It's time to admit the Heretic sacrifice change was a mistake.

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TypicalRig
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It's time to admit the Heretic sacrifice change was a mistake.

Post by TypicalRig » #654137

(edit: I just realised this may be more appropriate for coding feedback rather than coding. If so, if someone could move the post there that would be fine too)

Return heretic sacrifices gibbing a person rather than reviving them.

I play regularly on Terry and Sybil, and have started also being fairly active on Manuel, so I speak from both a perspective of LRP and MRP. The fact of the matter is that the Heretic change has not only made it exponentially harder from an ingame standpoint, but is also an administrative nightmare as it has made it impossible for admins to protect Heretic players OOCly. It was a good natured code change that fell flat on its place and only provided more problems than it solved. The change provides protections to the victim, but not to the murderer, who is forced to murder to progress (essences aren't enough now), and is subsequently punished for it.

Let me give two personal examples, and then some scenarios other people have mentioned to lay out how bad it is.

This was either on Terry or Sybil. Not sure which. I'm playing HoP and I'm the acting captain. Due to this, I have a relatively easy time and access to weapons and low suspicion for being in areas with weapons. I kill a detective without getting caught and bring him to execution undetected. A smooth sacrifice. During this, I had stripped some of his items. I leave the area and continue searching for my targets. The HoS had some suspicions it was me, but it was unrelated to the detective. So he tries to arrest me and I flee. The detective lethals me and is going for the kill, despite ICly the HoS only saying I'm a suspect (he just had a hunch) and has no evidence. This same detective happens to immediately randomly check perma, get his items from it, and point at the bloodied floor as evidence for heretic activity and then points at me. I of course ahelped, and the admin handled it, and I was released as they had no concrete proof, but the damage was done. I'm now a suspect and being heavily watched at all times by the AI, HoS, and rest of sec. What is an admin meant to do about this?

On Manuel, I was a heretic botanist with two other botanists in my department. One of them was my target. After some waiting, the botanist that wasn't my target went SSD in a locker in the botany backroom. Perfect. I shove the target on to a glass table, kill them, bring them into the backroom, strip the SSD person of all their stuff and feed them bungo just in case they come back during the sac, then sac the target. Real smooth, no witnesses. Either bungotoxin failed to kill the SSD person or the sacced botanist brought them for revival. Either way, the sacced botanist upon revival, goes up to me, and says "Why'd you kill me asshole." It can be assumed that at this point that the other botanist told my sac target that I was the heretic and that I was the one that sacrificed him, but he had no evidence. He just blindly took their word for it. We were all coworkers getting along in botany and he was supposed to have his memory ICly wiped, but that doesn't eliminate an OOC bias. Nothing an admin can do about that, either.

Sinful also brought up other workarounds like turning a suspected heretic to wanted as sec so even if they are killed by the heretic and have their memory wiped, they are still set to arrest afterwards so you can hunt them down. Things like coincidentally entering rooms you wouldn't enter. Believing information you wouldn't normally believe. People not caring about the RP aspect (this is not a LRP limited issue and does indeed happen on MRP too) and simply waiting for the tiniest IC justification to get them ganked for being a heretic. Admins can and will note the offender, but the line for what they would actually do ingame and what they are using meta info for is very blurry, and not simple to get right. Even if they do appropriately punish the offender, they can't do anything to interfere with the knowledge that was already spread to multiple people.

Heretics are already very weak when starting off, and now have to deal with worrying about their dead targets fucking them over with meta info and not being able to do anything about it. It sucks being round removed, but heretics have to work hard to do just that, so if it's unfortunate to happen to you, tough. There's always the next round.

tl;dr makes an already difficult antag role even more difficult and creates a problem that admins are powerless against. doesn't work on LRP or MRP
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Re: It's time to admit the Heretic sacrifice change was a mistake.

Post by mrmelbert » #654139

I'm not really interested in reverting the baseline behavior to gibbing.

However someone suggested it gets turned into a config so the admins can change it on a server to server basis which I'm not opposed to.

It doesn't change the balance of heretics that much, as heretics are already free to maul their targets before sacrificing them or whatever. It can be left up to the headmins whether they want to bother administering the flavor text, like Abductors.
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Re: It's time to admit the Heretic sacrifice change was a mistake.

