/tg/Station 13

Cult is probably one of the single worst gamemodes on manuel, and it's very common to see a very concise flurry of "remove cult" whenever a cult round ends, and has become a prevalent opinion within the playerbase. It's also very common to see multiple people discussing how much they hate cult within the manuel discord.

Personally, I don't know what's so terrible about it in comparison to other gamemodes, but I can say this:
It being a TDM mode kills most potential for RP, as one greytider can start validhunting/murderboning and break any sort of unofficial truce that has been made. I, personally, hate it a lot more then nukies/revs, but I can't put my finger on why.

This isn't exactly a call to ban it, it's more of a place for discussion to be brought forward into an official channel so the many people that dislike it can have a chance of actually getting what they want.

The problem with cult is not that of policy but of code. Cult right now is severely outdated and sucks.

NikoTheGuyDude wrote:it's very common to see a very concise flurry of "remove cult" whenever a cult round ends

People scream "remove X gamemode" every time X gamemode ends on every server for the entire history of ss13

quit complaining and play the video game

Cult is bad because there's not much room at all to RP in either direction. No matter what the cult's goal is to summon an Eldritch god and destroy the station. It's a very concrete goals with a very concrete path to get there. You convert people, kill your target, convert and kill more, then summon Narsie. You can attempt to do some limited RP with the cult, but the goal will always be to convert, kill, and summon Narsie. Cult is worse than almost any other gamemode in this regard. Revs has a concrete goal but so many ways to go about getting there. Same with nukies. Solo antagonists have concrete goals, many ways to get there, and more room to not go for those goals because they are not on a team. Cult just is not made for an RP environment.

As for solutions the only answer I have is the obvious one, remove cult from Manuel. Perhaps it could be reevaluated if any code side changes are made.

Wouldn't removal of cult require separate codebases?

Samuel Hayden wrote:Wouldn't removal of cult require separate codebases?

Nope, the chance could probably just be set to 0 for secret and dynamic.

Cult is kinda in a weird spot. I mean, look at revs. Cult and revs are kinda similar, if not, ARE similar (in some ways). Both involve converting folks and trying to either kill station goers or converting the masses. However, unlike revs, cult is usually one sided and just results in "who can kill who faster" (yeah revs is this too but revs don't have access to unique tools and such, its whatever their department has). As for the RP aspect of cult, yeah, it doesn't seriously exist. Once ANYONE catches wind that someone is speaking Nar'sie on the station, its a collective effort to try and shut them down - sometimes too late, sometimes just early enough.

At least with revs there is some form of creativity and does open up RP aspects, whereas cult is just "please God don't let us get caught early" and do your best to summon that ungodly thing they call a god.

vkalls wrote:Cult is bad because there's not much room at all to RP in either direction. No matter what the cult's goal is to summon an Eldritch god and destroy the station. It's a very concrete goals with a very concrete path to get there. You convert people, kill your target, convert and kill more, then summon Narsie. You can attempt to do some limited RP with the cult, but the goal will always be to convert, kill, and summon Narsie. Cult is worse than almost any other gamemode in this regard. Revs has a concrete goal but so many ways to go about getting there. Same with nukies. Solo antagonists have concrete goals, many ways to get there, and more room to not go for those goals because they are not on a team. Cult just is not made for an RP environment.

just for discussion's sake, would cult be more appealing on manuel if it had a different objective?

random idea off the top of my head but

-everything is the same up until the ritual
-when the ritual is completed, the 3x3 rune stays and becomes a super conversion rune, and everybody gets an announcement saying where it is and a rp message ("you hear a dark voice calling you to [location], and struggle to resist...")
-the shuttle autocalls, can't be recalled, and all cultists gain a hijack objective ("hijack the shuttle and bring the new acolytes to the cult planet base")
-cultists can mass convert using the 3x3 rune, with only one cultist needed to convert somebody on it
-when the shuttle comes, loyalists can try to secure it from the cultists, and cultists need to try to hijack it

nar'sie shouldn't be scrapped just because its a bad ending for rp servers, but i wonder if having an alternate win condition would be doable as a server config

Critawakets wrote:The problem with cult is not that of policy but of code. Cult right now is severely outdated and sucks.

Clockwork cult was a fun gamemode until it got reworked into tower defense and ended up being shitcanned. So was gangs until it got reworked (turrets were added or something) and ended up being shitcanned. If it's bad on Manuel just get rid of it there instead of trying to fix it because whoever takes that thankless task upon themselves will probably end up killing it inadvertently.

cacogen wrote:

Critawakets wrote:The problem with cult is not that of policy but of code. Cult right now is severely outdated and sucks.

