Instead of "fixing" GWar/Sling/etc., give Traitors some love

[Oldman Robustin]

Traitors makes up over 50% of our rounds, but they've become super fucking bland.

The traitor meta is incredibly stale. Every round starts to feel the same and there's very few traitors who do anything fresh.

The traitor doesn't need new weapons or minor gadgets that nobody will ever use, they need to have something that really shakes things up. Here are a few ideas but honestly it's not hard for anyone to come up with this stuff, it just need someone to actually undertake it:

1) Traitor crews. A subset of traitors that will be automatically teamed into groups of 2-4 with a mutual objective that requires substantially more effort than solo objectives. They should either have access to the Syndie channel by default, or perhaps access to a special crew channel that is unique to their headsets. There's a lot of room for flexibility here but admins should enforce the usual team rules against these guys, so no "IM A FRIENDLY TRAITOR LET ME TELL YOU WHO THE OTHER TRAITORS ARE" bullshit unless it's an elaborate ruse. Part of that flexibility can include custom uplinks for certain objectives, so that a "Heist" style objective would limit some/all of the weapons and explosives so that the objective has to actually be approached like a heist and not simply a "murder everyone until we get what we need" effort.

I'd also love to see the possibility of Department Crews, where an entire department are the selected traitors for the round. The department's objective would obviously have some synergy with their department. Perhaps science has to ensure the number of mechs+slimes+subverted borgs+traitors outnumbers the number of loyal crew on the shuttle. Perhaps engineering needs to ensure X% of the station's APC are depowered (but not destroyed) at the time the shuttle launches. Perhaps medical needs to have total loyal crew dead+diseased+medical staff genetically empowered = a certain % of the total crew. Again, the sky is the limit for this stuff, if you're worried about Departments just murderboning, then it wouldnt be hard to code in a mechanic that would warn the crew of the team's identity and objective if dead crew reach a certain threshold. Or, once again, you can turn off certain traitor items for certain dept. teams that might be OP.

2) Game-changing items. Stuff that completely turns the traitor's round on its head without having to resort to a TC trade with an admin. How about a mini-BSA cannon that the traitor can set up on other z_levels to bombard the station with small explosions (accuracy shouldn't be perfect and there should be a modest delay between the firing and the explosion). The first 2 shots would be "calibration" shots that would hit just about anywhere on the station accompanied by an automatic Centcom warning. After 2 shots the BSA would become increasingly accurate but Centcom would also be able to determine the (increasingly accurate) GPS coordinates from where the shots were coming from. It would be up to the traitor to see how hard they could defend their space base and up to the crew to determine the amount of force worth deploying to stop it. Is a single officer with a jetpack and GPS enough? Or should the station unleash a mass of validhunting assistants into space to hunt this guy down? Why not both? This would be surprisingly easy to balance since the utility of the BSA would hinge almost entirely on the explosion size, which can be tweaked to a very fine degree of power. Also it wouldn't be hard to come with a meta-excuse for why the BSA wouldn't be able to aim within X tiles of the engine since the singularity/tesla/supermatter would inevitably suck in/vaporize any projectile aimed within the engine's vicinity. Perhaps at X minutes, the BSA would become fully charged and allow the traitor to fire multiple shots in succession before the reload.

This is just one idea of many. I think zombies had a lot of untapped potential too (shocker) and they could also be balanced into an item that is fun. The ideal balance would be that if you just jabbed someone at roundstart with the zombie virus there would be little to no chance of an outbreak before the threat would be cured/neutralized... but if you used other items at your disposal (flooding gas, cutting coms, disabling cargo, stealing the armory) then there is a higher chance that you could achieve a zombie outbreak.

3) Merge binary and traitor keys into one 2TC item. Add a key that ONLY adds Syndicate comms for 0TC. Kind of self-explanatory, the ability to spy on comms shouldn't be conflated with the ability to talk to other traitors. Traitors exposing themselves to getting backstabbed/spied on by security in exchange for the chance to communicate seems like a fair tradeoff for an antagonist. Traitors teaming up is always one of the most interesting things that can happen in a traitor round.

You get the idea now... if we're going to make traitors 50% of the damn rounds, lets make those rounds feel like they have a little variety to them. I'd much rather have that than see some marginal improvements to a mode that makes up 5% of the rotation.

[leibniz]

You make some good points, and at the end you mention that 50% of our rounds are traitor variants... which reminded me of lowpop. Lowpop is almost entirely traitor.
Currently we have some uplink items that are only available in highpop (surplus crate and I dont know what else).
So just like that the uplink could have items limited to lowpop. Like.. no idea what would be good, but there is some potential here. Maybe some "game changing" items could disable latejoin antags so it doesn't become too chaotic or unenjoyable with a skeleton crew.