Post by Pandarsenic » #654140

I'm inclined to agree that relying on the flavor text to manage this system is unfeasible. On a server with more serious RP expectations where people will have none of your metagaming because of a widespread culture that shuns people who do it this might work. We're not that server. We can't exactly PM sec and be like "Hey, Katie ignored the flavor text about forgetting when a heretic sacrifices you, please ignore her claims that X is a heretic until something else comes up, thanks uwu~" and it's not realistic for us to cut off people metagaming it before it's too late for the heretic.

Until then, I can always just turn any Heretic who gets metagamed into a Wizard or something 😎
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Re: It's time to admit the Heretic sacrifice change was a mistake.

Post by mrmelbert » #654141

I'm inclined to agree that relying on the flavor text to manage this system is unfeasible.
I dislike the idea that coders are no longer allowed to design antagonists around memory loss.

Abductors have been using it for over five years. Abductees are not allowed to snitch on the ayys that abducted them, because they're given flavor text that says "You don't remember how you got here".

What makes this different? Is it because Heretics are more common? We just made Abductors more common, too, so it should be addressed if so.
Is it because Heretics are crew members? Is it more personal? That really irks me.
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Re: It's time to admit the Heretic sacrifice change was a mistake.

Post by TypicalRig » #654142

mrmelbert wrote: Sat Oct 15, 2022 9:04 pm What makes this different?
I don't find it a fair comparison because while Heretics are dependent on people following the text, Abductors are not. They can instantly discard their old disguise and get a new one, instantly teleport out at all times to a guaranteed safe location, AND have a one hit stun and sleep baton for when shit hits the fan. Heretics can teleport but are limited to inventory space, the time it gets the materials and make the rune to replace them, have a random location that isn't necessarily safe chosen for them, and can still easily be tracked instantly by the AI in most scenarios. If someone ignores the Abductor flavour text and tells everyone, it is a minor inconvenience at best. If it happens to a Heretic, they're in for a very rough time. It's not that it works because it's a viable solution, but because crew can't really do anything with that information minus buddy up, examine random people to try and disguise check them (does not happen often at all), and even then Abductors have a large chance of making it out alive.
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Re: It's time to admit the Heretic sacrifice change was a mistake.

Post by Itseasytosee2me » #654161

mrmelbert wrote: Sat Oct 15, 2022 9:04 pm
I'm inclined to agree that relying on the flavor text to manage this system is unfeasible.
I dislike the idea that coders are no longer allowed to design antagonists around memory loss.

Abductors have been using it for over five years. Abductees are not allowed to snitch on the ayys that abducted them, because they're given flavor text that says "You don't remember how you got here".

What makes this different? Is it because Heretics are more common? We just made Abductors more common, too, so it should be addressed if so.
Is it because Heretics are crew members? Is it more personal? That really irks me.
Abductor gives its target a gimmick. Something to drive that persons round forward. Its also flavorful

Heretic is like "boom, someone bested you in the curt of space station combat and now you are back being told not to know something." It is a meta punishment for loosing, it feels bad and humiliating, and it doesn't drive the round further. Its also not just asking them not to snitch on the heretic, but also asking them to not act any different around them. Its very awkward in a meta sense, and its also awkward for the heretic.
Its also a failure in fiction, if the "shadow realm" existed and functioned in a book exactly as it does in ss13, it would be criticized as a plot contrivance, and their would be no reason for the heretic character in that book not to mangle all of his targets anyways.

Its a cheap way to keep people in the round as their statics after they get bested and die. When we really should be focusing on getting people back into the round through different forms.
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Re: It's time to admit the Heretic sacrifice change was a mistake.

Post by Shadowflame909 » #654163

What if the heretic kept people in the shadow realm to be tortured all shift and the death of the heretic freed them

We keep an interesting flavor, but add a motive to kill the heretic.
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Re: It's time to admit the Heretic sacrifice change was a mistake.

Post by iain0 » #654196

I really dislike the idea that we can't clamp down on our player base sufficiently to make the large purple text suitably enforced and followed, as mentioned its not the only spawn (in fact there's quite a few) that require you to follow the spawned rules ; everything that is subservient to something/someone else relies on the same, and largely it works, as well as obvious things like abductors and obsessed which require this restriction from rule 4 freedoms.

