Straight Talk about conversion modes

[Bob Dobbington]

So, conversion modes are fucking suffering. It wasn't always the case, but it is now, at least on Sybil. The problem, at least as far as I can tell, is that a large majority of people who become antags during conversion modes don't really care about helping their team or fulfilling their objectives. Unlike traitor and other non-conversion modes, conversion modes are balanced around the idea that the antags work as a team to defend against security and accomplish their objectives. Cult doesn't work if nobody bothers to convert, gang doesn't work if all the people you pen don't give a fuck about any aspect of being in a gang other than the free grief license, revolution doesn't work if the roundstart headrevs decide to fuck off to lavaland for that sweet-ass PVE loot. All these guys inevitably die quickly leaving both security and the actually good antags a round full of bullshit and suffering. Security has lately been responding to this tendency during cult modes by becoming indiscriminately murderous turbohitlers, which also completely blows. It's time to realize that full-on antag freedom where the only rule is "don't murder anyone with the same HUD icon over their head" is not going to work given our slow slide toward a low-RP deathmatch server. Conversion modes are balanced around people choosing to play the mode.

So, I propose adding something like this to the server rules: If you are a conversion antag, you are required to make a good faith effort to accomplish your objectives and convert other crewmembers. If you're converted by a conversion antag, you are required to make a good faith effort to fulfill any and all orders from the player that converted you, or in gang from any LT or boss. Failure to do this will result in a ban from that gamemode.

I feel like if something like this isn't done, and soon, conversion modes will degenerate into meme gamemodes on par with monkey or meteor round. Since conversion modes used to be my favorite modes, that would suck shit. But /tg/ has changed, and our policy needs to change with it if we want these modes to be anything other than suffering.

[TechnoAlchemist]

Sounds impossible to actually moderate also people should make good non-conversion game modes

[Bob Dobbington]

It's like any other subjective judgment call an admin makes. The admin selection process is supposed to produce people that are good at making those types of calls, and they are subject to the oversight both of higher-ranking admins and the community at large. I have no doubt it would suck for the first week or so but maybe we need to rip off the band-aid.

[TribeOfBeavers]

Conversion modes have a lot of problems that im not sure can be fixed by changing policies, at least not in the way they're currently implemented.

Unlike solo antags you cant opt out of conversion modes. If someone joins just to build an autism fort or hunt some monsters on lavaland or whatever and instantly gets converted by the guy who spawned next to them, they're probably just going to ignore their objectives and do whatever they were going to do anyway. This also applies to leaders: if one traitor fucks off and ignores their antag status it isnt a big deal, but if a leader or roundstart cultist does it has a huge impact on the round.

Another issue is that as the entire station could potentially be converted, people probably dont think its a big deal if they just go use their grief licence to be a dick as someone else will probably finish the team objectives. I had a clockcult round a few weeks ago in which literially the entire station was converted, and it still took 20 minutes to finish the round as nobody had bothered to build any caches at all, thinking that someone else would do it.

All the conversion rounds are super snowbally as well, I dont think Ive ever been in one that I would consider a close fight. They either get caught early and sec wipes them out, or they reach critical mass and can steamroll through numbers alone.


Im not really sure how to fix any of this, however. Giving more roundstart members and removing the conversion aspect would fix some of the current problems, but also cause more to pop up.

[Ergovisavi]

Does this mean bans will be handed out for assholes that fuck over their teammates? I recall being in a gang round where the virologist infected the entire crew, including their own gang, with a virus that basically took them out of the round, and was not even talked to. The jackass didn't even bother to make a vaccine for gang members. The gang won in the end, but many many players in the virologist's gang, including a lieutenant, were out of the round.

[onleavedontatme]

How strict do you imagine these rules being?

You used to often stay in botany farming kudzu as a cultist, and either release it claiming it was a distraction to tie up security, or that your team had already lost while you were farming so no harm in using it. Others complained you weren't helping the team, but just using the antag status as an excuse to use kudzu. Where would stuff like that fall under the guidelines you're proposing?

