[3 Dismissals - Bin 10MAY2018] Make dying suck more

[Bauser]

It has been brought to my attention that dying is a cheap event in Space Station 13. We have an easy pipeline for turning corpses back into productive employees, even if there are some circumstantial roadblocks that make it inconvenient or (practically at random) impossible. I contend that this approach is perfectly suitable for a classic game of Space Station 13 but that it is not well-suited for Aurora, owing to our culture of heavy roleplay.

The rationale

Dying, in the first place, is usually a pretty involved process. If you get beaten, you can put on some bandages, if you get burned, you can use some ointment, get poisoned, take medicine, bleed profusely, eat some food or get an IV, get your hand electrocuted to ashes, have surgery, get shot, get over it, etc.... It takes some doing to die. And yet, people are doing it all the time. True, it's generally not their first choice - pirates and changelings and bombs like to make it happen more often than not - but it's obvious that a player's natural approach is to act cavalier in the face of death, simply because it is cheap. We often think we won't die, we often think we will be brought back, and we always know that none of it will matter in two hours anyway. All of these things work together to create a framework where people just aren't very afraid of being dead.

Owning to Aurora's culture, this hasn't been a huge problem. Players have some restraint. Unfortunately, just because it's not a huge problem, doesn't mean there's no problem at all. My question is: why rely on the hope of that restraint when the problem can be solved mechanically?

 

The suggestion

Make ghosting irreversible. If you leave your corpse to observe the round, you lose the opportunity to re-enter that corpse to be cloned. Effectively, the decision to become a ghost would be sacrificing your later involvement in the round in exchange for the privilege of observing.

Some people have told me that this sucks, and that being dead inside a corpse that can't see or hear anything would not be fun. To this I say: that's the idea. The goal of enacting this change would be to make players more cautious about dying, mechanically enforcing a rule of roleplay that already exists in theory, but not always in practice. It would have the added benefit of completely preventing the abuse of meta knowledge gained from ghosting.

In short: it's a game, so when you die, it should feel like game-over.

[AmoryBlaine]

It sucks enough. You already have to do the whole cloning process with the brain damage and the cryo, and the shrink. Or you can wait 20 minutes to respawn as a new character.

[Itanimulli]

Eh-no.

Sure, make some drawbacks to being revived. But I don't want to sit in a dead body all round. That's unfun. You can't see or hear stuff. You're no-longer invested the round at all. It's like getting emp'd as a borg, and then tossed into space. There is little-to-no rp value to be had in being a rock.

The current death mechanic works fine, and the only people who really go nuts in the face of danger are the ones who think they have a chance. IMO afterdeath drawbacks would be better.

And what about all the dead shaft miners? People who die to carp gangbangs going eva? Accidental deaths? Workplace incidents? I can't agree with this, because taht leaves out the other 30 or so percent of deaths that occur outside of antagbuse. What if a d e a d l y v i r u s impacts the station? Someone forgets the shields? Someone is KO'd during a radiation event?

-1 for so many reasons.

[Bauser]

@ AmoryBlaine

Brain damage was added for the same reason, to make death more serious, right? If there existed a baseline punishment for dying to always be awful, the need for randomized annoyances like that would be gone. We could do away with brain damage. We could speed up the cloning process, since the bad part of dying becomes the wait until cloning, rather than the wait during. This change doesn't have to be made by itself; I imagine it would demand tweaking of other mechanics like that.

@ Itanimulli

 

Sure, make some drawbacks to being revived. But I don't want to sit in a dead body all round. That's unfun. You can't see or hear stuff. You're no-longer invested the round at all.

Then ghost. That's the point of 'not being invested in the round anymore,' you forfeit your involvement in it and enjoy spectating.

And what about all the dead shaft miners?

Clone them. They will quickly learn to be careful when mining.

People who die to carp gangbangs going eva?

Clone them. They will quickly learn to be aware of dangers in space.

Accidental deaths? Workplace incidents?

Clone them. They will quickly learn to employ precautions against accidents (not putting themselves in the position where it could happen) and be more aware of the dangers of their work.

