Wizard rounds ending on wizard death

[Amnestik]

To me this is just a waste of everyone's time. Why not just spawn another wizard and let another player have a chance at the role, until the station can't take it anymore and calls the shuttle?

[invisty]

I've seen several rounds where immediately after the wizard has died, the shuttle has been called with the reason "Wizard's dead, lets go home".

[Incoming]

A problem mulligan was supposed to fix, but hasn't.

There's a problem with player attitude where no one wants to deal with the fallout of antagonists after they fall. Among players (at least among players who play command staff) there's often a very nihilistic attitude on "keeping things going". The mindset is that the round ends with the antag, even if it doesn't actually end. I was hoping time with mulligans might change that thinking, but I can say for the most part it hasn't. Beyond working on datum based antags to offer better variety in a post wizard world I don't really have any answers to how to challenge this thinking.

Also you kind of just described ragin mages.

[Steelpoint]

Killing certain antags like Wizard, Blob or Nuke Ops should end the round there and then, in many cases otherwise people just call the shuttle or have to deal with several traitors either doing nothing for an hour or said traitors killing the few surviving members of the station who are exhausted after already surviving the last major antag.

Mulligan is often anti-fun, and is only relevant when said major antag fails very early and easily on.

[Incoming]

Yeah saving fluke blob/wiz rounds has actually been one of the things mulligan actually fixed in its current incarnation. That said the parameters for it to fire (first 30 minutes of a round with no more than 30% dead) are pretty tight and could always be made tighter. It's all config options.

[invisty]

IMO just crank up the aggressiveness of the mulligan, and force every round to be an inevitable descent into chaos and mass death within the hour.

[Amelius]

Killing certain antags like Wizard, Blob or Nuke Ops should end the round there and then, in many cases otherwise people just call the shuttle or have to deal with several traitors either doing nothing for an hour or said traitors killing the few surviving members of the station who are exhausted after already surviving the last major antag.

Mulligan is often anti-fun, and is only relevant when said major antag fails very early and easily on.

This. It used to be sort of cathartic ending the round by killing a major solo/duo antag, but now you're stuck with a somewhat broken station that no one wants to fix because people have already been taken out of the round and most non-antags are simply just going to want to go home.

IMO just crank up the aggressiveness of the mulligan, and force every round to be an inevitable descent into chaos and mass death within the hour.

The tensioner would be probably be a solution. I'd probably stick around for the mulligan if it wasn't like extended 1/3rd the time or mini-traitor/mini-ling the other 2/3rds. If things became more interesting over time, rather than less, I figure people would be more engaged in rounds anyway.

[MisterPerson]

I believe this is a config setting. As usual with config settings, PM the host if you want to change them.

[Amnestik]

I believe this is a config setting. As usual with config settings, PM the host if you want to change them.

The round just turns into extended when this config option is enabled and the wizard dies. No extra antagonists are spawned, so the shuttle is called because there's nothing to do.

What I'm suggesting/asking for is a third way, where the excitement of the round is maintained and it doesn't immediately end on wizard death, disrespecting the crew's job progress.

[Incoming]

The game is supposed to make more antags when the wizard dies, it doesn't because of two reasons:

1.) It's designed to not throw more antags if the shuttle is already inevitable, and people always, every time, no matter WHAT, call the shuttle in wizard.
2.) There might be a bug that prevents it that I've never been able to nail down.

[imblyings]

part of it is when wizard rounds didn't automatically end, people would guess mindswap or apprentices

and I guess another part of it was some sort of a movement that frowned upon wizard suicide bombing

[callanrockslol]

Maybe the mulligan should fire the moment the wizard dies if the shuttle hasn't been called and spawn in some traitors with really loud objectives rather than do nothing. At least something to clean up the round a bit. I just had a round where the wizard got blown up in a toxins accident and nobody fucking knew there was one in the first place and then the traitors did nothing.