Also there is no good reason why we dont have job specific traitor items like goon. Yes, people who encounter would be able to "meta" the source, but if the traitor doesnt like it, they just wouldnt buy it, that's it. More variety.

[Armhulen]

department traitor sounds extremely fun until security metagames and arrests all of science because they caught two science traitors

[ShadowDimentio]

I say we should lower the traitor weight so some of the more obscure rounds get some time in the limelight (blob, wizard) and traitor doesn't get so boring. I have a terrible time trying to think of fun stuff to do with traitor these days, and usually just ask to trade for memes or something.

[Oldman Robustin]

department traitor sounds extremely fun until security metagames and arrests all of science because they caught two science traitors

Metagaming would play an outsized role for that sort of thing, but:

1) If science has had 2 of their traitors caught, they've kind of already fucked up.

2) When you can trust the rest of your department as a traitor that opens up a lot of possibilities for stashing gear


I think the only weakness is how to deal with comms. Having a special radio channel would just encourage security to strip headsets off traitors to see if they were working alone. On one hand I kind of like security being able to infiltrate syndie comms if the syndies fucked up... on the other hand it seems like it would be a little too easy to meta and could ruin the round for multiple other traitors if one was dumb and got arrested breaking into EVA only to have their headset checked for secret channels.

Or we could just make up some scifi nonsense about how traitor teams have a special implant that lets them hear the secret channel.

[onleavedontatme]

Making larger teams of people with dual eswords silently killing everyone wont make the round more fun

[calzilla1]

COUGH COUGH BUNDLES COUGH

[Cik]

tfw dual eswords weren't even a problem until after a certain thing was removed from the game

traitor does need to be expanded though. oldman's ideas are p. gud as usual

[CPTANT]

tfw dual eswords weren't even a problem until after a certain thing was removed from the game

traitor does need to be expanded though. oldman's ideas are p. gud as usual

dismemberment made duel eswords way stronger than they were.

[onleavedontatme]

The way to make traitor a more exciting mode would be to change the rules set to emphasize creativity and telling bizarre stories rather than a dry formula of who is and isn't okay to kill immediately and silently.

Such a rule set would be very difficult to write though, and would probably have too much subjectivity to be fairly enforced by such a large team of admins.

[ShadowDimentio]

That rule would be utterly unenforceable. You can't tell people "Hey, be creative and fun" and then shoot them with a ban if they aren't creative and fun enough, or tell you to fuck off.

[calzilla1]

Make it a rule that you must accept tc trades of abductors/borer/ect

[Oldman Robustin]

Making larger teams of people with dual eswords silently killing everyone wont make the round more fun

I think making it a larger team would actually work in that sense because its easier to track down and locate small groups compared to one dude who hides in a locker between killing sprees.

It's also silly to dismiss the concept out of hand. Teams could receive reduced TC per person or restricted item lists to make up for the benefits of having allies.

We can't enforce "creativity" against antags without becoming Bay, but it's much easier to put them on a team which would require creativity for them to succeed (and admins CAN act against team members who don't work toward the objective).

Maybe a team needs to extract X credits from the Vault but their uplinks don't include any weapons or explosives... bingo, bango, bongo you've got a team that needs to engage in some creative problem solving.

[oranges]

We can't fix your burnout with the game and we can't fix players not doing interesting things of their own accord.

We're developers not wizards

[ShadowDimentio]

I'm extremely reluctant about forcing traitors to occasionally be team antags. When I think of team antags I'm reminded of once where I was playing mime and two lings carrying the entire armory in sec gear guarded the comms console and systematically scavenged the entire station for an hour and a half searching for valids. What made it worse was just as I had one ling on the ropes the other flew in out of nowhere and killed me.

I was mad.

[Oldman Robustin]

We can't fix your burnout with the game and we can't fix players not doing interesting things of their own accord.

We're developers not wizards

I mean the whole design of team objectives is to FORCE the players do something interesting. I can only imagine how cancerous certain modes would be if the team objective was just "Just do whatever fam XD".

I'm not burned out with SS13 as a whole, traitor rounds lacking variety may contribute to burnout but its certainly a separate problem.

[TheColdTurtle]

What ever happened to the objective that made you have to protect an innocent guy? I remember I had that once but my target suicided roundstart. Fuck you pillz

[Gun Hog]

Make it so that Traitor modes are not half the round chances. That may help!