What if a d e a d l y v i r u s impacts the station?

Clone them. They will quickly learn to practice hygiene and use internals in the event of an outbreak.

Someone forgets the shields?

Clone them. They will quickly learn to care about the shields enough to hold the engineers accountable for them.

Someone is KO'd during a radiation event?

Clone them. They will quickly learn why they should respect the alert announcement instead of assuming it's a sensor glitch.

In all of these situations, making death less fun incentivizes the player to act more as a person would realistically act in the face of dangers.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

You are presupposing that all deaths are the result of hubris worthy of punishing the arrogant player for. A lot of deaths are accidents or are already frustrating. Frustrating the player even more is a fast track to losing players.

[Bauser]

Well, what kind of accident isn't preventable in-game? Workplace accidents like opening the phoron canister without a tank attached, miners falling into holes, scientists getting eaten by slimes, chemists mixing the wrong stuff... All the "accidental" deaths I can think of require the player to enact their death - in essence, meaning it really is for a lack of caution. The only accident scenarios I see that don't require the player's input would be like... getting hit with a meteor or having carps spawn on top of you, both of which are events that are forewarned by announcements.

These are deaths we see every other round or so, and the idea is that they are deaths we really, really can avoid if we just teach people to actually be afraid of them. So it's true that these deaths are frustrating, but they're clearly not frustrating enough for people to actually do what they'd realistically do to avoid them. So rather than making the deaths less frustrating, my goal with this change is to make those deaths less common.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

Last night I was walking into the trash compactor and a vampire wordlessly ran in after me and shoved me a z-level down.

A week ago I got stung by a bee walking down the hallway and instantly died because it was genetically altered by xenobotany.

That same week I fell down a hole on the asteroid and bled out.

[Bauser]

Two of those aren't just an accident. First is a poorly-roleplayed malicious act by an antagonist (the sort of thing that warrants an ahelp), the second is a player deciding to make a death bee and failing to secure it (... the sort of thingt hat warrants an ahelp), and the third one is exactly the kind of accident that can be avoided by taking precautions. So the only death that qualifies (I.E. the only death that belongs in our gameplay instead of being an example of rule-breaking) is the one that you performed all by yourself...

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

I still died each time. Admins dont usually rejuv. You want to punish me for each one anyway.

At that point id be frustrated and play on another server.

[Bauser]

The change does not prevent you from being cloned, nor does it prevent you from ghosting. All it does is make you choose between them, because it doesn't make mechanical sense to have unrestricted access to both. It's not as severe a punishment as you imply. No, waiting in a deaf body isn't particularly fun, but nobody's making you wait in that body. If you want to give up the ghost, go ahead. It would just make your decision to leave the round as final as it deserves to be.

[Bauser]

Sometimes I wonder if people who make these kinds of dumb suggestions actually play the game other than just sitting in the bar or medbay lobby chatting all round.

Sometimes I wonder if the people who say these dumb kinds of sentences think talking to people in the medbay lobby isn't playing the game. You'd have to be really detached from your characters and uninterested in RP if your only thought when you die is "gotta get that respawn." Your approach is more in line with someone who treats the game like a shooter or deathmatch, and I don't think that's what we're going for, broadly speaking.

admin note: no personal insults allowed

[Kaed]

The change does not prevent you from being cloned, nor does it prevent you from ghosting. All it does is make you choose between them, because it doesn't make mechanical sense to have unrestricted access to both.

 

Come on, let's be clear here. This isn't a problem with game mechanics making sense, this is a problem with you feeling they aren't restrictive enough. From a gameplay standpoint it makes plenty of sense. You're tied to your body when you are alive because you are using it. Once you are dead, it's a husk that has no particular hold on you.

Now, rude as Munks is being, he makes a few solid points here. You clearly seem to be a little disconnected from the general viewpoints of the playerbase. Many of us feel that dying is already a sufficient punishment in this game. We are resistant to making it even harder on us.

