawn full). If people want to hide and turn on internals in an emergency EVA suit, they can survive. That being said, I'm a firm believer that every office should have O2 lockers IN them based on how many people should be in that office maximum.

Why do I think it's OK to do all this without high RP? Because Security can come in guns blazing and THEY don't get bwoinked for stunning/capturing the Antag or even killing them if need be. Security is "just doing their job", but wasn't the antag also? I think it's a really snowflaky attitude to say you 'shouldn't be killed' by an antag. If you get killed by a coworker who wasn't an antag, YES Ahelp it. The admins SHOULD be watching out for needless violence that has no good RP behind it, but the fact is, killing as an antag HAS an excuse. Antags gotta antag!

It would be nice, if for a week, antags were allowed to do ANYTHING they wanted without repercussion. I'm not saying that is the BEST way it should be, but at least for that week, we'd be able to see DEFINITIVELY, how that changes the game. THEN rules could be set to determine what constitutes TOO far. They should, for that week, be encouraged to be as crazy as they want! Let's just see how that molds the game, so we know where the real lines are.

[Sebbe]

*snip*

Why do I think it's OK to do all this without high RP? Because Security can come in guns blazing and THEY don't get bwoinked for stunning/capturing the Antag or even killing them if need be. Security is "just doing their job", but wasn't the antag also? I think it's a really snowflaky attitude to say you 'shouldn't be killed' by an antag. If you get killed by a coworker who wasn't an antag, YES Ahelp it. The admins SHOULD be watching out for needless violence that has no good RP behind it, but the fact is, killing as an antag HAS an excuse. Antags gotta antag!

It would be nice, if for a week, antags were allowed to do ANYTHING they wanted without repercussion. I'm not saying that is the BEST way it should be, but at least for that week, we'd be able to see DEFINITIVELY, how that changes the game. THEN rules could be set to determine what constitutes TOO far. They should, for that week, be encouraged to be as crazy as they want! Let's just see how that molds the game, so we know where the real lines are.

 

I agree with this last part, hell Aurora is even known for being snowflaky when it comes to what antags can and can't do. It would be interesting to have a week where antags can go all out and see how it goes from there.

I also think we should start pulling in the reigns on security, I try my best when I play inround as sec but it's hard to do when it feels like everyone that play sec officers have the hugest hard-on for validing everything. It irks me when sec are the first on location when atmos alerts are called, it should not be this way.

[Korinra]

Going to agree with Sebbe on this. If we're going to say Antags need certain rules, then why don't Security have to follow the rules too?

Bottom line is, Security is WAAAAAY to big for it's britches these days. Officers are glorified mall cops, but they run around guns blaring with no repercussions. Just today I ghosted a round where I joined in as a posibrain. Officers suddenly showed up, fired three rounds into the roboticist, and THEN said "STOP!". OK yeah... you RPed I guess... but really? You fired THREE TIMES before saying a word, and the roboticist didn't even MOVE! But if an antag did that it's BWOINK!

[Coalf]

Time to chop.

Maybe if antags didn't have risk facing bwoinks over every single action, antags would be more apt to going loud. I've seen antags warned for beheading people or making their body unrecoverable

Funny story actually, I do remember having an extensive talk with OP of this thread, it was I believe regarding a ninja who murdered people and hid them in lockers which we didn't bwoink him for.

Further I do believe Garn has said MULTIPLE times while yes it is a bit of a weenie move we've never bwoinked anyone for hiding a body. Or atleast I do not remember that happening these past 9 months.

Furthermore we can't ignore ahelps, I know perhaps some people would love that but when someone ahelps about being possibly ganked it is our job to take it seriously and investigate every possible option, this includes interviewing the antagonist himself.

Sure we could just ignore it and go "Well he's just whinning" but then people would whinge about that too.

 

whereas other antags go on mass-murders and throw corpses into space and don't have a word said to them (possible staff favoritism here? *gasps in spanish!*)

https://forums.aurorastation.org/viewforum.php?f=36

 

I'm not going to kill someone if they're going to get cloned. It defeats the purpose of me going out of my way to risk arrest and HuT if I'm not allowed to remove them outright.

I agree with this, every single one of my characters has been set to HuT and I have posted MULTIPLE times that I fully support removing cloning as a mechanic and instead giving medical more ways to bring people back from the brink of death and not total death.

But we have this discussion almost every year and it never lead to anything, here is hoping for this year.

 

When I'm told that as Malf AI, I'm not allowed to blow up the people in departures or vent them, that are literally taking an escape shuttle away from me - I'm not going to want to be a Malf AI anymore.

Was this a Transfer or an Emergency shuttle?

If this was a transfer shuttle, it means players are bored, your gimmick was uninteresting and they wanted to leave, there is no reason for you to force them to stay in the round outside of your own selfish reasons.

If this however was an ESCAPE shuttle, well thankfuly that is included in the rules.

 

So yes, if there was prior proper escalation and the station was up in arms already you are allowed to stop them from boarding the shuttle that way.

 

I'm not going to target someone if I'm going to have to spend the next ten minutes explaining to a moderator why it's reasonable to slit someone's throat when you grabbed them, told them not to say a word, and then they proceeded to scream your exact location and 'HELP SECURITY' completely ignoring you , or then being forced to recount the exact reasoning and methods of your last three murders (despite all three being incredibly roleplay focused, having the player's permission to remove them first in LOOC, and none of them having any issues with their deaths) - it's just not worth the time or energy to actually put effort into antagonism.

