Maximizing antagonists through antag trades

[Mothblocks]

A near daily occurrence on LRP is people rolling heretic, then immediately trading it away for traitor. On its own, this isn't really much to write home about, but in the grand scheme of things its presenting a greater problem. There is an extraordinate amount of people who have heretic on exclusively to trade it for traitor. Not applying these trades tends to either lead to them getting fussy, or them just not doing anything heretical/antagonistic in general, and they just end up trying again the next time.

This has a few side effects. There is the heretic specific problem of reality availability, but this can be adjusted to react to heretics being removed in code, and is only a minor, and non-general, concern. The bigger problems is:

1. People who actually want to play heretic aren't getting it, because people who don't want it are getting it instead.
2. We are encouraging maximizing your antagonist chance by rolling the dice with admins.

#2 is a big one, since the people who are playing the game as intended (only turning on antagonists they actually want to play as) are getting punished. Why shouldn't you just enable every antagonist in hopes you can trade it for what you actually want?

In the past, I've directly asked people who ask for the trade of heretic to traitor why they have heretic on. A good chunk of the time, they'll be candid and say it's just to trade for traitor. In this case, I've applied heretic bans that I mark as being liftable upon request. This has worked remarkably well, most of the time people don't appeal it (meaning people who actually want heretic get it instead). Someone has once, and I've stuck to my word and lifted it. You can make an argument that lifting the ban can have the problem of them just not doing it while I'm around, but most of the time, it just works out.

I've been told by a head admin not to do this, but I am opposed to the idea of letting people enable antagonists for the sole purpose of trading, and it didn't seem to be a unanimous agreement, so I would like to have precedent that enabling antagonists for the sole purposes of trading them away can lead to you getting banned from the antagonist you already don't want to play. This is not to say admins are not allowed to trade one for the other, especially if it is not recurring and the player just has a gimmick in mind, but it's to say that specific bans for the sake of letting people who actually want to play specific antagonists receive them are justified.

Simply put, it is unfair to people who actually want to play heretic (or whatever antagonist) when the people getting it don't even want it to begin with. It is in the same field as antag rolling, where part of the rationale behind banning it is that the playstyle of maximizing antag chances is not one we want to promote.

[Jonathan Gupta]

I usually trade for diseases or abductor(CAUSE THAT SHIT IS FUN!)

[Mothblocks]

I forgot to bring that up. Sentient disease and abductor trades (and whatever else) are honestly fine with me, you can't roll for those roundstart naturally anyway.

[Atlanta-Ned]

Easy fix: ban antag trades, across the board. This is the only solution.

[Armhulen]

if you couldn't normally get it, it's totally fine. i used to be a bit of a revenant trade addict back in the day. but other than that i'm 100% with mothblocks on this that people signing up for antagonist roles to not play those antagonist roles but rather use them as a bartering chip is ridiculous.

Easy fix: ban antag trades, across the board. This is the only solution.

Antag trades can shake up a round in a healthy way, it's just sad to me that 90% of them are just garbage nowadays

[Hulkamania]

I think this falls squarely under antag rolling rules as it is now. TC trades and the like are already not a right, or even necessarily a privilege, they're just a little side thing that sometimes an admin will agree to.

If you are going out of your way to play a role just so you can try to leverage it for a lesser antagonist role that you actually enjoy, that's not fair to anyone who may actually enjoy playing it. Furthermore, antagonists are a requirement to create interesting rounds, and if you're basically just gonna sit out your round after you roll something you don't like, you're taking away from EVERYONE'S experience.

On the administrative end, it's also really annoying to catch people who are doing shit like this because there's so many different people on the team interacting with a given individual. Anything that's hard to track like that is usually worth a harsher punishment.

[Istoprocent1]

#2 is a big one, since the people who are playing the game as intended (only turning on antagonists they actually want to play as) are getting punished. Why shouldn't you just enable every antagonist in hopes you can trade it for what you actually want?

