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Config Change: Antag Rep Edition

Posted: Wed Sep 05, 2018 12:26 am
by subject217
Okay, basically what I'm suggesting is one part config change, and one part code change (although it could be handled via config, it'd be more work.)

This functionally configures the antag rep system to work like Pseudo-RNG from Dota 2.

Here are the changes:
ANTAG_REP_MAXIMUM 350 -> 100
MAX_TICKETS_PER_ROLL 150 -> 100

But what does this mean?

Basically, the current way antag rep works is that the roll is calculated based on an "initial" value of 100 for each player, with a certain amount of tickets being added onto that based on how many the player has. If they succeed in the roll, they will lose those tickets that they had stored, but if they fail the roll, they will keep them. And every time you play a role, you get 10 more tickets (or 7 for assistant).

The problem with the system as it currently stands (aside from the "it should be purely RNG" claim) is that players who play a lot will keep more of their antag rep around, and new players or people who just don't play a lot since it was added have to play for a long time to build up this rep.

My suggested changes basically make it so that you can only double your chance of rolling for antag compared to the base chance anyone gets, and when you win your chances are reset entirely instead of just being dropped down a bit. The latter part is the particularly important bit.

The code change/config with work change would be setting Assistant to earn 5 rep per round instead of 7. The rationale for this is that with a lower max antag rep the impact of Assistant earning less rep is reduced. The dev of antag rep included a config option for custom job reps that differ from what the code itself says, which is currently not used by the server, but it'd be very easy to set up. Or I could open a PR on GitHub and change it, but since these two systems are tied (config and non config) it'd make more sense to do it all as a config change.

Re: Config Change: Antag Rep Edition

Posted: Wed Sep 05, 2018 12:41 am
by BeeSting12
How about we remove antag rep instead?

Re: Config Change: Antag Rep Edition

Posted: Wed Sep 05, 2018 12:44 am
by subject217
BeeSting12 wrote:How about we remove antag rep instead?
Not what this thread is about. Many, many, many different people have discussed removing or disabling antag rep many different times, and it is still a discussion that is worth having, just not here.

Re: Config Change: Antag Rep Edition

Posted: Wed Sep 05, 2018 12:45 am
by oranges
this useless deadweight of code has produce no obvious change in player behaviour and therefore should be removed completely

Re: Config Change: Antag Rep Edition

Posted: Wed Sep 05, 2018 12:48 am
by subject217
oranges wrote:this useless deadweight of code has produce no obvious change in player behaviour and therefore should be removed completely
The objective of this config change isn't to induce change in player behavior, it is to make antag rolls more fair by increasing the odds for people who get unlucky, and that's it. You are a head coder, you could remove it if you wanted to.

Re: Config Change: Antag Rep Edition

Posted: Wed Sep 05, 2018 7:51 am
by Arianya
oranges wrote:this useless deadweight of code has produce no obvious change in player behaviour and therefore should be removed completely
Also its disingenuous to say that it didn't produce change in player behaviour when the system was never widely explained to players, and on top of that was implemented in such a way that the player-choice element of it was minimized so much it was practically non-existent.

Re: Config Change: Antag Rep Edition

Posted: Wed Sep 05, 2018 12:19 pm
by Lumbermancer
subject217 wrote:and when you win your chances are reset entirely instead of just being dropped down a bit..
I thought it was the case already, because it seems logical. No idea why wasn't this a thing in the first place.

Re: Config Change: Antag Rep Edition

Posted: Wed Sep 05, 2018 1:05 pm
by segundoblz
It also discredits admins as they can increase their own rep or for a "friend". I don't know. It's not logged. What should playerbase believe?

Re: Config Change: Antag Rep Edition

Posted: Wed Sep 05, 2018 1:55 pm
by WarbossLincoln
It also greatly favors people who play all the time. Someone who plays for a couple hours twice a week might not get antag in a month because their rep stays low. People who play every day get both more rolls(which they should cause they're playing a ton) and more rep making those rolls more likely(which is what may or may not be a good thing). When the people who play like 10 hours a day get tons of rep they get antag way more often and take a slot. When someone who doesn't play as much starts building up rep they might get a higher chance of rolling antag but they're still competing with a big base of people who always have high rep so that further dilutes their chances.