Personally I don't think I've ever taken a ticket from a heretic complaining about this either. And thats on Terry. Though there's also the chance the heretics don't really understand their right there and don't ahelp transgressions (Terry loves a good bit of proactive-minning). Perhaps a message to the heretic on sacrifice reminding them of their protections here would help.

Maybe require the player to "consent" to a large box saying they understand the conditions of what just happened before they get returned to the station.

If this really is a problem there must be a better approach, reducing freedoms around RP objectives down to only the mechanically enforcable is a bit of a deep gutting for a lot of this game (heck, hypno flash, exact same thing, if they just outright ignore it and out the tot its no different)
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Re: It's time to admit the Heretic sacrifice change was a mistake.

Post by Misdoubtful » #654198

iain0 wrote: Sun Oct 16, 2022 3:08 pm I really dislike the idea that we can't clamp down on our player base sufficiently to make the large purple text suitably enforced and followed, as mentioned its not the only spawn (in fact there's quite a few) that require you to follow the spawned rules ; everything that is subservient to something/someone else relies on the same, and largely it works, as well as obvious things like abductors and obsessed which require this restriction from rule 4 freedoms.

Personally I don't think I've ever taken a ticket from a heretic complaining about this either. And thats on Terry. Though there's also the chance the heretics don't really understand their right there and don't ahelp transgressions (Terry loves a good bit of proactive-minning). Perhaps a message to the heretic on sacrifice reminding them of their protections here would help.

Maybe require the player to "consent" to a large box saying they understand the conditions of what just happened before they get returned to the station.

If this really is a problem there must be a better approach, reducing freedoms around RP objectives down to only the mechanically enforcable is a bit of a deep gutting for a lot of this game (heck, hypno flash, exact same thing, if they just outright ignore it and out the tot its no different)
Pretty much all of this.

If this is a problem I see it as an enforcement one.

But I'll always welcome QOL additions.
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Re: It's time to admit the Heretic sacrifice change was a mistake.

Post by Itseasytosee2me » #654203

iain0 wrote: Sun Oct 16, 2022 3:08 pm If this really is a problem there must be a better approach, reducing freedoms around RP objectives down to only the mechanically enforcable is a bit of a deep gutting for a lot of this game (heck, hypno flash, exact same thing, if they just outright ignore it and out the tot its no different)
The post-shadowrelm purple text is not an objective. It's a restriction. It does nothing to drive forward the round of the person getting revived, or anybody else's. Which I assume is the purpose of an objective.
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Re: It's time to admit the Heretic sacrifice change was a mistake.

Post by Pandarsenic » #654205

Me, a Heretic victim, coming back to the station and making a stun prod: Yeah I read the EULA before clicking, why

Also, the problem isn't that it's not enforced, it's that it's nigh-unenforceable. It would require an admin-message in addition to the normal logging (and possibly Admin HUD interactions) to flag people who have been sacrificed just to know who's necessary to watch.

THEN, if we added that, you would still have to police them near constantly for any odd behavior after.
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Re: It's time to admit the Heretic sacrifice change was a mistake.

Post by Indie-ana Jones » #654207

My issue with it is that by not killing anyone, Heretic doesn't really amount to much "antagonism" over the course of a round unless they manage to ascend. This problem is shared by progtots who don't do anything outside of their objectives and was also shared by thieves. I believe this lack of antagonism is ultimately the root of the majority of boring rounds happening more recently, actual antagonism pretty much solely comes from Cult, Wizard, Revs or a Midround Antagonist.
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Re: It's time to admit the Heretic sacrifice change was a mistake.

Post by Itseasytosee2me » #654208

Indie-ana Jones wrote: Sun Oct 16, 2022 4:56 pm My issue with it is that by not killing anyone, Heretic doesn't really amount to much "antagonism" over the course of a round unless they manage to ascend. This problem is shared by progtots who don't do anything outside of their objectives and was also shared by thieves. I believe this lack of antagonism is ultimately the root of the majority of boring rounds happening more recently, actual antagonism pretty much solely comes from Cult, Wizard, Revs or a Midround Antagonist.
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Re: It's time to admit the Heretic sacrifice change was a mistake.

