Families: Hold another vote

[carshalash]

When most of the manuel playerbase voted on keeping families we were under the assumption that things would get better through policy and coding. This was not the case at all.

Family members have been given FULL antag immunity to their actions, they are able to kill people for the flimsiest of reasons due to the fact they willingly became antags, code-wise we have had things get worse with the naming schemes of gang members. There is no deconversion, these people will ALWAYS be antags and be able to do as they please, there is no downside to becoming a gang member as sec and command are expected to let them do as they please.

This experiment has gone horribly wrong.

[Mothblocks]

When you say you assumed things would get better through policy, what exactly do you mean by that, and have you done the work to start policy discussion on what you've wanted changed?

[carshalash]

When you say you assumed things would get better through policy, what exactly do you mean by that, and have you done the work to start policy discussion on what you've wanted changed?

I expected the willing conversion antag not to be treated as a regular antagonist when it comes to rulings. Willingly accepting a handshake shouldn't give one full antag immunity to their actions.

[Mothblocks]

Have you started a policy discussion thread discussing the policy of how to treat a families antagonist with respect to MRP?

[Tearling]

Have you started a policy discussion thread discussing the policy of how to treat a families antagonist with respect to MRP?

Are you trying to suggest that anyone who doesn't like families should try to get it fixed before trying to get it removed?

[Mothblocks]

I'm wondering how you can make the "assumption that things would get better through policy" without actually doing anything to make things better through policy, on the board whose sole job it is is to make things better through policy!

[Jackraxxus]

Huh I typed out a post but it didn't go through.
Thank you for this thread based OP, and might I say that I may have misjudged your bartending ability.
Until families doesn't spit in the face of the beautiful work Inept and Co have done on the common core lore repo, the gamemode doesn't have a place on any server, let alone MRP.
I voted that that families could be salvaged, I regret my vote.
I genuinely believe that Heretic was a better fit for Manuel, at least I could insult heretics without ock icking.

[Featherfield]

Best part about families is that its not full on free for all against just sec and heads like revs is... its the fact that you can make up any excuse on someone you dont like and kill or cripple them over smallest things and claim "families" and roleplay just as Goof intended!
Man I do love families it has never failed in any tests or times it has been played or wanted to be used as events or had good platform for roleplay or had a game with no murderboning or had good sec/head round-

[Tearling]

I'm wondering how you can make the "assumption that things would get better through policy" without actually doing anything to make things better through policy, on the board whose sole job it is is to make things better through policy!

They are trying to make things better through policy, that's why they're trying to have a vote to remove families, to make manuel more enjoyable to play. As it stands now, just as Carsh said, "they are able to kill people for the flimsiest of reasons due to the fact they willingly became antags." Personally I think it's more complicated than just 1 or 2 policy changes to fix families, because as it stands, families is a playerbase problem on top of a policy problem. I think you should be focusing less on Carshalash and more on the idea they're putting forward.

Even in the best case scenario, families still not interesting. families are an outcome, not gameplay. Especially when paired with constant, very inadequate roleplay (and murderboning). This is why attempting to "fix" families is a fruitless play--you're not making the game more interesting by making families more fair. This means that, in practice, families are a way to gain antag status for no downside.

[wesoda25]

I don’t play/admin MRP but it’s been my impression from sitting in bus that a lot of the MRP admins don’t like dealing with families. Is that the case? If so, I can only imagine stripping family members of their full antag status would create more confusing escalation situations and make even more work for admins. Would it even be tenable at that point?

[Armhulen]

I want to hear some ideas from the creator and other posters on how they'd fix it

[Valorium]

Families is difficult to separate from its roots and from its previous editions, where it was used to gain free antagonist status and do as you please. Despite great efforts against such with the 4.0 edition, it seems like we're back to Square One again with regards to shittery. There's only really two options, which cleanly lead into each other:
- Make the escalation and metaprotection rules against Family members stricter and more enforced/enforceable. Right now, Family members need very little to no reason to murder someone, and Security can do very little to prevent it. Even if it boiled down to "Family membership is considered a misdemeanor by Nanotrasen and makes the party viable for random searches and fines regardless of alert level", that would give Security greater ability to combat the arms race Families often devolves into.
- If the above is untenable due to burnout or an active dislike of the gamemode by administration, then it should be pulled and revised until it can be made actually livable from both a player and administrative perspective.

[Armhulen]

Heck maybe an admin vote on how they feel adminning families is in order

[Tearling]

I want to hear some ideas from the creator and other posters on how they'd fix it

I would fix families by increasing the quality of players that are able to join the families. However, as this is not realistically feasible, I think families should have a poll to be removed.
The main reason families are allowed on manuel and not the other servers is because there is a heightened expectation of roleplay. In my experience, however, families can somehow magically reduce the roleplay capabilities of some players or draws in bad faith actors to look for ways and excuses to be antagonistic in ways that don't fit the roleplay.

