Prayers for changeling playtesting

[Perakp]

Sorry for making yet another topic on the issue, but this didn't fit in the previous ones.

This is a call for player - admin - coder cooperation to balance changeling when it comes to the features it currently has, and for finding a direction for the gamemode.

This year the gamemode has seen new mutations, the hivemind was removed from the starting abilities and lastly, a week ago, some of the powers were made slightly cheaper. While we are still waiting for feedback from the last changeling buff, largely just compensating for the loss of free hivemind, I would like to ask players and admins to do some playtesting with buffed parameter values.

Changelings should send prayers asking admins to change the gameplay defining parameters, to see what values they can be set to in order to make the play experience as changeling and against changelings more enjoyable. If the admins and the player could then report what values were changed and how it changed the way they played the antagonist and how it affected the round, we could collect data on what, if anything, could be easily changed to try and fix the gamemode.

For admins, the changeling related variables can be found from mob>mind>changeling. The variables you should mess with are chem_recharge_rate, geneticpoints and after the abilites have been purchased, chemical_cost for individual abilities. I would suggest doubling or quadrupling the chem recharge rate as a starting point for tests.

For players, if your prayer has been answered, you shouldn't reset your mutations or the changes will be undone.

Finally, to make a case why changeling is still worth fixing and not to be scrapped, I present a collection of arguments why absorb-focused changeling is good for the game, and ultimately better than the transform-focused version we have now. I know there probably isn't any new debate to be had, but would appreciate if someone stepped up to give a direction for the gamemode beyond it's current, broken state.

Spoiler:

You've probably heard all of this already, but just as kind of a design document, this is what changeling should (in my opinion) be.

Designing a powertrip
The starting point for changeling is to create a powerful, feared antagonist, with difficult objectives to match the power level. Changeling is supposed to be up there with the most difficult antagonist roles to get greentext with, but has the tools for the job in it's raw power to kill. Being powerful feels good, and completing difficult objectives even better.

Why death is not a bad thing
Over the last year we've had few major updates that help against murdersprees. Fully updated cloners and drones bring dead people back in the round. Non-random space helps recover spaced bodies. Telescience can be used to fetch those that have their suitsensors on. To combat uncontrolled murdersprees, I could imagine the random event system could be changed to push out aliens, blobs, ninjas and even nuke ops to end rounds and engage ghosts without hope of otherwise getting back in the round. If nothing else, players shouldn't be afraid to vote for restart.
Beyond bringing comfort to the dead, it is important to understand what 'permanent' death means for a game like this. If death is nothing more than a critical state that takes a bit longer to heal from, why do we even have weapons? Death is to be allowed, expected and appreciated as a game mechanic: Played and designed around. Attempting to remove death from the game, either by rules or game mechanics, ultimately devalues the name of the game.

Argument from antagonist-led round progression
Things that make a round enjoyable can be roughly divided into content and gimmicks.
The only content that changelings provide that is unique to the gamemode are husks, and to some extent identity swapping. The hope with extract-DNA sting and changes to the absorption system was to make changelings change their appearance often enough to provide content for the round, but because no one cares what DNA you are wearing, this attempt didn't quite work. The motivation and tools for absorbing DNA were removed, so just gimmicks remained. The few changeling gimmicks currently in place are hallucinations, spiders and the transformation sting, none being very enjoyable.

For reference, the current way the absorption objective works is you can either do it the old-fashioned way, or use extract-DNA to silently sting crew members for their DNA. After you have collected four different DNA in addition to the one you started with, you have to transform. When you get the sixth DNA, you lose your original one. If you want to save your original DNA, you can use transformation sting on someone to use as hard storage, or the hivemind DNA channel ability. You can repeat this until you have met your objective. If you are hiding your identity, you can complete the absorb objective without anyone noticing, assuming no one stole your dna from the hivemind DNA bank.
There would be ways to fix this kind of DNA juggling, but the point remains: identity swapping isn't enough content to keep the round moving.

What is on the table
Changelings need to have a proper absorption objective or proper gimmicks. If they are to be a reskinned traitor we should balance them as such, and remove the pointless absorb objective. If we want to have variety in our antagonists and allow a gamemode designed around husking, changeling can be balanced around that role. If the headcoders or the ”community” could come to a decision on this matter, we could stop dancing around the issue and wasting everybodys time.

ps. replacing changeling with shadowling is one option, but I can't see why they couldn't both exist.

Now, if you, like me, don't have anything new to contribute to this, I would hope posts about playtesting results and actual decisions from people who call the shots. Because right now as a coder I'm terrified of even suggesting anything to improve the gamemode, because I feel either no one cares what happens with it or they just want to bury it deep to never be mentioned again. As if it went away from rotation if you disconnected from the server each time it showed up.