I get that you think death isn't being treated with enough gravity, but if you want it to be deeper and more meaningful, this is not the way to do it. Right now, death is what it is because it is interactive. Every change we've made to the process of death and coming back has contributed something to 'shit people can do and have fun with.' Cloning defects and traumas can be frustrating, but the key point is they are something you WORK AROUND, they encourage roleplay and people interacting with their byond client and other players.

Similarly, being able to leave your body with ease posthumously gives you the chance to watch the chaos, shoot the shit with other ghosts, whine about how you died with insufficient rp, and so on.

What you are asking is for people to give all that up and just stay in a deaf, blind body that can't do any of that for an indeterminate amount of time, because 'death sucks, lol, if you don't like it eat shit or leave'. This is neither fun nor interactive, and if a new game mechanic you are proposing is going to encourage people to just afk for a snack or minimize the byond client and check back every ten minutes or so to see if they're alive again, this is not a good game mechanic.

You need to give people something in exchange for taking away their ability to participate in any kind of activity in game, rather than telling them to just 'deal with it, too bad'. A minigame, the ability to do something else for a bit while they're waiting to be cloned, anything.

[Scheveningen]

Why should death be any more punishing than it already is? You become unable to play that character unless one of two cases happen:

1. The character is cloned or revived through other means.

2. Get adminhealed.

Neither of which are terribly likely in some cases where the station problems aren't immediately resolved.

 

Make ghosting irreversible. If you leave your corpse to observe the round, you lose the opportunity to re-enter that corpse to be cloned. Effectively, the decision to become a ghost would be sacrificing your later involvement in the round in exchange for the privilege of observing.

 

So, what, AFK and wait while someone drags your corpse from maintenance if you want a chance to be revived? This is hardly a great solution. You're forcing the player to sit and wait for their body to be recovered, and if they ghost you penalize them in doing so for not being able to play that character because they pressed a button to preserve.

The odds are extremely low someone's going to use meta information from prior to their death to influence the round. Doing so is a punishable offense, so the point of trying to discourage the behavior through mechanics is moot since someone who is adamant on doing it, will do it anyway and get banned.

 

Some people have told me that this sucks, and that being dead inside a corpse that can't see or hear anything would not be fun. To this I say: that's the idea.

 

I'm somewhat glad I do not get the misfortune of having to play alongside someone like you if you have this mentality that insists that everything a player does be punished to the most grueling extent possible.

 

The goal of enacting this change would be to make players more cautious about dying, mechanically enforcing a rule of roleplay that already exists in theory, but not always in practice. It would have the added benefit of completely preventing the abuse of meta knowledge gained from ghosting.

 

Nothing in regards to the metaphysical part of the game really exists. The whole concept is fake, but we roleplay like it's real anyway, because! That's the point. We are expected to roleplay accordingly because that is what we are all here for. To roleplay this experience alongside others and have fun with it. It doesn't need any more enforcement than what's established currently.

 

In short: it's a game, so when you die, it should feel like game-over.

 

This analogy doesn't work for a real-time game that runs regardless of one person being there or not. You cannot just reset the server whenever you die, although some people do treat the round vote like you can.

[Bauser]

Come on, let's be clear here. This isn't a problem with game mechanics making sense...

You can't observe the round if you're inside your corpse and you can't be cloned if you're ghosting; there already exists this implicit suggestion that the two states are supposed to be distinct and serve different purposes. This change would serve to solidify that suggestion. So when I say it's a problem of game mechanics not making sense, I mean to say that the current system "fights itself" thematically - it limits what you can do while in your corpse AND what you can do as a ghost, but it fails to restrict access between them. So anyone who's really opposed to this suggestion should be (and, by the sound of it, is) very in favor of Fortport's suggestion in the other thread: https://forums.aurorastation.org/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=9269 (Allow ghost-hearing + ghost-sight as a corpse)

The problem that primarily concerns me is the disjointedness of limiting your dead-senses as a corpse while NOT limiting your ability to swap between ghost and corpse. So both Fortport's suggestion and mine solve that problem, they just do it by moving in opposite directions: his, by aligning both features to make death a little more forgiving, and mine, by aligning both features to make death a little more harsh.