That is the main issue - people who want to play a specific antag are being put in a disadvantageous situation. Secondary issue would be the rarity and inconsistency of getting an antag - want to play contractor real bad, get it once in like 20-40 rounds because you only enabled traitor and then run into a round that ends randomly because dynamic spawned ops, cult and a wizard as well. Tough luck, pal, try again after you have spent another work week's worth of hours or more playing the game - this is currently me as I only have enabled antags I enjoy playing rather than get the most chance of being an antag and it sure isn't fun. Meanwhile some random newfriend who never does anything to spice up the round nor spends any TC gets traitor like every other round.

There could be a few solutions, but they would most likely be code ones rather than policy ones:

a) Antag preference priority (similar to current job priorities - none, low, medium, high), split it into two categories single and team antag (for an option to set 1 high in each category). This would let those who really want to play antag X have a better chance of playing that antag and there would be no reason to TC trade in the first place.

b) Universal antag roll for solo antags with the option to choose which antag one is at the start of the round. This would let everybody roll for an antag and then have an option to choose which antag they would want to be for that round. It would also be more work intensive to code compared to the option a).

c) Antag tokens for playing X amount of rounds and some method for disqualifying things like afking in a locker or dying early into the round.

[Mothblocks]

The rarity of antagonists is something we (mostly I?) spend a fair bit of time designing the game around. People who don't get traitor often because traitor is rare (it really isn't, you're likely just getting unlucky) is not a bug, it's part of the intricate balance of antagonist design.

[Istoprocent1]

The rarity of antagonists is something we (mostly I?) spend a fair bit of time designing the game around. People who don't get traitor often because traitor is rare (it really isn't, you're likely just getting unlucky) is not a bug, it's part of the intricate balance of antagonist design.

Skinnerbox and all that good stuff. The design could be better to ensure that the people who pour more hours and effort into actually playing the game would get better odds at antag compared to random newfriends just wasting an antag roll as well as ~45 minutes of everybody's time on doing nothing interesting.

64 players, 4 traitors means that everybody with only traitor enabled has 6.25% chance of becoming an antag. The odds of becoming a specific antags come into play when there are multiple types of antags such as round spawning 4 traitors & 4 heretics (only traitors would become traitors 100% of the time with their meager chance at antag, while all-enabled would become traitors 50% of the time with their maximized chance at antag, which would be 12.5% vs the only traitors' 6.25%). And the odds are reset every round, so there is no cumulative effect, which leads to the "unlucky" part, especially if you don't maximize your antag roll.

My bad for all the edits, I haven't drank coffee yet. I cease now.

[NecromancerAnne]

Given how dynamic currently works, hopefully whoever has their roles enabled will get the roles they want within a specific period of play over enough rounds. Maybe in the mid to late stages of the round if not roundstart (which is the only time that heretics spawn, which might be contributing to the issue with heretics in particular). I don't think we need roleswaps anymore now that antagonists are not an exclusive handful of players. Just keeping it to removal should be fine, then people won't be incentivized to try and swap into antagonists using other roles.

Skinnerbox and all that good stuff. The design could be better to ensure that the people who pour more hours and effort into actually playing the game would get better odds at antag compared to random newfriends just wasting an antag roll as well as ~45 minutes of everybody's time on doing nothing interesting.

Entitlement to antagonistic roles to the exclusion of the vague other, punishing newer players for their lack of experience and rewarding addictive play, the trifecta of elitism. This can't possibly go poorly and only seen positive outcomes historically for player behaviour when catered towards.

[wesoda25]

I agree with others that this seems to pretty much fall squarely within the realm of antag rolling. As arm said antag trades can be healthy for a round, but repeatedly doing this with specific antags just goes against dynamic. I’ll probably get in the habit of checking peoples tickets for such patterns before agreeing to trades from now on.

[Noodlecat]

This is way more of a problem with heretic in its current state, it’s an antag that immediately reveals itself on the station with influences, sec then immediately powergames and bag searches literally everyone, resulting in the heretic getting fucked over. Then you get executed and have no more presence in the round.
This is a problem with one antag being shit.