Clockwork cult was a fun gamemode until it got reworked into tower defense and ended up being shitcanned. So was gangs until it got reworked (turrets were added or something) and ended up being shitcanned. If it's bad on Manuel just get rid of it there instead of trying to fix it because whoever takes that thankless task upon themselves will probably end up killing it inadvertently.

And have you ever heard of paper cult? The ruining of cult happened a long time ago already.

I fail to see how Nar’sie destroying the station is damaging for MRP in any conceivable way. Roleplaying in a devastated station that’s falling apart at the seams is much more fun than “eccentric space office with-an-assassin simulator”

Nar-Sie creates a bunch of harvesters that cut off your limbs and drag you to Nar-Sie which is unconducive to roleplaying. Also play Cultist Simulator just pirate it you won't know what you're doing and you won't figure out how to ascend before you get bored with it but that is how you do it

maybe if you get good you wouldn't be complaining about cult

Manuel is not HRP. It is classic /tg/ with some additional rules as a cherry on top to encourage more crew interactions.

MRPer: Timber... Do you think RP can bloom, even on a battlefield?
Timber: Yeah, I do. I believe at any time, any place, people can RP with each other.

cacogen wrote:Nar-Sie creates a bunch of harvesters that cut off your limbs and drag you to Nar-Sie which is unconducive to roleplaying.

Objectively false

Farquaar wrote:

cacogen wrote:Nar-Sie creates a bunch of harvesters that cut off your limbs and drag you to Nar-Sie which is unconducive to roleplaying.

Objectively false

This this this, I don't get people who think that struggling against an unwinnable mass destruction scenario is "bad for RP." You'll even see it on low-RP servers where a small group of doomed people, well aware that there is a singularity or narsie nearby that they cannot run from, will just begin chatting. People on pods who have just barely narrowly escaped death will often have lots of talk about how relieved they are or what happened to them that lead up to the situation they're now in. Just because this kind of thing usually takes place near the end of a round doesn't make it any less RP, and hearing harrowing tales of survival from an in-character perspective during a short pod ride or an "if we get out of here alive" promise made seconds before harvesters bust down the door is way more engaging than sitting at the bar and discussing the latest catgirl nudes for a half hour.

If you cant put your finger on why you should play it more until you can, or at the very least not suggest a change without tangible reasons as to why its not sufficient for MEDIUM(!!!) roleplay. I see no reason for cult to removed from manuel, its one of the few roles that can be more conflict-creating as they have to aggressively convert, which disrupts circles and perhaps more importantly makes it so you cant trust anyone, even those who you pretty much know dont have antag enabled.

Compared to say a traitor with steal and escape.

+1 to Timberpoes--there's nothing about cult that makes it less RP-centric for Manuel. I'd rather see it die on every server.

I haven't really seen anyone roleplay any differently while it's a cult round, cultists make their csgo esque callouts and sec mechanically orders implants and holywater. The crew hardly changes their act as well. Although everything im saying is conjecture just like everyone else in this thread. Also fuck cult, what terribly made miserable gamemode with nothing interesting to it.

cybersaber101 wrote:I haven't really seen anyone roleplay any differently while it's a cult round, cultists make their csgo esque callouts and sec mechanically orders implants and holywater. The crew hardly changes their act as well. Although everything im saying is conjecture just like everyone else in this thread. Also fuck cult, what terribly made miserable gamemode with nothing interesting to it.

sounds like a player problem, ban those cs go players?

Alright, people keep saying that nar'sie being summoned doesn't restrict RP. This is true, normal people who aren't involved with it can still RP. My main issue is that the driving antagonists for the round are nothing more than convert, kill, summon. There is no RP or creativity when being or dealing with cult. People seem to be really focusing on the part where I said summoning a god to destroy everything is not conductive to RP. I said this because it just helps the problem grow, you cannot cooperate with the cult and the cult cannot cooperate with you. The way cult goes about their goals is always the same, convert people and hope you don't get caught before you've reached critical mass and can overrun the station. The mechanics only add to this, to convert someone you just click, drag, and click a rune. There's not really a whole lot of room for RP to be occuring WITH or WITHIN the cult.

I don't necessarily think cult should be entirely removed but I think it would greatly benefit the culture of manuel to tone down how much it occurs. My experience with the majority of conversion rounds is that they're enjoyable in an RP sense when they're a big event. Three back-to-back cult rounds and then nuke ops, which is a day that will haunt me forever, burns people out and removes the "shock value" of having an existential threat on the station. It becomes very mechanical. The cultists want to win, so they play the game well. The crew, in turn, must react competently and put RP on the backburner to try and beat them. This can be exciting, and often it is when it's not happening 3 times a day.

