/tg/Station 13

Bottom post of the previous page:

https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/pull/79788

TLDR is PR is up to remove ascensions from heretics.

Seems like a terrible PR to me since that means Heretics will now be progression antagonists with weak early games, but without the payoff for that weak early game.

Also feels absolutely terrible as a heretic enjoyer.

Hope you guys are ready for Bar RPing heretics, because they won't have anything better to do anymore!

I keep trying to write a post on this but it all just boils down to me disliking progression =/

wesoda25 wrote: ↑Fri Nov 17, 2023 7:55 pm I keep trying to write a post on this but it all just boils down to me disliking progression =/

Yeah, this is pretty much the root of all the trouble. The only antag with progression that works is Cult and even that's glorified TDM half the time.

Excuse the doublepost but I just had a brain blast:
Why not make final objectives more like station objectives? So instead of doing one task that relates to your final objective after grinding unrelated objectives for fourty minutes, if you want that battlecruiser you instead would have to work for it and do like five battlecruiser specific objectives and build a beacon with T4 parts or something. And nix the auto-greentext thing too, so a tot still has to escape alive with original objectives if they want to succeed after doing an optional final objective for fun.
Plus, if station objectives are anything to go by, this would make sure it's not too common since no one would ever do them.

kieth4 wrote: ↑Fri Nov 17, 2023 7:28 pm

dendydoom wrote: ↑Fri Nov 17, 2023 7:02 pm

kieth4 wrote: ↑Fri Nov 17, 2023 6:58 pm

dendydoom wrote: ↑Fri Nov 17, 2023 6:55 pm

Imitates-The-Lizards wrote: ↑Fri Nov 17, 2023 6:53 pm

dendydoom wrote: ↑Fri Nov 17, 2023 6:46 pm im sorry

"Restricted"

So you're talking MRP

Why don't you disable heretic on MRP again instead of gutting heretic for LRP?

i was talking about mrp because i play mrp

im not a headmin i was participating in a discussion with my opinion. idk what heretic is like on lrp. how is it?

Wdym by restricted antags

you should know this kieth!!!!!!!!!

the subheading "Is this antagonist role restricted in how it can deliver death and destruction?" under roleplay rules

Don't ever throw rp rules my way or it might just be my 13th reason why.........

Don't you think it's cool to have a logical ending to an antagonist? Like, I can't imagine what kinda shit heretic would do w/o it. Just murder forever until they're finally caught? Having a win condition so the station can lose is cool IMO.

Also on lrp ppl are really bad with it unless they have like 8k hrs

yeah i think heretic is cool. this was another facet of the discussion. a lot of us were in agreement that heretic is fun to play, has deep mechanics, is rewarding, but the ascension just feels shit for mrp where we don't want validhunting and for antags to have a chance to cook if they're restricted, hence the "proportionate response" rule. heretic is just incompatible with this, as are endgame ascension style mechanics in general.

generally i don't really mind heretic if it's the 1 antag that works that way, but the greater context of my quote was highlighting the problem in the first place. i went on to say that we should either address the totality of ascension (the way people dedicate their whole rounds to achieving it to the abandonment of all other gimmicks or the fact that the response to a heretic is informed by the knowledge that they will ascend at some point if you go easy on them, thus not treating them proportionately) or just unrestrict them completely.

I'm just mad cause I spent a week+ coding an ascension only to have this pr come up when I am so close to done

dendydoom wrote: ↑Fri Nov 17, 2023 8:49 pm

kieth4 wrote: ↑Fri Nov 17, 2023 7:28 pm

dendydoom wrote: ↑Fri Nov 17, 2023 7:02 pm

kieth4 wrote: ↑Fri Nov 17, 2023 6:58 pm

dendydoom wrote: ↑Fri Nov 17, 2023 6:55 pm

Imitates-The-Lizards wrote: ↑Fri Nov 17, 2023 6:53 pm

dendydoom wrote: ↑Fri Nov 17, 2023 6:46 pm im sorry

"Restricted"

So you're talking MRP

Why don't you disable heretic on MRP again instead of gutting heretic for LRP?

i was talking about mrp because i play mrp

im not a headmin i was participating in a discussion with my opinion. idk what heretic is like on lrp. how is it?

