The Multiverse Sword

[bandit]

...is the most retarded, bassackwards, idiotic item in the game right now, capable of instantly turning any round into a murderboning shitfest. It makes summon magic 5x look like extended. The "objective" that copies receive is so vague as to be meaningless (which means it is usually interpreted as KILL THEM ALL), it's unclear how you are the copy of the particular individual you are a copy of, and most importantly: THERE IS NO WAY TO OPT OUT OF IT except turning off your wizard preferences, which you shouldn't have to do just to opt out of a shitty game mechanic. Suiciding will not save you. Suiciding 1000000 times will not save you. Ghosting will not save you. There is no respite in death, you will just be yanked right into the meme body of another meme murderboner within 1 second.

I don't often post "I DED PLS REMOVE FEATURE" threads, but this is seriously one of the most awful mechanics I have ever seen. Get rid of it, add an opt-in, clarify the objectives. But preferably the first.

[lumipharon]

I ded, then not ded, then ded, then not ded, pls remove.

Seriously, admin only this awful item. It's highlander with respawn on every time.

[onleavedontatme]

code/game/gamemodes/wizard/spellbook.dm

Line 277.

Very easy to make a PR to remove it from wizard.

[onleavedontatme]

It's highlander with respawn on every time.

What's wrong with letting wizards turn their round into highlander if they want to?

[lumipharon]

Because it's never ending.
It is quite literally an infinite stream of sword wielding antags.

Highlander has an end, an a purpose. This is just mindless death matching.

[onleavedontatme]

Because it's never ending.
It is quite literally an infinite stream of sword wielding antags.

Highlander has an end, an a purpose. This is just mindless death matching.

Highlander usually has everyone die within 5 minutes and the admins start spamming respawn so people don't fall asleep waiting for the shuttle.

The end goal of multisword is to have your team be the last one on the shuttle. It's murdering until the shuttle gets here, same as highlander, but with respawns/teams.

[lumipharon]

>teams
>team objectives

You have no idea who is on your team - you don't look at all alike (you keep your own snowflake appearance, + random outfit), you have no antag icon - all you have in common is a name.
These 'team mates' murder each other all the time. Some times intentionally, but I'm sure a good number of them are honest mistakes - if you've got a stolen ID for example, and a covered face, no one will realise that you are supposed to be 'the same person'.

Multicuck sword might as well be replaced by a button that teleports everyone to the thunderdome to fight forever, until the AI calls the shuttle.

[Cobby]

The only thing that grinds my gears is that Non-antag gets free antag with the sword and if they don't act like an antag, you can bet their clones do.

All you have to do is spawn ONE clone and now you get "I is antag "

If the memesword gave a different objective to non-antag clones then maybe it would be alright, but giving them the same just turns this item into a tangible antag token.

Also clones don't look alike which has cause at least several issues of "Oh I thought I was X" and friendly fire. Memesword is about summoning clones to dominate the station and T E A M W O R K. What's even the lore behind the memesword not making exact clones? I could understand if they were different gear but different identities?

If it matters I came on here to cry about the memesword and saw there was already a thread on it.

[Incomptinence]

Can we engrave it with directives to the spawned? I mean one in 5 or 10 just runs off immediately to avoid being told not to hurt people. Icing on the cake is they are probably grudging whoever killed them last too.

[Arete]

If the memesword gave a different objective to non-antag clones then maybe it would be alright, but giving them the same just turns this item into a tangible antag token.

Can we engrave it with directives to the spawned? I mean one in 5 or 10 just runs off immediately to avoid being told not to hurt people. Icing on the cake is they are probably grudging whoever killed them last too.

It already does all this. The issue is that a few shits still attack people at random and once that starts happening, things spiral out of control. Once those people get jobbanned, maybe it will work as intended.

[onleavedontatme]

[things

Don't really like the "people grief so remove it" argument either.

I also dont understand why temporarily toggling off wizard is a herculean chore either. It's a very simple command.

Cult, rev, shadowling, gang, hacking silicons/forceborging people all rely on forced conversion as well, with no option at all to opt out.

more things.