Does this mean bans will be handed out for assholes that fuck over their teammates? I recall being in a gang round where the virologist infected the entire crew, including their own gang, with a virus that basically took them out of the round, and was not even talked to. The jackass didn't even bother to make a vaccine for gang members. The gang won in the end, but many many players in the virologist's gang, including a lieutenant, were out of the round.

This is already something people can get banned for.

[Montyblancs]

You used to often stay in botany farming kudzu as a cultist, and either release it claiming it was a distraction to tie up security, or that your team had already lost while you were farming so no harm in using it. Others complained you weren't helping the team, but just using the antag status as an excuse to use kudzu.

If this were to be a rule, it would certainly have to be a very loose and vauge one. People get creative sometimes, and do antagonizing things that don't particularly follow the well-traveled path to greentext, but they still have the group's goals in mind. The only actions that would logically require enforcement with it would be if the person openly states that they will not help because they don't want to, or if they just continue doing things that blatantly do not help the goal, like an autism fort.

Even then, another factor to keep in mind is that they could purposely be doing something non-antagonizing simply because they're trying not to be discovered by a nosy coworker or something. I think it'd be very difficult to enforce, and by the sounds of things would cause players to spend a lot of time in ahelps trying to justify their actions in what is usually a pretty time-critical round.

[onleavedontatme]

You used to often stay in botany farming kudzu as a cultist, and either release it claiming it was a distraction to tie up security, or that your team had already lost while you were farming so no harm in using it. Others complained you weren't helping the team, but just using the antag status as an excuse to use kudzu.

People get creative sometimes, and do antagonizing things that don't particularly follow the well-traveled path to greentext, but they still have the group's goals in mind.

That is what worries me. Either we leave so many loopholes and exceptions that the rule becomes useless and arbitrarily enforced, or we take it seriously and enforce a strict meta on what strategies you're allowed to pursue as a team antag and just end up making it even more of a boring death match.

[Bolien]

I think Bob Dobbington's got a point.

Just two days ago I converted a bunch of engi's to clock cultists and they attempted to beat me into crit for "ruining their mining expedition."
They then preceded to fuck off into Lavaland for the rest of the shift ignoring being cultists.

I went through all the hassle of stealthily converting them for literally nothing, which is extremely frustrating.

[D&B]

Did you ahelp it?

[Bolien]

Only the one engi trying to beat me, he was talked to.

The fact that this is a continuous occurrence is the issue though.

[Bob Dobbington]

Part of the reason I used to do that so much is because I knew that when I did try to forgo my botany memes for something more useful, I'd never be able to get support from my team. I can pull off kudzu by myself. When I did try to go out and play cult in a more cultlike way, it usually resulted in me failing to assemble the required three people to convert and getting dunked by security in the attempt because I hadn't had the time to grow anything more robust than a banana. For my part after seeing these rounds play out from both a player and an admin perspective I'd be willing to accept some loss of "freedom" in exchange for being able to count on my teammates to actually support my ass. And, like I've also argued many times, often kudzu can do a lot to help out cultismers. If you vine the shit out of brig sec can't use it as a deconversion base. If you vine the shit out of the corridors sec can't run through them, stuncuff the non-implanted, and feed them holy water in brig. This isn't about enforcing a specific meta at all, it's about getting the low-hanging fruit who blatantly, obviously don't care. If someone were to be bwoinked over this and gave an even halfway plausible account of how what they're doing could further their team's objective then I imagine they wouldn't get banned.

[Scott]

Maybe these modes are just too common and their rounds will degenerate more and more. The solution would be make them less common so that when people have to be a gang member they will actually care.

Edit: Also have more extended.

[icecreamcohn]

This is kind of Antag Rape... I mean you are forcing someone to now be a bad guy when all they want to do is work on science or build a pipe system.