[Steelpoint]

That was a amusing round, the wizard took 20 minutes to leave the den and he just teleported to toxins, fireballed himself and the scientist blew up toxins leaving no trace of the wizard.

The crew never knew it was wizard, and the traitors did nothing.

[leibniz]

Maybe the mulligan should fire the moment the wizard dies if the shuttle hasn't been called and spawn in some traitors with really loud objectives rather than do nothing. At least something to clean up the round a bit. I just had a round where the wizard got blown up in a toxins accident and nobody fucking knew there was one in the first place and then the traitors did nothing.

Yeah, maybe a delay isn't necessary.
Nuke ops, wizards take a lot of time to set up. Blob gives a warning announcement. Traitors and changelings are minor things.
Usually the death of the antag is the point of catharsis so going back to work after that doesn't feel right to most players.

[Oldman Robustin]

A problem mulligan was supposed to fix, but hasn't.

There's a problem with player attitude where no one wants to deal with the fallout of antagonists after they fall. Among players (at least among players who play command staff) there's often a very nihilistic attitude on "keeping things going". The mindset is that the round ends with the antag, even if it doesn't actually end. I was hoping time with mulligans might change that thinking, but I can say for the most part it hasn't. Beyond working on datum based antags to offer better variety in a post wizard world I don't really have any answers to how to challenge this thinking.

Also you kind of just described ragin mages.

People wouldn't be playing on this server if they just wanted pure RP extended mode. Conflict drives the round.

When the wizard/blob/malfai dies, the conflict comes to a conclusion. The natural instinct is to conclude the round with the conclusion of the conflict. With the big bad "solo" antags the pacing, intensity, and narrative of a round are completely based on the interaction of the crew and that antagonist. It just leads to a more satisfying round, and a more compelling experience when their death brings things to a close. We can all sit back and admire the tenacity of the wizard, the amusement of having the CMO save the station with morphine, and banter about the round as the next one winds up. The story has a natural beginning and end for these rounds, why interfere with that? If the wizard was shit and therefore the round was shit, how is piling more shit on the shitheap by forcing everyone to stand around and endure extended 2.0 going to improve things?! One of the big redeemers of wizard was that unlike shitty traitors/lings/cultists/gangsters... when you had a shitty wizard the round would at least be mercifully short.

You call it nihilism but it's simple utilitarianism. When the wizard is dead, there's a brief moment where the round is free of antagonists... now aside from the few minutes it takes to restart a round, if you really just wanted to fight traitors at that point... why wouldn't you just start a new round where the focus is on crew v. traitors, and traitors come sufficiently populated to actually pose a threat to the station?!

Instead a heroic bombing of the wizard doesn't lead to an applause, curtains drawn, the end... instead the crew patches the hull, collects the dead and then a smattering of traitors appear. 2-3 of those traitors will already be braindead because either they didn't want to fight a wizard or they weren't interested in mulligan extensions, another 1-2 will outright miss the message or will simply use it as an opportunity to play meme traitor and fill the escape bay with syndie soap, and maybe one will go "fuck this" and pull out an actual weapon and attack people in the halls until they're dead 30 seconds later. The round lasts for another hour, hooray, and absolutely nothing of note happens besides the crew breaking a record for number of people vacantly staring at the wall.

Instead of the "the round where a suicide bomber saved the station from a lich", it becomes the round where we essentially played extended until the crew couldn't even remember what the original antagonist even was.

The only coherent argument is "muh immurshins", that sudden round ends disrupt the "crew control" of the round and destroy immersions when we're all sucked out of a round just because a blob died. That argument, for whatever its worth, is massively outweighed by the huge cost of forcing the crew to endure 30-60+ minutes of extended every wizard/blob/malf round that the crew wins. And yes, stuffing 6 of the weakest antags in the game into a 60 person round is essentially extended unless you're lucky enough to have one cuban pete, singularity release, or plasma flood the station within a few minutes. Even where the rare traitor manages to put the round of his back and actually antagonize after a mulligan, how is that any better than just restarting and having a traitor round?