[Armhulen]

What ever happened to the objective that made you have to protect an innocent guy? I remember I had that once but my target suicided roundstart. Fuck you pillz

revive this

[Bob Dobbington]

Plenty of these ideas are worth exploring. Syndicate department infiltration sounds like all the fun of stealth ops but without the inevitable fuckup and ops wipe and red alert shuttle call because the part everyone fucks up starts done for you. We've tested far worse ideas for extended periods. Traitor is pretty stale right now and a lot of this stuff sounds actually fun.

[ShadowDimentio]

Make it so that Traitor modes are not half the round chances. That may help!

>Stealing my idea

Suing you

[onleavedontatme]

You are a traitor. You are traitor maybe once a week. You have two choices:

1. Do something creative and involved. At any given time the shuttle might be called early, or a security officer might shoot you once before silently dragging you into the execution room and murdering you. You have lost your chance to have fun. Instead you are frustrated and sad and possibly mocked in OOC. You can try again in a week though!

2. Enjoy the instant gratification of beating one or more people to death.


The only way to get people to do 1 more often is to add a safety net for them. Traitors have adrenals as a safety net, but that just as easily facilitates option 2.

But you can't add a rules safety net that says you can't instantly murder traitors as long as traitors are allowed to instantly murder you, and nobody wants an end to that, so people are going to keep picking option 2.

[ShadowDimentio]

It is what it is. Be the change you want to be, but don't demand other people play how you do.

[Oldman Robustin]

I like the "protect" objective idea. One traitor must survive and escape (and it would be considered a team objective so no roundstart suicide bombing), a few other traitors would have to protect that individual, and a few more would be tasked with assassinating that person, then a few others would just be vanilla traitors to spice things up. Anyone with the protect/assassinate objective would have revolvers and other ultra-lethal options disabled. For bonus fun, all parties would have a pinpointer that they can activate when their PDA is unlocked that would flash with the targets direction when activated but would turn off after 5 seconds with a ~2m cooldown.

Only question is if you let the protectors have a way to identify themselves to their objective or if you just leave it all unknown and open to RP to try and gain trust. I support the RP option but it kind of feels like it would be too easy just to pretend to be a bodyguard, wait them to get distracted, then chop their head off with an esword and space the brain. If the objective trusts people who claim to be bodyguards, then they will easily die to a liar, if they don't trust anyone and just try to isolate themselves, it would also be very hard for the target to survive solo and it would be frustrating to protect your target when they or the other bodyguards are likely to murder you out of precaution.

[Kel]

It is what it is. Be the change you want to be, but don't demand other people play how you do.

Don't be dense. Even if Oldman summons up the creativity to be a different flavor of traitor every round, that won't inspire anyone else to be creative or even fix his problem as a whole. Most of the game is playing on the receiving end of traitors and him being creative when he rolls it doesn't mean it'll be any more fun for him the next round when he decides to play security.
Edit: Flavor needs to be added into traitor forcefully, variety is the spice of life and traitor as a whole has been very bland for a long time. Holoparasites were a step in.. a direction, most would say. They were different, they had a whole new playstyle, and (personally) they were fun to fight against. Players have proven they won't be different and it's hard to blame them when your tools are so limited and unchanging. Half of the uplink consists of items basically never willingly chosen and if they are they're from a pacifist traitor who trades them off for a steal objective or just gives it away for free, which is the antithesis of entertaining. Something needs to change. Anything.

[ShadowDimentio]

What did he mean by this

I'm agreeing with you dummy. Nothing can force our playerbase to be more creative and fun short of turning into Bay and banning anyone who steps out of line, which is a solution nobody wants to a problem that isn't a problem.

[calzilla1]

Tbh when i get traitor i either get a bundle or admin trade. Do you think admins would allow me to make a syndie store?

[Armhulen]

sometimes when I get traitor i just trade it away to some other lucky folk

what have i become

[Jacough]

The way to make traitor a more exciting mode would be to change the rules set to emphasize creativity and telling bizarre stories rather than a dry formula of who is and isn't okay to kill immediately and silently.

Such a rule set would be very difficult to write though, and would probably have too much subjectivity to be fairly enforced by such a large team of admins.

If someone pulls the same exact "order dual esword, try to murder everyone, ignore objectives" over and over give them an antag ban. Make some room for people who might have more interest in doing something fun and interesting instead of stale and gay.

[D&B]

>Play this special rate chance based mode the way I want or get banned from it.

Even if people yell high shit at friendly wizards for being fucking boring/obnoxious, everyone still accepts that one should be able to play the role the way they want.

[PKPenguin321]

>Play this special rate chance based mode the way I want or get banned from it.

Even if people yell high shit at friendly wizards for being fucking boring/obnoxious, everyone still accepts that one should be able to play the role the way they want.

