Disable Heretic in the config until it becomes less “murderhoboey”

[The Wrench]

Bottom post of the previous page:

Imagine being semi forced to Unga bunga round remove people for power. With the current state of LRP and the potential banning of lowpop murderbone, I say we purge one of the biggest threats to remaining in the shift. Being forced to murderbone and round remove for power =bad. Heretic bad, traitor good. Nuff said

[Mothblocks]

@Pandarsenic Yeah, that's more or less my thoughts.

@EdgeLord I think removing the gib would be a good place to start, but one thing I consider is, if you're already there, why wouldn't you just throw them in a locker while you're at it?

One thing I was thinking of is having a sacrifice keep them in place for a bit (to incentivize you to go somewhere else), then throwing their body somewhere in maint, probably somewhere behind airlocks. Stops the round removal, as well as stopping people from just round removing while they're there, because there's no reason not to.

[EdgeLord_exe]

@EdgeLord I think removing the gib would be a good place to start, but one thing I consider is, if you're already there, why wouldn't you just throw them in a locker while you're at it?

one is a code thing, the other is community. you cannot punish people for something getting blown up when it is *supposed to*, you can (if you really wish) do that with the body locker thing.

[Mothblocks]

It's not about "punishing", it's about encouraging preserving the body as opposed to just round removing it while you're there.

Regardless, this is all only so relevant considering this is a policy discussion, and these are code changes.

[Imitates-The-Lizards]

The core of Mothblocks' issue, as they have stated multiple times, is that Heretic by design promotes murderboning (And worse, round removal murderboning due to the fact that sacrificing the target gibs them), and they feel this is bad for game/community health, since no one wants to be gibbed 5 minutes in and then be out of the round and unable to play for an hour.

Personally, I think there are several issues with this argument:

It's not reflected in the actual results of the shifts - Most heretics are bad and do not gib any significant quantity of players, if any at all. It is irrelevant if the code promotes the playstyle if it never actually manifests in reality - If you get a popup at shift start that says "kill 10 players at random and we'll give you an antag token" but everyone ignores it, then does the popup matter in the first place, or is it completely irrelevant to any policy discussion? Why are we bothering with theoretical issues instead of real issues, especially when these purely theoretical issues are being used as a justification to remove content a lot of players (including myself) enjoy?

Heretic requires significant prep time - Right now you need to rush to find pierced realities at the start of the shift or else other heretics might take them all, and also because Heretic's have no real starting power, un-upgraded Mansus Grasp is basically nothing. I think it is reasonable to assume most heretics will receive 2 pierced realities on average at shift start, and that this will take 10 minutes to obtain, because they cannot beeline directly for them, since they are not omniscient, and they could also be in places that will require the heretic to obtain tools, and they need to search the entire station. Next, the Heretic needs to find a nice location to place their transmutation rune, select a target, get a kitchen knife (probably from Cargo), get the secondary materials for their funny curved knife (Most of which are easy to obtain, but not always - I play ethereal, so getting blood for the flesh knife is a bit of a pain sometimes) and then they also probably want to steal the poppies from the chapel... And....if this is all they get then they will die and lose. Only a new heretic would stop with this level of preparation, and they will only get 1 or 2 sacrifices (If any at all), making this a non-issue. A more advanced heretic will have to go and steal the hand tele, get a backpack full of at least 5 funny curved knives, maybe get some other weapons like a syringe gun (which will also take more time to make the chemicals), maybe they will even have to get EVA gear. So, REALISTICALLY, if you're not a new heretic who will not get any sacrifices in the first place making the murderhobo issues a non-issue, you are looking at at LEAST a half hour of prep-time (Most likely more), and at ANY point in any of this you can get noticed by someone who thinks you're acting strange and then sec searches you and you're done. Now, can you REALLY complain if you get hunted down and sacrificed at 30-35+ minutes into a shift?