This problem is readily apparent to the command staff who can't just go braindead every time they're bored and are typically forced to endure the drying-paint level of excitement that ensues after a mulligan. They also represent the more experienced players who aren't going to shout and scream against a shuttle call because they just read about bluespace tomatoes on the wiki and refuse to leave until they manage to get some. Newer players may be perfectly satisfied with the 'Extended Experience' (tm) but older players have seen that show play out 1,000 times where people keep the round going until you have to say "test" on radio because you can't tell if comms went down or if everyone is really that damn bored.

Datum antags might mitigate this issue, but I still haven't seen compelling evidence that other half-assed antag groups are worth extending a round over. Everything I've said before applies equally to some baby street gang, lil' narnar's first cabal, or Weenie Hunt Jr's apprentices showing up and providing as much conflict as a janitor who only puts signs on one side of a wet floor.

The voice of experience rings loud and true when it says, "extended isn't fun, and having a pseudo-extended after every dead wizard/blob/malfai isn't going to be fun either".

[Oldman Robustin]

That was a amusing round, the wizard took 20 minutes to leave the den and he just teleported to toxins, fireballed himself and the scientist blew up toxins leaving no trace of the wizard.

The crew never knew it was wizard, and the traitors did nothing.

This isn't some crazy anecdote, this is the subtance of most mulligan'd wizard.

Some shitty first-time wizard (meanwhile it's been nearly two years since my last wizard round, say whaaaaaat) gets himself killed within minutes but "MUH IMMULSIONS" prevent just an anti-climatic 5 minutes round where at least we can shit-talk the wizard during the restart and turn it into a two-hour extended round where captain is a "no emergency no shuttle" autist and forces the admins to intervene and put the round on life-support buttons because traitors can barely make their presence known right now even if they try, and few even bother trying.

The

net

effect

of

mulligan

is

bad


Yes someone had one waaahacky round where a traitor stole a staff and turned the HoS into a crab, for every one chuckle those hijinx yield, there's a legion of terrible psuedo-extended rounds that make me feel like a masochist for playing this game.

Maybe the mulligan should fire the moment the wizard dies if the shuttle hasn't been called and spawn in some traitors with really loud objectives rather than do nothing. At least something to clean up the round a bit. I just had a round where the wizard got blown up in a toxins accident and nobody fucking knew there was one in the first place and then the traitors did nothing.

You could give all the traitors "KILL EVERYONE AND DIE A GLORIOUS DEATH" objective and you'd still only get a minor uptick in entertainment. Traitors grow exponentially in power based on their numbers. When there's enough traitors to start causing chaos, that's when you at least have a bearable round... since you can do all the suspicious stuff when setting up your sabotage/murder because your cutting cameras/hacking doors/looting bodies becomes a lot less concerning when someone is abducting a sec officer, several secure areas are emagged open, and someone lubed escape. You need that kind of veil of chaos to successfully traitor or else bored players are going to report every infraction you commit and bored security will dogpile you because you're the only person doing anything criminal on the entire station.

Even then, traitors just aren't very compelling antags anymore. It's easily gotten to the point where the most defining acts of traitors are actions that have nothing to do with being members of the syndicate or having access to their tools.

I've seen several rounds where immediately after the wizard has died, the shuttle has been called with the reason "Wizard's dead, lets go home".

Just because the crew sometimes manages to avoid the shittiness of mulligan doesn't mean we should try even harder to shove it down their throats.

Plus "immediate wizard death" means you're typically waiting at least 20 minutes for round to end just based on refueling/travel time/docking/etc.

When "20 minutes of shitty boredom" is the BEST CASE for most mulligans, that's not a good feature.

[Celdur]

tldq

Well said, man.
I mean I don't like people calling the shuttle early on tator/gang/rev whatever rounds even when the shift feels like extended, because shit could still be brewing.
But when the wizard is dead that's fucking it. There is 0 reason to go on.

