/tg/Station 13

Post progression traitor feedback here

Please include whether your experience is from LRP or MRP

It's a good game mode and all glaring issues that I had have been resolved.

I just want more objectives now. I think space law minor crimes would be a fun way to obscure if your an antag or a rider.

LRP. Maybe it's just me but I'm seeing traitors end shifts with averages of 30tc. This is, obviously, a little high.
Perhaps turning down the TC gain/making some form of diminishing return so that the high-rollers stand out a little less might be worthwhile?
Some method or system that doesn't punch down too hard on beginners while ensuring that pros don't get the chance to take this and run hog-wild with it.

Second bit's more of an administrative issue that I can solve myself, but it's worth noting here anyway - have seen now, for the second time within 3 days, prog traitors get hypnotized or forced into working for a captain/hos who makes them do objectives in order to get TC to spend themselves. Gonna be either opening policy on this subject or just cracking down on it myself, as I feel like getting traitors to get in the way of other people because of the need for gamer gear is insane.

Omega_DarkPotato wrote: ↑Tue Jan 11, 2022 3:44 pm LRP. Maybe it's just me but I'm seeing traitors end shifts with averages of 30tc. This is, obviously, a little high.
Perhaps turning down the TC gain/making some form of diminishing return so that the high-rollers stand out a little less might be worthwhile?
Some method or system that doesn't punch down too hard on beginners while ensuring that pros don't get the chance to take this and run hog-wild with it.

Diminishing return does exist for people who get too far, however the values can be tweaked to be more punishing on those who quickly get a lot of progression. It scales exponentially so you won't notice it unless you complete objectives lightning fast. Though this doesn't get applied to TC, ending shifts with 30 TC doesn't sound like it's that bad, however the TC you start with is tweakable.
Prices can now be tweaked now that 20 TC is no longer the limit, but I'd need someone to inform me what items are problematic and what items can stay at their price, because I genuinely have 0 clue about the balance of cost for items right now.

Omega_DarkPotato wrote: ↑Tue Jan 11, 2022 3:44 pm Second bit's more of an administrative issue that I can solve myself, but it's worth noting here anyway - have seen now, for the second time within 3 days, prog traitors get hypnotized or forced into working for a captain/hos who makes them do objectives in order to get TC to spend themselves. Gonna be either opening policy on this subject or just cracking down on it myself, as I feel like getting traitors to get in the way of other people because of the need for gamer gear is insane.

Can't do anything about that I'm afraid, it's not really a code issue since it's how players behave playing the game. I've done my part to stop non-traitors from completing objectives

So overall I really enjoy how the framework of a prog traitor and its made it a lot more fun to be able to actually pick and choose what I want to do rather than "This is your lot, get to work soldier." but i've noticed a couple of issues in the few rounds i've had of it:

- On MRP there's starting to be a lot of contempt for people who just pick assasination objectives because they can very easily snowball out of control, which is starting to reflect on why heretic was removed from there. I think either capping the amount of assassinations one person can do per shift should be added, or heavily reducing the amount of tc/rep those goals grant/
- Decapitation objective usually leads to a lot of unintended round removal, the calling card objective is honestly cool enough. Plus if contracting was ever made into an objective that could easily replace it
- The Esword/Desword needs to have its rep cost significantly increased. We've had rounds where multiple Tots were buying them at roundstart to easily make their payment back with assassinations
- Romerol is nice to have as a final objective, but there might need to be a policy discussion on how far a tot can take that on MRP
- Smuggling objectives are cool but its starting to get pretty obvious and easy to for people to meta. Maybe instead of the cargo shuttle there could be a designated spot where a drop pod comes to collect the item like with contracting?

DaydreamIQ wrote: ↑Tue Jan 11, 2022 10:54 pm - On MRP there's starting to be a lot of contempt for people who just pick assasination objectives because they can very easily snowball out of control, which is starting to reflect on why heretic was removed from there. I think either capping the amount of assassinations one person can do per shift should be added, or heavily reducing the amount of tc/rep those goals grant/

This has been brought up and a solution is being put in place to address this. I believe we're adding some way to configure kill objective limits per server, so could potentially be capped on MRP servers or have kill objectives delayed in how often you can grab them.

DaydreamIQ wrote: ↑Tue Jan 11, 2022 10:54 pm - Romerol is nice to have as a final objective, but there might need to be a policy discussion on how far a tot can take that on MRP

Romerol SORT OF falls into a His Grace category in a clause that the uplink does not contain items that are banbait just for using them for their intended purpose. Just how it's impossible to use His Grace any way but to maximise kills, it's pretty much impossible to use Romerol for anything other than making an army of zombies.