Wdym by restricted antags

you should know this kieth!!!!!!!!!

the subheading "Is this antagonist role restricted in how it can deliver death and destruction?" under roleplay rules

Don't ever throw rp rules my way or it might just be my 13th reason why.........

Don't you think it's cool to have a logical ending to an antagonist? Like, I can't imagine what kinda shit heretic would do w/o it. Just murder forever until they're finally caught? Having a win condition so the station can lose is cool IMO.

Also on lrp ppl are really bad with it unless they have like 8k hrs

yeah i think heretic is cool. this was another facet of the discussion. a lot of us were in agreement that heretic is fun to play, has deep mechanics, is rewarding, but the ascension just feels shit for mrp where we don't want validhunting and for antags to have a chance to cook if they're restricted, hence the "proportionate response" rule. heretic is just incompatible with this, as are endgame ascension style mechanics in general.

generally i don't really mind heretic if it's the 1 antag that works that way, but the greater context of my quote was highlighting the problem in the first place. i went on to say that we should either address the totality of ascension (the way people dedicate their whole rounds to achieving it to the abandonment of all other gimmicks or the fact that the response to a heretic is informed by the knowledge that they will ascend at some point if you go easy on them, thus not treating them proportionately) or just unrestrict them completely.

Let's say there's a real thug heretic, he goes into sci and gets caught doing something bad and called out. On Terry he's over, let's say there are no validhunters that round or anything, the security team will wipe him out and he will like get caught 99.9% of the time. Does this not happen on manuel?

Even looking at the ascension rats it's 10% that's really kinda low and imo a minority of rounds

TheBibleMelts wrote: ↑Fri Nov 17, 2023 7:27 pm i don't think final objectives like the ones that heretics have are healthy for the kind of gameplay SS13 does best in. you start the round, you get heretic, and suddenly you know that if you take the time to smell any flowers along the way, or try to experiment, you're RUNNING OUT OF TIME OH FUCK WHAT IF SOMEONE CALLS THE SHUTTLE AND YOU WASTE ALL YOUR SWEATY EFFORT.

i'd prefer antagonists to work as something that can branch out and take advantage of their rules-free status with whatever unique flavor that antagonist can work with in the sandbox. needing to rush to a round-end in opposition to every other player on the server to the detriment of being able to meaningfully run gimmicks/roleplay just sours me on the antagonist as a whole.

additionally, the response that having an antagonist like that on a crewmember level is, as i see it, equally unhealthy. if you catch one, you have no reason to ever believe that they're not a round-ending murderbone with a timer on it, and have no reason to not instantly valid them due to that - you cannot meaningfully disable them in any other way, and any degree of roleplay you attempt with them to give them the benefit of the doubt will come along with a voice yelling in the back of your head 'remember the last time you let one go and he ascended and killed your entire department'?

i think removing the final ascension can promote a little bit more good-faith gameplay that both sides of the fence can engage with and enjoy, at the cost of the rush of 5 minute dopamine you get for sweating your way hard enough through the round and treating everybody else like NPC's to obtain.

preach. +1. gas this. this ^. etc etc

I am in favour of removing traitor end objectives, but heretic has always been designed as a progression antag.

I think removing ascensions is lame because it ruins the flavour and "coolness" of the role, you are building up towards something instead of eternal powergaming. Also all heretic paths are written with a conclusion in mind.

CPTANT wrote: ↑Fri Nov 17, 2023 9:26 pm I am in favour of removing traitor end objectives, but heretic has always been designed as a progression antag.

My thoughts as well. Progtot should really be a subtype of oldtraitor (so we should have both).

IIRC, heretic was designed around being a progression antag from the ground up, right?

we live in an mrp codebase

Prog tot has been on everyone's shit list for a while now because of the whole PROGRESSION part of it. But final objectives have always been really cool ways to ensure rounds end after 90 minutes (Even if some of them like the dragon are laughably weak). But removing heretic's main goal which is the big bombastic finale of ascending is just really fucking short sighted and claiming its to 'Encourage player freedom' is such cope. There's nothing free about gutting the most impactful part of an antag.

