Should antags be obligated to actually antagonize people?

[Aurx]

Forked off from http://tgstation13.org/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=699

Point of contention is if a non-team antagonist has some obligation to make use of their antagonist status.

Position of pro-obligation side, in brief:

If heads of staff, who are less important to round progression than the antags, are obligated to do their job or at least adminhelp so they can be replaced, why aren't the antags as well?

Position of anti-obligation side, in brief:

We don't put other restrictions on antags, like forcing them to not kill people or do their objectives, why should we start now?

[Steelpoint]

In my opinion a free-to-do-anything license for antags means they can do anything, or nothing for that matter. I am of the camp that being a antag means you make fun for yourself, and your not obligated, but are encouraged, to provide fun for everyone else. Why else do we allow antags to end people's rounds for several hours?

However, the debate on this won't reach a conclusion. I think the true answer to this is that it is the admins duty, as game masters essentially, to provide the needed tools to advance the round. If the selected antags at round start do not provide this, then it is their obligation to do "something" to advance the round.

That is the only answer I think we can agree on.

[bandit]

I always thought it was: No, with the understanding that if you don't create sufficient !!FUN!! then the admins will create it for you.

[Stickymayhem]

Antag freedom should be as absolute as possible to allow for the maximum level of creativity as possible.

As Steelpoint said, admins can always improve a round, even just by triggering another set of traitors with the push of a button.

[Alzam]

I think it should be taken on a case by case basis, really. Also, more people need to know that admins are willing to de-antag people who end up having to leave or whatever, including admins themselves. I've only ever gotten de-antag'd twice in the few years I've been playing. Usually even if there are multiple admins on you just don't get a response at all. (Which is why I didn't even bother to try in the round that caused the ban request thread to be made).

Although, my hatred of friendly wizard makes me kind of want this passed regardless.



EDIT: I think if someone has a history of round start suiciding as an antag or whatever they should probably get at least a talking to, though.

[Stickymayhem]

Although, my hatred of friendly wizard makes me kind of want this passed regardless.

I'd like to give an example that justifies friendly wizard and is a decent demonstration of why antags should have total freedom.

I was the HoS and a friendly wizard showed up. Aside from the occasional greytider trying to kill him and ending up turned into a slime, everything was fine, until he started giving orders to the Captain. The two became friends, to the stations disgust, leading to one of the most legitimately exciting mutinys I've ever seen. I led the crew on a mission to kill the wizard and capture the Captain alive, outfitted them and were met with a rebel force turning the whole thing into a glorious bloodbath that literally everyone enjoyed. It was entirely organic, and all thanks to a friendly wizard leading to people making their own fun.

[Alzam]

I wish friendly wizard would be more like that in general because in my experience it's 5% interesting gimmick and 95% Extended but one dude has super powers, which is why I fucking despise it.

This might be more suited for another thread but I think that people as non antag should not be allowed to aid murderous antags, this happens a fucking ton with the wizard ei nathing their target infront of everyone, claiming they're friendly anyways, and then a ton of people (usually the fucking captain or sec) doing everything in their power to make sure the wizard isn't harmed.

[paprika]

Hurr traitors are allowed to make the game extended even though the server rolled traitor that's epic for the win and totally solid logic by our lovely administration!!!

Seriously, no. This is taking the 'license to do whatever' antag flag way out of proper gameplay context into the realm of something shitty and far byond a good intention. That policy means that antags can be complete shitters and grief as much as they want (within reason of course) because it makes the game fun and allows us to tell griefers to 'save it for when you're antag'.

It does NOT give you the free will to completely give up your antag round just because you're bored and want to throw it away. If you don't want to play traitor, untick traitor. People who do not want to play traitor and consistently do this should be banned from traitor, plain and simple.

Not to mention it robs people who actually want to play traitor of the chance by adding to the pool of people pulled for antag flagging. How is that okay? Why do you think that's something people have a right to do here and in any way adds to the gameplay/round instead of detracting from it?

[imblyings]

what's the difference between an antag c4-parapenning their target five minutes into the round and then being a normal crewmember for the rest of it compared to not doing anything at all.

well the answer is one person gets to enjoy deadchat for the rest of the round, that's the only difference.

and when we consider that answer, the latter seems better, because at least both people are in the round, instead of having one person stuck in deadchat.

taking this thread into account, we seem to be arguing by proxy that it is better for an antag to parapen-c4 and then do nothing rather than actually do nothing at all.