We may need to revisit the policy around items like Romerol and His Grace if their use becomes widespread - But that's not really a matter for coders to worry about.

DaydreamIQ wrote: ↑Tue Jan 11, 2022 10:54 pm - On MRP there's starting to be a lot of contempt for people who just pick assasination objectives because they can very easily snowball out of control, which is starting to reflect on why heretic was removed from there. I think either capping the amount of assassinations one person can do per shift should be added, or heavily reducing the amount of tc/rep those goals grant/

I personally don't think this is a concern. I think there's been a mistaken impression by a lot of people that MRP means less lethality. It really just means less purposeless lethality, and less powergaming. Death, destruction, and chaos is still the glue that holds ss13 rounds together, including on MRP. I'm pretty pleased with what I've seen of progtraitors on Manuel thus far in terms of death.

Timberpoes wrote: ↑Tue Jan 11, 2022 11:53 pm We may need to revisit the policy around items like Romerol and His Grace if their use becomes widespread - But that's not really a matter for coders to worry about.

pretty much zero final objectives should/will be widespread- the game needs to go to its absolute end of content for it to happen

Bawhoppennn wrote: ↑Wed Jan 12, 2022 12:04 am

DaydreamIQ wrote: ↑Tue Jan 11, 2022 10:54 pm - On MRP there's starting to be a lot of contempt for people who just pick assasination objectives because they can very easily snowball out of control, which is starting to reflect on why heretic was removed from there. I think either capping the amount of assassinations one person can do per shift should be added, or heavily reducing the amount of tc/rep those goals grant/

I personally don't think this is a concern. I think there's been a mistaken impression by a lot of people that MRP means less lethality. It really just means less purposeless lethality, and less powergaming. Death, destruction, and chaos is still the glue that holds ss13 rounds together, including on MRP. I'm pretty pleased with what I've seen of progtraitors on Manuel thus far in terms of death.

more importantly assassination needs more alternatives other than killing so people take it less.

Armhulen wrote: ↑Wed Jan 12, 2022 1:00 am more importantly assassination needs more alternatives other than killing so people take it less.

Screwdriver

to the eye

Armhulen wrote: ↑Wed Jan 12, 2022 1:00 am

Bawhoppennn wrote: ↑Wed Jan 12, 2022 12:04 am

DaydreamIQ wrote: ↑Tue Jan 11, 2022 10:54 pm - On MRP there's starting to be a lot of contempt for people who just pick assasination objectives because they can very easily snowball out of control, which is starting to reflect on why heretic was removed from there. I think either capping the amount of assassinations one person can do per shift should be added, or heavily reducing the amount of tc/rep those goals grant/

I personally don't think this is a concern. I think there's been a mistaken impression by a lot of people that MRP means less lethality. It really just means less purposeless lethality, and less powergaming. Death, destruction, and chaos is still the glue that holds ss13 rounds together, including on MRP. I'm pretty pleased with what I've seen of progtraitors on Manuel thus far in terms of death.

more importantly assassination needs more alternatives other than killing so people take it less.

I do agree we should have more objectives. Luckily we've got a nice thread full of many good ideas for unique ones, and there's ton more potential beyond those and the current ones. Just gotta code em.

DaydreamIQ wrote: ↑Tue Jan 11, 2022 10:54 pm - Smuggling objectives are cool but its starting to get pretty obvious and easy to for people to meta. Maybe instead of the cargo shuttle there could be a designated spot where a drop pod comes to collect the item like with contracting?

I want to change the smuggle objective so that the destination is more variable so that it's harder to meta. Making it a random spot on the station has downsides in that it can be really annoying to get an obscure location you have no idea about.

MRP here. Progression traitors is work in progress but from what I have experienced it feels a lot like heretic in many ways (open ended objectives to do basically anything, overpowered arsenal).
A example as to how progression traitors works out for other servers is CEV Eris, most rounds its one traitor knowing how to do things and rushing the easy objectives (steal x thing, bug y place, kill z and send their head via bluespace mail device) then they pop out with a uplink 100+ TC and become a killing machine (the wiki page on their uplink https://wiki.cev-eris.com/Uplink_ErisEn ).
From what I see it's nearly the same situation on tg as well - one traitor getting a ton of TC then becoming really powerful or it's a head race as to who gets to do a certain objective when there is a lot of traitors.
Killing objectives seem to not care how a person died so even if you didn't put any effort in killing x you get rewarded, uplink pools are also shared between minds (you can have a implant uplink and your starting one and they share the same TC pool).
Another issue is that the objectives are a positive feedback loop an example would be having to bug a hand teleporter, you now have a hand teleporter as an utility and some extra TC to spend (maybe borrow the idea from Eris and add the bluespace mail device but that might arise its own issues).
It is also an administrative hell much like how heretic was in that if a kill was valid or not without watching the antag do the certain sequence of events to make it valid, as well as the romerol objective being ambiguous if you are allowed to kill anyone to spread the zombie virus.