Would you also then go an say that a Round start non conversion antag also must now in good faith try to achieve their goal? I mean there are things I want to do and being a antag gives me the chance to do it. If I want SM Sing the station I get to now even if my goal was just steal a nuke disk and some plans... with this rule I no longer get to have my fun because all I can do is steal the nuke disk and plans. I cant make a Max Cap and use it or Make that fast acting Kudzu because those have nothing to do with stealing the nuke disk and some plans.


I guess what I am getting at is maybe not make a policy to force a playstyle on someone.

[PKPenguin321]

i think conversion modes are fun
very few things make them not fun, those being:

1. not being able to convert fucking anybody (like when you're a gangboss and everybody you pen happens to be by sheer chance already in a gang)
2. bombs/xray lasers wiping out every antag at once
3. stalling (heads hiding in space during rev)

yes even sec concentration camps in cargo can be fun

[onleavedontatme]

Only the one engi trying to beat me, he was talked to.

The fact that this is a continuous occurrence is the issue though.

If what happened to you is already against the rules, and admins already took action on it, I'm not sure how you think another rule is gonna help.

Part of the reason I used to do that so much is because I knew that when I did try to forgo my botany memes for something more useful, I'd never be able to get support from my team. I can pull off kudzu by myself. When I did try to go out and play cult in a more cultlike way, it usually resulted in me failing to assemble the required three people to convert and getting dunked by security in the attempt because I hadn't had the time to grow anything more robust than a banana. For my part after seeing these rounds play out from both a player and an admin perspective I'd be willing to accept some loss of "freedom" in exchange for being able to count on my teammates to actually support my ass. And, like I've also argued many times, often kudzu can do a lot to help out cultismers. If you vine the shit out of brig sec can't use it as a deconversion base. If you vine the shit out of the corridors sec can't run through them, stuncuff the non-implanted, and feed them holy water in brig. This isn't about enforcing a specific meta at all, it's about getting the low-hanging fruit who blatantly, obviously don't care. If someone were to be bwoinked over this and gave an even halfway plausible account of how what they're doing could further their team's objective then I imagine they wouldn't get banned.

I didn't really mean to force you to defend the specifics of kudzu, just wanted to point out how reasonable people can disagree on what it means to help the team. I'm sure most of the people who abandon the round to go to lavaland could come up with something about how they're getting gear to fight security.

[onleavedontatme]

But I do think the rules are bad right now in that the fastest ways to get permabanned right now are

-Talking to the same people too much. Metafriending. (That "confirmed steam friends" watchlist notice, the lizard ostation crowd being driven off the server because they were talking to eachother too much instead of "playing the round", etc)

-Making people upset with shenanigans. If you're screwing around and another player doesn't like it, and the admins don't like you, you're probably in trouble now. Makes it risky to mess around with anyone but your friends, but messing around with your friends gets you in trouble for point one.

I think we self selected for a playerbase that silently waits for antag status, or for people with antag status to appear, because that's the only 100% clear section of our rules that applies across every admin that you know you won't get banned for participating in. Otherwise you're pretty much rolling the dice that you haven't triggered some admins pet issue. Boring, anti social valid seeking robots are pretty much who is safe under our ruleset.


Also, of course, the explosion in the number of conversion modes in the first place contributed to this.

We had rev and cult a couple years ago, then we had rev/cult/shadowling/clockcult/gang/hand of god.

EDIT:

I forgot about bad admin events. If admins just spam nonsense if the round gets anywhere near 40 minutes, players aren't going to take anything seriously or get invested. They're just gonna wait for the rod spam to start.

[Bolien]

Only the one engi trying to beat me, he was talked to.

The fact that this is a continuous occurrence is the issue though.

If what happened to you is already against the rules, and admins already took action on it, I'm not sure how you think another rule is gonna help.

Was referring to the other two engi's who said fuck you and went to lavaland even though they were converted.
When three people all get converted and all say "Nahhh" its a massive waste of time as an antag; this is a reoccurring thing too.