That's why I don't think progtot should be full on removed, it should instead be a subtype of traitor that rolls (that should be rarer)

That way you have the middle ground of people wanting the whole "here's 20 TC, here's three objectives, go nuts"* and the people who want to play Bethesda procedurally generated quests for 60 minutes before going sicko mode with max rep, with all the gear they could ever want, trying to destroy the station.

*Doing custom objectives was a step in the right direction, but you still have the issue of time gates on a lot of stuff even if you are doing custom objectives as a progtot.

I feel like removing heretic ascensions comes from a person who goes "HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO FIGHT AND KILL AN ASCENDED HERETIC?" Answer, you're not.

zergking wrote: ↑Sat Nov 18, 2023 1:35 am I feel like removing heretic ascensions comes from a person who goes "HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO FIGHT AND KILL AN ASCENDED HERETIC?" Answer, you're not.

Its really not hard to read the pr or responses from the pr author. its astounding how people fail to do it every time anyways

I JUST WANT MY FUCKING ROUNDSTART SYNDIE BOMB STIMPACK NO SLIPS AND AIRLOCK CARD BACK

I DONT CARE ABOUT THE REST OF IT

Kendrickorium wrote: ↑Sat Nov 18, 2023 1:42 am I JUST WANT MY FUCKING ROUNDSTART SYNDIE BOMB STIMPACK NO SLIPS AND AIRLOCK CARD BACK

I DONT CARE ABOUT THE REST OF IT

You wonder why they thought of gutting progression entirely and forcing everyone to have no fun allowed instead of just giving you some incentive to personally remove ascension/final objectives for heretic/traitor for a bonus in heretic research points or traitor reputation (early unlock of goodies, very fun, very based, lets you get to the juicy stuff and have fun setting up your gimmicks instead of focusing on the grind). Like, as mentioned by GPeckman, "If you want to give heretics more sandbox tools, one easy thing to start with would be to remove the focus requirement that exists on most of their spells".

Crew will typically just kill hostile antags anyways because they're bored or because jank fighting is fun(?), not necessarily because they fear a battle cruiser or w o r m. Antagonists are antagonists for a reason, and it's to spice up a round. If you remove the lingering threat that maybe one of the many suspicious individuals onboard could bring doom, then you remove any real reason to be suspicious of "potion sellers" because it's just a funny friendly antag gimmick, and that often is boring as hell for the crew.

Imitates-The-Lizards wrote: ↑Fri Nov 17, 2023 7:48 pm Counter-argument: the fact that you think people consistently choose to pursue final objectives over rp gimmicks proves that players love final objectives, because there is nothing preventing heretic players from doing gimmicks currently except for missing out on final objectives and crewmate responses.

And people who play gacha games consistently spend extreme amounts of money on them in the hopes of getting the characters of costumes they like, as well as logging in every single day to spend their allotted 30 Energy on farming upgrade materials.

That doesn't mean gacha/lootboxes or Stamina Systems are actually the best thing for the game. I assure you Genshin would be a much more enjoyable game if it wasn't a gacha and you could progress at your own pace.

People pursue final objectives because they want the dopamine surge that comes from 'winning'. Final Objectives and Greentext as a system are direct detriments to SS13 because they encourage a competitive playstyle, rather than one focused on creating an interesting story or being enjoyable for everyone. People don't want to see "(name) has FAILED", they want to see "(name) has WON" or, in the case of Final Objectives and is the topic of this thread and PR, they want to see that battlecruiser come in, because they know that means they won. They *beat* everyone else!

The rules, even for LRP, say that SS13 is a roleplaying game first. Yet certain mechanics (like Final Objectives and Ascension) prioritize competition and victory over all else and directly clash with that.

Everyone's said it before in here, but before we had Final Objectives, antags still worked! Shuttles were still called and rounds still ended! We don't need to doom and gloom that they're all going to choose to just sit around and bar RP because they don't have a 'Win Condition'.

CMDR_Gungnir wrote: ↑Sat Nov 18, 2023 9:00 am

Imitates-The-Lizards wrote: ↑Fri Nov 17, 2023 7:48 pm Counter-argument: the fact that you think people consistently choose to pursue final objectives over rp gimmicks proves that players love final objectives, because there is nothing preventing heretic players from doing gimmicks currently except for missing out on final objectives and crewmate responses.