I've never seen a friendly wizard that turned out well so they can all eat an ass

The closest one ever came was this one time when the wizard summoned magic then died early. The wizard was a cutie girl though so I stole a healing staff from someone then revived her, then endlessly flirted with her. This apparently broke her spirit and she spent pretty much the rest of the round being non hostile but running/teleporting away from me

It was pretty funny but also a cruel metaphor for real life looking back

[Oldman Robustin]

The way to make traitor a more exciting mode would be to change the rules set to emphasize creativity and telling bizarre stories rather than a dry formula of who is and isn't okay to kill immediately and silently.

Such a rule set would be very difficult to write though, and would probably have too much subjectivity to be fairly enforced by such a large team of admins.

If someone pulls the same exact "order dual esword, try to murder everyone, ignore objectives" over and over give them an antag ban. Make some room for people who might have more interest in doing something fun and interesting instead of stale and gay.

Honestly traitors don't have a whole lot of options for "fun and interesting", hence my thread. I take crates now just for the meme potential but even if I wanted to do something "whacky" I honestly dont know what I'd pick. I think the most interesting thing I did recently was teleport to the AI sat and use the 3 EMP boxes I got from the crate to throw like ~15 EMP grenades at all the teleporter beacons on the station. Better than most traitor memes but still /yawn. I find a 2x esword murderboner more entertaining than some fresh traitor who spends the whole game undercover, uses an emag to get some shitty objective nobody cares about, and then spends the rest of the round acting like a loyal crewmember.

This has been a trend since I started playing SS13, people try to change the players and that's silly. You have to change the game so that players have the right tools and incentives to do something that is more healthy for the game.

[Arianya]

Bring back job specific antag items

[Xhuis]

I tried that once but I got shot down. I guess I could do it again if people really wanted.

[Lumbermancer]

There's no security.

[InsaneHyena]

Remove traitor items at all, make the station itself and things you find on it deadly instead.

[Arianya]

I tried that once but I got shot down. I guess I could do it again if people really wanted.

I believe the argument in the past against them is that they ruin stealth since as soon as you find, for example, antag seeds, you know the traitor is a botanist.

I'd suggest making role-specific items tied to what ID is inserted into the PDA during item buying, since this allows for role specific items without the "100% valid" issue, as if you go to the trouble, you can get an ID with another job/get your ID changed and so throw people off the scent.

The only complication is that your uplink is sometime on your headset. Not sure how you'd manage that.

[ShadowDimentio]

What imbecile buys antag items then leaves them laying around?

[Nabski]

Me. I always buy the surplus crate. You end up with more than you can carry. Half the time I just leave the crate in maintenance after.

Camera bug, beacon, 2nd power fist/spacesuit/hardsuit, .357 loader without pistol, soap, carp, chem kit. If I can't carry and I don't have a plan for it, it stays in the box.

[Incomptinence]

I would rather changeling be fixed to provide solo variety. That would require letting it do something other than march goose-step with traitor tho, cheridan legacy etc.

[Davidchan]

The only complication is that your uplink is sometime on your headset. Not sure how you'd manage that.

Most jobs have radio keys, if someone wanted to change the code a bit you could make duplicate keys for every job in a department, so medical doctor and chemist keys would be identical as far as examinations but a code flag on the key would allow headset uplinks to get job specific gear.

Big problem with this idea though, is that traitors would be hunting down job-specific gear they like, and the round start headsets would need their own null category for uplinks or else they'd be tied to a job.

It's not a terrible idea but allowing traitors to specific to roles outside their roundstart has a number of flaws and would only encourage more murderboning and killing nontargets to get more gear options.

Though overall I feel traitors are in a good spot right now, there is always room for improvement but it's the most common game mode and gets the most PRs and new items compared to any other antag role. Other gamemodes have serious problems with them that should be fixed to make them more fun to play and offer alternative playstyles. Traitors aren't broken, have numerous playstyles even for the same job, and tweaking them will likely break them much like how cult was fucked and ruined because someone didn't like how conversions worked.

[Incomptinence]

I believe the argument in the past against them is that they ruin stealth since as soon as you find, for example, antag seeds, you know the traitor is a botanist.

Always been a really stupid argument. If you are dropping and leaving your gear where it is easily found you have other problems. Like detectives scanning it or whoever downed you feeding you your own weapon.

It's a modicum of investigation to go these magical tator seeds might be from a botanist better go get that botanist. Leaving out botany is a multiperson job and you could potentially frame your coworker this extra intel to your enemies is part of a downside upside equation. The increased chance of discovery is rewarded by very unique and sometimes stronger than standard tools. It's a risk you are rewarded for taking.