 

What you are asking is for people to give all that up and just stay in a deaf, blind body that can't do any of that for an indeterminate amount of time, because 'death sucks, lol, if you don't like it eat shit or leave'. This is neither fun nor interactive, and if a new game mechanic you are proposing is going to encourage people to just afk for a snack or minimize the byond client and check back every ten minutes or so to see if they're alive again, this is not a good game mechanic.

You need to give people something in exchange for taking away their ability to participate in any kind of activity in game, rather than telling them to just 'deal with it, too bad'. A minigame, the ability to do something else for a bit while they're waiting to be cloned, anything.

Well, I'm asking them to do that, or to ghost. All of these reactions here seem to suggest that forfeiting the ability to be cloned makes ghosting completely unacceptable somehow, but that's not a realistic view, considering how often people already choose not to be cloned, and just keep watching the round. We don't need to give people anything in exchange, because nothing has been taken away. If you want to ghost, ghost. Do it. Nothing is stopping you except your desire to come back from the dead. And if you really want to come back from the dead, yes, you can tough it out.

I just don't see how existing in that quiet limbo, even for a while, is supposed to sound like an unfair price to pay for the opportunity to literally be brought back to life. It's exactly like you say: tab out for a bit. Eat some snacks. Go to the bathroom. Watch a video on YouTube. I contend there's nothing wrong with death taking you out of the round. As it stands currently, since you can ghost out and hop back in your body to be cloned, it doesn't do that - you always have the opportunity to be involved in the round either physically (going back in your body to be cloned) or socially (ghosting). This change would supply a consequence that is currently very lacking. Because if you have to choose, you will have to sacrifice one or the other. And I think that's a grand idea.

 

Now, rude as Munks is being, he makes a few solid points here. You clearly seem to be a little disconnected from the general viewpoints of the playerbase.

I am tragically aware of the fact that most people don't understand why something like this is necessary or beneficial. If everyone already knew, I wouldn't feel obliged to make a thread trying to persuade them.

 

I get that you think death isn't being treated with enough gravity, but if you want it to be deeper and more meaningful, this is not the way to do it.

Then what is? Because so far you've given me the impression that you'd be categorically averse to any change that makes death more impactful and less damaging, so your suggestion that there might be a different 'right' way to do it falls a little flat.

 

Similarly, being able to leave your body with ease posthumously gives you the chance to watch the chaos, shoot the shit with other ghosts, whine about how you died with insufficient rp, and so on.

Again, this change would not inhibit your ability to ghost from your body.

[Scheveningen]

Again, this change would not inhibit your ability to ghost from your body.

 

It inhibits your ability to re-enter the round as the character you joined to play in the circumstance they get revived. That is the concern here, and the only point that matters.

[DatBerry]

You actually get a message to re-enter your body as a ghost, it is an intended feature.

Forcing someone to stay in their body is just plain stupid unless you also remove respawning, which again is just restrictive for the sake of being restrictive.

I see the point of death being cheap a few months back, but i don't think it's that convenient to be cloned anymore, besides making death anymore inconvenient will just backfire, goodluck luring anyone anywhere for murder.

If you think people will metagame info as a ghost you can't deny people will become extra suspicious of anyone when death is more punishing.

[Sytic]

It's gonna kill interest for playing if you're just killed, then told "haha git gud, die less". And if respawning is still a thing, then players can still use metaknowledge (and get banned for it), Making a mechanical restriction for a problem that doesn't exist is dumb. And if players want to put more and more efforts to "focus on surviving" you're going to get to a point where you swing to the other side of the pendulum and get more powergaming, not less. Players will begin giving their characters foreknowledge of events, broader skillsets and staying within metacliques to survive, potentially even using metaknowledge when they respawn. Against.

P.S.: If you're going to instead kill the players' ability to ghost, how do I know if I'll even revive or get cloned? Am I just supposed to wait the entire rest of the round if I am an important position? (As if I ghost while occupying an important position such as a Head of Security, not knowing that I'd be cloned in the next two minutes, players are gonna be salty.)