[Incomptinence]

Well good luck with this, I do feel the flaws with ling are in the core concept though. What is wanted from the ling? Like traitor but stealthier, I believe is what can be agreed upon as just a base from how things are put together. The problem with ling as a stealth based antagonist compared to traitor and giving up some of the flexibility and potency in exchange is quite frankly traitors are innately perfectly stealthy at one point.

Before taking antagonistic action both are indistinguishable from the crew by necessity. Once they have acted and been exposed ling has a greater variety of tools to use but they have already been exposed so what are these great tools for? Running away, lings are fantastic at running away if they apply any forethought to the possibility. A retreat is usually a defeat though and shucking all your items and turning into a monkey to vent crawl is a pretty good way to be sure of it if you needed something you carried. So a ling is great at riding out the arse end of a bust, if they planned to fail in the first place.

[Miauw]

Both newling and oldling fail in what they are supposed to do (which is infiltrate the station and be spooky). I have no idea how to fix this, tbh. So I also have no idea of what the fuck we're supposed to DO with ling.

[Steelpoint]

Why not Shadowling? I still think it is the best Ling implementation we have.

[Alex Crimson]

Why not Shadowling? I still think it is the best Ling implementation we have.

That is a pretty unique game mode and has very little to do with the idea behind the "changeling" playstyle. Lings are supposed to be super stealthy dangerous aliens that absorb humans to evolve.

Rather than have a changeling game mode, why not just have every single game mode have a chance to spawn a changeling? Obviously they wouldnt spawn every time, or in great numbers. But the "could my co-worker be an alien in disguise trying to kill me?" mindset is what i feel Ling should be. They would never be the main antag threat on the station, but instead a secondary worry for the crew.

If we did this and limited the number of changelings per round to 1-2, i think it would justify buffing them back to a level similar to oldling, where they could kill a single person silently, but make them ill-suited to fighting groups(None of this armblade/armshield bullshit that is just murderbone enabling).


Regardless, i think lings should be stealthy, not be given more abilities that encourage them to play as lone wolf/rambo murderboners that can take on the station.

[ExplosiveCrate]

The problem with stealthy antags without robust weapons is that they're incredibly boring for everyone except maybe the antag. If they do their job, nothing changes within the round. If they fail, they're left defenseless against security, get gibbed, and change nothing within the round.

[Alex Crimson]

The problem with stealthy antags without robust weapons is that they're incredibly boring for everyone except maybe the antag. If they do their job, nothing changes within the round. If they fail, they're left defenseless against security, get gibbed, and change nothing within the round.

Like i said, if changeling wasnt an actual round type, and instead was just a sort of secondary theme, then i think the stealthy ling playstyle could work without making the round boring.

[Hornygranny]

No absorb requirement = terrible changelings. They are not spooky, they are traitors with weird abilities.

[Perakp]

https://github.com/tgstation/-tg-station/pull/5111

Proposing the following changes:

•Changelings no longer receive the absorb objective. The objective was broken because the interaction between extract DNA sting and hivemind allowed it to be completed without any effort.
•New objective 'Escape with identity' requires the changeling to have the DNA and ID of their target when escaping. Always comes if they get a maroon objective, 50% chance otherwise.
•Extract DNA sting costs 1 point and doesn't count towards absorptions.
•Hallucination sting, transformation sting and engorged glands now require 3 absorptions. The stings were very obnoxious, so they are now locked behind a few absorptions. You have to be a douche and absorb people to use douche abilities. Engorged glands at 3 absorptions is more of a reward for absorbing, and a balance thing to lock it out at round start.
•Can't purchase abilities you can't use. Improvements to the evolution menu.
•Increased chemical recharge rate from 0.5 to 2. Engorged glands increase recharge rate by 1 instead of doubling.
•You can absorb people even if you have their DNA already.

[Incomptinence]

As posted on github.

Well I guess there is a certain nobility in striving against futility. Might want to tweak the chemical cost of epinephrine overdose or increase the negative effects of synaptizine to control that. It is about the only chemical based power that could potentially become overpowered if spammed and the tox damage on synaptizine overdose is pretty manageable. With these numbers the ling can generate enough chems overdose every 15 seconds. Or store 1 and use the rest of chems to do it again in 5 seconds. 10 seconds to generate on glands and they can store 75 chemicals aka 2.5 overdoses which is about 3 in roughly 5 seconds. Might want to keep an eye on the quick regeneration powers but they should be fair unless some fool is using the wrong split of damage against them (irradiating and poisoning, burning and brute are not good ways luckily our combat is dull huh).