It is pretty fucking jarring though when you have something going on during a wizard/malf/blob round and suddenly the red text pops up and everyone just stops in their tracks and goes "oh, well I guess that's that then".
I think it would piss less people off if it was a forced shuttle call instead of just a round end. That way people could look over the damage, reflect a bit and get some round closure instead of just start clubbing each other with toolboxes all of the sudden.

[EndgamerAzari]

Newer players may be perfectly satisfied with the 'Extended Experience' (tm) but older players have seen that show play out 1,000 times where people keep the round going until you have to say "test" on radio because you can't tell if comms went down or if everyone is really that damn bored.

Jesus Christ, it's disturbing how often this has happened since I started playing again, and I only play one or two days out of the week.

But yeah, Oldman, you're making a lot of sense. Captain is one of my most-played roles and there are times when I've tried to scrape together a feasible IC excuse to call the shuttle when nothing was happening at all, and nothing was likely TO happen unless some greytiding shit released plasma or stole my ID or something. Then, of course, people will bitch about shuttle calls because they're so engrossed in whatever asinine project their incredibly myopic mindset is locked onto that they don't realize that nobody is having fun. As satisfying as it can be to sometimes just do your job and do it well (individual levels of competence may vary) on the station, we must not forget that this is a game, and conflict--and I mean real conflict, not the antics of line-toeing jackasses--is the very core element of almost any game. If the reward for winning that conflict is the opposite of another chance to partake in mayhem, then what's the point of trying to win?

And I'm not being powergamey or play-to-win here, I'm one of the most unrobust fucks around and I don't fight people if I don't have to, but SS13 without a constant, paranoia-and-chaos-inducing threat is like Dwarf Fortress without inevitable failure--a game with the core of its identity excised.

[invisty]

You want post-antag suffering?

Try playing as an AI during a late night traitor round. Catch all antags in under twenty minutes, then you might as well just suicide.

[onleavedontatme]

Well said, man.
I mean I don't like people calling the shuttle early on tator/gang/rev whatever rounds even when the shift feels like extended, because shit could still be brewing.
But when the wizard is dead that's fucking it. There is 0 reason to go on.

It is pretty fucking jarring though when you have something going on during a wizard/malf/blob round and suddenly the red text pops up and everyone just stops in their tracks and goes "oh, well I guess that's that then".
I think it would piss less people off if it was a forced shuttle call instead of just a round end. That way people could look over the damage, reflect a bit and get some round closure instead of just start clubbing each other with toolboxes all of the sudden.

I agree with an automatic forced shuttle more than I do instant round ending.

So that we can waste 15 minutes standing in escape?

[Steelpoint]

The times Mulligan works is very little, the only time in recent memory I swa Mulligan actually work was a blob that died in a minute after it was popped because it did it in a bad location.

Mulligan is just boring and needlessly extends the round. Its a bad joke at this point and it really should be gutted.

[Not-Dorsidarf]

You want post-antag suffering?

Try playing as an AI during a late night traitor round. Catch all antags in under twenty minutes, then you might as well just suicide.

Have you tried

Not validhunting them all?

Helping the lone security officer hunt down the magboot thief whilst also helping the magboot thief escape the officer is hilarious when the pop is too low for someone to notice you're playing both sides.

[Oldman Robustin]

Well said, man.
I mean I don't like people calling the shuttle early on tator/gang/rev whatever rounds even when the shift feels like extended, because shit could still be brewing.
But when the wizard is dead that's fucking it. There is 0 reason to go on.

It is pretty fucking jarring though when you have something going on during a wizard/malf/blob round and suddenly the red text pops up and everyone just stops in their tracks and goes "oh, well I guess that's that then".
I think it would piss less people off if it was a forced shuttle call instead of just a round end. That way people could look over the damage, reflect a bit and get some round closure instead of just start clubbing each other with toolboxes all of the sudden.