It ignores that not all heretics make it so you are actually not able to play the round any more - I ALWAYS pick flesh path, and make flesh path minions. I assume other people do as well. Maybe you should just consider streamlining Heretic so that only the Flesh path exists, since it makes it so you bring back the dead? Or just buff flesh path so people pick it more (Please buff raw prophet to do literally anything, they're so god damn useless). And if you're going to say "Well, being a flesh-slave to a heretic isn't good still, because the player wanted to do (job), not be a zombie." well, then, you should also be advocating for the removal of the Cult and Revolution antagonists too.

The only real issue is lowpop murderboning - Heretic was already disabled for any shift with a population below 18 - if you're literally running around murderboning on mid or high pop, and no one can stop the heretic, which has 0 defense against a bullet, that's a skill issue, not a design issue.

Even in the absolute worst case scenario, it's not necessarily as bad as you're making it out to be - The negative feelings players feel are the supposed bad part of this - someone with a funny green hand came out of maints and murdered you. Now, how do most people actually feel about this - angry? upset? I don't think so. I think they can be at first, but, I think most people actually find it really interesting to spectate heretics due to their high skill requirements and low probability of success. In fact, I would go so far as to say that I would RATHER be murderboned by a heretic and get to spectate them for half an hour than a lot of the boring greenshifts I've seen on Sybil. And I think if you asked around, a lot of other people would agree with me on that. Highly successful heretics are really interesting, and create amazing opportunities for dead player fun with the help of admin intervention - I have ascended as a flesh path heretic ONE TIME. During that shift, the admin online called in THREE ERT deathsquads to fight me, and we all had a blast and it made for a great round. Maybe consider an automatic trigger for an ERT if a heretic ascends, to help resolve the "everyone is dead due to the murderboning heretic" issue? Frankly, I think this is just another argument for Heretic to be trimmed down to just flesh path though.

[Pandarsenic]

0. The core of Mothblocks' issue, as they have stated multiple times, is that Heretic by design promotes murderboning (And worse, round removal murderboning due to the fact that sacrificing the target gibs them), and they feel this is bad for game/community health, since no one wants to be gibbed 5 minutes in and then be out of the round and unable to play for an hour.
1. It's not reflected in the actual results of the shifts -
2. Heretic requires significant prep time -
3. Even in the absolute worst case scenario, it's not necessarily as bad as you're making it out to be -

0. I would posit the problem with Heretic is not that it's pure murderbone, though that is a problem. Rather, it's that Heretic is inflexible. Even Nuke Ops, who have the ultimate goal of "Bathe the station in nuclear fire," have a much wider variety of methods available to them, from the "Very real CentCom inspectors" to the drop pod to the syndiemechs and syndieborgs to stealth ops. Additionally, there's zero RP potential with them; they have no real lore. Even Nuke Ops now have some degree of RP, mostly in the form of "yelling at each other before the fight when war ops is announced"

1. If the Heretics can't actually do their murderhobo thing, that's also a problem, because it means that the antag isn't designed well enough that people can do the only thing they're good at successfully.

2. Comes back to 1. You have to run around to a bunch of places and hope you get lucky just to have powers, and then that allows you to murder to get cooler powers. If you don't manage to do that at all? Well, get fucked, buddy - you need to get a takedown with basically 0 antag powers just to get powers, so... good fucking luck. Hope you're ready to make hearts until one points to someone who's not staying in a public area a lot. Furthermore, the prep time you mention exists because all of their stuff requires them to murder and only makes them better at murder. They have no significant way to get anything done except by violence, so they have to be prepared for a fight to the death at any given time.

3. Automatic ERT on ascension would be badass, but again it relies on the Heretics being sufficiently robust and motivated to drive for ascension and pull it off.

I think the biggest problem with the Heretic is - let me know if I make sense here, please - that they're a pure murderhobo antag. They have no lore, no apparent IC motivation, no RP potential, and only the barest variety of methodology (the 4 paths, but honestly a huge amount of work gets done by the barely-different funnyhands alone, then more is done by the identical "break a blade in a pinch") in their goal of becoming a round-ending threat. They have basically 3 endgames: Ascend, do the bare minimum to greentext, or eat shit and die

(Or, 4th, roll Heretic just to get a funnyhand and a low-level power that's fun, like teleport, and then play like normal crew after that)

[Imitates-The-Lizards]