[Bauser]

Forcing someone to stay in their body is just plain stupid unless you also remove respawning, which again is just restrictive for the sake of being restrictive.

I would if I could. Death is made extremely cheap just by the round-based format of the game. Respawning is what you do every round, and I have not seen any evidence that making it possible within a round as well inspires people to behave in any sort of way reminiscent of an actual crewmember aboard a very small and dangerous tin can floating in a very hostile and deadly black void.

 

I see the point of death being cheap a few months back, but i don't think it's that convenient to be cloned anymore, besides making death anymore inconvenient will just backfire, goodluck luring anyone anywhere for murder.

Forces antagonists to be creative, doesn't it? Things get a lot more real when you actually have to come up with plans that would make others let their guards down. Is that really asking too much from people?

 

If you think people will metagame info as a ghost you can't deny people will become extra suspicious of anyone when death is more punishing.

And how is that not a desirable goal? The root of classic traitor-based SS13 is the intrigue and uncertainty that arises exactly from this reality of not knowing who's on your side, and who's going to turn against you - but still having to work alongside them. Just because people become more suspicious, it doesn't mean they're going to stop responding to opportunities for gameplay and RP. If someone tries to lure them, they're not going to avoid playing just because it's dangerous - the only difference it makes is that the real possibility of an unpleasant death makes it more intense and exciting.

 

I'm somewhat glad I do not get the misfortune of having to play alongside someone like you if you have this mentality that insists that everything a player does be punished to the most grueling extent possible.

Anybody else have something they'd like to get off their chest? It's open season, apparently. I'm not going anywhere, so you might as well go ahead.

[Bauser]

If you're going to instead kill the players' ability to ghost, how do I know if I'll even revive or get cloned? Am I just supposed to wait the entire rest of the round if I am an important position? (As if I ghost while occupying an important position such as a Head of Security, not knowing that I'd be cloned in the next two minutes, players are gonna be salty.)

You're not supposed to know if you'll get cloned. You're supposed to evaluate whether or not the possibility of being cloned is worth the wait, or if you're satisfied with the life you lived and ready to move on. If you die as Head of Security and can't be cloned, it gives someone else an opportunity to step up. If you wait two minutes to find out that your cloning is expeditious (and it is, since you're HoS), then the reward you get for your patience feels more earned.

Additionally, it would encourage medical personnel to act with more haste, since people are less likely to stick around as long for cloning. It makes cloning fundamentally more special - so existing traumas and roadblocks to it could be dialed back for convenience.

ADDITIONALLY additionally, remember that you can still see a little bit around your body when you're inside your corpse, so you DO know if something is happening with you (E.G. you are being taken to be cloned). It's not an exercise in blind faith.

[Scheveningen]

If you die as Head of Security and can't be cloned, it gives someone else an opportunity to step up.

 

Job slots do not automatically open up when the associated job holder dies. It also seems unlikely anyone will be promoted to HOS when the initial one dies, seeing as how people roleplay their qualifications and fit where they're supposed to be, ever since the concept of job-hopping got neck-chopped in policy by administration.

 

Additionally, it would encourage medical personnel to act with more haste, since people are less likely to stick around as long for cloning.

 

Encourage through what? Encouraging them to do something because of your belief that people need to be OOCly punished for dying in-character? Hm, really?

 

ADDITIONALLY additionally, remember that you can still see a little bit around your body when you're inside your corpse, so you DO know if something is happening with you (E.G. you are being taken to be cloned).

 

Weren't you just making an argument against this mentality that you're for some reason promoting again? Seems to be an inconsistent way of pitching this.

As much as I'm an advocate for emphasizing consequence and an impactful cause/effect dichotomy that works well enough in-game, this is the wrong way to go about it.

[Bauser]

"The wrong way to go about it"

"The wrong way to go about it"

"The wrong way to go about it"

That's what everyone keeps saying. That the rationale for the change is good, the positive effect of it is important, but somehow these things mean that the change is awful. And yet, no competing theories - just being told to leave it alone. Because the lot of you don't want to confront the fact that maybe you just want the game to be a little more crazy and less severe.