I agree with an automatic forced shuttle more than I do instant round ending.

Then someone make a pull request for this until we get datum antags in three years.

I prefer the old method but at least "Class 5 Event Detected, launching priority emergency shuttle for crew evacuation and debriefing" would prevent me from blowing my brains out and satisfy the "immurshen" people. People just need to accept that some rounds may be short and since we are a LONG way from having a "short round" issue right now, the old excuses simply aren't there.

Despite the hyperbole, people will ALWAYS fight a shuttle call during a non-emergency and re-fueling limits the insta-calls. As captain it's a dreaded nightmare when you try to call after an unrobust wizard/blob/AI dies... either you go full martial law and spend the last 10 minutes playing revolution as random shits try to mutiny and either get you killed/robusted while others are just content to shit-talk you on radio... or you just call it and wait 30 seconds for some other shit-head-of-staff to show up and unilaterally recall against your wishes because "I'm making a sick mech/sick pipe ride/sick corgi farm/sick sickness" or simply the generic "fuck you this isn't an emergency" fundamentalist.

It's NOT fun even if you manage to end the round ASAP once mulligan triggers, but sooo many people here play captain/hos regularly I'm sure they have plenty of equally valid insight into how fun it is to be chained to a station that is relying on a single active traitor to provide conflict for the round.

You want post-antag suffering?

Try playing as an AI during a late night traitor round. Catch all antags in under twenty minutes, then you might as well just suicide.

This applies to most roles for experienced players who don't have an autism project lined up.

Not valid-hunting is not the answer either. I've been with AI's who do the "be as vague as possible" schtick and it's not fun for anyone. Playing 20 questions with the AI every time someone emags a door does not make my security round more fun.

This is an inevitability when you get <25 people playing... but it's absolutely maddening when you're at that 1-2am EST midpop phase, with plenty of potential left for great rounds, and a hard-line "NO EMERGENCY NO SHUTTLE" shitter is captain and doing their goddamn best to make sure the server dies early that night.

[Amelius]

I agree with Oldman here, it's what I was arguing with Incoming when this 'feature' was first implemented. It's fucking boring, invariably so. At least with round-end-on-antag-death not only did we have catharsis, but we wouldn't pussyfoot around for 1-2 hours with fucknothing happening. Especially since at the point the major antag is dead, more likely than not, the shuttle will be called in sub-10 minutes (like it will stay called hah!), so mulligan doesn't trigger.

Basically, all mulligan tends to accomplish is tacking on 10-30 excruciatingly boring minutes onto rounds waiting for the muh immershions shuttle to get there without a head recalling, or, in the worst case, hours. Then barely anything fucking happens, everyone is bored, and so forth.


Also, it's ridiculous how often in the last year where there will be 60+ people online and I'd have to ;test multiple times over the course of the round to figure out if everyone is so fucking bored that there's nothing to talk about, no crimes to report, no nothing; or telecomms is broken. It's always the former.

I'm guessing it's because with the SoS-reduced antag rates, declawed antags, mulligan and so forth, it's basically boredom incarnate waiting for, god forbid, someting interesting to happen with extraordinarily long rounds consisting of fucknothing most of the time. Didn't someone analyze the statistics recently, which show that, on average, far more people go braindead over the course of the round rather than those that actually die?

[Steelpoint]

Whenever we kill a major antag I'm hoping the round ends and we don't go into mulligan.

[Amelius]

Whenever we kill a major antag I'm hoping the round ends and we don't go into mulligan.

This. I'm always praying right before killing a malf AI that enough people died for it to not trigger. Shit sucks.

[EndgamerAzari]

Whenever we kill a major antag I'm hoping the round ends and we don't go into mulligan.

This. I'm always praying right before killing a malf AI that enough people died for it to not trigger. Shit sucks.

The fact that this feature has people hoping for a high body count should tell you all you need to know about how ridiculous it is.