[onleavedontatme]

Well if you didn't adminhelp that part then there is no way admins could have dealt with it. Admins jobanned people for telling their leaders to fuck off and refusing to help in the past.

[Bolien]

I'll be sure to do that next time.

[TheNightingale]

The admins aren't going to know if you don't tell them.

"I got robbed and the police didn't do a thing about it! They didn't even ask me any questions!"
"Did they know you were robbed?"
"Well, no, I didn't tell them, but still!"

[Durkel]

I think the general apathy of conversion modes come from the fact that it entirely fucks with your plan you had for a round. Nuke ops,traitor,changeling come in and you're dead, it's over and you're not expected to do anything. Some asshole runs into your office, smashes your windows,beats your head in until the point you're on the floor coughing up blood, but right as you're about to finally have the sweet release of death you're stabbed with a pen/someone waves some retarded steampunk clock at you and you're bandaged up.

Now not only is your round completely fucked, you're now expected to help the very same asshole who just about killed you, and if you don't, you get banned or bitched at.

This can happen 1 out of 3 rounds, and it gets really fucking old real fast.

Some people like valids that the conversion antag gives them, others like to autism out in a fort or simply fuck around in the bar. We've got a pretty large player base and not everyone is going to be happy, but a policy like this is just unenforceable.

[Cobby]

If you want to build an autism fort, then simply help the team and finish the round as fast as possible so you can hopefully get extended next round and build it better, using the info you got from this round.

As I've always said, if you honestly don't want to participate in the team-based game, you can ask an admin to have someone take over your body. With ghost roles (particularly drone), you can still build your autism fort without much interruption. "THE CULT RUINED MY PLANS FOR THE ROUND" doesnt mean you get to ruin theirs by being a waste of time/conversion materials. I mean, they could have just killed you.

This is especially true with my favorite rare conversion game, wizard with f2s and staff of animation. You won't believe the amount of times my wizzy rounds were ruined because someone got salty I turned them (they'll either just wait it out or better yet kill me when they get the chance)

[Steelpoint]

Conversion game modes should be rare.

Rev as a game mode is fine because of its fast paced nature, but Cult and Gang heavily demand the antagonists hunker down for the long haul.

E: The reason why most other game modes are fine is because they don't force the player to act. Outside of Nuke Ops or if you're playing as Security/Command you can chose to be involved or not in the affairs of the greater round. Conversion game modes flip that around and force most of the crew into the fight, whether they want to or not. As I said Rev is fine because the rounds tend to go by quickly but Cult and Gang can go on for a long time, hence why you can find people fucking off as a Cultist/Gangbanger because they don't want to commit to a hour or so of fuckery.

[ShadowDimentio]

Gang and clockcuck are the only two bad conversion gamemodes.

[NikNakFlak]

But I do think the rules are bad right now in that the fastest ways to get permabanned right now are

-Talking to the same people too much. Metafriending. (That "confirmed steam friends" watchlist notice, the lizard ostation crowd being driven off the server because they were talking to eachother too much instead of "playing the round", etc)

There's a vast difference in my opinion. The lizard's were half run off the server just because they awful and everyone shit on them for erping, when you say "driven off", what you really mean is they finally left to a temporary server specifically for erp, which is what they really wanted to do. There's "talking" to each other, and then there is what they actually did which was attempt to do the nasty at every opportunity to bait people, trigger people, and such. They did talk in the bar of course, but it always escalated once they got bored. I don't bother database diving anymore, but I do read the new bans everyday just to see who did what, and nobody ever gets banned for metafriending. A few warnings and a watchlist maybe, but never any real bans.

-Making people upset with shenanigans. If you're screwing around and another player doesn't like it, and the admins don't like you, you're probably in trouble now. Makes it risky to mess around with anyone but your friends, but messing around with your friends gets you in trouble for point one.