Post by Pandarsenic » #654209

I strongly suspect that the problem of green-seeming shifts is aggravated on both servers by a lack of effective tools for enabling more destructive behavior among the common, lower-threat antagonists (Thief, Traitor, Changeling, Heretic) and on Manuel by a lack of reliable, practical administrative support for antagonism outside of fairly narrow-scope following of objectives. People just don't seem to die much, important systems don't get broken, etc., but we don't have the kind of HRP mandate that you need to fill the space with casual (or "bar" as some like to call it) RP when nothing is going wrong.
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Re: It's time to admit the Heretic sacrifice change was a mistake.

Post by Cobby » #654210

Even things like F2S> staff of animate doesnt work half the time and the statue-person is ALIGNED with the wizard, hence why hardly anyone runs that build despite its extremely strong power.

A game mechanic designed entirely on administrative presence is really bad as well, particularly because 1) we dont guarantee 24/7 coverage despite this mechanic easily enabling ruined rounds and 2) it reinforces the notion that an admin cant just play the game without one eye on the admin tools because it might be this gamemode where you get absolutely bricked if the gentlemans agreement falls flat on its face. Coders should loosely expect the mechanics to police the players with admins being a last resort.

Abductor works because they mechanically have ways to avoid people who are after them to the point where we give THEM rules to not go ham because its so good. Heretics simply dont have that, and thats not even considering the ayys ability to easily disguise as anyone on the station. Ayys are also by design meant to be outted and acknowledged as their glands have/had features with zero plausible deniability of any other phenomenon.

Ayys should be the exception to the rule, not a precedent especially when you consider their mechanics.
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Re: It's time to admit the Heretic sacrifice change was a mistake.

Post by oranges » #654239

mrmelbert wrote: Sat Oct 15, 2022 8:38 pm However someone suggested it gets turned into a config so the admins can change it on a server to server basis which I'm not opposed to.
I am

just change heretic back to killing
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Re: It's time to admit the Heretic sacrifice change was a mistake.

Post by iain0 » #654240

Itseasytosee2me wrote: Sun Oct 16, 2022 4:20 pm The post-shadowrelm purple text is not an objective. It's a restriction. It does nothing to drive forward the round of the person getting revived, or anybody else's. Which I assume is the purpose of an objective.
Eh, not a big thing to pick up on and i certainly don't mean the mechanical "objective" list of the antag types, I'm aware of the difference, it's literally more like hypnoflash, these set you "objectives" for your roleplay generally that you should be conforming to. Rules may be a better word but hypnoflash often goes hilariously wrong.

Either way we know what we're talking about here, the ability for large purple text to RULE roleplay, as it already does in a large number of other places.
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Re: It's time to admit the Heretic sacrifice change was a mistake.

Post by Shadowflame909 » #654241

oranges wrote: Mon Oct 17, 2022 4:13 am
mrmelbert wrote: Sat Oct 15, 2022 8:38 pm However someone suggested it gets turned into a config so the admins can change it on a server to server basis which I'm not opposed to.
I am

just change heretic back to killing
you see orange man they did (and do still) kill peeps. They just revive the sentient ones after forcing them to play shadow hand tag for 3 minutes.

What made heretics so hated was that prior functionality they gibbed folks they killed. Which made them a high priority threat for sec to stop, whilst the antag was very weak in action. Dc'd/soulless corpses that cant play the shadow realm game currently retain slight gibbing function as all their organs pop out which makes them a pain to revive.

We should not constantly turn the pendulum so far back and forth like this. The weak antag with heavy consequences to being slain to it turned into a weak antag with negligible consequences for being slain by it.

tldr: hugbox or anti hugbox will lead to it being a non-threat to too much opposition which makes it unfun/unfair to play
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Re: It's time to admit the Heretic sacrifice change was a mistake.

Post by Itseasytosee2me » #654242

iain0 wrote: Mon Oct 17, 2022 5:18 am
Itseasytosee2me wrote: Sun Oct 16, 2022 4:20 pm The post-shadowrelm purple text is not an objective. It's a restriction. It does nothing to drive forward the round of the person getting revived, or anybody else's. Which I assume is the purpose of an objective.
Eh, not a big thing to pick up on and i certainly don't mean the mechanical "objective" list of the antag types, I'm aware of the difference, it's literally more like hypnoflash, these set you "objectives" for your roleplay generally that you should be conforming to. Rules may be a better word but hypnoflash often goes hilariously wrong.