0. The core of Mothblocks' issue, as they have stated multiple times, is that Heretic by design promotes murderboning (And worse, round removal murderboning due to the fact that sacrificing the target gibs them), and they feel this is bad for game/community health, since no one wants to be gibbed 5 minutes in and then be out of the round and unable to play for an hour.
1. It's not reflected in the actual results of the shifts -
2. Heretic requires significant prep time -
3. Even in the absolute worst case scenario, it's not necessarily as bad as you're making it out to be -

0. I would posit the problem with Heretic is not that it's pure murderbone, though that is a problem. Rather, it's that Heretic is inflexible. Even Nuke Ops, who have the ultimate goal of "Bathe the station in nuclear fire," have a much wider variety of methods available to them, from the "Very real CentCom inspectors" to the drop pod to the syndiemechs and syndieborgs to stealth ops. Additionally, there's zero RP potential with them; they have no real lore. Even Nuke Ops now have some degree of RP, mostly in the form of "yelling at each other before the fight when war ops is announced"

1. If the Heretics can't actually do their murderhobo thing, that's also a problem, because it means that the antag isn't designed well enough that people can do the only thing they're good at successfully.

2. Comes back to 1. You have to run around to a bunch of places and hope you get lucky just to have powers, and then that allows you to murder to get cooler powers. If you don't manage to do that at all? Well, get fucked, buddy - you need to get a takedown with basically 0 antag powers just to get powers, so... good fucking luck. Hope you're ready to make hearts until one points to someone who's not staying in a public area a lot. Furthermore, the prep time you mention exists because all of their stuff requires them to murder and only makes them better at murder. They have no significant way to get anything done except by violence, so they have to be prepared for a fight to the death at any given time.

3. Automatic ERT on ascension would be badass, but again it relies on the Heretics being sufficiently robust and motivated to drive for ascension and pull it off.

I think the biggest problem with the Heretic is - let me know if I make sense here, please - that they're a pure murderhobo antag. They have no lore, no apparent IC motivation, no RP potential, and only the barest variety of methodology (the 4 paths, but honestly a huge amount of work gets done by the barely-different funnyhands alone, then more is done by the identical "break a blade in a pinch") in their goal of becoming a round-ending threat. They have basically 3 endgames: Ascend, do the bare minimum to greentext, or eat shit and die

(Or, 4th, roll Heretic just to get a funnyhand and a low-level power that's fun, like teleport, and then play like normal crew after that)

There's two very strange presumptions in your post:

-Heretic is difficult, therefore it's bad

-Heretic can only murderbone

Neither of which is true. Addressed below:

0 - Isn't this just an issue of you not being creative? There was the guy earlier who mentioned he ran a shop to sell Heretic goods. I saw a heretic the other day who spent the entire shift humanizing monkeys to sacrifice them instead of murderboning. I saw a shift before where the RD was a heretic but it was nuke ops - he came out as a heretic and sided with the crew, and the crew sacrificed themselves willingly for him in order to help fight the nuke ops. Heretic is NOT locked into "Only hide in maints and murderbone", you just are not creative. Literally a skill issue.

1 - The reason this is not an issue is because bad/new heretic players do not actually care if they don't succeed, because heretic is a very strong power fantasy antagonist. People know it's hard but they want to try it anyway, it's kind of like when people play the lottery - you could say it's poorly designed because almost no one wins at it, and yet millions of people enjoy the lottery and use it as a valid form of entertainment every day.

2 - This is not a negative, this is a positive that makes heretic MORE appealing. Why? Because it gives Heretic players the ability to sit down and think "Okay, that didn't work, what can I do better next time?" It creates a positive feedback loop of player enjoyment because heretic players can see themselves improving bit-by-bit every single time they improve their preparations in terms of speed of completion and quality of items prepared. It's kind of like playing Factorio, dying to the bugs overwhelming you, and going back to think about how you think about the game, and building your base better the next time you play. If you DON'T have such a mindset, you will not enjoy Heretic, and you should disable it from your antagonist menu - but just because an antagonist isn't right for everyone, doesn't mean it should be removed.

3 - Ascension is a huge goal/reward. It being difficult to obtain is a GOOD THING. Because it motivates people to improve at the game, and improve at Heretic.