So is your problem that the team death match isnt clear enough or that you dont like the team deathmatch at all?

Is it worth fixing it to give hud icons etc or are people gonna hate it anyway?

[Actionb]

When I first heard about this sword, I figured it'd be like ToME's temporal warden skill that spawns in copies of yourself for a fraction of a turn.
Multiverse sword is pure carnage. It's TDM with little to no teams.
Yeah, you may have that sword to defend the innocent, but as soon as one of your clones hits somebody, it spirals out of control.
Unless the wizard waits a long time before engaging the crew, a 40 minute round will enable everyone (that isn't dead yet) to get a sword.
I feel it grows a little too quickly. Maybe let clones have no-drop and let them disappear upon death with a chance to leave behind a sword?

Summon Magic: "I CAN TURN PEOPLE INTO SLIMES!"
Summon Guns: "I CAN TURN THE STATION INTO THE WILD WILD WEST!"
MV Sword: "Nice try kiddos. Now go play with your dolls, daddy has a station to level."

[lumipharon]

Yeah just compare it to summon guns.

Summon guns gives everyone weapons, and gives a small fraction of them antag status.
Multicuck sword (within 10 minutes) gives everyone a weapon, all with antag status, all with respawn functionally turned on.

They both cost 1 spell.

[Fatal]

Adding some HUD icons would be an excellent help, other than that, there isn't much you can do for it

[Arete]

Yeah just compare it to summon guns.

Summon guns gives everyone weapons, and gives a small fraction of them antag status.
Multicuck sword (within 10 minutes) gives everyone a weapon, all with antag status, all with respawn functionally turned on.

They both cost 1 spell.

I think it's disingenuous to call what the multiverse sword gives you "antag status." You get an objective, yes, but it's literally an objective to defend the innocent.

A HUD icon to recognize your own alternative universe selves probably wouldn't help much since it seems like most of the chaos is caused by clones of one non-antag attacking clones of a different non-antag. Putting HUD icons over literally all non-antags might help, but I'm not sure if we want that kind of omniscience.

[Actionb]

Yeah just compare it to summon guns.

Summon guns gives everyone weapons, and gives a small fraction of them antag status.
Multicuck sword (within 10 minutes) gives everyone a weapon, all with antag status, all with respawn functionally turned on.

They both cost 1 spell.

I think it's disingenuous to call what the multiverse sword gives you "antag status." You get an objective, yes, but it's literally an objective to defend the innocent.

Some people get the hijack the shuttle objective.
And even with the 'defend' objective, your clones will still go around killing people who they think are harming the innocents - turning themselves into targets for other 'defender' clones. Spiral of violence.

[onleavedontatme]

There are potential solutions to that issue, like making all the evil clones glow red and all the good clones glow blue, but people have failed to answer the question of whether or not they'd accept it fixed rather than gone.

And wizard mode lets you buy infinite lives for 1 point as well as smoke for 1 point, or the staff of animation for 1 point vs forcewall for 1 point.

Not sure why that's a sticking point either, and I dont want to get bogged down arguing over balance if people dislike the concept at its core.

[Actionb]

The idea behind the swords is unique, I like that about them. I'd rather see the feature tweaked than removed.
The current mindset of wizards is to cause as much chaos as possible so they can do their objectives in peace. Previously, summon magic/guns did that somehwat well. Slaughter Demons catch a lot of attention now too. But MV swords just turns everyone into an antag. Nobody will care about the blinking wizard when there's some less mobile guy to kill nearby. The swords completely take the wizard out of everyone's focus.
In other words: there is no joint effort to kill the wizard coming from the crew anymore. Easy game for the wizard and so there is little reason to favour super dangerous summon magic/guns over MV or even the demon. What if all swords + clones vanished when the wizard dies?

The swords spread too fast and they cannot be contained. With summon guns you could kill the spree killer. You can kill the demon. But you can't really pick up 20+ swords and space them - not to mention you'd have to kill all their bearers in the first place. And why would you space those anyway, when you could get free antag?