Either way we know what we're talking about here, the ability for large purple text to RULE roleplay, as it already does in a large number of other places.
No, I understand entirely, the reason that hypoflash functions and heretic doesn't is that hypoflash tends to give people an actual objective that drives there round forward.
The majority of "roleplay rules" as you describe fill the function of an objective, and I openly criticize any that don't on the same basis as heretic.
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Re: It's time to admit the Heretic sacrifice change was a mistake.

Post by Jacquerel » #654246

What if it did give people objectives to move the round forward?
Like the sleeper surgery ones but maybe a bit more focused in actually causing some problems.
Or is this a case of “the player base can’t be trusted to be given an inch and not use it to justify a mile”?
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Re: It's time to admit the Heretic sacrifice change was a mistake.

Post by Bluere » #654247

Why not make the sacrifice an antag?

Lets call them Heretical Follower.

Make it so that if the player survive the shadow realm they get teleported somewhere in maint and get the objective "(Heretic name) is your master, obey and protect (Heretic name) at all costs", make this condition be caused by a severe brain trauma and make it so that EVERYONE in the sacrifice list can be converted this way, no mater if they are Heads, Sec or Cap.

Now, yes, this would make Heretic another conversion based traitor, but unlike Cult of Rev there would be some differences, for starters, unlike the other roles, all jobs can be converted to Follower, and unlike the others in order to deconvert the Follower you must use brain surgery to fix the brain and remove the trauma insted of the mindshild, in addition the Followers numbers would rise very slowly because only Heretic can convert and add more Followers to ranks.

This would make Heretic a real danger and introduce more difficulty on the crew reaction, is your boss a Follower? What about that Sec officer? And what about Cap?

This could be a way to fix Heretic, if its possible to code this.
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Re: It's time to admit the Heretic sacrifice change was a mistake.

Post by blackdav123 » #654265

Itseasytosee2me wrote: Sun Oct 16, 2022 4:43 am Abductor gives its target a gimmick. Something to drive that persons round forward. Its also flavorful
Giving eldritch themed objectives to sacrifice victims is another solution we could use. Steal from the flavor text the heretics get when they unlock stuff and make the sacrifice victims into raving lunatics warning of the end of the world. Being sacrificed to an eldritch god should have negative effects on a person's psyche.

Another thought related to this is giving victims occasional eldritch hallucinations or even a phobia of eldritch things. With the phobia approach, they probably wouldnt be able to interfere with the heretic that killed them anymore.
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Re: It's time to admit the Heretic sacrifice change was a mistake.

Post by BrianBackslide » #654269

Heretics are rare enough that I think turning them into a conversion antag would make them even rarer. Which is odd as they're not even that dangerous until they've ascended.

If the problem is that sacrificed people immediately out the heretic on returning, despite their flavor text, and the admins aren't intervening to pound them into the dirt for doing so, (since they don't/can't with abductors either) then maybe giving the sacrifice a mute trauma or phobia once they come out would be a good way to go. It'd fit in with the flavor of seeing unspeakable horrors and it's a lot easier to beat someone administratively as PDA messages are easier to dig through.

If the problem is gibbing, why not just delete the sacrifice's heart? The heretic has to then think of how to dispose the body, which can be tracked if the heretic is sloppy, and while a pain in the butt to fix from a medical standpoint, it's not putting humpty dumpty back together again levels of pain.
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Re: It's time to admit the Heretic sacrifice change was a mistake.

Post by Itseasytosee2me » #654270

blackdav123 wrote: Mon Oct 17, 2022 6:29 pm
Itseasytosee2me wrote: Sun Oct 16, 2022 4:43 am Abductor gives its target a gimmick. Something to drive that persons round forward. Its also flavorful
Giving eldritch themed objectives to sacrifice victims is another solution we could use. Steal from the flavor text the heretics get when they unlock stuff and make the sacrifice victims into raving lunatics warning of the end of the world. Being sacrificed to an eldritch god should have negative effects on a person's psyche.
Yeah, this could definitely be an avenue to fix the issue.
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Re: It's time to admit the Heretic sacrifice change was a mistake.