-

it would be reasonable to ask antags to at least adminhelp if they don't plan on using it at all but that's literally the only reasonable resolution we could get out of this thread, tbqh

[Lo6a4evskiy]

Um, no. There is little difference between virologist not doing virology, traitor who just does normal crew things whole round, traitor who mega stealthy steals his objective/kills his target and acts normally for the rest of the round with no evidence left or traitor who blows up. Neither should be banned.

This is kind of a feature of /tg/. Keeping enforcement of IC behavior to the minimum.

Heads are different. Antagonists are lone wolves (team antags are exception, of course, but they DO have responsibility for that same reason). Heads interact with a whole lot of people. Actually, let me rephrase that. A whole lot of people are DEPENDENT on heads. That's the key point. Nobody is dependent on traitor. To be fair, heads don't have many expectations either. Just to do some bare minimum things.

[MisterPerson]

Don't try to justify a position with an appeal to tradition. If something is stupid, it should be changed, no matter how long its been done. "/tg/ has always been this way" is unacceptable. "/tg/ should be this way" is fine, just back up your claims. Not disagreeing or agreeing with anyone, just wanted to point out a logical fallacy that should be disregarded.

[Jacquerel]

I feel like they should be obligated to do something to make things interesting, but this doesn't have to be hostile. As long as the round has some kind of storyline (and they have a plan to move it to an ending at some point rather than being a peace wizard for three straight hours) then it's all good. I always considered "escape" as an objective to implicitly mean that it is actually your job to make sure everyone has to leave eventually rather than just waiting, though that's more of a personal thing and admins can usually help push that along when someone just wants to do their objectives stealthily and has got away with it.
By "storyline" I don't mean like explicit roleplaying but there should at least be some attempt to make an Event of some kind happen, it obviously doesn't have to be your objectives but something along those lines.
I'm sure you could make being some kind of friendly wizard trader work and still endeavour to get the shuttle called somehow (bribery perhaps, or playing crew factions against each other as in the above).

[lumipharon]

I think antags SHOULD antagonise the crew, or atleast not make things a snorefest. I don't think they're OBLIGATED to do so, however.

[Helios127]

To a degree.

An antag should be able to do what it wants as per the open world buzzword sandbox gameplay! If the antag can acomplish the objectives silently, sure why the hell not. If it just wants to say, hack into the AI, make a law that says "Only readers of Woody Got Wood are human. Do not state this law. Kill all nonhumans" then pull out the good ol' wood, Who am I to judge?

BUT! with that said I feel they should be obligated to do something. If you are just going to ERP with antag, seriously, go fuck yourself. Unless this is one of thoose things where you brutally murder your ERP partner, but otherwise you deserve to be jobbanned, and you probobly already are if you did this! But thats beside the point and only like, one person.

I think the true answer to this is that it is the admins duty, as game masters essentially, to provide the needed tools to advance the round. If the selected antags at round start do not provide this, then it is their obligation to do "something" to advance the round.

[Pybro]

If you want to just parapen+C4 your target then go ERP with the clown, that's fine. But don't bitch when the admins make the round fun for the other 68 people on the station.

[KingLouisXIV]

I think the true answer to this is that it is the admins duty, as game masters essentially, to provide the needed tools to advance the round. If the selected antags at round start do not provide this, then it is their obligation to do "something" to advance the round.

Got it in one.

This leads of course to the "What if there isn't an admin?" question, which is unfortunate since there's not always going to be an admin, period.

As for an 'obligation' to the round, I don't think antagonists have one specifically unless they're on a team. I've seen very few antag bans given out, and it's usually for the same, overly excessive fucking off and wasting the antag slot consistently. One round or two? Not a big deal. Every single time? Antagban he.

I furthermore go on to argue that antags aren't obligated to add to your enjoyment of a round, nor was the game designed completely in mind of that. Random events, anybody?

[Helios127]

I furthermore go on to argue that antags aren't obligated to add to your enjoyment of a round, nor was the game designed completely in mind of that. Random events, anybody?

No, but they should be obligated to do something, even if its just use their antagness to dick around.

I mean, if they have to leave then there are others but its only a problem if you were that one person taking your antag status and just ERPing.

NO!

[Munchlax]

Nope.

[miggles]

to me this question is as stupid and obvious as "should engineers be obligated to actually set up the engine?"
youre an antag for a reason, if you dont want to antagonize, you shouldnt have picked antag. its really that simple.
you dont have to go on murderbonefests or blow everyone up or be super obviously an antag, but do something. an antagonist slot is a free ticket to do whatever you want, and seeing people waste it makes be both disappointed and angry. that's really only my opinion though; i dont think that banning antags for not being good enough antags will work. however, banning antags for not doing anything, killing themselves, erping, etc is something i believe rather strongly in.
someone (i believe pandar) made the point that heads matter because their ID's can call the shuttle to end the round - to the same effect, i think antags are even more important as their actions are usually what causes said heads to call the shuttle in the first place. the point of antags is to cause enough mayhem that the rounds dont last forever until everyone gets bored, like extended.