Omega_DarkPotato wrote: ↑Tue Jan 11, 2022 3:44 pm LRP. Maybe it's just me but I'm seeing traitors end shifts with averages of 30tc. This is, obviously, a little high.
Perhaps turning down the TC gain/making some form of diminishing return so that the high-rollers stand out a little less might be worthwhile?
Some method or system that doesn't punch down too hard on beginners while ensuring that pros don't get the chance to take this and run hog-wild with it.

There's no problem with people regularly ending shifts with 30 TC IMO - that's the whole point of progression tot. If people had to spend all shift to get the 20 TC they normally start with anyway, it'd just be a hard traitor nerf.
If anything I would say the more difficult objectives, like murder, should be awarded more TC, because getting 3 TC for a murder seems extremely low for the risk involved.

sinfulbliss wrote: ↑Thu Jan 13, 2022 2:55 pm

Omega_DarkPotato wrote: ↑Tue Jan 11, 2022 3:44 pm LRP. Maybe it's just me but I'm seeing traitors end shifts with averages of 30tc. This is, obviously, a little high.
Perhaps turning down the TC gain/making some form of diminishing return so that the high-rollers stand out a little less might be worthwhile?
Some method or system that doesn't punch down too hard on beginners while ensuring that pros don't get the chance to take this and run hog-wild with it.

There's no problem with people regularly ending shifts with 30 TC IMO - that's the whole point of progression tot. If people had to spend all shift to get the 20 TC they normally start with anyway, it'd just be a hard traitor nerf.
If anything I would say the more difficult objectives, like murder, should be awarded more TC, because getting 3 TC for a murder seems extremely low for the risk involved.

Quite a lot of traitor item costs were balanced around the fact that 20 used to be the maximum - think scarp and nstar gloves. Can't buy em both without a discount or buddy.
21 TC lets you get both, 22 TC lets you do double powersink, 23 TC lets you do blah blah blah bogus silly shit that we used to say was "OK" if it was done rarely because of discounts or teamwork.

Ending shifts with 30TC on average, while some REALLY objective-rushing people get 50, 60, supposedly 80 in one shift according to another member of the team? Now we start to see real problems.

I like the idea that you can get TC for your work, but I do not think people should be able to get more than 40 TC max a round - put a softcap at 30 and a hardcap at 40 would be my suggestion.

Don't traitors have a restriction limit on certain items. Where even if you get more tc, you can only buy them a certain amount of times? Just use that.

Should the syndicate toolbox which does more damage the more tc that's in it be scaled differently with the influx of more tc or is it intended to stay the same?

cybersaber101 wrote: ↑Fri Jan 14, 2022 7:51 am Should the syndicate toolbox which does more damage the more tc that's in it be scaled differently with the influx of more tc or is it intended to stay the same?

That item is gimmicky as heck and can be taken from you with a stun or a slip and used against you

I wouldn't worry about it even if you got to the fearful 40 tc. You should have already completed the romerol objective by then. Or killed everyone with how many times you raided cargo/assassinated people

cybersaber101 wrote: ↑Fri Jan 14, 2022 7:51 am Should the syndicate toolbox which does more damage the more tc that's in it be scaled differently with the influx of more tc or is it intended to stay the same?

probably not compatible since the idea was traitor cooperation

Requires a heavy rewrite in MRP rules, got bwoinked a few days ago for doing my objectives of killing and planting calling cards

Longestarmlonglaw wrote: ↑Fri Jan 14, 2022 8:00 am Requires a heavy rewrite in MRP rules, got bwoinked a few days ago for doing my objectives of killing and planting calling cards

Admin issue, or to be more precise, an issue with the admins.

Omega_DarkPotato wrote: ↑Thu Jan 13, 2022 5:35 pm Quite a lot of traitor item costs were balanced around the fact that 20 used to be the maximum - think scarp and nstar gloves. Can't buy em both without a discount or buddy.
21 TC lets you get both, 22 TC lets you do double powersink, 23 TC lets you do blah blah blah bogus silly shit that we used to say was "OK" if it was done rarely because of discounts or teamwork.

