Community Feedback: Antagonists

[Faris]

For the poll, we decided to add a section on the greetings window.

 

 

If you did see this in the greeting window, vote yes, otherwise no. It doesn't matter if you used the link itself, the poll is to see how many members of the community do review the greeting window.

Moving on to the actual feedback. This survey had a feedback pool of 174 people.

First question. Self explanatory and the results were as expected. Most people do have some gripes with at least one game mode, proven by this.

 

 

Second question. My personal expectations were that ling would have the most votes, followed by cult and then rev. While I was not entirely correct, it was a close call on the third position.

 

 

Third question. My prediction on this was more correct as people had to select their most hated gamemode, only able to pick one.

 

 

Fourth question. Results here are also reasonable, rework is generally the priority when it comes to mechanics and features.

 

 

Fifth question. This tells me that people are heavily against retaining their most hated gamemode.

 

 

So to break it all down. The results were more or less as I expected them, especially with how clear cut Ling is hated, almost double cult in the most disliked question. Ling does present an issue with the narrative, being highly dependent on killing people and being sloppy with the body generally means capture. While death is an integral part of the game, it can leave distaste for some players. I suppose we can look into reworking the game mode, but with how many have passed and how much of a pain it really is, I'm not optimistic on a rework happening in the short term.

As for cult, a team based gamemode mostly dependent on violence and forceful conversion/sharding, I can understand the sort of frustration people can get, as even refusing conversions can still result in being sharded, still forcing you to work with them. Death is not always pleasant, but I feel for this gamemode there's still different avenues for things to be approached, it gives you the option to join them, you can be a construct or as a ghost join as manifests when they're summoned, so it's hardly a die and hide body as ling generally is.

Everything else was more or less close to the other gamemodes in the most disliked question. Even in the question where people were allowed to vote for every gamemode they disliked, the disparity between ling/cult and the other gamemodes is present. So for me, it boils down to ling and cult needing some attention. I'm interested in hearing peoples opinions.

[BurgerBB]

Remove changeling tbh

[AmoryBlaine]

As for cult, a team based gamemode mostly dependent on violence and forceful conversion/sharding, I can understand the sort of frustration people can get, as even refusing conversions can still result in being sharded, still forcing you to work with them. Death is not always pleasant, but I feel for this gamemode there's still different avenues for things to be approached, it gives you the option to join them, you can be a construct or as a ghost join as manifests when they're summoned, so it's hardly a die and hide body as ling generally is.

 

Protip: The best option is to cryo or ahelp and swap out of your shard.

In my opinion, Cult is similar to LRP-Rev which relies on flash converts or "Are you revolutionary?" prompting to join the other team. Just because you make it more elaborate doesn't mean it's any less of a clear and cut prompt to join or die- then join anyways.

[Kaed]

If we removed changeling, would we also remove the round types that involve them, or revise them? Aka removing Feeding, or taking them out of Paranoia?

[Garnascus]

Admittedly the results did surprise me. Regardless i will never ever support an entire round being expunged from the server. Even if we trick ourselves into believing "we will just remove it until its reworked". That is very unlikely to happen. Features that do not see general use are much less likely to get reworks or fixes. I do agree that most other antagonists have more freedom in their narrative. A changeling has to kill people to get stronger and no matter what lie we tell ourselves about the roleplay we are NEVER satisfied in dieing. Even if you can find some niche situation where you've been happy with a death you will not find it in a changeling round. They are conditioned to kill silently and without anyone noticing. I am personally completely ok with an antagonist that needs to kill existing but i admit it has problems.

Increase their starting amount of gene points. Make kills not reward you with gene points. Lock horror form behind a kill count.

[AmoryBlaine]

Admittedly the results did surprise me. Regardless i will never ever support an entire round being expunged from the server. Even if we trick ourselves into believing "we will just remove it until its reworked". That is very unlikely to happen. Features that do not see general use are much less likely to get reworks or fixes. I do agree that most other antagonists have more freedom in their narrative. A changeling has to kill people to get stronger and no matter what lie we tell ourselves about the roleplay we are NEVER satisfied in dieing. Even if you can find some niche situation where you've been happy with a death you will not find it in a changeling round. They are conditioned to kill silently and without anyone noticing. I am personally completely ok with an antagonist that needs to kill existing but i admit it has problems.

Increase their starting amount of gene points. Make kills not reward you with gene points. Lock horror form behind a kill count.

 

So then what's going to be done about the distaste towards Ling? You bump up the gene points and that just makes killing more easy, locking the horror form behind kills will further push the now buffed ling into killing even more people.

[Scheveningen]

https://forums.aurorastation.org/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=11127&p=99060#p99060

Here's my idea for ling.

[Garnascus]

So then what's going to be done about the distaste towards Ling? You bump up the gene points and that just makes killing more easy, locking the horror form behind kills will further push the now buffed ling into killing even more people.

 

The idea is to provide better freedom to the changeling. They would not be forced to kill people to grow stronger. Now all their kills can be totally roleplay motivated.