I'm saying this after having several fun rounds where some of the families worked together on roleplay goals like one where a family got together to get as many "cool rides" as possible. I thought this was great, and I had a ton of fun playing with them. However, what I didn't have fun with, was on a different round I chose not to join an assistant's family, so they beat me into crit before being restrained by sec. I was taken to medical but because of the countless victims of family violence I was essentially left to rot for roughly 20 minutes.

Personally I've seen more LRP roleplay from families than any other antag (Other than, you know, obvious stuff like Blob), despite being one of the only antags tailor built for good roleplay interactions. I think this is because families is a voluntary antagonist, where any assistant with less than 10 hours can shake somebody's hand and suddenly have a license to cripple or kill security, and anyone else that looks at them funny. I'm not sure though, and I'm not sure if it would be fixed even if there was a way to rework the voluntary antag part of it.

At the same time, I prefer features to be fixed rather than removed, so I was very hesitant to voice my opinion on this. Even though I'll vote "no" if there is an official poll for if families should be removed I still think the poll should be done.

[mrmelbert]

I would greatly be in favor of holding a vote to see admin consensus on opinion of Families.

From my feedback of Families 4.0, 3 months ago:

The game-mode still requires an inordinate amount of admin attention to ensure it goes smoothly. It can very easily degrade without a pretty firm guiding hand - which basically turns it from an antag ruleset to an admin event.
As it requires so much admin attention, it's only fair that the admin team can weigh in to see if it should continue to be ran.

(Also I really dislike the forced name change done on gang leaders. But that's not really relevant.)

[thgvr]

I think a great start for Families being able to harbor any form of roleplay is making all of their objectives/themes not based around direct videogame references/memes or arguing about which persona game is better. I'm also of the opinion that forced name changes IMMEDIATELY make people disconnect from their character and turn their brain off. Most of the objectives also end up being "kill/harass security". The pure fact that it is also a mode you CONSENT into joining, while giving you basically freedom to do whatever is pretty awful to play with.

[Mothblocks]

The main reason families are allowed on manuel and not the other servers is because there is a heightened expectation of roleplay.

Not quite right. It was my call and it was because voluntary antagonist is not something I ever want to see given LRP's rule 4 (which is what got it disabled in the first place)

[iamgoofball]

Huh I typed out a post but it didn't go through.
Thank you for this thread based OP, and might I say that I may have misjudged your bartending ability.
Until families doesn't spit in the face of the beautiful work Inept and Co have done on the common core lore repo, the gamemode doesn't have a place on any server, let alone MRP.
I voted that that families could be salvaged, I regret my vote.
I genuinely believe that Heretic was a better fit for Manuel, at least I could insult heretics without ock icking.

I have literally asked the lore people like ten times to write lore and they keep brushing me off, go away. Write lore yourself

[oranges]

Until families doesn't spit in the face of the beautiful work Inept and Co have done on the common core lore repo, the gamemode doesn't have a place on any server, let alone MRP.

A)common core was not primarily written by inept

b) it's only a guideline, and no developer is under the requirement to align to it.

so not only is this comment holding a poor grasp of the facts, it's also entirely irrelevant and does nothing to explain any perceived structural issues with the gamemode.

[oranges]

I don’t play/admin MRP but it’s been my impression from sitting in bus that a lot of the MRP admins don’t like dealing with families. Is that the case? If so, I can only imagine stripping family members of their full antag status would create more confusing escalation situations and make even more work for admins. Would it even be tenable at that point?

The first half of this comment is quite bad because it implies other people hold opinions but fails to expand on any of them or even offer any evidence that they exist other than a personal impression, it doesnt' advance the argument in any useful way.

The second half has some nuggets of wisdom, but at the same time escalation has always been fairly poorly defined and always been something admins have to work out, so I dont' see what the complaint is there.

[oranges]

The game-mode still requires an inordinate amount of admin attention to ensure it goes smoothly. It can very easily degrade without a pretty firm guiding hand - which basically turns it from an antag ruleset to an admin event.
As it requires so much admin attention, it's only fair that the admin team can weigh in to see if it should continue to be ran.

how does this differ from say revolution? (PS families is just a rev alternate, don't even debate me on this)

Genuinely that will usually devolve into chaos fairly quickly too, but I don't see admins complaining about it or even trying to "guide" the revolution round, so what makes it different here?

