/tg/Station 13

Hello my fellow SS13 players,

I have recently had a moment of clarity when it comes to powergaming.
It started with this thought: "what if I just... didn't powergame, and went with the flow of the round, wherever it takes me?"
If you die, you die. If antags greentext, they greentext. It's not about winning, it's about participating and letting the round unravel in an interesting way that isn't a binary win/lose objective.
It's about letting your character's fate be guided by the round rather than the round's fate be guided by your character.

Go with the flow as if you were sailing in an ocean. If the tide is smooth and calm, then going with the flow is relaxing and makes everyone's experience better. Maybe you can even admire the sunset and the marine life, the ocean air and cool breeze advanced research items... Let the heretic go. That traitor with the makarov? Gulag will suffice. No need to preemptively harden the security of the station in preparation for that which does not yet exist. Enable the round to unravel on its own terms.

Then I realized: this is unique to MRP.

What if the tide isn't smooth and calm? What if it's rough and ruthless, and your boat is being throw about left and right, the crash of each wave casting more and more of your crew overboard? Well, if you know that's what sort of ocean you'll be sailing in, it's your best bet - no, your only hope - to make sure your boat is forged from steel and your crew is prepared and geared to deal with anything and everything they might run into. That's an LRP round.

This is why powergaming rules don't work on LRP. This is why antags have restrictions on MRP. This is why tiding is acceptable on LRP. They are different environments that allow for different behaviors, and call for different approaches. If you stick the captain from the storm-ship onto the peaceful-ship, he will seem tyrannical and domineering. If you stick the captain from the peaceful-ship into the storm-ship, he will seem ineffectual and passive.

sinfulbliss wrote:Hello my fellow SS13 players,

I have recently had a moment of clarity when it comes to powergaming.
It started with this thought: "what if I just... didn't powergame, and went with the flow of the round, wherever it takes me?"
If you die, you die. If antags greentext, they greentext. It's not about winning, it's about participating and letting the round unravel in an interesting way that isn't a binary win/lose objective.
It's about letting your character's fate be guided by the round rather than the round's fate be guided by your character.

Go with the flow as if you were sailing in an ocean. If the tide is smooth and calm, then going with the flow is relaxing and makes everyone's experience better. Maybe you can even admire the sunset and the marine life, the ocean air and cool breeze advanced research items... Let the heretic go. That traitor with the makarov? Gulag will suffice. No need to preemptively harden the security of the station in preparation for that which does not yet exist. Enable the round to unravel on its own terms.

Then I realized: this is unique to MRP.

What if the tide isn't smooth and calm? What if it's rough and ruthless, and your boat is being throw about left and right, the crash of each wave casting more and more of your crew overboard? Well, if you know that's what sort of ocean you'll be sailing in, it's your best bet - no, your only hope - to make sure your boat is forged from steel and your crew is prepared and geared to deal with anything and everything they might run into. That's an LRP round.

This is why powergaming rules don't work on LRP. This is why antags have restrictions on MRP. This is why tiding is acceptable on LRP. They are different environments that allow for different behaviors, and call for different approaches. If you stick the captain from the storm-ship onto the peaceful-ship, he will seem tyrannical and domineering. If you stick the captain from the peaceful-ship into the storm-ship, he will seem ineffectual and passive.

I've been playing with this mindset from the beginning. Both in LRP and MRP. There are certain powergamy things I can't avoid doing depending on the jobs, but I've always liked the idea of just following the current while my characters do what they do, instead of trying to make everything about being the best and min-maxing all that's possible.

I understand people otherwise enjoying this playstyle though, and think they are necessary to create balance and add variety of interactions and shenanigans to a round. Which is one of the reasons I'll always find our LRP way richer in experience than our MRP.

Agux909 wrote: I understand people otherwise enjoying this playstyle though, and think they are necessary to create balance and add variety of interactions and shenanigans to a round. Which is one of the reasons I'll always find our LRP way richer in experience than our MRP.

Amen

technokek wrote:did anybody ask?