[Bauser]

But what is a changeling's in-character motivation? Canonically they just kill to feed, right? Since they're not actual crew, they wouldn't typically engage with the crew's drama - the nature of the beast is that they kill indiscriminately wherever they can get away with it. The player has an opportunity to spice it up by choosing to pick their targets for more involved reasons, but isn't that kind of at odds with the profile of a changeling?

[Pylon Mountain]

But what is a changeling's in-character motivation? Canonically they just kill to feed, right? Since they're not actual crew, they wouldn't typically engage with the crew's drama - the nature of the beast is that they kill indiscriminately wherever they can get away with it. The player has an opportunity to spice it up by choosing to pick their targets for more involved reasons, but isn't that kind of at odds with the profile of a changeling?

 

I support the increased gene-points and taking gene-points out of killing idea, and I think it would similarly allow a rework of what changelings are doing on the station. If killing to grow stronger wasn't their primary mechanic you could expand the roleplay reasons they're on station.

Probably the most involved new possibility would be something like impersonation. Think of it, the changeling has to spend a large chunk of time observing their targets to learn about them while not drawing suspicion, possibly gobbling up secondary crew members in order to get closer to their actual target while participating in the round's crew drama in order to deflect suspicion that something's wrong. Then if they actually manage to eat their target they have to spend the rest of the round pretending to be that person. It would be an intense challenge to any player's acting skills, at least as far as SS13 goes.

[climax708]

Perhaps the issue is that the ling is too sandboxy & free-form?

If you give them an IC purpose (succ the HoP!) that they have to work towards, it may limit the ammount of succed bystanders "just because they can".

They can succ people to work their way towards the target, but the goal becomes the target, not the succing.

Also creates an incentive to be discreet, adding to the rounds paranoia.

Also, IMHO all ling rounds should be solo ling. It will help the antag craft a cohesive conflict, as opposed to the current whackamole.

A completely different idea for ling:

Instead of killing the succed taking them out of the round, add them as the lings imaginary friend.

1. The ling now absorbs the memory of the succed (converse with the imaginary friends).

2. The victims are not taken out of the round, and are given a unique way to interact and roleplay with the antagonist.

[DaTimeSmog]

The only way to fix Ling in its current state is to give it a true endgame and with that, more ways to obtain "evolution points" without being forced to kill every god damn person you see.

Im gonna bring up the two type of lings that currently exist in the codebases, which is the progression ling and the static ling

Progression ling has many flaws, mainly the need to constantly being forced to kill new victims for a limited award. However powerspikes like the horror form and stun sting feel sudden and out of place but also stupidly out of reach. The Horror thing is currently my most hated upgrade due to the Ling being little less than a traitor with the objective to murderize the entire station because it simply exists to feed.

The horror form takes 5 victim to obtain, considering you didnt spend your 5 starting evo points on any upgrades. When you do a ling without spending any upgrade points then you are the worst antag there is. You are not only forced to work with your departments tools in order to murder 5 people without being spotted, but you're working towards a powerspike which is currently a round ending evolution as the station doesnt have the firepower to remove this threat easily, the only weapon coming close to that being the shotgun.

Static ling has another set of flaws that is hidden under the basic concept of objectives.

Static ling starts with every power open for it, however it only has a limited amount of slots, so it has to wisely choose which powers to take in order to complete the objectives given to it, the player is asked to find the best possible way to complete whatever task he was given, without being forced to work for the tools. This presents another problem however, as there is no sense of progression and as such, you're never stronger or weaker much like many other antags. This lack of progression is very noteable on TG, as very few antags have a true sense of progression, aside from Blob, Cult and Clock Cult.

On Aurora the ling has no real role aside from being stupidly annoying for secruity to deal with and stupidly boring for players to interact with. While roleplay is of course there, its mostly you begging for mercy as a being that only craves to devour eats you. Thats it. While of course you can argue that a ling is able to do some RP, it simply doesnt fit the antag, as they're again, simply there to feed on the crew and not to hear them tell you a 20 hour long backstory while thinking if its truely the right thing to suck their bodily fluids out.

I myself believe that adding a true progression system would be the best, which also forces more ways to obtain whatever resource you require without being forced to kill every guy you see.

[Itanimulli]

Ling could be another 'group' type mode in which the ling spreads it's influence by removing one's genomes, and then outright rewriting them, thus converting the assailed individuals into another changeling. "But that's just cult,'" one asks. Nay, it's not to a discernible endgame. That will be decided by the gimmick/whatever.

Too op? Nah, not really. Each new ling looks like the original ling.

Perhaps, even, these 'sub-lings' could look like whatever the original ling looks like at the time.

[Bauser]

Since changelings are already (roughly) balanced power-wise, making each victim turn into a new one would rapidly turn the changeling swarm into an unstoppable killing tide. Instead of turning the victims into full-fledged changelings, why not make them turn into weaker monsters? I would love if they turned into basically zombies (think a lesser horror form) - strong melee attacks for trying to eat people, stun resistance, but no harder to kill than a regular human. That adds a whole lot of spookiness to the round, it keeps the people who got got by the changeling in the round longer, and it generates a little more violence to entertain the crew.