New changeling objectives in regards to required teamplay.

TechnoAlchemist · Tue Aug 25, 2015 5:09 pm

If you didn't already know, changelings now have percent chance to get their objectives as a team, sharing assassination targets as well as impersonating entire departments.

I'm wondering if working against fellow changelings in this circumstance should be acted upon by administration.

Thoughts?

Steelpoint · Post by **Steelpoint** » Tue Aug 25, 2015 5:13 pm #114829

Unlike in traitor rounds where you have the incentive to kill the other traitor for their PDA, with lings that's less so as you only stand to benefit in helping other lings.

Unless there's a chance another ling has to kill you, in which case ggnore to any motivation in working together.

Which leads me to state that lings killing other lings in a objective scenario would only do so to be a dick or because 'i'm a antag'.

Falamazeer · Post by **Falamazeer** » Tue Aug 25, 2015 5:16 pm #114831

team antag is team antag, be it changeling or nuke.
A nuke op is an antagonist and can do as he likes, so long as it doesn't work against his teamates
lolbombing as a cultist is bad for the same reason, it could kill cultists, it could force the shuttle, you can't do it
nomming a fellow changeling who is on your team, or otherwise acting against someone with the same objective is bad form and should be treated the same damn way as any team based missions.

Now if they fight and escalate, that's a whole other matter, but killing your co-antags as a gimmick or to be a dick for no raisens should net an antag ban, and of course changelings with different objectives and no tie to eachother should feel free to consume eachother as has been tradition, so basically to answer your question, yes, admins should feel free to be hands on in that situation, With regards to context of course.

TechnoAlchemist · Tue Aug 25, 2015 5:21 pm

Falamazeer wrote:team antag is team antag, be it changeling or nuke.
A nuke op is an antagonist and can do as he likes, so long as it doesn't work against his teamates
lolbombing as a cultist is bad for the same reason, it could kill cultists, it could force the shuttle, you can't do it
nomming a fellow changeling who is on your team, or otherwise acting against someone with the same objective is bad form and should be treated the same damn way as any team based missions.

Now if they fight and escalate, that's a whole other matter, but killing your co-antags as a gimmick or to be a dick for no raisens should net an antag ban, and of course changelings with different objectives and no tie to eachother should feel free to consume eachother as has been tradition, so basically to answer your question, yes, admins should feel free to be hands on in that situation, With regards to context of course.

The thing is that the lings start separated and as far as I know there is no indicator that you are a team besides the last objective of "assist your fellow lings in impersonating x y and z"

As far as I know you are never really told that you are a team.

Tornadium · Post by **Tornadium** » Tue Aug 25, 2015 5:25 pm #114834

Either make Changelings a team antagonist role or leave them as solo.

Don't start making the water murky.

Either it's kosher to fuck over other lings full stop or its not full stop.

Post by **Cobby** » Tue Aug 25, 2015 6:33 pm #114844

How is it not clear that fucking your teammates while you are OBLIGATED with objectives to work as a team will get you in trouble?

If you have objectives that REQUIRE you to work as a team, then work as a team.

What's over-complicated about this except people trying to toe-la-línea?

imblyings · Post by **imblyings** » Tue Aug 25, 2015 7:20 pm #114850

No team HUD markers.

Yes this is an issue. No I do not want lings with team objectives to get HUD markers. No I don't expect lings to constantly exchange accurate information about what disguise they are wearing.

whodaloo · Post by **whodaloo** » Tue Aug 25, 2015 7:26 pm #114854

i hope lings don't get markers

there's nothing funnier than someone armblading a dude and the guy to be yelling on .g "HEY IDIOT I'M ON YOUR SIDE"

Scones · Post by **Scones** » Tue Aug 25, 2015 8:34 pm #114867

I was always operating on the assumption they are solo antags with no obligations to the team - Just, a lot of rewards for actually caring to work together

I don't think the code changes should cause a policy change in regards to antag behavior but ehhh those are def. team objectives

Takeguru · Post by **Takeguru** » Tue Aug 25, 2015 9:33 pm #114879

I remember old ling, an incredibly valid strategy was to kill another ling to get his genome stockpile.

Keep old ling the fuck away from everything, though.
Para GGNORE was boring gameplay with little counterplay.

Post by **lumipharon** » Tue Aug 25, 2015 9:57 pm #114880

I honestly don't like the changes making ling and traitor much more heavily encouraged/easier/obligated to work together - they've always been lone antags, who if they chose to, could work together at the cost of trusting one another.