Also the only time I ever rev traded was to do a gimmick

[terranaut]

Easy fix: ban antag trades, across the board. This is the only solution.

yeah man fuck people trying to have fun

[Rohen_Tahir]

Admins should refuse shitty trade requests like this. Add something about it to the Admin Conduct page or @everyone adminbus or something. If people who do this start consistently failing, most of them will probably stop.

Off Topic

This is way more of a problem with heretic in its current state, it’s an antag that immediately reveals itself on the station with influences, sec then immediately powergames and bag searches literally everyone, resulting in the heretic getting fucked over. Then you get executed and have no more presence in the round.
This is a problem with one antag being shit.


Also the only time I ever rev traded was to do a gimmick

Git gud

[NoxVS]

This is way more of a problem with heretic in its current state, it’s an antag that immediately reveals itself on the station with influences, sec then immediately powergames and bag searches literally everyone, resulting in the heretic getting fucked over. Then you get executed and have no more presence in the round.
This is a problem with one antag being shit.


Also the only time I ever rev traded was to do a gimmick

Then turn off heretic. If you don't want to play an antagonist, don't turn it on. There are people who do actually want to play whatever antagonist you are using as another traitor roll, so turn it off and let them have it. If you are just using an antagonist roll to get more chances at being a traitor you should be banned from that antagonist.

[Noodlecat]

i do play heretic and have ascended once, i am pointing out a larger flaw in the fact we have a shitty antag that most people don't like.

[Boot]

Antag trades can shake up a round in a healthy way, it's just sad to me that 90% of them are just garbage nowadays

What's made you change your mind on this? I was under the impression you didn't like antag trades.

[Armhulen]

Antag trades can shake up a round in a healthy way, it's just sad to me that 90% of them are just garbage nowadays

What's made you change your mind on this? I was under the impression you didn't like antag trades.

Nothing, but when you turn away 90% of people for asking to turn heretic into traitor or traitor into changeling or changeling into heretic you kinda come off as the trade hater. I used to trade a TON as a player though

[Jonathan Gupta]

Antag trades can shake up a round in a healthy way, it's just sad to me that 90% of them are just garbage nowadays

What's made you change your mind on this? I was under the impression you didn't like antag trades.

abductor trade is where its at

[WineAllWine]

Antag trades can shake up a round in a healthy way, it's just sad to me that 90% of them are just garbage nowadays

What's made you change your mind on this? I was under the impression you didn't like antag trades.

abductor trade is where its at

The button to turn people into an abductor is buggy as fuck so experienced admins never accept this trade (also lone abductor sucks)

[BeeSting12]

I don't see why players should be penalized for asking admins for trades. It does somewhat feel like they're wasting the heretic role by keeping it from someone who wants it but that's within their right as a solo antagonist as per rule 4. (There are some exceptions in policy I've seen such as no suicide wizard gimmicks which this might fall under). Admins should just start telling players trying to trade for different antagonists no unless there's a compelling reason for the trade, such as the player having a specific gimmick in mind. If a player is choosing to suicide after being told no to a trade then I'd consider a role ban, otherwise they'll have to either learn to love playing heretic or quit playing heretic.

For players who hate playing heretic but still are rolling for it: Just space your gear and treat it like a license to grief lol. Nothing wrong with that.

[Misdoubtful]

Antag trades can shake up a round in a healthy way, it's just sad to me that 90% of them are just garbage nowadays

What's made you change your mind on this? I was under the impression you didn't like antag trades.

Nothing, but when you turn away 90% of people for asking to turn heretic into traitor or traitor into changeling or changeling into heretic you kinda come off as the trade hater. I used to trade a TON as a player though

The CREATIVE trades are the fun ones, come at me with some absurd wacky idea or gimmick. Trades have gotten a bit mundane in my experience, and I always like being able to set people up for gimmicks and ideas that will be really interesting or cool.

Since antag is already an open invitation to do come up with and act out a whole lot of ideas, maybe there is a way to encourage the creative trades more, whilst discouraging the cookie cutter stuff.