[iamgoofball]

the dirty secret none of you fuckers will ever admit is that HRP, MRP, LRP, none of it's real

it's all bullshit

i have divined this wisdom by playing almost every ss13 fork out there at least once

the difference between skyrat, tg, bay, hippie, all of that shit is the amount of policy wonks who think 500+ page word documents are what make an SS13 server good or not, that's the only actual difference between "RP levels" on any of these servers, is how much fucking reading I have to do before I can start toolboxing and screaming AI DOOR on a two dimensional pixel art space station

there's only two actual differences on a meaningful level

one of them is the round time

sybil/basil/terry/hippie have 30 minutes to an hour long rounds

manuel has 1 hour to 2 hour long rounds

skyrat has 2 hour to 4 hour long rounds

the other is admin enforcement

vekter and mrmelbert are more likely to enforce the roleplay rules manuel is supposed to be abiding by than wesoda or jackraxxus are

enforcement is the literal only deciding factor when it comes to whether a server is LRP, MRP, or HRP

which is why any form of argumentative bullshit about how something is/is not LRP is fucking garbage and we should ban it from policy discussion
ergo:
stop fucking telling me Families is LRP you fucking morons when a bunch of idiots yelling "tunnel snakes rule" is more RP then I see out of the average player in a week
they're playing the role of being a tunnel snake

if you have a problem with manuel admins not enforcing the existing fucking rules they wrote, go complain at the manuel admins, quit blaming my gamemode

"WAH WAH GANGSTERS KEEP MURDERBONING 4 NO RAISIN"

from your own fucking manuel rules document:
https://tgstation13.org/wiki/Roleplay_Rules


wow, would you look at that? that's against the rules! maybe you should be AHELPING

press F1 some time and AHELP

if you have a problem with admins not enforcing the fucking rules as written, make a fucking admin complaint, don't go incorrectly pointing fingers at my gamemode

[CMDR_Gungnir]

The game-mode still requires an inordinate amount of admin attention to ensure it goes smoothly. It can very easily degrade without a pretty firm guiding hand - which basically turns it from an antag ruleset to an admin event.
As it requires so much admin attention, it's only fair that the admin team can weigh in to see if it should continue to be ran.

how does this differ from say revolution? (PS families is just a rev alternate, don't even debate me on this)

Genuinely that will usually devolve into chaos fairly quickly too, but I don't see admins complaining about it or even trying to "guide" the revolution round, so what makes it different here?

Revs are a proper antag that Security is supposed to immediately deal with on sight, because their presence will guarantee the deaths of at LEAST their entire department and all of the Heads of Staff, if not more players who try to stop them. They're not supposed to do so with Families, because Families are supposed to be smaller scale, and because of the RP focus on them.

Families are only supposed to be Soft/Half Antags, who're capable of doing things that further their teams goals, which is SUPPOSED to typically be Family vs Family. Unfortunately, it tends to become "JOIN MY FAMILY OR DIE" as Tearling spoke of above, which we'd already discussed on Policy Threads and had "Forcing someone to convert into your Voluntary Conversion antag is Bad and Against The Rules" decreed, but it apparently still happens.

Carshalash is right, and I can say this fundamentally because I tried making policy threads to help fix the mode, and it didn't work. It's still a shit show.

[NecromancerAnne]

if you have a problem with manuel admins not enforcing the existing fucking rules they wrote, go complain at the manuel admins, quit blaming my gamemode

Honestly half the time I feel like I'm just playing 2018-19 Sybil but it's 2 hour rounds instead of 30 minutes.

[wesoda25]

The first half of this comment is quite bad because it implies other people hold opinions but fails to expand on any of them or even offer any evidence that they exist other than a personal impression, it doesnt' advance the argument in any useful way.

The second half has some nuggets of wisdom, but at the same time escalation has always been fairly poorly defined and always been something admins have to work out, so I dont' see what the complaint is there.

Perhaps your problem is you are approaching it as an argument, that was more an invitation than anything else for MRP admins to share their grievances if they had any. One of them then commented how they think it requires a lot of admin attention so… there you go?

For the second part my analogy would be imagine if nations was a gamemode. I imagine roughly the same inter-party politics and escalation would be in play. I know for a fact that on LRP would be untenable. My question is whether or not it would be on MRP. Regardless of whether or not you agree with the analogy, someone has already described how admin involvement is intensive for families, and so if nothing else I think it’s worth taking into consideration.

[Timberpoes]

Just server ban players who abuse the antag to TDM and hide behind it when being omegashitters. Manuel has no blanket antag freedom.

Admins can (and should) decide what policy they want for families that works for them administratively, then apply it, then actually enforce it.

The policy should not be dictated by goof, who has limited understanding of how admin workflow goes when handling incidents, how the rules are enforced, etc.

The halfway house where policy is decided by people who can't enforce it just doesn't work for us.

Almost every edgelord we bring onto the admin team rapidly has an epiphany when they go "I finally understand why rules, policy and enforcement is how it is now". It's difficult to communicate that to non admins since it requires experience working with our specific team and our specific players on our specific servers.