Kill-To-Level-Up has no place in this game. This isn't a single-player JRPG, but that's exactly how people play it when killing is incentivised through the skinner box of levelling up.

Cheri the level up mechanic is the slightest ever proposed, comparing a three kills leading to a single unlock set up to jrpg grinding is hardly apt. Most job tasks are more grindy. Killing has incentive regardless, ling objectives always have one assassination required and how do we want them to steal? We want them to kill to steal. Lings pretty much have a kill 2 people or get lucky deal at present. One cause of the take over the station and kill everyone ling rounds dragging on was usually looking for items long displaced before they could steal them

[Cheridan]

Kill-To-Level-Up has no place in this game. This isn't a single-player JRPG, but that's exactly how people play it when killing is incentivised through the skinner box of levelling up.

Cheri the level up mechanic is the slightest ever proposed, comparing a three kills leading to a single unlock set up to jrpg grinding is hardly apt. Most job tasks are more grindy. Killing has incentive regardless, ling objectives always have one assassination required and how do we want them to steal? We want them to kill to steal. Lings pretty much have a kill 2 people or get lucky deal at present

The incentivization isn't as bad as changelings were originally, but why take even one step in the wrong direction? You just said that they pretty much have to kill 2 people already, so adding further changes to make people want to kill even more isn't necessary.

One cause of the take over the station and kill everyone ling rounds dragging on was usually looking for items long displaced before they could steal them

More like they were caused by changelings literally farming players like they were NPCS in an MMO, trying to level up to get Deathsting.

[Incomptinence]

Well no, actually farming players was a poorly effective method. In the land of the old absorb goals those with access to monkeys were king since it was pretty easy to grow your own humans.
Ling objectives have pretty much always been a mess, why they were even expected to steal anything to begin with is puzzling. I am still pro total ling removal do keep in mind, my view is the vast majority of steps in changeling development have been wrong. Including the base concept.

[Lo6a4evskiy]

>not letting lings use the only fun stings
Come on, we don't need that.

[Cheridan]

I am still pro total ling removal do keep in mind, my view is the vast majority of steps in changeling development have been wrong. Including the base concept.

Well, you're right there. Changelings were only added because some remnant of the gooncode was there as a base, there wasn't really any design goal behind them.

Wish the policy to have the fluff considering them innate murderers of THEMSELVES BEFORE THE ROUND STARTED was done away with. Perfect human mimics having only one way onto the station, how imaginative. Also shuts down interactions with alternative core lawsets because they are also illegitimate and evil murderers to boot on top of their base inhumanity.

Yeah, I agree. It's not even consistent with the current build with free DNA Extract sting. The justification for the cremate-all-lings previously was "Well they remove everyone from the round themselves so it's justice". I naively hoped that with the removal of obligatory husking, the retaliation against them would lessen.

I can't do anything about policy myself, but I'll bring up the matter with #adminbus.

Keep in mind though, that the fluff also states that changelings are a mystery to NT and that they should be captured alive if possible. I don't know how far a fluff change will go, as people only seem interested in it when it helps them justify their valid kills.

[Perakp]

Unless other headcoders say otherwise, I'll take Cheridan's word as the decision I was asking for.

If we have design policies written down somewhere, we should add the design goal "antagonists are not supposed to kill people too much" to those policies.

[Miauw]

Unless other headcoders say otherwise, I'll take Cheridan's word as the decision I was asking for.

If we have design policies written down somewhere, we should add the design goal "antagonists are not supposed to kill people too much" to those policies.

design "policies" mainly exist in the minds of maintainers tbh. and antags killing a lot of people is not always bad, as long as those people can do something against it. the rounds being very short makes dying less worse too (e.g. blob and wizard (and meteor)), etc. they're not even really policies, just a bunch of things to keep in mind when making changes to the game.

[callanrockslol]

Ok so OLD oldling, back when you almost never would be able to kidnap the 10 required people to absorb was good, but parasting a bitch because it was a guarenteed kill if you didn't powergame a station bound radio whenever you were in maint so you could whisper into it, nerfing the number of genomes and giving them hivemind made them way too powerful, some of the new stuff is really good but as an antag they are piss weak because they have no direction, having to absorb 5 genomes, kill someone and steal a brain or something stupid is a massive spread of things and the powerset of current lings doesn't exactly work well for any of them.

[Incomptinence]

Lings aren't taken in alive because their escape abilities, annoying stings and emp basically require you to crit them for transportation if they squirm, boy do they squirm. An officer full of mind toxin with depowered weapons can't really do their job properly.