[Incoming]

Every single time the mulligan activates all active admins get a message giving them the option to end the round or disable the mulligan to pull their own shenanigans (note: they don't see to pull their own shenanigans much) if they feel like the round was interesting enough. The system is designed with so many back out chances and config options to let people turn it off where it doesn't work that I'm straight up absolving myself of any subjective wrongdoing here.

If you're seeing a lot of mulligans it may mean that the admins on call either didn't want to touch it or didn't think the antag died in a way that was worthy of ending the round, which is an administration thing. Likewise if your seeing a lot of mulligans it probably means a lot of people are screwing up their 1 v station antag chances, which is a different problem (a get gud problem). Finally if you think post mulligan is so boring it probably means that the antags being created aren't doing enough to spice up the round, which is more a community problem than anything.

The point here is that the way mulligan was supposed to work was to basically inject a new roundtype without having to restart the physical state of the station. People don't seem to want to play it like that though and time doesn't seem to be changing those opinions so beyond saying "I put in the config options to disable it, if people really can't stand it just let the administration know to comment out MIDROUND_ANTAG for each round type in the config. Lets give it another shot when I finish datum based antags." I'm out of suggestions.

[Cik]

i'm fine with it creating more traitors lings or DAs in those rounds but for the most part it shouldn't be mulliganing on wizard or malf AI, and probably not blob most of the time either. this shit shatters the station the majority of the time, and in anything but highpop it's a pain in the ass to get it repaired.

i wouldn't rip it out, just tune it so that it's more logical.

[Oldman Robustin]

Didn't someone analyze the statistics recently, which show that, on average, far more people go braindead over the course of the round rather than those that actually die?

That's a hypothesis I've definitely held for a while, I'd love to see some stats backing it up.

i'm fine with it creating more traitors lings or DAs in those rounds but for the most part it shouldn't be mulliganing on wizard or malf AI, and probably not blob most of the time either. this shit shatters the station the majority of the time, and in anything but highpop it's a pain in the ass to get it repaired.

i wouldn't rip it out, just tune it so that it's more logical.

Keeping it just to traitor/traitorling is something almost everyone is ok with.

The issue with it being ineffective at "creating a new roundtype" boils down to traitors/lings being impotent right now. Traitor/Ling impotency created a vicious cycle where robust players turn it off simply because it's not fun to play an antag that is so weak, then you're left with summerfriends and other inexperienced players constituting the entire traitor pool and making the problem that much worse.

[Scones]

I seriously don't see the issue with wizard/blob ending with antag death

Antag is dead. Round is over. No reason to draw it out.

I end malf 100% of the time when the AI dies.

[Konork]

I seriously don't see the issue with wizard/blob ending with antag death

Antag is dead. Round is over. No reason to draw it out.

I end malf 100% of the time when the AI dies.

I think it's more of a bigger "issue" with large groups of people having different ideas on how focused the game should be on antags. The two main groups are people who think the antags are more of a spice to the round, who probably think that the aftermath of an antag could be just as interesting as the antag itself, and people who think antags are the main focus of the round, who think that once the antag's dead there's not much else to do.

[TheNightingale]

I think they do need a little wind-down time afterwards, so everyone can go "Yay! We did it! The wizard's dead!". More than thirty seconds. Forcing a shuttle call once a solo antagonist dies would work; the crew can recall it if they want to stay, and if they choose to recall, Mulligan could kick in.

[invisty]

From what I've read in this thread, there is very little regard for round investment and persistence, which is a strong aspect of the gameplay as the status quo. Jobs and gameplay styles exist that are not heavily tied in to the antagonist plot of the round, so they ought to be considered as much as the idea of antagonists defining the gameplay for others. We need to address the imbalance between antagonists being defeated and giving half of the crew nothing to do, while having something relevant to the round for the sandbox jobs that aren't typically antagonist-involved. This imbalance is perhaps best distinguished by the likes of the R&D jobs, which often have no relevance to the antagonists unless they are antagonists themselves. We know this, because half of the people in this thread who spawn as scientist immediately ghost/braindead because they didn't roll antagonist, which signifies that there is a breakdown between the involvement of these jobs as non-antagonists and the antagonist elements of the game itself for certain players. That's understandable.