But the policy should be 100% informed by goof's goals and ideals for the game mode to make it as close to what he envisioned as possible without admins logging off or complaining in their private echo chamber every time it rolls.

We already have concepts of half antags. Abductors. Ash lizards. Heck even obsessed doesn't give a murderbone pass on LRP I believe. And if it does that's lame and the admin team are dumb.

Decide a coherent policy with goof's goals in mind.
Publicise that policy.
Enforce that policy.

[Mothblocks]

Unfortunately, it tends to become "JOIN MY FAMILY OR DIE" as Tearling spoke of above, which we'd already discussed on Policy Threads and had "Forcing someone to convert into your Voluntary Conversion antag is Bad and Against The Rules" decreed, but it apparently still happens.

Are people ahelping this?

[largibbon]

Gangs are tiresome, and Carsh is right

[Mickyan]

Until families doesn't spit in the face of the beautiful work Inept and Co have done on the common core lore repo, the gamemode doesn't have a place on any server, let alone MRP.

A)common core was not primarily written by inept

b) it's only a guideline, and no developer is under the requirement to align to it.

so not only is this comment holding a poor grasp of the facts, it's also entirely irrelevant and does nothing to explain any perceived structural issues with the gamemode.

May have been poorly worded but it's still relevant, if a mode that is specifically ran for the MRP server doesn't fit the established roleplay(to put it very, very mildly) that's still a valid point of contention as this is a policy matter concerning the manuel MRP server and community, not the codebase nor how common core relates to the development side of things. It's never been a problem before because it's usually obvious for roleplay specific features to at least try and make things fall into the established roleplay, to a reasonable degree

All that said, gangs being one giant videogame reference with no regards to SS13's themes was a common complaint even before common core existed and the mode was on LRP but it's only been doubled down on as time went

[Armhulen]

I would argue that even if something is allowed to be completely non canon, people expecting a universe to get immersed in and being handed the factions from command and conquer fighting the phantom thieves from persona 5 have a right to get mad. I mean people play ss13 for a plethora of reasons and we try to accommodate most of them, immersion is a really innocent and great reason to like ss13

[Farquaar]

Every Families round I’ve ever played, both within a gang and without, basically boiled down to “here’s a silly costume, now go greytide”. I’m not sure how this could be fixed or made fun/interesting without completely altering the structure of the gamemode.

[Mothblocks]

I think removing/changing the explicit references to other stuff is a fine prospect. If I remember right, Goof was talking about how that was the only way he could get LRP players to join along, which shouldn't be necessary now.

[mrmelbert]

The game-mode still requires an inordinate amount of admin attention to ensure it goes smoothly. It can very easily degrade without a pretty firm guiding hand - which basically turns it from an antag ruleset to an admin event.
As it requires so much admin attention, it's only fair that the admin team can weigh in to see if it should continue to be ran.

how does this differ from say revolution? (PS families is just a rev alternate, don't even debate me on this)

Genuinely that will usually devolve into chaos fairly quickly too, but I don't see admins complaining about it or even trying to "guide" the revolution round, so what makes it different here?

While you are not wrong in saying "Families is just revs without forced conversion", their outlined goals differ.

Revolution has a set goal: Blue R flashes guy, guy has to go kill sec now.
Families does not: Family invites another guy, guy can interpret their objective completely differently.

As most of the objectives are very open, unless there's an admin directing it in a pseudo-event style, the players will end up doing something that warrants administrative attention.
An example of this being the Football theme - The objective written is to "Talk with the other gang and figure out a goal on your own!". People are not very good at this, and will just clobber other footballers unless an admin sends referees / makes a report about what the ball is / designates where the goals are / etc. Unless a voice in the sky is telling the gangsters what to do, they do whatever they think a gangster should do, which usually is against a rule or something (Wanton violence).

Admins don't have to guide a revolution round, because it has a goal. (It's "organized chaos", so we don't have to do anything until it becomes post-revs.)
Families rounds don't have a goal, and without direction usually ends in admin problems and arguments.



DESPITE this, I also think that code changes can be accomplished to prevent this from happening, rather than place it all on the admin's backs. Force name-change and blatant references are a good start, as mentioned in this thread.

[carshalash]

The worst gang for example would be the powder bombers, there is no reason not to instantly round remove any powderbomber you see.

[Armhulen]

The worst gang for example would be the powder bombers, there is no reason not to instantly round remove any powderbomber you see.

Unironic powder ganger objective: "Ensure nobody else has to suffer under Nanotrasen's unlawful arrests by destroying the permabrig and the brig cells!"

L M A O

[Imaginos]

Quite honestly as an admin who had to handle rounds with families alone on highpop, its one of the most miserable experiences imaginable, only tied with adminning alone with a revolution going on.