Now traitor is just round start say .t ayyyy who wants to murderbone
and lings now have a literally team objective to make it ling station.

Deitus · Post by **Deitus** » Tue Aug 25, 2015 10:50 pm #114888

my two cents:

yes, but only under the circumstances that the lings KNOW they are working together, as in it would say in the notes "you are the ling! objectives: work with x to assassinate y"
i know that they could just communicate this through ling chat, but in my experience with ling rounds its very rarely used. the way i see it is that lings hindering each other when they have the same objective usually comes about from them not knowing they have similar goals; if we let lings know they are working towards the same objective then they would have no reason to hinder each other, and therein could be acted upon by administration if griffin occurs.

invisty · Post by **invisty** » Tue Aug 25, 2015 10:58 pm #114890

HUD markers or bust. If you give people an explicit rule and a means of plausible deniability, they'll take it. Watch as changelings smoke each other with laser guns before they can complain, absorb the genomes, and then say "oh sorry, I had no idea!".

Tue Aug 25, 2015 11:22 pm

fucking over teammates for no reason is absolutely shit, and i think in this case it would go against the new "you can't work directly against your objectives" policy we got a while back, so it should be grounds for an antag ban

Malkevin · Post by **Malkevin** » Tue Aug 25, 2015 11:27 pm #114892

Why the hell is every antag being made a team antag?

Wizards were original a completely solo round, then they got constructs added, then animate objects, then player apprentice wizards
Traitors were solo operatives, often with objectives to kill each other, but they did get code phrases to try to work together.
Lings were specifically designed to eat each other for a massive potential gain of genomes.

We already had rev, cult, and nukeops for team vs team stuff.

Saegrimr · Post by **Saegrimr** » Wed Aug 26, 2015 12:01 am #114895

Animate objects is STILL solo, you just have a shitton of angry NPCs running around. Construct wizard is best wizard but nobody plays it.
All three things you listed are also COMPLETELY OPTIONAL, until we figure out the deal with lings anyway.

firecage · Post by **firecage** » Wed Aug 26, 2015 11:39 am #114941

Just keep lings as they are. It shouldn't be team-based where they have to work with other lings. Heck, they shouldn't even know if they CAN trust other lings.

Malkevin · Post by **Malkevin** » Wed Aug 26, 2015 11:51 am #114945

Saegrimr wrote:Animate objects is STILL solo, you just have a shitton of angry NPCs running around. Construct wizard is best wizard but nobody plays it.
All three things you listed are also COMPLETELY OPTIONAL, until we figure out the deal with lings anyway.

Having a bunch of NPCs do your dirty work for you isn't what I'd call solo.

There's strength in numbers so of course most people are going to take the powers that give them that edge.
I want to shoot lasers at the magical bastard not get chased around by a bunch of grilles.

Saegrimr · Post by **Saegrimr** » Wed Aug 26, 2015 12:11 pm #114952

Malkevin wrote:Having a bunch of NPCs do your dirty work for you isn't what I'd call solo.

So I guess offline Diablo 2 necromancer was the pinnacle of MMO gameplay.

Malkevin wrote:I want to shoot lasers at the magical bastard not get chased around by a bunch of grilles.

So your complaint isn't from the wizard's perspective, its idedplsremove.

Malkevin · Post by **Malkevin** » Wed Aug 26, 2015 12:19 pm #114955

No, classic wizard was a short round about one man and his (un)robustness.

Now its an over extended slogfest through his minions whilst the wizard jerks off in a locker somewhere.

Takeguru · Post by **Takeguru** » Wed Aug 26, 2015 1:04 pm #114963

Well, I prefer new wizard to be honest

They can still go the tried and true tryhard route and just MM + Ei Nath everything, or they can actually try to do something more interesting than killing a dude every minute.

I will admit that some of the current wizard's options are boring, but I'll take a few boring wizard rounds out of several over every round being the same thing ad infinitum

Wyzack · Post by **Wyzack** » Wed Aug 26, 2015 2:32 pm #114975

Not do derail the thread but skelemancer build in diablo 2 was the pinnical of that game for me, especially when you hit the expansion episode and march your horde of the dead across the battleground through catapult fire and shit.

ColonicAcid · Post by **ColonicAcid** » Wed Aug 26, 2015 3:16 pm #114983

No no no no no no no no.