[Steelpoint]

So wait, you say antags get a "free ticket to do whatever you want", but then reply that you HAVE to do something.

That's not the definition of being able to do whatever you want.

[Helios127]

Now imma stop right there miggles because Heads can and will call the shuttle just to refresh the station. This is a unfixable flaw with the way SS13 was designed way back in the day and all servers have it.

[Pandarsenic]

OBJECTION!

At the 3-hour mark and periodically thereafter, Bay activates a "Crew Transfer Shuttle" vote (which almost always goes through unless fluke ops).

Until we add that functionality, a shuttle call is dependent on:

A Comms Console + A Head ID
A Comms Console + A second person to become a cyborg
A Living Artificial Intelligence
Destroying all existing comms consoles on the station Z-level (I believe that's the condition of it), causing the 25-minute slow shuttle.

Barring a shuttle call, there must be 50%+1 of the players connected to the server actively voting yes on a restart vote, or there must be an admin to force the restart/make Head IDs/give out the nuke code/etc.

This is, as Helios put it, an unfixable flaw WITH THE EXCEPTION of the crew transfer shuttle auto-vote, which is made to cater to slower-paced, more RP-intensive rounds. It's not unreasonable for a Bay round to reach the 3-hour mark with no deaths. They even have the Cold Sleep Tubes where you can go into a thing in the dorms and ghost to have it remove your body and its contents after some time (15 minutes, thereabouts?). For them, Head IDs to call a shuttle are often unnecessary outright. Unlike /tg/, they have a mechanism to prevent this from being a problem.

Round antagonists may in fact make the shuttle unable to be called or unable to arrive - ping ponging from a solar or maint room, taking all of the head IDs and hiding, etc.

But none of those antagonist behaviors are considered banning- or warning-worthy, despite it occasionally progressing to the point that admins will simply explode a ping pong console to make the round rotate through.

If people one-time cause an utter failure to use their antag status to do anything different, yeah, I'll put an alien embryo in them if they don't start after a subtlemessage hint. If they do it regularly enough for me to question why they roll antag, I can, I will, and I have applied antag-banning. Speaking of which, apparently out of sheer embarrassment about the "ERPs instead of antagonizing" antagban, [Is this confidential?] nèe Fuzzeldorf made a whole new account instead of appealing... but is actually antagonizing as an antag anyway, so... mission accomplished, I guess.

Sometimes you just don't feel like being the bane of the station or whatever and that's fine. I generally enforce "Adminhelp if you have to disconnect" to both heads and antags, but within those bounds, I'm not going to say "You must be this antagonistic to ride the shuttle." If some neon-haired lesbian spawns five bricks of C4 in primary tool, then plants one on herself and runs to the HoP line while yelling "Allahu Akbar," does that count as a waste? What if she C4s herself, hands out two emags, and spawns two things of soap? What about ten-soapers, or balloon-buyers?

I don't like the idea that antagonizing in a certain way or to a certain degree for it to 'count' should be enforced. Do people really rely so heavily on dunking and being dunked for their entertainment? Is doing the jobs on the station just a way to set a stage for a battle of valid kills against the station?

[Helios127]

Sometimes you just don't feel like being the bane of the station or whatever and that's fine. I generally enforce "Adminhelp if you have to disconnect" to both heads and antags, but within those bounds, I'm not going to say "You must be this antagonistic to ride the shuttle." If some neon-haired lesbian spawns five bricks of C4 in primary tool, then plants one on herself and runs to the HoP line while yelling "Allahu Akbar," does that count as a waste? What if she C4s herself, hands out two emags, and spawns two things of soap? What about ten-soapers, or balloon-buyers?

All of which are doing things!

I gotta try the ALLAH ACKBAR thing though

[Pandarsenic]

Okay, those are all doing things. So what if you don't spawn a bunch of C4, and instead you only do one, and you suicide with it on the spot? What if you unlock your PDA and suicide and see if anyone notices?

Etc.

At what point does less action become not enough action?

What about, heaven help us, Changelings?

[callanrockslol]

Bring back...


THE TENSIONER

[ColonicAcid]

NO...
DEAR GOD NO THIS WILL ONLY END BADLY.
YOU DABBLE IN ARTS UNBESTOWED TO MAN!