The distinct difference between both is that one (revolution), has a very easy and simple objective and its very easy to enforce rules, after all, its as simple as killing a head of staff.

Families, only have "guidelines" and no clear route or objective whatsoever. The fact that you even have to use view variables and do a very roundabout way to find the flavor of the family to see what their "objective" is, already makes it a pain for newer admins to figure out the logic as to why a powder ganger decided it was an awesome idea to blow up the brig and space half the station. Can I fault them wholeheartedly for following their command to "Ensure nobody has to suffer under Nanotrasen's unlawful arrests by destroying the permabrig and the brig cells!"? No, not really. Can I fault someone for beating the shit out of another gang member, or for killing someone for trying to stand up to them? Not exactly either, as long as its not in excess. This antag type is not fun for admins, since everything is badly defined and is in a nebulous grey area, and not fun for the playerbase, when people clearly are unhappy when a gang starts causing excessive amounts of tomfoolery from what they perceive is the "correct" way to see the objective.

If there's even a single thing I want out of this thread, is at least proper damn logging on the traitor panel. I don't enjoy the prospect of having to VV dive to find out what the gang member's flavor is to glean even an idea as to why they decided it was a wonderful idea to do [Insert gigantic rulebreak here]

[TheFinalPotato]

Hello fellow players and playees, if you have issues with/opinions about some existing families objective, post it here viewtopic.php?f=10&p=623343
This way we can track and discuss them in a space free of policy discussion (Honestly they may be one and the same conversation, but discussing another families vote alongside powdergangers seems a bit silly)

[Misdoubtful]

This thread is too long for me have any serious interest at the moment (I'll come back later) but it'd be super cool to see, listed: all the things that do and don't merit families being an active gamemode.

Thanks in advance homies

[Drag]

I have compiled the usual complaints on families the best I can.

What usually happens on Manuel when families rolls:
A lot of people suicide, especially non families head of staff.
There is usually next to no security.
A station filled with full antag protection antags goes unchecked from the lack of command structure and security, leaving the maybe one or two command staff left to end up having to hide because they're now a kill target for not aligning with a family.
There have been rounds where people have been round removed for not wanting to join a family, this has gone unpunished because families have full antag protections.
The situation usually declines into the families trying to kill the last remaining heads of staff because they called the shuttle for a red alert level uncontainable threat.
If security DOES manage to arrest family members they end up getting swarmed anyways and the previous point occurs.
It's threat that could be better spent on something else.
Nobody has fun when families rolls.

[Drag]

I have compiled the usual complaints on families the best I can.

What usually happens on Manuel when families rolls:
A lot of people suicide, especially non families head of staff.
There is usually next to no security.
A station filled with full antag protection antags goes unchecked from the lack of command structure and security, leaving the maybe one or two command staff left to end up having to hide because they're now a kill target for not aligning with a family.
There have been rounds where people have been round removed for not wanting to join a family, this has gone unpunished because families have full antag protections.
The situation usually declines into the families trying to kill the last remaining heads of staff because they called the shuttle for a red alert level uncontainable threat.
If security DOES manage to arrest family members they end up getting swarmed anyways and the previous point occurs.
It's threat that could be better spent on something else.
Nobody has fun when families rolls.

Tldr: Families is just revolutionaries but worse and with a lot more bullshit because we expect more from it

[Jackraxxus]

Poorly worded, badly thought out 5am post attempting to detail some of my issues with families. It's very possible that my arguments are so unbelievably stupid that you think I'm controlled opposition seeking to make people who have problems with Families look like dent-heads. If you choose to read this post I apologize in advance, like, I am genuinely sorry. You have been warned.

Spoiler:

Admin:
-When I remove the families datum from someone, it doesn't change their name back. (The bar RPers don't remember to toggle their midround pref).
-On that note why is there a midround ruleset for families? It doesn't really work as a midround IMO. It needs to be front-and-centre from the start, not awkwardly shoved in.
-The objectives are vague. There are too many things open for interpretations that will differ in the team. AI law interpretations work because there's an angry box who decides which interpretation is correct. In the VERY loosely organized group of a gang that has multiple leaders, whose goal is correct?
-I don't think families murderbone, personally. I think people who say they murderbone are being drama queens. Families take advantage of the massively relaxed escalation that applies to antags on MRP to harrass/bully/assault/murder people who get in their way and fair enough, I think. Imagine walking up to a bunch of tough looking, baseball bat wielding gangsters, then callong them names and shoving them, and then acting surprised when they beat you up over it.
-The wiki should detail the objectives and the Fiction-Speak to English translation of those objectives, and generally better explain to less experienced gamers what they're supposed to be doing. (WYWI (When You Wiki It) I guess)