Post by oranges » #654279

Shadowflame909 wrote: Mon Oct 17, 2022 5:19 am
oranges wrote: Mon Oct 17, 2022 4:13 am
mrmelbert wrote: Sat Oct 15, 2022 8:38 pm However someone suggested it gets turned into a config so the admins can change it on a server to server basis which I'm not opposed to.
I am

just change heretic back to killing
What made heretics so hated was that prior functionality they gibbed folks they killed.
reasons why you shouldn't listen to people bitching, so what, you died, get over it, go play minecraft for 40 minutes.
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Re: It's time to admit the Heretic sacrifice change was a mistake.

Post by Pandarsenic » #654280

I think the problem was the gibbing, specifically, because it blasted organs all over and deleted the original body so even if you were being a friendlyheretic and gave their head to medbay it was like a 33% chance that medbay actually figured out how to revive them, and if they did it put them on an ugly-ass monkeyhuman body
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Re: It's time to admit the Heretic sacrifice change was a mistake.

Post by toemas » #654286

killing people = good
bring it back
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Re: It's time to admit the Heretic sacrifice change was a mistake.

Post by Shadowflame909 » #654287

oranges wrote: Tue Oct 18, 2022 1:38 am
reasons why you shouldn't listen to people bitching, so what, you died, get over it, go play minecraft for 40 minutes.
Fair but a heretic having the wrath of the station is different from a traitor with the wrath of the station.

A good e-bow + e-sword gamer is going to deck an ERT summoned by the shrieks of deadchat.

A heretic who has 1 - 2 sacs is going to get dunked by the first non-afk assistant with a spear/butchers cleaver

The playing levels are too different!
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Re: It's time to admit the Heretic sacrifice change was a mistake.

Post by Pandarsenic » #654288

Yeah but making them not kill people is even worse because now they're valid and they're going to get subtly metagamed
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sinfulbliss
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Re: It's time to admit the Heretic sacrifice change was a mistake.

Post by sinfulbliss » #654292

mrmelbert wrote: Sat Oct 15, 2022 9:04 pmWhat makes this different? Is it because Heretics are more common? We just made Abductors more common, too, so it should be addressed if so.
Is it because Heretics are crew members? Is it more personal? That really irks me.
It is quite irking, but it really do be the case. It is simply hard for players to walk around casually with the person that murdered and sacrificed them, and when they can feasibly get away with "re-learning" this meta-knowledge through dubiously legal channels, they often will. Surely there's a healthy middle-ground between exploding the sac into organs and reviving them safely onto the station.
iain0 wrote: Sun Oct 16, 2022 3:08 pmThough there's also the chance the heretics don't really understand their right there and don't ahelp transgressions (Terry loves a good bit of proactive-minning). Perhaps a message to the heretic on sacrifice reminding them of their protections here would help.
I think Panda is right in saying it's not a matter of players not ahelping or admins not enforcing, it's that it's practically undetectable except in the most obvious of cases. All they have to do is tell an officer you're suspicious, and now you're being hunted. You may not hear them say anything, and probably neither will the admins unless it's reported - which it likely won't be because how do you know to report them?
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Re: It's time to admit the Heretic sacrifice change was a mistake.

Post by zxaber » #654300

The fact that heretics exist in the round at all ends up being a secret to nobody, since they litter the station with unremovable shattered realities. Unlike abductors, it's not that they're around, it's who they are.

Give Heretics a spell that conceals their identity or something. Clothing and all. Then if people survive the shadow realm they can yell all about the shadowy purple dude that has since blended back in with the crew.
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Re: It's time to admit the Heretic sacrifice change was a mistake.

Post by mrmelbert » #654323

I like zxaber's suggestion a lot, and I like blackdav123 suggestion a lot as well.

I actually was going to enforce it mechanically - I was going to make it so being sacrificed gave you a phobia of heretics / the guy who sacrificed you, so that you couldn't snitch at all, but I didn't want to untangle phobia's code.

I'll look into these, see what's possible.
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Re: It's time to admit the Heretic sacrifice change was a mistake.