You can see this in game too. There are a couple regulars I notice get antag almost every night that I'm playing, not uncommonly multiple times a night. These are regulars who are on basically every night, all night. I play like 6-8 hours a week or so, give or take, and I average antag about once a week.

This is all not necessarily a bad thing, if you want to favor people who play tons of hours on the server. But that should be taken into consideration with this system.

Re: Config Change: Antag Rep Edition

Posted: Wed Sep 05, 2018 2:12 pm
by Arianya
segundoblz wrote:It also discredits admins as they can increase their own rep or for a "friend". I don't know. It's not logged. What should playerbase believe?
In as much as my saying it matters, I can tell you 100% that it's never been done while I've been around (it sends a message to admins whenever anyone touches antag rep) and that in general administrators were reluctant to touch it for any reason whatsoever, even when it might have been justified.

Re: Config Change: Antag Rep Edition

Posted: Wed Sep 05, 2018 3:24 pm
by subject217
segundoblz wrote:It also discredits admins as they can increase their own rep or for a "friend". I don't know. It's not logged. What should playerbase believe?
Admin logging for it is public, and nobody is allowed to just increase theirs for the hell of it. I wholly encourage you to find any examples of admins changing antag rep for personal gain or the gain of their friends. It should show up in the game log under the ADMIN prefix.
WarbossLincoln wrote:Snip
This is primarily what I'm seeking to change. That's also why I lowered the max antag rep, so people who roll more can't get it as high before it resets.

Re: Config Change: Antag Rep Edition

Posted: Sat Sep 08, 2018 1:28 am
by CitrusGender
I don't particularly have a problem with this but I fail to understand why we shouldn't reward our players who play more with one of the only benefits in the game we can offer.

There's literally nothing else we can control as a benefit of playing the game other than antag rolls and we're going to remove the incentive to players to play more.
Again, I don't have a problem with this but I'm just confused as to why this is considered an overall bad thing. I can understand how it does maker the roll less likely to favor new players, but there's never going to be an upside without a downside.
I will do this but if you dislike it that much, I suggest you do a revert codeside.

Re: Config Change: Antag Rep Edition

Posted: Sat Sep 08, 2018 3:12 am
by Hathkar
CitrusGender wrote:I don't particularly have a problem with this but I fail to understand why we shouldn't reward our players who play more with one of the only benefits in the game we can offer.

There's literally nothing else we can control as a benefit of playing the game other than antag rolls and we're going to remove the incentive to players to play more.
I don't think there needs to be an incentive or benefit to playing more. If you're playing the game more often, your reward is that you get to play the game more often because you clearly enjoy playing.
And if you can't have fun without being an antagonist, maybe you should take a break?

Re: Config Change: Antag Rep Edition

Posted: Sat Sep 08, 2018 3:36 am
by CitrusGender
Hathkar wrote:
CitrusGender wrote:I don't particularly have a problem with this but I fail to understand why we shouldn't reward our players who play more with one of the only benefits in the game we can offer.

There's literally nothing else we can control as a benefit of playing the game other than antag rolls and we're going to remove the incentive to players to play more.
I don't think there needs to be an incentive or benefit to playing more. If you're playing the game more often, your reward is that you get to play the game more often because you clearly enjoy playing.
And if you can't have fun without being an antagonist, maybe you should take a break?
Well, that may be a misrepresentation of the people we're dealing with. If that's the case, then yeah, it would not be feasible. However, if people are willing to play and get that extra enjoyment out of being antag more often and thus are encouraged to play more with that extra boost, then those are the types of people we'd want to encourage. It's a trade off between whether or not we want to cater to our returning players or our new players.

A similar thing can be said about newer players, if they stop playing because they don't get early antag rolls, perhaps they shouldn't be playing either?

Ultimately, I don't think there is an easy answer to this question.
I do like to encourage new players though so I'm kinda leaning towards turning it off.