Player:
-It changes my name to something silly sounding. I like my snowflake statics please don't rename them from "Wettham Unfunnyman" to "Supreme Cock Muncher Unfunnyman" or whatever. Though to be fair the gang name is probably more in-line with naming rules than any name I've ever used. The naming thing is just silly, I like that it makes it more obvious who is in what gang but I don't think it's worth it. Maybe you could do a little symbol in chat next to a fellow gangster's name when they speak? The re-naming thing I think makes a lot of people hesitant to join a family.
-I joined the Phantom Thieves of Hearts and then Ahelped asking if I could ERP the CMO to "steal their heart" and was told to fuck off, then this gang of cannibals murdered my prospective lover and ate their heart. Adding to that, as AI I called the phantom thieves a bunch of weaboo LARPers in loudmode over general radio and I got yelled at over it.
-There is no way to deconvert gangsters. It makes going against them as sec feel really bad. I do not want to take people out of the round, but 9/10 times if you show any goodwill towards a gangster they will turn around and X-4 R-bola you. I watched this happen to a poor newfriend solo-sec gamer on a 19 player families round and it hurt my soul. Antagonists will always be a prisoner's dilemma, when you're allowing one side to join an antagonist team VOLUNTARILY, those people will ALMOST ALWAYS choose to betray without any consideration for anyone else's experience. Give sec the ability to offer a deconversion handshake or something.
-It rolls on stupid low pops at 50 threat. If you wanna roll families at 10 pop at 99 threat sure go ahead. Hell malf AI has a minimum pop of 40 or something at 100 threat, families should be the same. It needs ~3 full teams to be a complete mode.
-Unironically "Muh Immersionz". As lardgibbon's post details at the end a lot of good-faith players are turned off by the situations families puts them into, and I believe they are further pushed away by the pop-culture references that make up the gamemode. I know a lot of people have snowflakey character backstories (And as ashamed as I am about it I will admit that I may have done this to some degree) and they'd think "What justification does person X who works on a research station have to join a gang and LARP as a snowman or whatever it is the Jack Frosts do". Other conversion antags get around this with forced conversions (hypnosis, dark god magic). Goof thought I was being a bad faith dickhead when I was complaining about the lore (People do this often, so I'm told.) but I genuinely enjoy the worldbuilding and story of a fictional world and pop-culture references break my suspension of disbelief. If I wanted to see people RPing as Tunnel Snakes I'd play whichever fallout 13 server hasn't collapsed from poor administration/hostship at the moment, not Space Station game.
-The Spinward PD and the undercover cops and the Tank were based and I miss them.
-Hackers theme makes life hell for silicons. Upload wars are not fun and should not be encouraged.
-People's attitude toward the gamemode is generally negative. And I don't mean like Manuel Metacord opinions (The manuel metacord is a negativity echo-chamber and should be ignored in all serious circumstances) but IC/OOC in game. Others see that is families and giving the game their best go, and then others see people not giving it their best go and decide to not give it their best go either, and it spirals from there. This is a playerbase issue, and not one that I can offer a solution to. I dunno. It's like a self-fulfilling prophecy.

[iamgoofball]

A lot of people suicide, especially non families head of staff.

this is bannable under antag rolling policy, roundstart suicide when you dont get antag is a rules violation

There is usually next to no security.

this is an issue on all of our non-terry servers

A station filled with full antag protection antags

this is incorrect, read the rules sometime

There have been rounds where people have been round removed for not wanting to join a family, this has gone unpunished because families have full antag protections.

once again, objectively wrong, murderboning is bad, read the fucking rules and hit ahelp, if admins refuse to prosecute it make an admincomplaint and demand names of admins on that round, they're required to give them to you

The situation usually declines into the families trying to kill the last remaining heads of staff because they called the shuttle for a red alert level uncontainable threat.

see: murderboning, bad etc.

If security DOES manage to arrest family members they end up getting swarmed anyways and the previous point occurs.

see: murderboning, bad etc.

[Mothblocks]

this is bannable under antag rolling policy, roundstart suicide when you dont get antag is a rules violation

I'm not sure this maps on--it sounds more similar to how we allow suicide when you get the war ops declaration.

[Drag]

A lot of people suicide, especially non families head of staff.

this is bannable under antag rolling policy, roundstart suicide when you dont get antag is a rules violation

There is usually next to no security.

this is an issue on all of our non-terry servers

A station filled with full antag protection antags

this is incorrect, read the rules sometime

There have been rounds where people have been round removed for not wanting to join a family, this has gone unpunished because families have full antag protections.

once again, objectively wrong, murderboning is bad, read the fucking rules and hit ahelp, if admins refuse to prosecute it make an admincomplaint and demand names of admins on that round, they're required to give them to you

The situation usually declines into the families trying to kill the last remaining heads of staff because they called the shuttle for a red alert level uncontainable threat.

see: murderboning, bad etc.