I've had much better experiences with revs because the revheads will often propagate some kind of narrative behind their conversions. There is often a dialogue between them and the crew. With cult, it doesn't seem like this happens as often. It's a kill-or-be-killed scenario, and that's how everyone plays it. There is no in-between.

I'd also like to see the threat cap for dynamic toned down so it lands below something like 50 more often than not, but I guess that's for another thread entirely.

it seems like the biggest, non-code related, issue with cult on Manuel (and well just team modes in general on Manuel) is the cultural perspective on these modes. The moment everyone realizes it's cult most people just switch over to gamer mode which creates a cycle of "well it's TDM, no one is going to RP so why should I?" And even when one side is willing to shake things up and try a different approach the other side likely isn't and will just steamroll because "well what if I lose?"

Not like this attitude isn't without reason obviously, these modes weren't built with roleplay in mind. Though even on a mode like Families that was built with roleplay in mind this kind of thinking still tends to linger in my experience.

I don't know if making it more rare will really have much effect outside of just reducing how often people complain about it.

The issue isn't the game mode, it's the fact that players get too competitive and that people think doing fuck all with their metaclique constitutes the only legitimate form of roleplay.

Players need to be more flexible with who and in what situations they roleplay.

Security and culties need to stop with the crazed arms race to end the round.

Maybe a policy change for roleplay is in order to slow down conversion rounds, but I don't think code tweaks are necessary.

Lacran wrote:The issue isn't the game mode, it's the fact that players get too competitive and that people think doing fuck all with their metaclique constitutes the only legitimate form of roleplay.

Players need to be more flexible with who and in what situations they roleplay.

Security and culties need to stop with the crazed arms race to end the round.

Maybe a policy change for roleplay is in order to slow down conversion rounds, but I don't think code tweaks are necessary.

I'd argue the over-competetiveness of cult is because of the nature of the gamemode, not just the players. Any non-gamer behavior on TDM modes rely entirely on good faith between the two groups of players, and far more-so on cult, although I can't exactly put my finger on why; maybe it's because of how much more power cult gets then other conversion antags?

Trying to say "Just act in good faith lol" doesn't work IRL, and it certainly won't work in TG.

A policy change /might/ work, but I feel like it would be a far easier solution to just disable cult, considering how cult is based entirely off TDM with absolutely no thought put into any RP opportunity.

Cult works on HRP servers (most of them use talisman cult), albeit it with their own special set of challenges. I fully believe it can work on MRP too, it just depends on how people play around it and the code that supports it. If it can work on LRP, and on HRP, it can work on MRP.

Lets consider both player interaction and RP here:

• Player interaction being everything from conflict, helping each other, trading things, mechanics, you name it.
• RP being a story, something improvised, something about the characters, that sort of thing.

Any situation can become RP simply through the power of improv and willing parties, and there are plenty of areas of player interaction for cult.

What happens though? It all just falls apart when this happens:

stewydeadmike wrote:it seems like the biggest, non-code related, issue with cult on Manuel (and well just team modes in general on Manuel) is the cultural perspective on these modes. The moment everyone realizes it's cult most people just switch over to gamer mode which creates a cycle of "well it's TDM, no one is going to RP so why should I?" And even when one side is willing to shake things up and try a different approach the other side likely isn't and will just steamroll because "well what if I lose?"

dendydoom wrote:The cultists want to win, so they play the game well. The crew, in turn, must react competently and put RP on the backburner to try and beat them.

Lacran wrote:The issue isn't the game mode, it's the fact that players get too competitive...

Consider things going down the drain because of a round succumbing to a lack of good faith, sportsmanship, and people playing for fun (instead playing to win) — that would be a cultural thing, wouldn't it?

Thing is, there is no policy about RP standards for things like sportsmanship or culture, so the way to change this is people becoming the change and promoting what they'd like to see IC.