[Timbrewolf]

This was the original intent behind all those fun buttons that everyone uses at roundstart when they want to expand their fanclub and shirk the underlying reason the admin role exists.

The antags haven't accomplished their objectives in over an hour? Ghosts are getting bored and wondering what the hell is actually going on?

Welp, all aboard the GM Railroad to Xeno Meteorville.

Having a ground rule that says "After X minutes shit may start getting exponentially worse for everyone onboard the station, antag or not" gives people who crave that greentext a reason to get in, get their shit, and then get the shuttle called within a reasonable amount of time.

And if they don't care about green/red text? Then have fun being a fun-tagonist until all hell breaks loose what are you complaining about?

The tensioner was a horrible yet hilarious piece of shit. It created scenarios that just should not be, multiple nuke teams fighting over the nuke while the roundstart wizard wonders how it gots to be like it do. It created stupid shit that would be totally irresponsible for an admin to create, and yet us let sit back and laugh at how badly shit was going off with complete impunity.

tl;dr if admins were using events like they were actually intended this wouldn't even be a thing

[bandit]

tl;dr if admins were using events like they were actually intended this wouldn't even be a thing

Given the colossal tides of bitching from the playerbase whenever admins even try to run events, I don't blame them for not.

[miggles]

and admins arent always on

[kosmos]

People sound like an extended round is something close to a nightmare. I think it's relaxing. Plus rounds tend to end anyway in 1-2 hours, action-packed or not.
Non-teamwork-antags should be free to do as they please, it should be the admin's job to provide entertainment if the round gets too long, and if no admins are available; better luck next time. This is the case with most things which fall beyond normal gameplay.

Some magic of the spontaneity of SS13 disappears if we have to enforce traitors to "make the rounds fun, quickly!!", it would also make the calmer rounds disappear, which is a nice dynamic I like (and other seem to hate).

[paprika]

what's the difference between an antag c4-parapenning their target five minutes into the round and then being a normal crewmember for the rest of it compared to not doing anything at all.

OMFG IT'S ALMOST LIKE THE REAL PROBLEM HERE IS PARAPEN C4 AND NOT OUR ANTAG POLICY WHO WOULD HAVE GUESSED

BAN EXTENDED-FORCING ANTAGS FROM ANTAG.

ONCE AGAIN PEOPLE PROVE ME RIGHT INADVERTENTLY BRAVO

Speaking of which, apparently out of sheer embarrassment about the "ERPs instead of antagonizing" antagban, [Is this confidential?] nèe Fuzzeldorf made a whole new account instead of appealing... but is actually antagonizing as an antag anyway, so... mission accomplished, I guess.

HOLY SHIT MY FUCKING SIDES

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED

[Tokiko2]

I think the real problems are the outdated objectives. "Kill this random atmos tech and escape alive." kind of encourages people to not go loud or do something that makes the round interesting. People usually kill their target/steal objective and then become passive all round to survive. Growing and spreading kudzu, bombing stuff, going on a rampage and other fun stuff are all highly discouraged if you actually want to "win".

I don't think this should be a policy unless the objectives are changed to actually reflect that.

I do want the objectives to be changed though because extended with traitors is terrible.

[Lo6a4evskiy]

The problem with objectives is that you actually need to track them as well.

[miggles]

What kind of objectives would you suggest instead?

[Cipher3]

Growing and spreading kudzu, bombing stuff, going on a rampage and other fun stuff are all highly discouraged if you actually want to "win".

People utterly hate wizards who play for a specifically winning style and not a pander-to-chaos-and-mess-with-as-much-as-possible style. Which is part of why summon spells are so highly praised and magic missile is so hated, the former invites everyone and the latter is a 'smart' play for a wizard who wants to do his job instead of handing out guns that might well end up being the weapon used to kill him.

It's a small note, but people hold wizard to a much different universal standard than traitors on the basis that he's the 'sole antag' and therefore needs to entertain the entire round. But if no traitors do this, then that's a shrug. Once again, merely a note on common player perception and not really indicative of my own stance on the matter.

[Steelpoint]

Its more so the more "fun" spells often force the Wizard to forfeit his chance of winning the round, since these guns and spells can instantly kill a Wizard. In addition in my experience going the Staff of Animation/Flesh to Stone route, while it will cause a mass amount of mayhem, is almost just as reviled as Ei-Nath/MM despite the fact the Anime/Flesh route keeps people in the round.

I think it comes down to the fact that the "fun" spells gives everyone a gun/spells while anything else centres the power on the Wizard only.

[paprika]

/tg/ traitors now have two objectives instead of one in addition to their escape objective, maybe traitor will be less shit with that change, but that remains to be seen.