If security DOES manage to arrest family members they end up getting swarmed anyways and the previous point occurs.

see: murderboning, bad etc.

You have completely missed every point I am trying to make on why families isn't fun for Manuel because of how desperate you seem to be on defending it. It is very clear there is a lot of rulebreaking going on and people don't care. This is what is going on, we don't like families. You claiming I should read the rules sometimes shows how dense you are to how bad the problems actually are.

[Drag]

The general consensus on Manuel is that families is NOT fun and causes a lot of issues and burnout that makes players feel like they need to take a break. Either admins need to be given more quality control ability and code changes need to be made or the mode needs to go away.

[Drag]

this is bannable under antag rolling policy, roundstart suicide when you dont get antag is a rules violation

I'm not sure this maps on--it sounds more similar to how we allow suicide when you get the war ops declaration.

Yes this is what I'm referring to. A noticable portion of non antags suicide when it is revealed the round is families.

Edit: I would also like to note instead of listening to the MRP admin's perspective and grievances the maintainers are just saying "ahelp it". Thanks very cool. The policy isnt even clear if they have antag protections or not. Clearly we need the headmins to decide some things.

[spookuni]

I originally voted to keep families around under the assumption that time and modification would smooth out the growing pains of having an entirely new large scale team antag game mode. Now I think that while families isn't un-salvageable, many of the issues from that early phase are rooted in problems that are a lot more underlying than simple unfamiliarity with the game mode's nature and systems.

First and foremost - I both personally and as an admin do not believe that a voluntary conversion team antagonist will ever function well on our servers - team antagonists in general tend towards promotion of lowest common denominator play, conversion antags even more so, voluntary conversion where your self-selecting player pool is going to naturally veer towards people who desire to cause problems often becomes an exercise in waiting for someone to proverbially light the match that sets the round on fire.

Secondarily, and following on from the previous; there is a lot of general misunderstanding about how antagonist rules on Manuel actually function and a fair amount of assumption that rules prohibit action that they actually do not. For reference, here are the two paragraphs defining what is and is not considered murderboning on Manuel:
Murderboning Is:

killing typically large amounts of the station’s population without regard and/or in direct violation of one’s objectives
killing someone and being unable to explain why without going into deep hypotheticals such as "they could find the body if they happened to walk across the station to the opposite corner of the map", or “because I can (as antag)”
killing anyone without justification
This is different than killing individuals who simply aren’t listed in your objective.

Setting up situations where you can evade these restrictions (i.e. placing a body in an open location, not making an honest attempt to hide it, then killing individuals who “stumble” upon it) or otherwise maximizing the kill count without justification is also against the rules.

In short, you should be able to very quickly and easily explain why an individual was killed.

Do note that as an antagonist, your job ideally is to create an interesting story with the objectives, freedoms, and abilities as the framework to complete this task. This means:

Permission to kill is NOT the same as obligation to kill. Feel free to approach a situation as non-lethal as you’d like even if you would be okayed by the administration to kill.
Feel free to ask an admin to change your objectives or for permission to murderbone in the pursuit of running an interesting gimmick on a non-murderboning role. They might even be willing to make it easier to run!

Murderboning is not:

Reacting to slights with lethal force.

Antagonists still cannot kill randomly, but they are subject to relaxed escalation rules. "Slights" here can include people shoving them repeatedly, stealing from them or going out of their way to greatly insult them.
Self-defense.

Someone actively trying to make it difficult for you to complete your objectives is fine to eliminate in pursuit of completing your objective. This would include witnesses.
Collateral.

If you for instance bomb your target, it is not considered murderboning if other individuals die in the explosion. This can include self-defense situations where individuals dying from a result of being in a crowd after you would also not be considered murderbone.
Directly benefiting the pursuit of your objective(s).

An individual carrying an item you have to steal or killing someone to get closer to your mark (IE a doctor whose patient just happens to be your target) would fall into this category.

I've often seen accusations of murderboning levelled at families antagonists, both as an aspersion against the quality of the game mode (gang members just murderbone all the time the mode sucks) and as a defence of the mode itself at the expense of the admin team (admins just let families murderbone why aren't they enforcing the rules) and in both cases I feel this stems from a lack of understanding of what those rules actually enforce.