[wesoda25]

I think heretic is cool and has a unique niche within our current antags. It has a lot less playstyle/freedom potential compared to other antags which while lame, just leads to me enabling and disabling it whenever I want that sort of thing. When I’m in the mood, I find it can be fun both purely mechanically or with an emphasis on roleplay. Also don’t think having violent/uncompromising antags is a bad thing. I’d be sad to see it go.

[bastardblaster]

Heretic requires significant prep time - Right now you need to rush to find pierced realities at the start of the shift or else other heretics might take them all, and also because Heretic's have no real starting power, un-upgraded Mansus Grasp is basically nothing. I think it is reasonable to assume most heretics will receive 2 pierced realities on average at shift start, and that this will take 10 minutes to obtain, because they cannot beeline directly for them, since they are not omniscient, and they could also be in places that will require the heretic to obtain tools, and they need to search the entire station. Next, the Heretic needs to find a nice location to place their transmutation rune, select a target, get a kitchen knife (probably from Cargo), get the secondary materials for their funny curved knife (Most of which are easy to obtain, but not always - I play ethereal, so getting blood for the flesh knife is a bit of a pain sometimes) and then they also probably want to steal the poppies from the chapel... And....if this is all they get then they will die and lose. Only a new heretic would stop with this level of preparation, and they will only get 1 or 2 sacrifices (If any at all), making this a non-issue. A more advanced heretic will have to go and steal the hand tele, get a backpack full of at least 5 funny curved knives, maybe get some other weapons like a syringe gun (which will also take more time to make the chemicals), maybe they will even have to get EVA gear. So, REALISTICALLY, if you're not a new heretic who will not get any sacrifices in the first place making the murderhobo issues a non-issue, you are looking at at LEAST a half hour of prep-time (Most likely more), and at ANY point in any of this you can get noticed by someone who thinks you're acting strange and then sec searches you and you're done. Now, can you REALLY complain if you get hunted down and sacrificed at 30-35+ minutes into a shift?

An antagonist who is forced to powergame to have any chance of having fun/winning sounds like a reason to axe it.

It ignores that not all heretics make it so you are actually not able to play the round any more - I ALWAYS pick flesh path, and make flesh path minions. I assume other people do as well. Maybe you should just consider streamlining Heretic so that only the Flesh path exists, since it makes it so you bring back the dead? Or just buff flesh path so people pick it more (Please buff raw prophet to do literally anything, they're so god damn useless). And if you're going to say "Well, being a flesh-slave to a heretic isn't good still, because the player wanted to do (job), not be a zombie." well, then, you should also be advocating for the removal of the Cult and Revolution antagonists too.

Cultists/Revs are not obligated to help their teams, they cano do whatever, including their own jobs, as long as they do not harm their team.

[Imitates-The-Lizards]

An antagonist who is forced to powergame to have any chance of having fun/winning sounds like a reason to axe it.

Why on Earth would you come to the conclusion that Heretic needs to be axed due to requiring powergaming due to it's weak state rather than buffing the baseline powerlevel of heretic so that it doesn't require as much powergaming? Makes no sense. Furthermore, this is on the LRP servers, AKA the "Everyone powergames anyway" servers, because we don't want the admins poking into our bags to note us if we happen to pick up any kind of weapon without having knowledge of threats (Yes this has happened to me before). So, if people want to play the weakest antagonist and give themselves a challenge, WHY NOT?

Cultists/Revs are not obligated to help their teams, they cano do whatever, including their own jobs, as long as they do not harm their team.

I mean, okay. Then policy-change ban hypnoflash, romerol, antag force-borging and silicon subversion, murderboning on LRP in general etc. too. Why is Heretic being singled out?

[dragomagol]

We're currently seeing active development towards the improvement of heretics codewise, which would make disabling them altogether counter-intuitive. That being said, even before the changes we weren't looking to remove heretic from LRP, due to the fairly small pool of on-station solo antagonists and lack of clashing with LRP rules.

Headmin Votes:
Dragomagol: Do not disable
NamelessFairy: Do not disable
RaveRadbury: Do not disable