I've gotten plenty of my own funny little 'RP' nuggets out of cult rounds. You just have to really mine for improv and be open to it, even if its to your detriment. Why do I say all this? Because even HRP cult has the same geometer end game goal, and they manage to make it work, so we can too.

there reaches a point when, as any antagonist on manuel, your enemies just start trying to take you out on sight, even if you attempt to initiate RP by saying something to them from a distance or whatever. nope, body throw, but it's okay because it's a sec officer who did it.
nobody wants to risk leaving themselves open. why type or emote or whatever when someone can just do the funny cult hand on you?
why let them try and recruit when you can just stun baton them? as long as you don't kill them, you're not being a validhunting asshole, right?
such things make me weep.

cult's issue on manuel is that, unless you strictly play to win, sec will just absolutely steamroll you because you're already valid to be arrested by virtue of being funny blood man. so if you play to win in order to counteract this, admins get angry at you for not 'RPing' enough. it's a gamemode with no real way to play due to manuel's weird-ass rules.

just remove it from MRP. neither camp will ever, ever, ever be happy with it. it works on HRP and LRP, but not in MRP. this is a case where you get the worst of both worlds.

i also think a vast majority of players on manuel don't like large scale threats period. lots of people play on manuel because there's next to no danger in most shifts. that's another topic though.

I personally have never liked cult, it's like someone took rev and took away most of the player agency in it.

Misdoubtful wrote:Thing is, there is no policy about RP standards for things like sportsmanship or culture, so the way to change this is people becoming the change and promoting what they'd like to see IC.

queue the dickheads who get game-ended like once and turn into the thing they hate because reasons reasons reasons then queue the normal people who get sadly game-ended repeatedly and turn into the thing they hate because reasons reasons reasons

Few people are actually morally good enough to always act in good faith sadly.

tl;dr i agree but

To be honest, I imagine most of the fun of the gamemode is being a fucking cultist. It's rare for a cult round to ever feel like a H.P. Lovecraft story. I bet it's even less likely to come true if you're a detective ironically.

adding onto my previous post because it's a separate thought, but still relevant to the topic at hand: blood halos and red eyes.

when cultists get enough people, the game mechanics essentially force them to 'go loud'. sure you can slap gas masks onto everyone, but once the halos come out, it turns into full-fledged warfare. when you literally have a giant 'I am a valid man with instant stun, it is a massive unnecessary risk to do anything with me but murder' symbol over your head, people ain't gonna give a fuck about rules, they're gonna care about the salad (because let's be real, even manuelites love the salad) or simply prolonging their own round.

Ironically I've seen cults and revolutions play out better on anything other than the actual cult and revolution gamemodes. Were people actually have to put some thought into persuading others to their cause/cool kids club and can't just be pointed to and outed as a bad man instantly. I certainly think it's possible for people to transfer that kind of play over to the actual gamemodes but making it stick would likely need a full rework aimed at supporting that kind of thing or a monumental shift of the server culture.

PKPenguin321 wrote:

Farquaar wrote:

cacogen wrote:Nar-Sie creates a bunch of harvesters that cut off your limbs and drag you to Nar-Sie which is unconducive to roleplaying.

Objectively false

... catgirl nudes ...

Impending doom is conducive to roleplay but harvesters aren't. It's hard to perform one's craft while being dragged away from the rest of the players limbless.

Critawakets wrote: And have you ever heard of paper cult? The ruining of cult happened a long time ago already.

I was researching runes when you were still 13 and frankly it was garbage

Roleplaying and creating interesting situations and conflicts takes time, which can't be done when cult can and will steamroll the station in the span of 10 minutes, it has little to do with roleplay and a lot to do with dictating the round's pace

In simple terms cult is a shitty gamemode in terms of balance and it's even more shitty on a server where we expect people to not play the game like a team deathmatch, which is what cult is designed as

I've been saying for quite some time now that at the end of the day most if not all of the people who play MRP don't respect the prisoner's dilemma and ultimately race to bonk each other lest they be bonked by the other side first. Even if it's not most or all people, we still have players rushing to bonk first which puts things into that kind of headspace.

We don't have any system of crew being naive to what antags do, the "be nice to antags" rule has been changed to specifically reference punitive issues, and we don't have any standards of pacing. If Revs, Cult, or any future conversion mode is going to work on MRP we need both antags and crew to take things slower.

rave is right
the only difference in terms of validhunting between bagil and manuel is that, on the latter, the validhunters are usually horribly underprepared and just run at you like common infected.
the wizard 2 posts above me is a fool, though. i play on manuel and it's rare you actually see RP on there. in fact, the more time people have, the farther it goes in the opposite direction.
my last antag round i RP'd with the warden, quartermaster, and a paramedic who talked my ass down so she could get bodies. that's 3 people.
i was set upon by like 9 silent validhunters, however, and was put down mid-dialogue via bodythrow by a sec officer who was dragging detective and had a corpse over his shoulder.
my antag round before that, a xenobiologist ran from RND to brig to teleport me with their slime core into their pressurized death chamber. that's the type of validhunting you rarely even see on bagil.
the reason you rarely find RP beyond bar """"RP"""" on manuel is because, at the end of the day, people just go on there to powergame in peace, since rounds are longer. when they aren't powergaming, they're playing a greenshift knowing that if they're killed, they can probably ahelp it even if the other person is a badman.