No, I didn't (:

>It's about letting your character's fate be guided by the round rather than the round's fate be guided by your character.

i started playing like this a year or two ago, and its much more relaxing fun, and certainly not unique to MRP

Kendrickorium wrote:>It's about letting your character's fate be guided by the round rather than the round's fate be guided by your character.

i started playing like this a year or two ago, and its much more relaxing fun, and certainly not unique to MRP

I suppose this was directed mainly at sec and other roles where powergaming is prevalent, like validhunting assistant/chemist or wherever.

The real antag rolling is playing the game as normal but not optimizing to avoid death from the circumstances of the round

die dramatic die proud

Powergaming exists because people don’t want to die. True freedom is realizing your death is part of the story and not wasting your time looking for every way of preventing it.

Fuck sticky basically said the same thing fuck you sticky

wesoda25 wrote:Powergaming exists because people don’t want to die. True freedom is realizing your death is part of the story and not wasting your time looking for every way of preventing it.

Fuck sticky basically said the same thing fuck you sticky

Accidentally saying the same thing I did is just proof that you have the right take. Be satisfied that you are briefly correct

agreeing on sticky on anything is a permanent red mark on reputation of any admin even former one

you, mr wesoda, are therefore cringe

however what wesoda said is also what I've been saying for like a year, so he's actually agreeing with me and is absolved of any impurity

@ your argument about powergaming on LRP
decent take, if you don't like ever dying, but you yourself have complained that you feel like you don't have time to interact with people you'd like to because you have a strict schedule to follow as HoS consisting of "hunting for valids in maint".

playing this game on a schedule doesn't sound like something particularly enjoyable, but if it's what you like go for it
just don't feel like you HAVE to powergame to "save your crew", play however you wanna play

captain/hos/other head of choice is an essential role for the operation of the station, but if the station explodes or is slowly devoured by a particularly robust antag it doesn't mean you've "failed" - your objective is not to preserve the station at all costs, your objective is to have a good time playing a video game
I don't play heads because I hate revs though so maybe another hos main can correct me on their innately-stated duty to eviscerate every single antag and splatter their blood on the walls for all to see

also to doublepost

technokek wrote:did anybody ask?

i did fuck you

powergaming exists because there are people that want to win, and the codebase enables them. stuff like RNG disarm stuns, instant baton stuns, tazers, etc made it much easier to kill a good player as a bad player. moving towards skill based systems further rewards playing to win/get better instead of focusing on having fun with other players.

i used to be the same for a while but now i only do it as antag. games legit so much more fun and relaxing when u start to stop caring as much about living and killing the antags. not like a complete pushover, i'll still try to fight back and stuff, but in general just trying a lot less hard. highly recommend it to anyone that thinks of themselves as a gamer.

bonus points: you can do it as sec too but it might be hard if you're not already pretty decent. dont go much beyond default gear, lethals only for emergencies, generally not killing people unless its a ling or a wizard or something. you can usually solve most stuff without brigging people as well, requires a tiny bit of social skills tho. i like to issue people "warnings" telling them to not do something if I see them breaking into tech storage or something like that, i dont really use brig unless someones being a shithead. it makes the job a lot more relaxing and feels like less of a chore to interact with tiders while you're waiting for an antag to chase.

skill issue

oranges wrote:skill issue

skill issue

imsxz wrote:powergaming exists because there are people that want to win, and the codebase enables them. stuff like RNG disarm stuns, instant baton stuns, tazers, etc made it much easier to kill a good player as a bad player. moving towards skill based systems further rewards playing to win/get better instead of focusing on having fun with other players.

i used to be the same for a while but now i only do it as antag. games legit so much more fun and relaxing when u start to stop caring as much about living and killing the antags. not like a complete pushover, i'll still try to fight back and stuff, but in general just trying a lot less hard. highly recommend it to anyone that thinks of themselves as a gamer.

bonus points: you can do it as sec too but it might be hard if you're not already pretty decent. dont go much beyond default gear, lethals only for emergencies, generally not killing people unless its a ling or a wizard or something. you can usually solve most stuff without brigging people as well, requires a tiny bit of social skills tho. i like to issue people "warnings" telling them to not do something if I see them breaking into tech storage or something like that, i dont really use brig unless someones being a shithead. it makes the job a lot more relaxing and feels like less of a chore to interact with tiders while you're waiting for an antag to chase.