And people who play gacha games consistently spend extreme amounts of money on them in the hopes of getting the characters of costumes they like, as well as logging in every single day to spend their allotted 30 Energy on farming upgrade materials.

That doesn't mean gacha/lootboxes or Stamina Systems are actually the best thing for the game. I assure you Genshin would be a much more enjoyable game if it wasn't a gacha and you could progress at your own pace.

Although I personally loathe stamina/daily systems with the burning fury of a thousand suns, this is not a good comparison because you're not comparing similar situations. In the case of SS13 and progression traitors, you have access to final objectives, but you also have access to rp gimmicks. Players can choose to do either freely, and they usually choose to pursue final objectives.

Genshin Impact players do not have access to a gacha/non-gacha split dichotomy to choose from for us to make comparisons. If you want to try again with a better example, I would advise you to examine OSRS and RS3, as it's one of the only games I can think of where you have the same game but one side has MTX and the other doesn't, and how this has led to different developmental decisions over the last decade of active game development.

CMDR_Gungnir wrote: ↑Sat Nov 18, 2023 9:00 amPeople pursue final objectives because they want the dopamine surge that comes from 'winning'. Final Objectives and Greentext as a system are direct detriments to SS13 because they encourage a competitive playstyle, rather than one focused on creating an interesting story or being enjoyable for everyone. People don't want to see "(name) has FAILED", they want to see "(name) has WON" or, in the case of Final Objectives and is the topic of this thread and PR, they want to see that battlecruiser come in, because they know that means they won. They *beat* everyone else!

The rules, even for LRP, say that SS13 is a roleplaying game first. Yet certain mechanics (like Final Objectives and Ascension) prioritize competition and victory over all else and directly clash with that.

Everyone's said it before in here, but before we had Final Objectives, antags still worked! Shuttles were still called and rounds still ended! We don't need to doom and gloom that they're all going to choose to just sit around and bar RP because they don't have a 'Win Condition'.

Assumptions: the post.

Although I'm sure that a lot of people, maybe even the majority of antag players are playing for this win condition as described, it certainly does not apply to me: When I am playing heretic and going for an ascension, my primary motivations are firstly the novelty factor, in that heretic ascension is actually extremely rare and therefore interesting as a way to end a round, and two, I am trying to beat the challenge of heretic. This is different from me thinking "I want to beat all the other plebs and WIN THE GAME.", the focus is not on coming out on top over the other connected players, the focus is on heretic itself, and how due to it's low power level, it's very difficult to reach the end stages and ascend. Basically, for me, internally, it feels more like I'm competing with "Heretic" rather than I'm competing with "The crew", if that makes sense. It just feels like a really hard job in the game to me, like whenever someone tries to learn atmospherics. But instead of gas it's murder. So to me, it feels the same as if you told me learning to manufacture zauker is trying to "win the game".

What will I do or feel instead if I ever get good enough to ascend consistently? We will probably never know because due to when I usually play, I can't roll heretic due to not meeting population requirements.

So please do not make assumptions that everyone who pursues final objectives is motivated by "winning the game".

Also, (anecdotally) I still feel like 95%+ of shifts end with the shuttle. Is that not good enough for you? Why can't we have some of them end in other ways?

I said it in the PR and I'll say it again: Heretics status as a low-cost high-commonness mass-spawn antag which will end the round in a boring slaughterfest if not aggressively hunted down and destroyed at the slightest indication of heretic activity totally sucks.

"Heretics hardly ever ascend" IMO this is because every security team on rounds with any heretics is spending like half their time looking for signs of heretics, the detective doing nothing but scanning doors near influences to narrow things down, and the HOS aggressively executing them no matter how little theyve actually done because theyre round-ending murderers super hard to constrain and breaking out of perma/gulag on many maps is astonishingly easy even for people without magic powers. All the rounds I can actually remember an ascension happening is when sec are massively understaffed compared to station population or everyone is distracted/dead from another more interesting antag going ham on board.