It's right in line with the mainstream hatred of Haveatya's medical healing times suggestion (https://forums.aurorastation.org/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=10063): most of you don't think that being hurt and dealing with the consequences are a "real" part of the game. You just float between periods of action, and anything else is an obstacle to be circumvented in any way possible.

So yeah, you all agree that it's important for death to be impactful, but making death be impactful is "the wrong way to go about it."

Edited May 4, 2018 by Guest

[Itanimulli]

"The wrong way to go about it"

"The wrong way to go about it"

"The wrong way to go about it"

That's what everyone keeps saying. That the rationale for the change is good, the positive effect of it is important, but somehow these things mean that the change is awful. And yet, no competing theories - just being told to leave it alone. Because the lot of you don't want to confront the fact that maybe you just want the game to be a little more crazy and less severe.

It's right in line with the mainstream hatred of Haveatya's medical healing times suggestion (https://forums.aurorastation.org/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=10063): most of you don't think that being hurt and dealing with the consequences are a "real" part of the game. You just float between periods of action, and anything else is an obstacle to be circumvented in any way possible.

So yeah, you all agree that it's important for death to be impactful, but making death be impactful is "the wrong way to go about it." And not just that, but it's so much the wrong way that you will make fun of me for even thinking about it, you will accuse me of being so out-of-touch that I never actually play, you will express relief at the fact that you never have to even exist near me in-game. You're animals.

 

No. The point is that death is already impactful. You rp around death itself on this station, most times.

People are saying this is the wrong way to go about it simply because that's what they think.

This is becoming ad hominem. Dodge-roll before you get smacked with negative community opinion.

The current system works. People like the current system. Leave the current system alone.

[Kaed]

You're getting really offended about this, but you're not really listening to us. We're telling you many reasons why it's the wrong way to do it, but you refuse all of them because they aren't what you want. I've even encouraged you to put a bit more thought into the matter and tell us what we can do in exchange for not being able to leave our bodies anymore without leaving the round.

You've done none of these things, but instead stoically insist that an immersive game experience requires us to sacrifice actually playing the game for an extended period to continue playing the game as our characters. You posit that we aren't understanding you and are being inconsistent, but you seem to fail to grasp or refuse to grasp the crux of our frustrations with your idea too.

In the end, by doing this, you would drastically decrease the number of people who are cloned, because very few people will want to wait in their body when they could be doing other things, like waiting for the respawn timer to count down. And this wouldn't clear out slots, either. The slots would just stay used, for the rest of the round, leading to issues with the command structure being dead and no way to receive reinforcements via shuttle.

[LordFowl]

The current theory on death is that it is easy to die, but dying is not "game over" as you define it. Even if we were to make death more meaningful, making people sit in their corpse and enjoy the "You almost hear something" messages for however long it takes for someone to realize they're dead and clone them would not be the way to go. The basic idea of this suggestion is flawed - making death "suck" is not the way to make death meaningful. Our objective is not to make any aspect of the game "suck", as sucky aspects tend not to be fun, and even losing should be fun.

Furthermore, calling people animals will not help sway their opinion. No one is making fun of you, and even if they were responding in kind progresses nothing.

Voting for dismissal.

[Scheveningen]

So yeah, you all agree that it's important for death to be impactful, but making death be impactful is "the wrong way to go about it." And not just that, but it's so much the wrong way that you will make fun of me for even thinking about it, you will accuse me of being so out-of-touch that I never actually play, you will express relief at the fact that you never have to even exist near me in-game. You're animals.

 

Actually, that was only me that expressed my utter discontent with how you've conducted yourself as a community member. Don't conflate 'me' with the rest of the community. I'll take the insult in stride as it was clearly meant for only me. Just because I have zero respect for you as a person or how you conduct yourself doesn't automatically mean nobody else does, although you're not helping things by calling everyone else animals. You're being dramatic.