no its just that your kd got lower than 25.0 and you have given up on trying to recover from it

sinfulbliss wrote:Hello my fellow SS13 players,
I have recently had a moment of clarity when it comes to powergaming.

to answer the thread title btw, powergaming is a function of wanting attention, powergamers are one face of the coin that on the other side is all the felenid and rule 8 line toeing players

oranges wrote:to answer the thread title btw, powergaming is a function of wanting attention, powergamers are one face of the coin that on the other side is all the felenid and rule 8 line toeing players

Based

See, this is why I grow cocaine and have a part-time coyote GF.

Kassori wrote:part-time coyote GF.

Farquaar wrote:

Kassori wrote:part-time coyote GF.

me too

I spoilered the longer replies so as not to derail the coyote GF discussion.

@Omega @imsxz @oranges

oranges wrote:to answer the thread title btw, powergaming is a function of wanting attention, powergamers are one face of the coin that on the other side is all the felenid and rule 8 line toeing players

And a beautiful coin it is - worth its weight in gold. Except coins don't weigh much so it's probably, like, $9.99 or something.

A weird thing in SS13 is that a lot of the time you don't have a goal. Some people take this to mean that they need to fill that goalless space with preparation so that they will be in minmaxed gear from head to toe by the time any kind of combat comes around, and I think it is fair to say that that is a natural outcome of not giving the player a goal. That being said, not having a goal is a net positive in my opinion. If every player, both antag and not, had a laser focused goal that they had to give their attention to 100% of the time, the game would be a lot worse off. When you give a player the ability to set their own goals, it gives you all kinds of wonderful things that have defined SS13 for ages, most notably all variants of player driven events (sometimes called "gimmicks"). This sort of design philosophy isn't talked about a whole lot, but it exists in the codebase to a great degree too. Job content is never mandatory: Research doesn't have to be done, library books don't have to be written, the supermatter doesn't need to bet set up because you've got other engine choices (though this has been cut down a lot to pretty much just having solars as the alternative). The only job action I can think of that is technically mandatory for a round to have is for a head of staff to call the shuttle, and even then it's often either the AI or a crewmate with access they shouldn't have doing that (and in some modes the antags can end everything without the shuttle ever being called). Research is a cool example because it gives you a lot to do, and none of it is really mandatory. Want to build cool circuits and need to do research to get them? That's up to you, that's a goal that you are setting. The game had no hand in your desire to build circuits but gives you the option to do so anyways, and you're doing research to reach that goal. The only real strict goals you can have in the game are antagonist objectives, and even then those can often be ignored and simply used as a free pass to complete a different goal of your own choosing (like setting up a Saw-esque scenario instead of stealing the nuke disk or whatever). The game is very much like an incredibly deep sandbox in this regard, and while I do think that having to find your own motivation round after round is one of the main causes of burnout, I also think that it is what sets SS13 apart and makes it notable at all.

God bless shadowflame

TheFinalPotato wrote:

oranges wrote:skill issue

skill issue

PKPenguin321 wrote:wise words

Very true. I feel like some jobs have an implied goal though. People would get pissed at you if you just chilled in the bar and didn't respond to any crime as sec, for example. Or if the crew wanted the cure for AIDS and the chemist was making meth instead.

TheFinalPotato wrote:

oranges wrote:skill issue

skill issue

Okay YOU KNOW WHAT? ALRIGHT, I'M COMING AFTER YOU GREEN SHITPOSTERS.
@oranges @TheFinalPotato I HAVE BEEN BANNED ALMOST 2 MONTHS AND I STILL HAVE MORE PLAYTIME IN THE LAST TWO MONTHS ON TG THAN BOTH OF YOU COMBINED. LET THAT SINK IN. THE ONLY SKILL ISSUE YOU HAVE ON ME IS VISUAL BASIC.

sinfulbliss wrote: I HAVE BEEN BANNED ALMOST 2 MONTHS AND I STILL HAVE MORE PLAYTIME IN THE LAST TWO MONTHS ON TG THAN BOTH OF YOU COMBINED. LET THAT SINK IN.