Again we could ignore that ahelp, we could shorten our investigations, we could just stop interviewing every side of the argument, we could perhaps just press "close" on any ahelp that features a death by antagonist so we don't disturb him in his gameplay, indeed we could.

But we don't, we look at logs, we look at VV, we interview the victim, we interview the antagonist, we interview the possible observers or witnesses. This is how proper investigations work and the reason we ask instantly one the place is because we have to get a fresh picture, if we always asked at the end of the round you're even LESS likely to remember the events properly and it's much harder to differenciate lying from just misremembering.

 

Perhaps the community needs to start talking to the staff about how the rules are enforced disproportionately, in-cohesively, and sometimes outright arbitrarily. It's time for staff to sit down, and have a lengthy discussion on what deserves what kind of punishment, what rules incur which punishments, etc. When one admin warns a cultist for beheading a few people, but another tells me in an ahelp that my random, without interaction or roleplay, sprint up and run off beheading and then the beheading of various other's is 'valid', there's an issue in how rules are enforced.

When one admin warns a cultist for beheading a few people, but another tells me in an ahelp that my random, without interaction or roleplay, sprint up and run off beheading and then the beheading of various other's is 'valid', there's an issue in how rules are enforced.

(Have you considered that you yourself are biased towards the issue because of your personal involvement? *gasps in catalonian*)

Jokes aside, you don't have Logs, you don't have the story of every party on station, you don't have AOOC, you don't have View Variables, compared to an Administrator or Moderator your view is extremely limited. If you disagree with the ruling you are free to bring it up in staff complaints.

To end that, every issue is case by case. Not everything fits in a box, if it did Skull would have replaced us with a bot already. Again if you think a moderator or an administrator is not doing his job properly we have forums for it.

 

I'll agree with Azande to a small degree. I don't see the favoritism myself but that might be because I almost NEVER antag. The bottom line is, yes there should be a set and clear "this is ok and that isn't" mindset for rules.

Again, every issue is unique, sure we could fit everyone in a box but hey people would complain about that too so I'd rather handle people on case by case basis, this way we can tailor the server to individuals and their niches instead of giving everyone a checkbox of things they're supposed to do before properly escalating like some kind of a strange ritual. If someone doesn't know how to escalate without a special checkbox, well perhaps they shouldn't be here.

 

Death: Is it ok/reasonable to kill a character? I think it should be with no conditions. An antag should not have to worry about being antagonistic.

Disagree, this server has never been about how much shit the antag can cause but how well he can entertain himself and his victims. Just going ME AM BINGO BANGO is reserved for other servers, not this one.

Killing people on a shuttle: I don't really care about this one, because the round is ENDING. If you REALLY care at that point, I have to wonder why. Once the shuttle is called, the round WILL end in 15 minutes, whether you live or die.

Because this gives people the freedom of just waiting for 2 hours and then shitting on everyone in escape, this isn't fun for anyone except the single antagonist.

Atmos/Fire/Etc...: If you REALLY want to try to kill the entire crew, and drain all the oxygen on the station... well there are hazard O2 lockers, there are engineers willing to fix it, there is a surplus of oxygen tanks (that honestly SHOULD spawn full). If people want to hide and turn on internals in an emergency EVA suit, they can survive. That being said, I'm a firm believer that every office should have O2 lockers IN them based on how many people should be in that office maximum.

 

You can do that if you have a good reason.

Why do I think it's OK to do all this without high RP? Because Security can come in guns blazing and THEY don't get bwoinked for stunning/capturing the Antag or even killing them if need be. Security is "just doing their job", but wasn't the antag also? I think it's a really snowflaky attitude to say you 'shouldn't be killed' by an antag. If you get killed by a coworker who wasn't an antag, YES Ahelp it. The admins SHOULD be watching out for needless violence that has no good RP behind it, but the fact is, killing as an antag HAS an excuse. Antags gotta antag!

Security is a RESPONSIVE ELEMENT, they cannot fucking arrest you without the antag ALREADY DOING SOMETHING ANTAGGY AND BREAKING THE STATION REGULATIONS.

It would be nice, if for a week, antags were allowed to do ANYTHING they wanted without repercussion. I'm not saying that is the BEST way it should be, but at least for that week, we'd be able to see DEFINITIVELY, how that changes the game. THEN rules could be set to determine what constitutes TOO far. They should, for that week, be encouraged to be as crazy as they want! Let's just see how that molds the game, so we know where the real lines are.

I agree with this last part, hell Aurora is even known for being snowflaky when it comes to what antags can and can't do. It would be interesting to have a week where antags can go all out and see how it goes from there.

I also think we should start pulling in the reigns on security, I try my best when I play inround as sec but it's hard to do when it feels like everyone that play sec officers have the hugest hard-on for validing everything. It irks me when sec are the first on location when atmos alerts are called, it should not be this way.

 

"My solution to this problem on an HRP server is that antags should be allowed to act as LRP as they want but nobody else."

This is hippocritical, you're criticizing security for acting too LRP and Validhunting and then in the same breath you say that antags should be allowed to act that way but security shouldn't.

Also we do have reigns on security, it's called Heads, you see we like to let players deal with their issues instead of needlesly stepping in and punching down on them.

You have ahelps, you have character complaints, you have IR's, you have staff complaints, you yourselves can put feedback on others heads or report to us that heads aren't acting properly and their head whitelists should be stripped.

None of this has happened, instead we always get informed through some third party ranposting in discord or Forum and whenever we ask for specific names and situations we suddenly get the "Oh I don't remember, I don't know, It was so long agoooooo"

If you want to solve a problem you need to put effort into solving it instead of throwing your opinions in unreletead threads.