Post by Kassori » #654336

I died to a blob and during the chaos, I was left to sit for a while until an atmos tech grabs my rotten corpse, dragging it into the depths of maint. After sleeping through the shadow hands because of my noct resp virus, I woke up in atmos, to be let out by the heretic that had just sacrificed me, pretty much perfectly healthy.
I'm not sure how I feel about this, but I'm pretty sure they got me back into the game faster than medbay would have.
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Re: It's time to admit the Heretic sacrifice change was a mistake.

Post by datorangebottle » #654338

It's honestly really jarring that messily sacrificing people to the dark gods doesn't necessarily kill the person sacrificed.
I preferred the compromise of it dropping their chest organs. Made it easier for the heretic to source organs for their various recipes.
Timberpoes wrote: Sat Jul 29, 2023 10:33 pm ImageAnother satisfied Timberpoes voter.Image
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Re: It's time to admit the Heretic sacrifice change was a mistake.

Post by Pandarsenic » #654339

Heretic Sacrifices are in fact a more effective method of healing than medbay 9 times out of 10
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Re: It's time to admit the Heretic sacrifice change was a mistake.

Post by Nabski » #654352

datorangebottle wrote: Wed Oct 19, 2022 7:38 am It's honestly really jarring that messily sacrificing people to the dark gods doesn't necessarily kill the person sacrificed.
I preferred the compromise of it dropping their chest organs. Made it easier for the heretic to source organs for their various recipes.
It's almost like the requirements for everything requiring organs and body parts was built around sacrificing corpses that created organs and body parts.
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Re: It's time to admit the Heretic sacrifice change was a mistake.

Post by sinfulbliss » #654613

Alternatively, stab your sac's chest a little bit after they die until their organs spill out. Then sacrificing won't revive or teleport them away.
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Re: It's time to admit the Heretic sacrifice change was a mistake.

Post by SkeletalElite » #654640

mrmelbert wrote: Sat Oct 15, 2022 9:04 pm
I'm inclined to agree that relying on the flavor text to manage this system is unfeasible.
I dislike the idea that coders are no longer allowed to design antagonists around memory loss.

Abductors have been using it for over five years. Abductees are not allowed to snitch on the ayys that abducted them, because they're given flavor text that says "You don't remember how you got here".

What makes this different? Is it because Heretics are more common? We just made Abductors more common, too, so it should be addressed if so.
Is it because Heretics are crew members? Is it more personal? That really irks me.
Another reason it works for abductors is that abductors are not regular crewmembers. They can easily disguise themselves as literally anyone at anytime and can also teleport away to their untouchable fairy land UFO at any time.
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Re: It's time to admit the Heretic sacrifice change was a mistake.

Post by CPTANT » #654666

I seriously don't get people who don't want antagonists to actually antagonize the crew, what is the point of antagonists if they don't do that?
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Re: It's time to admit the Heretic sacrifice change was a mistake.

Post by VexingRaven » #654722

Along the lines of giving people objectives to make them less likely to be salty toward the heretic player, how about limiting where they can be dropped back? I've been dropped in xenobio on metastation before and it was a royal pain getting back to the station without tools and having to explain to the RD why I was in xenobio without breaking the sacred purple text. Drop them into an empty dorm asleep or something.

I do like the disguise idea, although I think it would be tricky to find time to use the disguise from out of your target's and anyone else's sight and then hope they're still where they were a few seconds ago and are still alone.
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Re: It's time to admit the Heretic sacrifice change was a mistake.

Post by Thunder11 » #655310

This is 100% just an admin issue of dealing with the people who ignore the text. We've gotten by just fine for years with rev and cult by dealing with players who name every revhead they instant they get deconverted or get de-culted and immediately run back to the cult base and bomb it. People will learn to deal with heretic amnesia too.
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Re: It's time to admit the Heretic sacrifice change was a mistake.