[Arete]

I would absolutely prefer for the concept to stay. I think it's a good thing that the swords take the focus off the wizard himself - it puts less emphasis on his ability to sax around the station. In general, I think wizard mode needs to move more toward the wizard as a chaos-instigator who uses the chaos to keep the crew from engaging him directly rather than as a one-man army balanced to fight twenty crewmembers toe-to-toe. Chasing around an infinitely-jaunting guy who can get away even when stunned is infinitely less fun than trying to survive a wrecked station and maybe giving the bastard responsible some payback if you're lucky enough to come across him.

[onleavedontatme]

Actually the point of summon guns, was in fact, to take the focus off the singular wizard. Same as soulstones, staff of change, apprentices, etc. Nothing to do with giving him room to complete his objective, since wizards have incredibly easy traitor objectives anyway.

I dont really find the crew chasing the wizard in circles while he gibs 1 guy a minute very exciting. Better to spread the fun and action around.

[Tornadium]

Actually the point of summon guns, was in fact, to take the focus off the singular wizard. Same as soulstones, staff of change, apprentices, etc. Nothing to do with giving him room to complete his objective, since wizards have incredibly easy traitor objectives anyway.

I dont really find the crew chasing the wizard in circles while he gibs 1 guy a minute very exciting. Better to spread the fun and action around.

We saw one group of clones take over the station then move in a human tide after the wizard.

That was pretty fun.

[lumipharon]

I think it's disingenuous to call what the multiverse sword gives you "antag status." You get an objective, yes, but it's literally an objective to defend the innocent.

A HUD icon to recognize your own alternative universe selves probably wouldn't help much since it seems like most of the chaos is caused by clones of one non-antag attacking clones of a different non-antag. Putting HUD icons over literally all non-antags might help, but I'm not sure if we want that kind of omniscience.

But that's not correct at all.

Spawn based off the wizard have an object it murder the fuck out of everything not them, and escape on the shuttle together.
Spawn of other plebs have an objective to defend the innocent and stop all the multicuck clones.

The objective does not say 'stop the wizard and his spawn' it says ALL multicuck spawn.
Which after 10 minutes, is fucking everyone.

[PKPenguin321]

multiverse sword rounds are fun as fuck

if you guys are really so upset that you HAVE to remove them from wizard, then honestly i'd be okay with them being their own gamemode, or a rare event like ninja

[rdght91]

Multiverse rounds are too badass to stop.

Wizard is a shit gamemode anyway, at least the wiz lets everyone get onto the murderboning train.

[onleavedontatme]

things

It actually says "defend the innocent from."

So if other clones are attacking people they're part of the innocent.

I thought the intent of objective was pretty clear.

[lumipharon]

I dunno about the exact wording, but that doesn't stop all the clones from murderin every other (non them) clone they see.
And good luck admins trying to find out what's going on when everyone is constantly respawning and getting new names and shit.

[Tornadium]

I dunno about the exact wording, but that doesn't stop all the clones from murderin every other (non them) clone they see.
And good luck admins trying to find out what's going on when everyone is constantly respawning and getting new names and shit.

If you're just spawned with no directive of who and who isn't innocent most people just murder anything not themselves.

[Oldman Robustin]

Just going to add that if clone objectives stay the same then clones of good crew need to be help accountable for murdering "innocent" crew members.

It says right in the objectives to protect innocents against the Clone horde, yet when I'm in multiverse rounds about 50% of the time I get cut down by a group of cargo tech clones who seem to think the sword makes everyone valid.

Rounds might stay a bit more coherent, with more people able to keep their identity, and less of a descent into Highlander, if assistant clones weren't murdering as many crew members as wizard clones.

I also think there are some huge balance concerns that haven't even been fully realized yet. People figured out the staff of change thing pretty fast (spawn clones in viro/vacant office/eletric maint, turn them all into syndieborgs and hunters, appear at the 10 minute mark with enough high-powered murdermachines to quickly wipe out the crew.

Only a matter of time before someone realizes you can do this with soulstone belt too and sits above perma making a construct horde that will breach at armory and steamroll the crew. Same thing for efficient statue + staff of animation. An unlimited supply of free souls to manipulate is problematic.