No team markers, no forced team work. If a changeling wants to work with fellow changelings, he's welcome to, but if he wants to lonewolf and even kill another changeling he should be equally welcomed to, no matter if they have the same objectives.

Antags, apart from team antags should be hands free admin wise as possible, don't do this.

Remie Richards · Thu Aug 27, 2015 2:15 am

I'll just pop in here, since it's my change.

If the round gives the lings a team objective (it's 20*number of lings%, could maybe do with lowering to 15, 10?) then every other objective of their's DELIBERATELY avoids other lings. that means from a pure code stance, a ling round with team objectives is NOT the place for backstabbing, you have no obligation to backstab, but you DO have an obligation to team up (If you're the kind of person who plays for their greentext, YES you can win if the other lings win the objective, but hedging your bets on other people doesn't always work out)

If the chance for a TO is lowered, I think that'll sort things mostly, People who want backstab ling will get backstab ling, people who want team ling will get team ling.

Also, as for team markers, Lings are masters of disguise so it -literally- didn't come to my mind that they should get team markers, they should inform each other either through their actions or Hivemind

Saegrimr · Post by **Saegrimr** » Thu Aug 27, 2015 2:17 am #115115

Part of the problem is we don't really have a defined policy on something that suddenly appeared in the game.

Alex Crimson · Thu Aug 27, 2015 3:13 pm

So would i be within my rights to suicide if i got team objectives as a ling? Im not really interested in team antags, which is why i keep them disabled most of the time. Id rather not disable ling just because a coder decided to add a low chance for team objectives.

imblyings · Post by **imblyings** » Thu Aug 27, 2015 4:42 pm #115232

Well, what's stopping you from just happening to do your lone objectives first and/or just happening to choose a strat or gimmick that passively makes the others redtext? nothing really, admins aren't mindreaders who observe everybody at the same time. It's worse in ling, since other lings have it harder to identify who's doing what. I played team ling once and I no luck trying to coordinate an attack on our objectives, I even offered a complete disguise to another ling to get us close but no one took me up on it and the only real teamwork was bailing out a ling who got caught. And right after, I got mindswapped by another ling because I thought I'd made it obvious that I was disguised as an engineer but in fact I hadn't. The meta has to catch up first I think, we'll see how players respond to the need for teamwork and constant identification of themselves over lingchat.

One solution would be for players to just deal with not getting complete greentext or god forbid, the coders adding some sort of text between green and red, especially for this. Orangetext or something.

AdenAbrafo · Post by **AdenAbrafo** » Thu Aug 27, 2015 6:21 pm #115252

Hand holding only gets you so far. When it comes to teamwork it gets you just about nowhere.
This isn't in response to any post, just the idea of punishment for not working with other changelings/antags.

callanrockslol · Fri Aug 28, 2015 5:38 am

Just go back to old ling where you had to kill the other lings and eat their genomes for any real chance of actually greentexting. Remove debrain too.

Takeguru · Post by **Takeguru** » Fri Aug 28, 2015 1:26 pm #115422

I'm fine with that, if parasting never makes a return.

Amelius · Post by **Amelius** » Fri Aug 28, 2015 3:18 pm #115438

callanrockslol wrote:Just go back to old ling where you had to kill the other lings and eat their genomes for any real chance of actually greentexting. Remove debrain too.

The biggest problem with oldnewling (what) was that debrain objectives sucked and if you got a ling as your target they'd transform into someone else approximately 10 minutes into the round. So basically you have a choice of ignoring greentext like 99% of lings, or beelining to your target and possibly getting into a lingfight, outing BOTH of you as changelings, almost surely taking two antags out of the round in a roundtype with relatively few.

A second major problem is that genomes were ridiculously easy to obtain since you could just DNA sting everyone with zero risk and transform with a mask on. Slash the objective in half to 4-5 and force absorptions instead of DNAstings, I feel is the proper way to go.

Post by **lumipharon** » Sat Aug 29, 2015 4:10 am #115563

Oldling required actual huskin of people. Huskin is now a joke, since there now multiple ways to bring husks back to life, where before it was only brain transfer.

Sat Aug 29, 2015 11:06 am

lumipharon wrote:Oldling required actual huskin of people. Huskin is now a joke, since there now multiple ways to bring husks back to life, where before it was only brain transfer.

isnt it just brain transfer and upgraded cloners now
that's honestly not that much different

newfren · Post by **newfren** » Sat Aug 29, 2015 12:35 pm #115598

You can brain transfer --> defib now which is a bit quicker.