Do people really need a certain particular has to be that one antag in order to make things fun / have fun?

[zxaber]

Antag Rep is a solution to #2, with a healthy dose of telling admins not to allow main-to-main antag swaps. People will turn off antags they don't enjoy if rolling one means less chance of rolling their preferred antag later.

[Boot]

Antag trades can shake up a round in a healthy way, it's just sad to me that 90% of them are just garbage nowadays

What's made you change your mind on this? I was under the impression you didn't like antag trades.

Nothing, but when you turn away 90% of people for asking to turn heretic into traitor or traitor into changeling or changeling into heretic you kinda come off as the trade hater. I used to trade a TON as a player though

So if someone asked you to trade tator for idk, Chrono Legionnaire, you go for it?

[Armhulen]

Antag trades can shake up a round in a healthy way, it's just sad to me that 90% of them are just garbage nowadays

What's made you change your mind on this? I was under the impression you didn't like antag trades.

Nothing, but when you turn away 90% of people for asking to turn heretic into traitor or traitor into changeling or changeling into heretic you kinda come off as the trade hater. I used to trade a TON as a player though

So if someone asked you to trade tator for idk, Chrono Legionnaire, you go for it?

This is kind of going off topic but Chrono Legionnaire is not falling into "creative", they have a 2 tile projectile that deletes someone after waiting 30 seconds. moving away, doing anything will cancel the deletion and they come back fully unharmed. you also get a jaunt that imposes MASSIVE telegraphs if you jaunt more than 10 feet, making it the worst jaunt in the game. i want to severely improve chronoboy but until then it's just never fun for the actual round, and sometimes even the person playing it.

but considering it's functionally weaker than a normal traitor i could probably do it on a good day just to prove how truly shitty it is

[Stickymayhem]

Antag trades can shake up a round in a healthy way, it's just sad to me that 90% of them are just garbage nowadays

What's made you change your mind on this? I was under the impression you didn't like antag trades.

Nothing, but when you turn away 90% of people for asking to turn heretic into traitor or traitor into changeling or changeling into heretic you kinda come off as the trade hater. I used to trade a TON as a player though

So if someone asked you to trade tator for idk, Chrono Legionnaire, you go for it?

This is kind of going off topic but Chrono Legionnaire is not falling into "creative", they have a 2 tile projectile that deletes someone after waiting 30 seconds. moving away, doing anything will cancel the deletion and they come back fully unharmed. you also get a jaunt that imposes MASSIVE telegraphs if you jaunt more than 10 feet, making it the worst jaunt in the game. i want to severely improve chronoboy but until then it's just never fun for the actual round, and sometimes even the person playing it.

but considering it's functionally weaker than a normal traitor i could probably do it on a good day just to prove how truly shitty it is

Did you forget it's a roleplaying game

Chrono is a based trade because it's fucking COOL that's it

[Dankasaur]

Honestly it should just be admin policy to decline any requests like "Can I trade for X." If you have a funny or interesting gimmick I can get behind that but trading for another antagonist ruins the whole point of rolling. If you don't want to play that antagonist you should not have it on it's simple as.

[Armhulen]

Antag trades can shake up a round in a healthy way, it's just sad to me that 90% of them are just garbage nowadays

What's made you change your mind on this? I was under the impression you didn't like antag trades.

Nothing, but when you turn away 90% of people for asking to turn heretic into traitor or traitor into changeling or changeling into heretic you kinda come off as the trade hater. I used to trade a TON as a player though

So if someone asked you to trade tator for idk, Chrono Legionnaire, you go for it?

This is kind of going off topic but Chrono Legionnaire is not falling into "creative", they have a 2 tile projectile that deletes someone after waiting 30 seconds. moving away, doing anything will cancel the deletion and they come back fully unharmed. you also get a jaunt that imposes MASSIVE telegraphs if you jaunt more than 10 feet, making it the worst jaunt in the game. i want to severely improve chronoboy but until then it's just never fun for the actual round, and sometimes even the person playing it.

but considering it's functionally weaker than a normal traitor i could probably do it on a good day just to prove how truly shitty it is

Did you forget it's a roleplaying game

Chrono is a based trade because it's fucking COOL that's it

If i'm telling you they do not improve the round i'm obviously also stating they're terrible for rp, which they are because they have a horrible kit to enforce being time police

[RaveRadbury]

The Chrono Legionnaire is interesting and in need of attention.