Re: Config Change: Antag Rep Edition

Posted: Sat Sep 08, 2018 3:10 pm
by EagleWiz
CitrusGender wrote:

It's a trade off between whether or not we want to cater to our returning players or our new players.

A similar thing can be said about newer players, if they stop playing because they don't get early antag rolls, perhaps they shouldn't be playing either?

Ultimately, I don't think there is an easy answer to this question.
I do like to encourage new players though so I'm kinda leaning towards turning it off.
Doesn't this actually help newer players? When you are new you can't even get most types of antag until a certain amount of playtime (or is it just a certain number of days), but presumably you can still get antag rep while not eligible to roll antag. I agree that 350 is a bit much (thats 35 rounds!), but at 100 this should make it so that when new players start being able to roll for antag they have a high chance of actually getting antag.

Re: Config Change: Antag Rep Edition

Posted: Sat Sep 08, 2018 6:40 pm
by Mickyan
CitrusGender wrote:I fail to understand why we shouldn't reward our players who play more with one of the only benefits in the game we can offer.
I don't really think that's the case any more than playing more rounds naturally gives you more chances to roll antag

What this system does is skew the RNG in favor of the unlucky- if you have an unlucky streak where you're not getting selected for antag in a while, your chances go up. You're less likely to have situations where one person gets constantly selected out of sheer luck while someone else never does, out of the same number of rounds

I agree that the changes described in the OP would be beneficial to make this system more efficient and into a sort of "soft queue" where as soon as you roll antag you go to the back of the line, so to speak.

Re: Config Change: Antag Rep Edition

Posted: Sun Sep 09, 2018 8:04 am
by subject217
EagleWiz wrote:Doesn't this actually help newer players? When you are new you can't even get most types of antag until a certain amount of playtime (or is it just a certain number of days), but presumably you can still get antag rep while not eligible to roll antag. I agree that 350 is a bit much (thats 35 rounds!), but at 100 this should make it so that when new players start being able to roll for antag they have a high chance of actually getting antag.
This is not the current case IIRC, there are no time restrictions on antags.

Re: Config Change: Antag Rep Edition

Posted: Mon Sep 10, 2018 4:28 pm
by WarbossLincoln
Mickyan wrote:What this system does is skew the RNG in favor of the unlucky- if you have an unlucky streak where you're not getting selected for antag in a while, your chances go up. You're less likely to have situations where one person gets constantly selected out of sheer luck while someone else never does, out of the same number of rounds

This is kind of not what happens though. You see situations where one person gets selected repeatedly. There are several players I can think of that I see getting antag a couple times a night pretty consistently when I'm on. That's anecdotal of course but I don't think antag rep really does what it's intended in practical effect. There might should be a level where your antag rep is high enough to kick into a new bracket with 100% chance next game or something.

I dunno what the current odds are but I think I get antag about once every 15-20 rounds or so.

Re: Config Change: Antag Rep Edition

Posted: Mon Sep 10, 2018 5:47 pm
by Lumbermancer
Like Sticky always being traitor when HoP.

Re: Config Change: Antag Rep Edition

Posted: Mon Sep 10, 2018 10:59 pm
by CreationPro
WarbossLincoln wrote:
Mickyan wrote:What this system does is skew the RNG in favor of the unlucky- if you have an unlucky streak where you're not getting selected for antag in a while, your chances go up. You're less likely to have situations where one person gets constantly selected out of sheer luck while someone else never does, out of the same number of rounds

This is kind of not what happens though. You see situations where one person gets selected repeatedly. There are several players I can think of that I see getting antag a couple times a night pretty consistently when I'm on. That's anecdotal of course but I don't think antag rep really does what it's intended in practical effect. There might should be a level where your antag rep is high enough to kick into a new bracket with 100% chance next game or something.

I dunno what the current odds are but I think I get antag about once every 15-20 rounds or so.
byond rng works in mysterious ways.
I'd seen Blessed Heretic roll wizard 5 times in a row on highpop (60-ish people) in 2013. I'm still amazed.

Re: Config Change: Antag Rep Edition

Posted: Tue Sep 18, 2018 11:35 am
by Arianya
It's been disabled so...