Post by **lumipharon** » Sat Aug 29, 2015 11:17 pm #115658

defibs + upgrading the cloner are the big ones (and extremely easy).
Life chem is also there, but rarer.

Gun Hog · Post by **Gun Hog** » Wed Sep 02, 2015 5:08 am #116260

Could we get a binary "Yes" or "No" answer to this? Are changelings with the team objective allowed to kill each other, or otherwise work against themselves?

Scones · Post by **Scones** » Wed Sep 02, 2015 5:58 am #116267

I'm going to be the one to make the call and say this changes nothing for changelings. Work together/against each other at your discretion.

Not-Dorsidarf · Wed Sep 02, 2015 9:35 pm

Scones wrote:I'm going to be the one to make the call and say this changes nothing for changelings. Work together/against each other at your discretion.

I was under the impression that it was against the rules to deliberately contradict your objective if it wasn't kill/steal/hijack

Malkevin · Post by **Malkevin** » Wed Sep 02, 2015 10:14 pm #116394

Only applies to special antag roles like Space Ninja and Death Squads and ERT teams, etc

iamgoofball · Wed Sep 02, 2015 11:17 pm

lumipharon wrote:defibs + upgrading the cloner are the big ones (and extremely easy).
Life chem is also there, but rarer.

You're thinking of Strange Reagent.

Zilenan91 · Post by **Zilenan91** » Sun Oct 04, 2015 5:11 am #122980

Sorry for the necro, but it IS problem when lings are incentivised to work together and can be punished by other lings for doing so. If admin policy is to treat them as if they aren't a team antag despite their objectives, then you need to remove them, otherwise this will continue to be a problem.

imblyings · Post by **imblyings** » Sun Oct 04, 2015 5:37 am #122984

The objective just really needs to be made it's own gamemode, complete with team HUD markers.

Tsaricide · Post by **Tsaricide** » Sun Oct 04, 2015 7:18 am #122991

Changelings are so strong as a team that they shouldn't see who their teammates are they should have to actually communicate.

Cheimon · Post by **Cheimon** » Sun Oct 04, 2015 1:39 pm #123050

imblyings wrote:The objective just really needs to be made it's own gamemode, complete with team HUD markers.

As a game mode, it has a serious problem. The moment one headling is caught, all the other heads fall under massive suspicion and often end up getting killed.

Zilenan91 · Post by **Zilenan91** » Wed Oct 07, 2015 1:16 am #123796

I'm not saying they should see who their teammates are, but disallow them from straight up selling out their teammates and working against the team antag goals they will likely have.

Tsaricide · Post by **Tsaricide** » Wed Oct 07, 2015 7:35 am #123907

Zilenan91 wrote:I'm not saying they should see who their teammates are, but disallow them from straight up selling out their teammates and working against the team antag goals they will likely have.

I agree with this I was responding to ausops, it would be nice if there was a final decision on this.

Post by **lumipharon** » Wed Oct 07, 2015 7:39 am #123908

Before someone rewrote the whole rules page, the rules clearly said that antags could not directly work against their objectives (killing a protect target etc), or work against their team.

Not-Dorsidarf · Wed Oct 07, 2015 8:23 am

lumipharon wrote:Before someone rewrote the whole rules page, the rules clearly said that antags could not directly work against their objectives (killing a protect target etc), or work against their team.

Lings aren't considered team antags. Team Antags are the antags with antagHUDs

Post by **lumipharon** » Wed Oct 07, 2015 8:37 am #123917

xenos are considered team antags though.

When lings have an explicit team objective, that cannot be completed if they rat out their fellow ling, then that's going against both points.

imblyings · Post by **imblyings** » Wed Oct 07, 2015 11:20 am #123934

Until a more formalized decision gets made,

Explicitly ratting out a fellow ling when you have a team objective will be against the rules. However it's not a full rule, it's a precedent and a new one at that so players breaking it will get the opportunity to be warned first. This specifically applies to explicitly ratting out a fellow ling. Lings not helping, lings using their antag license for a gimmick and disregarding the objective, lings concentrating on their other objectives, lings using strats which cause collateral damage to other lings, and lings killing other lings, will be considered fair play for now.

Factors in this include lings having their own objectives, the potential for lack of communication and friendly fire, and how lings seem to spawn in without team objectives despite other lings having them. As nice as new game content is, I think this was poorly implemented and any policy change will only be stopgap measures.