Ending shifts with 30TC on average, while some REALLY objective-rushing people get 50, 60, supposedly 80 in one shift according to another member of the team? Now we start to see real problems.

I like the idea that you can get TC for your work, but I do not think people should be able to get more than 40 TC max a round - put a softcap at 30 and a hardcap at 40 would be my suggestion.

I don't like the idea of hardcapping TC like that. If items were to be capped, it would be better to introduce a stock to each uplink so that you can only purchase a certain amount, and if the issue was multiple items working together in bad ways, then they'd just have to be balanced to work in ways that aren't bad together.

It may also be a problem that every objective offers both TC and progression, when the idea was that you'd have to choose to prioritise one, either TC or progression.

If you're that much of a nuisance that you're able to amass that much TC, then congrats, you deserve to have those rewards. Any admin that bwoinks you for following your objectives deserves to have their adminhood revoked. Doesn't matter if you're taking all the assassination objectives. If anything, that adds for more RP situations where people are slowly getting picked off.

I would point out that there's no need to prioritize progression when everything slowly unlocks anyway. Maybe progression is more of a concern on LRP, but I can play it slow on MRP and just harvest TC.

sinfulbliss wrote: ↑Thu Jan 13, 2022 2:55 pm There's no problem with people regularly ending shifts with 30 TC IMO - that's the whole point of progression tot. If people had to spend all shift to get the 20 TC they normally start with anyway, it'd just be a hard traitor nerf.
If anything I would say the more difficult objectives, like murder, should be awarded more TC, because getting 3 TC for a murder seems extremely low for the risk involved.

Giving people more TC for committing murder just sorta ends up with a doomsday spiral where the more skilled players roll over sec and the entire crew with their ever growing arsenal of weaponry. Fighting a tot with a restricted arsenal is doable. Fighting one that can amass enough TC to run around with Esword+Ebow+Noslips+Stims+Freedoms and counter 90% of things that aren't just an Elance or a Maxcap to the face just sorta turns it into Heretic with extra steps

You shouldn't be letting them get to that point while still expecting them to be as beatable as roundstart, that's the progression part

It is indeed a sec issue

Time to buff secs tech tree

Sec has a lot of INCREDIBLY strong goodies (X-ray eye implants + x-ray guns, for instance)

They're just nearly impossible to actually get if traitors are doing their jobs + it's at least as easy, if not easier, for the traitors to get them

it's also well worth noting nobody does toxins, so no gun or combat tech WHATSOEVER, because it's a requirement for weapon tech, so, don't take whatever the above person says is actually even obtainable on a round on lrp

Making a max cap takes like, genuinely one minute

easy for you to say, but the majority of the lrp all wanna get guns and insuls and validhunt, so toxins does not get done, and getting your staff to do their jobs risks them stunprodding and killing you, so heads of staff basically got no authority, so ordering subordinates is out of the question

What do you mean easy for me to say I play LRP, you don't need anything other than what you have in toxins (+ upgrades), we can only lower the bar so much

ok, then tell me how you make a maxcap in a minute, best I could do was 15 minutes

upgrade freezer/heater with high tier parts (i think just t2 is enough), heat plasma, cool freezer, make TTV. i think you might need to use the burn chamber for plasma to be hot enough but don't remember

(this is diverging off topic, i just took objection to your objection of the weapons tech)

If I really focus from roundstart, NRP, and optimize perfectly + miners are useful + someone else does R&D, I can do 10 minutes from roundstart, I think. In theory, if you're starting after roundstart and the tech/uranium is all already available, you only need as long as tweaking the chamber + the burn itself

The problem isn't that toxins is hard, it's that people often don't do it anyway.

Even if toxins is done, security is at the whims of R&D deciding to go down weapons tech instead of what I see much more commonly... Experimental Tools, Borg Modules/BORIS for the AI, Mechs, etc.

At least advanced medtech is no longer dependent on fuckin' slimes.

You don't even need a fucking maxcap for weapons technology, steal a high-capacity tank of welding fuel and detonate it at the range, it has enough strength to get the first 2 explosion experiments

The real annoying gatekeep for sec weapons are the anomaly requirements to actually build the guns

easy solution to this is having progression traitors also progress sec!

The more traitor gear RND decons the faster they get their sec technodes

getting off topic, I'm going to make a separate thread

Was progression traitor intended to work just like heretic?

I can no longer load the PDA/implant uplink interface, RIP

Before progression traitors I would always get latejoin traitor and not really know what to do with it. Since it was added, I haven't gotten traitor once so I haven't been able to try it. Coincidence?

...Yes.