What I don't agree with in this thread is that there's this perception that antagonists are the sole driving element of a round and that there is no "solution" to their death beyond instant round end. I am of the opinion that instant round-ends are not the best solution, because I know myself that I strongly despise it as a gameplay event. It gives me zero satisfaction to be rewarded for killing the wizard by being given no time to enjoy my/our victory through survival and persistence of the round and my current character.

I understand that there are people who don't care for such things and would prefer a restart so they can re-roll for antagonist and/or start anew with antagonists to hunt. That's fine by me - we all have our different preferences in gameplay. I would like to know what the consensus of the player-base is on this issue and whether or not mulligan can be fixed to address it. One option that I've advocated is a reworking of the mulligan/tensioner such that it more aggressively increases the level of danger.

What if we repopulated antagonists of the same type as the initial round-start, or antagonists of similar "style"? Say, defeating a cult might lead to a gang war or revolutionary outbreak. Wizards are replaced with wizards, traitors are replaced as they die, etc. The idea here being that the round carries a persistent theme, and respawns of new antagonists aren't an immediate gear-shift in the gameplay like 5x summon guns can be.
What if we changed the criteria for antagonist spawn, such that it depends as much on the number of antagonists alive with their objectives incomplete as it does the number of deceased crew? I'd rather prefer the entire station got murderboned, instead of everyone sitting around twiddling their thumbs for a small handful of traitors or ayy-lmao's be spawned that ultimately do sweet fuck all.
Perhaps having the this mechanism sensitive to the rate at which the crew is dying (instead of the %age of crew dead) would be better.

[Amelius]

Didn't someone analyze the statistics recently, which show that, on average, far more people go braindead over the course of the round rather than those that actually die?

That's a hypothesis I've definitely held for a while, I'd love to see some stats backing it up.

Here's the stats. It's in the 'lethality' thread, posted initially by Kor. Wall of text inbound:

People are simply not getting killed in any appreciable numbers anymore. Most of the crew usually survives.

However, the number of crew evacuating is significantly lower



Look at that shift in the graph

Are tons of people unable to reach the shuttle?

I find that unlikely given the high survival rates. The station can't be in that bad of a shape if everyone is still alive. So why aren't they reaching the shuttle?

I think it's much more likely that large numbers of people have simply gone braindead by the time the shuttle docks, something which I've noticed walking the halls.




The round is far too safe and dull if nearly as many people are missing the shuttle because they quit the game as people who missed it because they died.

Keep in mind we usually have several roundstart suicides as well so the numbers are even more skewed. Very few people actually get killed

You may now throw back your heads in maniacal laughter at how terrible the current state of the game is.

[Scones]

People go braindead because their jobs become fucking boring in repetition (Cookbook/RNG Science jobs) or fucking boring because of a lack of antagonists (Security, Science Toxins). There's almost no reason to drag a round on when you have an option to reset - New people roll new antags, fesh new start and we get to do the whole song and dance over again.

[onleavedontatme]

stuff

I'm starting to wonder if traitors being weak is even the main problem. On summon guns rounds I rarely see anyone flip out and go on a shoot spree anymore despite the antag status being back. When I blow shit up for no reason as an antag and ignore my boring as hell "steal RCD" objective people bitch in deadchat or OOC.

I think the culture has changed immensely. People aren't willing to go out of their way for mass destruction anymore.

There is, of course, the slew of balance issues and changes we've all bitched about elsewhere that I don't really feel like rattling off again.