the final cope

Fikou wrote:

sinfulbliss wrote: I HAVE BEEN BANNED ALMOST 2 MONTHS AND I STILL HAVE MORE PLAYTIME IN THE LAST TWO MONTHS ON TG THAN BOTH OF YOU COMBINED. LET THAT SINK IN.

the final cope

Don't make me bring your scrubby up Fikou... Don't make me add you to the hitlist. 2018-2019... Remember?

i play too much of this game to the point for about 3 years all I did was antag roll once you step away from the powergaming the game becomes fun again

If you say powergame to mean "I prep every round to make sure I cannot be killed easily by an antagonist", I think that comes mainly from murderbone culture.

In other games where you dont respawn the game lasts like 10 minutes max (COD Search and Destroy, R6S, etc.). If you get wiped early in ss13 however, you are stuck doing by design less enjoyable jobs or observing (occassionally you might get an antag role) for potentially an hour or more. It doesnt help that there are people in this game that play with the intent to make EVERYONE sit out EVERYTIME they get antag and become (in)famous for doing so.

This results in both 1) gearing up so that you can be prepared should an antagonist attack you and 2) going out of your way to kill the antagonists before they can gear up.

THAT results in them just murderboning for the same reason, as they cant run any good gimmicks without either being incredibly robust (most arent) or getting killed.

It's a vicious cycle and one that often has people looking for something like manuel but now that manuel is too oriented around other RP concepts there is definitely a hole for individuals looking for the freedoms associated with LRP without the fear of having your favorite pop-chasing murderboners hop on and wipe the floor for the upteenth time in a row (in fact this is a major reason why I will never support a separation between LRP/MRP while we dont have a LRP no-murderbone server because LRP oversight on MRP helps keep it not overly high). Im willing to bet someone championing that server would probably garner quite a few votes in headmin elections (if it was more than just a popularity contest).

I'm just here to own the noobs

sinfulbliss wrote:

PKPenguin321 wrote:wise words

Very true. I feel like some jobs have an implied goal though. People would get pissed at you if you just chilled in the bar and didn't respond to any crime as sec, for example. Or if the crew wanted the cure for AIDS and the chemist was making meth instead.

TheFinalPotato wrote:

oranges wrote:skill issue

skill issue

Okay YOU KNOW WHAT? ALRIGHT, I'M COMING AFTER YOU GREEN SHITPOSTERS.
@oranges

Spoiler:

@TheFinalPotato

Spoiler:

I HAVE BEEN BANNED ALMOST 2 MONTHS AND I STILL HAVE MORE PLAYTIME IN THE LAST TWO MONTHS ON TG THAN BOTH OF YOU COMBINED. LET THAT SINK IN.

Spoiler:

THE ONLY SKILL ISSUE YOU HAVE ON ME IS VISUAL BASIC.

skill issue

I would love a "LRP, but no RDM" server

Also

Skill issue

it exists because people play games to have fun

observing requires the highest levels of skill of all.

to be able to influence the running round as a passive ghost requires immense knowledge of human psychology and tradecraft

avoid talking to anyone, run around wordlessly collecting the most powerful items in the game so if anyone tries to kill you you can easily kill them.

realise you're doing this over and over again for no real gain or benefit.

Become burn out, cynical and bitter, stop playing, start forum posting.

Disappear for three years. Return, find a new server that is RP, go on it, realise you can't actually roleplay, spend the rest of your life observing while learning to code so you can contribute in some meaningful way to remain part of the community.

Die

Fikou wrote:avoid talking to anyone, run around wordlessly collecting the most powerful items in the game so if anyone tries to kill you you can easily kill them.

realise you're doing this over and over again for no real gain or benefit.

Become burn out, cynical and bitter, stop playing, start forum posting.

Disappear for three years. Return, find a new server that is RP, go on it, realise you can't actually roleplay, spend the rest of your life observing while learning to code so you can contribute in some meaningful way to remain part of the community.

Die

You forgot the penultimate step

im not reading this thread but powergaming exists because ss13 has some very obscure and intricate mechanics most of which are fun to exploit to their fullest in an attempt to break the game