That's because shenanigans is such a vague term and most often than not, shenanigans are lethal and awful. Creative and actually fun shenanigans are a rarity. The most recent example of a shenanigan I can come up with is icepacks giving the AI a law that essentially made it "rogue" as a team building exercise and what happened is everyone died and everyone was salty.

I think we self selected for a playerbase that silently waits for antag status, or for people with antag status to appear, because that's the only 100% clear section of our rules that applies across every admin that you know you won't get banned for participating in. Otherwise you're pretty much rolling the dice that you haven't triggered some admins pet issue. Boring, anti social valid seeking robots are pretty much who is safe under our ruleset.

Subject to opinion as well. Lots of people wait for antag status and they are pretty shitty and admins hate this. Valid hunting anti-socialness is not bannable but admins also hate this. Antag status isn't even clear either as murderboning, antag status or not, has been much subject for debate and admin intervention. Notes have been given out for antag's murderboning, and while notes are technically just "notes" for an admin, a lot of times, they are seen as black marks and what not, because they are often interpreted that way too.

Also, of course, the explosion in the number of conversion modes in the first place contributed to this.
We had rev and cult a couple years ago, then we had rev/cult/shadowling/clockcult/gang/hand of god.

shadowling is removed, hand of god was never finished/implemented so those are bad examples. Cult is a mess, so reliably, I can only say that rev, gang, and perhaps clockcult are the only "real" conversion modes we have.

[oranges]

they should all go

[paprika]

>Paprika was right: the thread

[InsaneHyena]

We need to remove gang and clockcult. Not in the future, not tomorrow, right now.

[Malkevin]

Funfact: When I changed cult mode and upped the round start cultists to nine I did that because I figured that two thirds of the round starters would be useless oxygen thieves that contribute nothing useful to the team.

[paprika]

That's not a very fun fact Malkevin

[NikNakFlak]

nor did it even work

[Supermichael777]

Most conversion mode leaders are terible. gang leaders who never give tools, info or orders, Revheads who drive by flash half the station, cultists who just wander off or spam jujernauts(remove constructcult)

[Malkevin]

nor did it even work

I under estimated the incompetence of the player base

[onleavedontatme]

>Cults objective is to convert ~9 people, either to summon nar-sie or to get those people on the shuttle
>I made cult start with their objectives done! I fixed conversion modes!

Amazing

[InsaneHyena]

I've seen cults redtext even with all those roundstart members.

[Saegrimr]

Funfact: When I changed cult mode and upped the round start cultists to nine I did that because I figured that two thirds of the round starters would be useless oxygen thieves that contribute nothing useful to the team.

>Cults objective is to convert ~9 people, either to summon nar-sie or to get those people on the shuttle
>I made cult start with their objectives done! I fixed conversion modes!

Amazing

Don't laugh, Kor.
For the longest time I remember seeing cults having to summon narsie, and starting with 9 people. I'd comment on this all the time.
So they just have to cult communicate to meet up in maint/library, drop the rune, done in 5 minutes. Right?

NEVER FUCKING HAPPENED
Somehow at least 4 of them would always fucking get themselves killed, captured, or do something stupid to alert security like walking around with their tome out and hitting people with it.

Even with their objective practically sitting in their lap, they fuck it up somehow. Never underestimate the general player's ability to fuck up.

[onleavedontatme]

Getting nine people to stand in a square is pretty tough, especially when it means they get gibbed and lose their griff license.

I actually did see a few summons in under ten minutes, but it was definitely rarer than it should have been considering how easy it was.

[Malkevin]

>Cults objective is to convert ~9 people, either to summon nar-sie or to get those people on the shuttle
>I made cult start with their objectives done! I fixed conversion modes!

Amazing

It was 15 to escape.

Don't forget, they have a sacc target too.
If they want maximum green text they're going to lose some numbers attempting to take out the sacc target.

[Sidon]

Sometimes you just wanna veg out and farm slimes, I don't wanna be a team antag in those cases