Post by CPTANT » #655312

Thunder11 wrote: Mon Oct 31, 2022 10:57 am This is 100% just an admin issue of dealing with the people who ignore the text. We've gotten by just fine for years with rev and cult by dealing with players who name every revhead they instant they get deconverted or get de-culted and immediately run back to the cult base and bomb it. People will learn to deal with heretic amnesia too.
We have already been over this, it's not an issue of admins not enforcing it, it's an issue of being unenforcable.
Timberpoes wrote: Tue Feb 14, 2023 3:21 pm The rules exist to create the biggest possible chance of a cool shift of SS13. They don't exist to allow admins to create the most boring interpretation of SS13.
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Re: It's time to admit the Heretic sacrifice change was a mistake.

Post by Thunder11 » #655341

CPTANT wrote: Mon Oct 31, 2022 11:32 am
Thunder11 wrote: Mon Oct 31, 2022 10:57 am This is 100% just an admin issue of dealing with the people who ignore the text. We've gotten by just fine for years with rev and cult by dealing with players who name every revhead they instant they get deconverted or get de-culted and immediately run back to the cult base and bomb it. People will learn to deal with heretic amnesia too.
We have already been over this, it's not an issue of admins not enforcing it, it's an issue of being unenforcable.
It's as enforcable as decoverted revs or cultists "coincidentally" "stumbling across" the cult's base or the first possible revs they grab for implanting "luckily" being the other revheads, we've managed those two modes just fine.
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IcePacks wrote:
MrFoster wrote:Back in my day, we didn't complain about lag! We used it to queue attacks!
That's thinking on your feet, soldier!
Quality Paprika from #coderbus wrote:[11:35.52] <paprika> holy crap so yeah i don't care about your opinion at all
oranges wrote:
Excuse me? Thats for sensible and calm rational debate, not for senseless whining.
Resident Catmin, please direct catposting to: https://tgstation13.org/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=5578
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Re: It's time to admit the Heretic sacrifice change was a mistake.

Post by Shadowflame909 » #655366

Thunder11 wrote: Mon Oct 31, 2022 8:56 pm
CPTANT wrote: Mon Oct 31, 2022 11:32 am We have already been over this, it's not an issue of admins not enforcing it, it's an issue of being unenforcable.
It's as enforcable as decoverted revs or cultists "coincidentally" "stumbling across" the cult's base or the first possible revs they grab for implanting "luckily" being the other revheads, we've managed those two modes just fine.
Honestly now that Thunder's brought it up. The entire server can easily get privy to info that would ruin the round, yet everyone knows better then to act on it. Like for example dying in a round, seeing undiscovered antags and then getting revived before they get discovered.

Everyone already has a reasonable expectation of not metagaming or breaking ic in ooc. So I'd say this expectation of heretic amnesia being enforced isn't that uncommon. Maybe it just rubs people the wrong way.
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Re: It's time to admit the Heretic sacrifice change was a mistake.

Post by CPTANT » #655380

Those modes suffer less because deconversion is relatively uncommon and they are team modes that already make the round hectic. Heretic has one dude that specifically dunks you in person and the round can be super quiet otherwise.

But apart from the how enforceable it is, having an antag dunk you and you get back healthier than you were is just baby mode.
Timberpoes wrote: Tue Feb 14, 2023 3:21 pm The rules exist to create the biggest possible chance of a cool shift of SS13. They don't exist to allow admins to create the most boring interpretation of SS13.
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Re: It's time to admit the Heretic sacrifice change was a mistake.

Post by Mey Ha Zah » #655523

I'm going to join in the convo here. One time I was heretic and got a good sac, target came back. Not 30 seconds after he comes back, I hear my name on comms of him claiming I'm a heretic. People however ignored him as he was a greytider that shift. He then attacked me later in cargo and I whopped his ass and called the admin on him.

This was some months back but I felt it was relevant to the discussion, but I am in favor better documentation, or things being implemented to restrict this type of behavior. Cleaning up after a messy sacrifice takes time, and thats really against you in a lot of shifts.
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Re: It's time to admit the Heretic sacrifice change was a mistake.

Post by johnfulpwillard » #655775

how da hell did we last so long with cloning
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Re: It's time to admit the Heretic sacrifice change was a mistake.

Post by blackdav123 » #655777

johnfulpwillard wrote: Sat Nov 05, 2022 3:22 pm how da hell did we last so long with cloning
tasers and one click stun meta was a thing so dying as fast as you could be revived was just normal and once we made dying harder cloning had to go
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