Please discuss this antagonist in its own thread if you'd like to continue talking about it.

Let's get back on topic, everyone.

[Boot]

Probably for the best Rave.

I'd feel abit different if this was still on secret rather then dynamic, however I don't know exactly how the math works out but if it decides the person who gets antag before the antag role is decided then I don't really see an issue with it. Otherwise if you only have it on so you can TC trade it away that probably should be discouraged.

[WineAllWine]

I think the status quo is fine and tying admins hands behind their back by disallowing antag trades would only result in a loss of fun.
I already see people in ASAY saying "oh no don't give this dude abductor he always asks for it". Maybe adding secret notes to people who ask for one specific trade a lot to warn against doing it. eg. "This guy always asks to trade heretic for traitor, consider this before agreeing to any trades"

[Mothblocks]

Probably for the best Rave.

I'd feel abit different if this was still on secret rather then dynamic, however I don't know exactly how the math works out but if it decides the person who gets antag before the antag role is decided then I don't really see an issue with it. Otherwise if you only have it on so you can TC trade it away that probably should be discouraged.

Hi, I know exactly how the math works out. Rulesets are picked first, not individual players. You are genuinely increasing your antagonist chance.

[Mothblocks]

I think the status quo is fine and tying admins hands behind their back by disallowing antag trades would only result in a loss of fun.
I already see people in ASAY saying "oh no don't give this dude abductor he always asks for it". Maybe adding secret notes to people who ask for one specific trade a lot to warn against doing it. eg. "This guy always asks to trade heretic for traitor, consider this before agreeing to any trades"

I said in the thread I'm not asking for trades like this to be banned (though I make no comment on if it's a good idea or not). But I want to know that I can antag ban for it.

Secret notes for this are worse than appealable antag specific bans.

[SkeletalElite]

Seems to me like admins should just be denying standard antag trades in most situations.

Stuff that you can't get roundstart like revenant and abductor is fine, but admins probably shouldn't just be giving people traitor in trades, unless of course its some strange gimmick they're asking for.

[Farquaar]

I think we should be wary about assigning all heretic antag trades as malicious antag-rolling. I’m pretty sure I traded heretic once not because I despise playing heretic, but because I wasn’t feeling it that night and I wanted to try another gimmick. It wasn’t some calculated attempt to increase my chances of rolling antag or anything.

If it’s the same player trading every heretic round they roll for something else, then yeah, that shouldn’t be happening. But an innocent antag trade every now and then shouldn’t get caught in the crossfire of a potentially broad policy remedy.

The focus should be on particular problem players. If they’ve made a bad habit of trading away heretic, tell them to change their antag prefs. If they continue, give them a heretic ban. Not complicated, really.

[mindstormy]

I don't think we should be antag banning folks for trying to antag trade heretic away. However, I do think leaving a note is a good idea so we can track it over time if someone doing it frequently. Most of the time when I am asked for such a trade, I try to encourage the player to just go for it and have fun. Folks seem for the most part to be confused by the mechanics of playing a heretic, which to be fair, are pretty confusing but yeah they just need to be coerced into trying it out a few times to get the hang of it. I think there is a lot of assuming negative intent going on in this thread when most folks are just confused.

[Jonathan Gupta]

the thing is only good players(Veterans) know how to play heretic effectively, I bet you most of the time it's newer players trading.

[NecromancerAnne]

I think the status quo is fine and tying admins hands behind their back by disallowing antag trades would only result in a loss of fun.
I already see people in ASAY saying "oh no don't give this dude abductor he always asks for it". Maybe adding secret notes to people who ask for one specific trade a lot to warn against doing it. eg. "This guy always asks to trade heretic for traitor, consider this before agreeing to any trades"

I said in the thread I'm not asking for trades like this to be banned (though I make no comment on if it's a good idea or not). But I want to know that I can antag ban for it.