[Amelius]

I'm starting to wonder if traitors being weak is even the main problem. On summon guns rounds I rarely see anyone flip out and go on a shoot spree anymore despite the antag status being back. When I blow shit up for no reason as an antag and ignore my boring as hell "steal RCD" objective people bitch in deadchat or OOC.

I think the culture has changed immensely. People aren't willing to go out of their way for mass destruction anymore.

I agree that culture has changed immensely over these last couple years. I propose the major instigator of this is BECAUSE of all the hugbox-y changes that progressively alienated much of the old guard. Then there were a couple bans handed out for being too robust (Rob Ust most notably, ironically), then there was SoS powertripping and making it against the rules to be antagonistic and so forth that attracted the Baystation crowd in lieu of the more Goonish crowd that we'd had in the past. Many of the coder's changes over the past year or two have been pushing in that direction as well, which serves only to further my point.

The problem stems from the remaining old guard resisting the changes that they (rightfully, imho) see as terrible, and the new guard the opposite. I think the major problem, however, is that the latter group, and only the latter group don't have an actual provable design concept that will make an entertaining game at all in the long-term, only the short-term, lasting until you've exhausted all possibility of projects and learned the various jobs. It's all about themselves right now (how dare they kill me, I was just minding my own business trying to do X, and I wasn't even their objective!), not about the overall game's health. Roleplay is used for a catch-all activity, that apparently is a substitute for antagonist/crew interaction, somehow acting as a magical cureall that fixes uneventful multi-hour round boredom and so forth, when roleplay has merely been the grease that kept the game going properly in the past, rather than the focus.

It's probably apt to note that these forums, if the lethality poll is any indication, are mostly the old guard. I don't recognize many 'new faces' from the past year or two here either. In conjunct with the unlearned nature of of the hugbox group, I'd propose that they consist of more casual audiences and don't play SS13 as frequently, or have played it long enough to even master the jobs, which ties in with why they don't know or care whether or not a proposed change would be good for the overall health of the game, just that they want to avoid interference in their learning experience.

TLDR: Coders and admins have been pushing the game in a direction that kills any and all entertainment to be yielded from the game past the learning phase of playing, which alienates the old guard who then progressive leave / become mostly inactive, and new players support the new direction, perhaps until they realize how terrible it actually is a year or so later. I'd hazard a guess that if we got any 12-month retention statistics for 2012-2015, you'd find that we're at an all-time-low.

[Scones]

Rob Ust quit

[Amelius]

Rob Ust quit

Fairly sure he quit because of hugboxing around when he was unbanned after a couple weeks for murderboning as an antag. I mean, I've borderline quit the game too at this point - I only play at 60+ pop now because it's the only time when I won't probably be bored out of my skull.

Still doesn't really invalidate my wall of text anyway.

[Oldman Robustin]

stuff

I'm starting to wonder if traitors being weak is even the main problem. On summon guns rounds I rarely see anyone flip out and go on a shoot spree anymore despite the antag status being back. When I blow shit up for no reason as an antag and ignore my boring as hell "steal RCD" objective people bitch in deadchat or OOC.

I've gone full cuban pete and simultaneously detonated 6 maxcaps across the station twice in the past week and never heard a real complaint about it. Killed the entire escape shuttle with 2 maxcaps as a survivor too and only more just shock and amazement that "FUCK NERF BOMBS BAN OLDMAN ETC".

As for the shooting spree thing. I mean maybe people learned that summon guns = the round won't end with wizard death = it's going to be super fucking boring being dead for 90 minutes if you go out in a blaze of glory now.

Regardless of what underlying problems we have with the way things are now, traitors being flaccid penises flopping uselessly around the station is something that should be addressed. I also suggested a "doorjacker" device, cheaper than an emag, with the sole purpose of lifting bolts/disabling AI control of a door... it could force the door open too but people might think that's too emaggy (even if the door doesnt break afterward).

I'm thankful everyday that we rebalanced weights though, fucking 75% traitor/traitorling/DA shit almost had me leave again it was so mind-numbing.