remanseptim wrote:rave is right
the only difference in terms of validhunting between bagil and manuel is that, on the latter, the validhunters are usually horribly underprepared and just run at you like common infected.
the wizard 2 posts above me is a fool, though. i play on manuel and it's rare you actually see RP on there. in fact, the more time people have, the farther it goes in the opposite direction.
my last antag round i RP'd with the warden, quartermaster, and a paramedic who talked my ass down so she could get bodies. that's 3 people.
i was set upon by like 9 silent validhunters, however, and was put down mid-dialogue via bodythrow by a sec officer who was dragging detective and had a corpse over his shoulder.
my antag round before that, a xenobiologist ran from RND to brig to teleport me with their slime core into their pressurized death chamber. that's the type of validhunting you rarely even see on bagil.
the reason you rarely find RP beyond bar """"RP"""" on manuel is because, at the end of the day, people just go on there to powergame in peace, since rounds are longer. when they aren't powergaming, they're playing a greenshift knowing that if they're killed, they can probably ahelp it even if the other person is a badman.

As much as I hate to say this, you're right. Genuine roleplay is only possible on low/medpop, and anything above that is snuffled out by validhunters, powergamers, pop-chasers, you name it. I feel like people will try to use the flimsiest reasoning possible (hes a tator and might kill someone so im justified in making a stunprod and arresting him!!!! what do you mean im a bartender?????????) to go after an antag, to powergame (well, you see, the nightmare looked at me once, and since he is a very slight threat to my life, im going to make a gygax, order a swat crate, autorifle crate, combat shotgun crate, and combat knife crate, tide into med storage for a medkit, and make 5 lexorin syringes and grab a syringe gun. i will then kill and cremate the nightmare and proceed to constantly keep all of this gamer gear on me at all times), and most of the time just straight-up refuse to roleplay in any meaningful capacity. You'll commonly see people """playing""" a character (and when I say that I mean the bare minimum of roleplay), and this roleplay immediately breaks down apon getting into a fight, or, literally anything really. This isn't exactly a bad thing, as you can't really expect players to CONSTANTLY stay in character, but from my experience of bagil/sybil? This isn't that much different. And for a server that advertises itself as a ROLEPLAY server in comparison to the other servers, you really don't see that much more roleplay on manuel. Honestly, the only thing RP-wise that changed is the fact that you might see like, one to two common characters that are a lot better then you could see on the other servers? But on average... the roleplay isn't that much better, and at times it just feels like bagil but with extra steps.

Going back on topic, while still relating to this post, this is an inherit problem with the relation of TDM modes and Manuel, in fact, all of TG. Nobody seems to want to roleplay, ever, in favor of more mechanical options. I'm not entirely sure why, but it's both a problem with rules and the culture; the rules fail to encourage genuine roleplay with a slower pace, and the culture is, from my understanding, simply far far more comfortable with mechanical solutions versus non-mechanical solutions. It's a gamble every time you try to engage in non-violent roleplay with someone if they will beeline for the mechanical action, disadvantaging you, or slow down with you and respect you, not taking advantage of the more vulnerable position you've put yourself in. This is why the prisoners dilemma can't be beat just be acting in good faith; one person doesn't make much of a difference. A code, or policy solution, should be put into place, as most people don't even browse the forums and if they do, it's unlikely they're reading this thread right now.

Cult is okay once in a blue moon but as people have probably already said holy FUCK is it too common for Manuel. I genuinely miss revolution rounds because they're so incredibly rare now, and maybe if cult rounds were in the same boat of rarity, they wouldn't make me want to shoot myself the second I hear "cult chapel maint". This hasn't been helped by the new dynamic tests on Manuel, where "Contested System" just translates directly to "Cult with two traitors also maybe".

Cult has been so common lately that most players I see treat it less as an opportunity to enjoy their antag status in lieu of "hoo boy lets get this over with". Its monotonous, its unfun, and its something I really hope gets changed sooner rather than later

cult is balanced around the station powergaming with how overpowered cultists are and their gg stun hands.

MRP cult weight has been adjusted from 3 to 2, and traitor from 5 to 6. Admins may accommodate any kind of gimmick cult as they see fit.

This policy was made thanks to discussion in policy bus.

Headmin Votes:
Coconutwarrior97: Yes.
Domitius: Yes.
Naloac: Yes.