Secret notes for this are worse than appealable antag specific bans.

If what you say is true and that you have mathed it out and can prove that it is indeed a method of acquiring antag more reliably, why not push for the banning of antag trades rather than argue for additional antag bans on players? You shouldn't want bans It's not just a behavioural problem at this point, it's a design one. Surely this is more easily solved and more reliably handled by simply discouraging/banning the practice altogether, with discretion given to admins to choose otherwise knowing what it can foster in players.

[Mothblocks]

Because I'm not interested in pushing towards limiting an admin's ability to DM a round, if someone has an interesting gimmick to go along with their antag trade, then I see no reason to discourage it.

My problem is in people who are specifically Maximizing antagonists through antag trades.

[NecromancerAnne]

Okay, but when something requires admins to enable that, I don't see how it could be banworthy, which is the issue. The admins are already empowered to deny and control trades, and people doing this can simply...cope when they are denied? If they *suicide* or something like that when denied, you absolutely can make a case for trreating as antag rolling.

[nianjiilical]

Probably for the best Rave.

I'd feel abit different if this was still on secret rather then dynamic, however I don't know exactly how the math works out but if it decides the person who gets antag before the antag role is decided then I don't really see an issue with it. Otherwise if you only have it on so you can TC trade it away that probably should be discouraged.

Hi, I know exactly how the math works out. Rulesets are picked first, not individual players. You are genuinely increasing your antagonist chance.

i would be legitimately interested in seeing how player-first dynamic would change the rarities of antags but its probably not at all worth the amount of effort it'd take to balance and code it just to try as an experiment

[Konork]

What if, instead of banning antag trading outright, we make it an official policy that if you want to antag trade, you aren't going to get the antag you want at full strength?

[Jonathan Gupta]

What if, instead of banning antag trading outright, we make it an official policy that if you want to antag trade, you aren't going to get the antag you want at full strength?

I want abductor "Yeah no tools"

[Pandarsenic]

Hi, I know exactly how the math works out. Rulesets are picked first, not individual players. You are genuinely increasing your antagonist chance.

The order of operations is that it chooses ruleset, then chooses valid antags, then assigns valid jobs, right?

So if you roll nuke op, it assigns you op, and queueing as X station role doesn't affect that, and similarly, if you roll traitor when you had sec set, you are assigned any non-sec role if you get traitor, etc.

So if you're not attached to specific antag types, just antag status itself, you want to max them out, but if you want to be a nuke op specifically, does adding traitor to your list reduce your chance of being an operative when they're both in the same round?

I don't think we should be antag banning folks for trying to antag trade heretic away. However, I do think leaving a note is a good idea so we can track it over time if someone doing it frequently. Most of the time when I am asked for such a trade, I try to encourage the player to just go for it and have fun. Folks seem for the most part to be confused by the mechanics of playing a heretic, which to be fair, are pretty confusing but yeah they just need to be coerced into trying it out a few times to get the hang of it. I think there is a lot of assuming negative intent going on in this thread when most folks are just confused.

I kind of feel like you might want, if anything, to track all trades in notes, not just bad ones. Admin gives someone a trade, whatever that is, they can record what that player did and how it went. It just seems like useful stuff to know.

[NamelessFairy]

Its not against the rules to ask to trade for another antagonist but rolling an antagonist with the exclusive purpose of trading for another may result in warnings or bans.

Admins can note and warn players who they suspect are only rolling an antagonist role with the intent to trade, this can include a note warning future admins of their intentions and encouraging them to deny trades from this person.
If a player admits that they intend to only use an antagonist role to trade then they can be warned that they will be banned from said antagonist role and given an opportunity for them to state that they will play the antagonist or disable it themself.
Bans invoked under this can be appealed when the player intends to play the antagonist role again.

Headmin Votes:
NamelessFairy: Yes
Dragomagol: Yes
RaveRadbury: Yes