To break it down, families members are not murderbone enabled antagonists, this means that they cannot simply kill people for existing or because they can and want to, straight up killing people for no in character reason as a families antagonist will catch you a ban. However, as full antagonists families gangsters enjoy dramatically reduced escalation requirements in conflict with both each other and crewmembers, and have blanket permission to employ violence in pursuit of aiding their team in achieving their objectives. Some examples of how this can result in large bodycounts that are by our rules defined as not murderbone under current families rulesets:

Powder gangers receive the objective to destroy and blow up the brig, in the process they are stopped by security and to complete their objectives they kill the entire sec team : entirely legal.
OSI receive the objective to assert their control over the science department to the detriment of the ability of the scientists in that department to function, science and security attempt to evict them from the department and to defend themselves in pursuit of their objective the OSI kill them all: Entirely legal
A random ganger from literally any gang gets into an argument with a crewmember over almost anything, the crewmember shoves the ganger over and stuns them against a wall, the ganger's teammates come over to assist their (ANTAGONIST TEAMMATE), and violently attack the shoving crewmember, resulting in their death: completely legal
The previous scenario, except 15 seconds later when several other crewmembers wander in to find multiple gangmembers beating someone to death, getting involved to defend the dying crewmember (the original instigator) and themselves dying in the ensuing fight: Also legal!

I've probably belaboured the point here: the murderboning rules don't actually say what a lot of people think they say, and it's very easy to justify lethal action as any full antagonist - murderbone enabled or not - with in character motivation and reference to your objectives or team status. This is made increasingly problematic when antagonist objective text is obscured from observing admins to the degree of requiring VV usage to access.

(OPINION ALERT) Families as a gamemode is at its strongest when the families are naturally pushed by their objectives to conflict with one another in ways that minimise violent interaction between the crew and the families, it'd honestly probably be more manageable if the family members weren't antagonists at all and could only ever fight each other, which kinda seems to be what Goof thinks not being able to murderbone means?

I'm not going to weigh in too hard on the flavour for the most part, the persona LARPers make me want to go do something else whenever they show up and silly 21st century gangs in the 26th century are silly, whatever.

If families is going to stay around, at a minimum their objectives need a significant rework/rewrite to discourage gang on crew violence (and, with another opinion alert, encourage gang on gang violence). Current families rounds often quickly degenerate into bloodbaths as people who want to get violent join gangs and take chances to get violent.

If nothing else running the poll would get us a much better gauge of the opinions of the quiet majority than a forum thread will, and I think families as it currently stands has enough issues to warrant the scrutiny.

[CMDR_Gungnir]

I'd also like to add the last time I was in a Families round, I saw Sec only had one other player in it and joined, not noticing the name changes (because I'd already made up my mind at that point).

It was without a doubt the most unbearably miserable round I've ever experienced in my life. We had two officers and the Captain (Captain HAD to go CapSec because we were that fucking overwhelmed) trying to deal with the Red Dead Redemption 2 gangs. So a lot of attempts to break into the vault, and a lot of general violence. We'd arrest someone for their crimes, then we had to worry about people who wanted to break them out. We had to worry about people being very angry we arrested their buddy.

We grabbed a dude who was trying to break into the vault, and I literally didn't even have time to process her before I was being called to back up the HoS, and had to temporarily throw her in perma. The shuttle was redcalled while I was helping, and when I came back to get them (escorting some Heads of Staff to the SecPod at the same time, I was intending to bring the prisoners with us) they'd already broken out of perma. My attempts to politely request that the Vault Breaker was in cuffs was met with them grabbing the knife that we literally DIDN'T HAVE THE TIME TO PROPERLY SECURE but had kept far away from the perma itself.

After batoning them, I tried to cuff them, and another crewmember kept shoving me around while I was trying, making it impossible to do, and due to the imminent departure of the shuttle, required me to harmbaton them both to death as I literally did not have the time to properly stun them both, cuff them both, and take them with me. I got screamed at for being ShitSec for being incredibly overworked and low on time, and defending myself and the heads of staff from violent attack.

Fuck Families.

[Mothblocks]

Edit: I would also like to note instead of listening to the MRP admin's perspective and grievances the maintainers are just saying "ahelp it". Thanks very cool. The policy isnt even clear if they have antag protections or not. Clearly we need the headmins to decide some things.

First off, I am as much a game admin as any of the others in this thread.

Secondly, when you say "Clearly we need the headmins to decide some things"--yes, I agree! So why is the policy discussion thread about removing families entirely, rather than any popping up to actually iron out what family members should and should not be able to do?

[Yulice]

First off, I am as much a game admin as any of the others in this thread.

Secondly, when you say "Clearly we need the headmins to decide some things"--yes, I agree! So why is the policy discussion thread about removing families entirely, rather than any popping up to actually iron out what family members should and should not be able to do?

Likely because there was an assumption that admins/coders would've done said tweaks without the NEED for there being a policy thread, and the policy thread being made by a player is because they are so frustrated at the inaction and so fatigued by families that any sort of fix would be too little too late at this point. Though I personally may be a bit biased, because I also dislike families and would not be one bit upset if it was nixed entirely, considering most of the issues seem to be player base wise, and you can't exactly fix that overnight.