You don't think it's the result of a bunch of people turning on traitor to try it?

Fair

ardentarclight wrote: ↑Sat Jan 15, 2022 8:13 am You don't even need a fucking maxcap for weapons technology, steal a high-capacity tank of welding fuel and detonate it at the range, it has enough strength to get the first 2 explosion experiments

The real annoying gatekeep for sec weapons are the anomaly requirements to actually build the guns

There is only two guns with an anomaly requirement, the rest of them just need you to use an energy or laser gun to make.

Some feedback

1. Blackbox is impervious to all damage, except for SM (it being destroyable at all seems like an old oversight)
2. Hand teleporters and blueprints are always gone, something to point to objectives would be useful
3. Suspicious device doesn't disappear after bug and hold objective is complete, can be difficult to destroy or hide effectively
4. AI maintenance is pretty ridiculous to try to get to in a way that doesn't arouse suspicion (especially as an assistant)
5. Sending contraband on the cargo shuttle is really obvious and basically relies on cargo not to unwrap your packages and discover it (i.e. know you're a traitor but turn a blind eye anyway)
6. Reputation increasing passively causes a couple of problems
i. Everybody greentexts provided the round goes on long enough, regardless of how many objectives they've completed
ii. Harder objectives unlock too quickly
It would be better if uplink unlocks were gated by time OR reputation instead
7. You complete the dead pet objectives even if you didn't take them, provided they showed up on the board for you to choose from
8. Wish there was more objective variety

I've played prog tot more now, here are some observations/issues with it:

1) Sometimes you will be stuck doing nothing for 10-15 min because your only objectives require bugging an item and waiting. When the rounds regularly last 45min-1 hour on LRP, and quite commonly as low as 30 minute, waiting 10-15 min for 4 TC is simply a waste of an objective. The idea seems to be that you need to confirm you "have" the item, but in reality after you've stolen it, it's not hard to hold onto for even an hour. The difficult thing is getting it in the first place, so the time should be greatly reduced or gotten rid of entirely.

2) You will quite often have an objective that is impossible to complete, even theoretically. If another traitor has to steal and destroy the blackbox, and they do this objective before you, your objective is simply a waste of a slot, and you could be screwed over trying to do an objective that was already done.

3) Green/redtexting is gone. There is no thrill of accomplishing your goals, escaping alive out of brig on the shuttle, and getting a nice greentext as a traitor anymore. Escaping alive and not incarcerated on shuttle should still count for something.

Oh yeah, having only the objective to bug an item for 15 minutes does suck especially if the shuttle is going to dock at Centcom before it's completed.

sinfulbliss wrote: ↑Thu Jan 20, 2022 4:09 am Green/redtexting is gone. There is no thrill of accomplishing your goals, escaping alive out of brig on the shuttle, and getting a nice greentext as a traitor anymore. Escaping alive and not incarcerated on shuttle should still count for something.

Yeah this for me has been a bit of a weird factor with prog traitor. There's no incentive to survive because there's no endgoal objective for you. Its basically just do whatever once you reach the rep cap.

On top of this its kind of ridiculous how far apart the current two end missions are. On MRP specifically Romerol is kind of a weird one because you get most of its effectiveness from infecting people you kill (Which with murderbone rules you can't really just go doing) which leaves the starfury the way better option for ending the round. Not only because of the excessive amount of force that it packs, but the fact that most crews don't have nearly enough time to prepare for what's essentially Super War ops.

Oh that and the fact you can suicide to use the spawners menu and become a Nukie is a bit stupid (Probably against the rules too but the fact you can do it is silly)

You're just not being creative enough with the Romerol. Put it in a smoke machine with hallucinogens. Put it in the food with a condiment bottle. Bluespace launchpad dead infected monkies into medbay, etc.

I would like to be able to reroll objectives, maybe just once per round. Having all my objectives be to steal and bug high risk items at lategame means I basically have to take and then forfeit them to roll one that I can do.

Would contractor kidnapping objectives be able to be rolled into prog traitors? Seems like it'd be a fun way to try to earn TC and expand the objective pool.

All that being said, while I like the freedom, I almost feel overpowered by no longer being restricted to set objectives. Even if I never really followed objectives anyway.

I can't answer this myself, but how much do people feel TCs are a means of completing their objectives vs. being a reward to get Gamer Loot for completing their objectives?

It feels like a bad feedback loop right now. Low pop means one of the few traitors can easily clear out the low effort objectives pretty uncontested and become way too much for a round to handle with 60 tc against like, 20 pop and 2 secoffs. I think we might need a TC cap or TC payouts should scale on crew size.