----

I think Heretics would work better if you're looking at expecting one, or at most two in a round when you start seeing influences, instead of 3 being the normal amount. And to be less common.

kieth4 wrote: ↑Fri Nov 17, 2023 9:21 pm Let's say there's a real thug heretic, he goes into sci and gets caught doing something bad and called out. On Terry he's over, let's say there are no validhunters that round or anything, the security team will wipe him out and he will like get caught 99.9% of the time. Does this not happen on manuel?

Even looking at the ascension rats it's 10% that's really kinda low and imo a minority of rounds

The ascension being low doesn't change that the ascension itself is what usually spurs people on Manuel specifically to put down heretics without prejudice. They don't really get much opportunity to roleplay, and they're often forced to be hyper-mechanical to even exist in the round without doing literally nothing otherwise.

I'd say Manuel treats heretics about the same as any other server. There is no reason to permit them the opportunity to exist, because they cannot be contained for several of the paths. Some heretics can be, but they'll often still grow in strength with time, and that also doesn't mean they can't do a little bit of botany and orion trail to suddenly manifest a blade again to escape (assuming sec didn't take them all). Their response from sec is exceptionally binary, which is why I argued that they should be unrestricted.

I don't think they're even a bad antagonist, they totally work conceptually. But they need a lot more than an ascension removal before they can be as good as they could be.

nothing odder than seeing people do the mental gymnastics to blame heretics being valid hunted on an ascension that's rarely reached to justify a pr merge instead of just acknowledging the servers, MRP included, just have that strong of a valid hunt culture.

catch and release on antags will always carry some risk and that's precisely why you are doing it to begin with, to keep the round fun.

I wish people did more catch and release. Too many people invest a little too much into round removing every single antagonist. It's a wonder that people don't give themselves an aneurysm playing sec half the time. Or get bored to death when they kill all the antagonists before they can do anything and wonder why nothing is happening.

TheBibleMelts wrote: ↑Fri Nov 17, 2023 7:27 pm i don't think final objectives like the ones that heretics have are healthy for the kind of gameplay SS13 does best in. you start the round, you get heretic, and suddenly you know that if you take the time to smell any flowers along the way, or try to experiment, you're RUNNING OUT OF TIME OH FUCK WHAT IF SOMEONE CALLS THE SHUTTLE AND YOU WASTE ALL YOUR SWEATY EFFORT.

i'd prefer antagonists to work as something that can branch out and take advantage of their rules-free status with whatever unique flavor that antagonist can work with in the sandbox. needing to rush to a round-end in opposition to every other player on the server to the detriment of being able to meaningfully run gimmicks/roleplay just sours me on the antagonist as a whole.

additionally, the response that having an antagonist like that on a crewmember level is, as i see it, equally unhealthy. if you catch one, you have no reason to ever believe that they're not a round-ending murderbone with a timer on it, and have no reason to not instantly valid them due to that - you cannot meaningfully disable them in any other way, and any degree of roleplay you attempt with them to give them the benefit of the doubt will come along with a voice yelling in the back of your head 'remember the last time you let one go and he ascended and killed your entire department'?

i think removing the final ascension can promote a little bit more good-faith gameplay that both sides of the fence can engage with and enjoy, at the cost of the rush of 5 minute dopamine you get for sweating your way hard enough through the round and treating everybody else like NPC's to obtain.

CMDR_Gungnir wrote: ↑Sat Nov 18, 2023 9:00 am People pursue final objectives because they want the dopamine surge that comes from 'winning'. Final Objectives and Greentext as a system are direct detriments to SS13 because they encourage a competitive playstyle, rather than one focused on creating an interesting story or being enjoyable for everyone. People don't want to see "(name) has FAILED", they want to see "(name) has WON" or, in the case of Final Objectives and is the topic of this thread and PR, they want to see that battlecruiser come in, because they know that means they won. They *beat* everyone else!

The rules, even for LRP, say that SS13 is a roleplaying game first. Yet certain mechanics (like Final Objectives and Ascension) prioritize competition and victory over all else and directly clash with that.

Everyone's said it before in here, but before we had Final Objectives, antags still worked! Shuttles were still called and rounds still ended! We don't need to doom and gloom that they're all going to choose to just sit around and bar RP because they don't have a 'Win Condition'.

Final Objectives are safe... for now. For the record, these are indeed the specific issues that I was targetting and think still lie unaddressed.
I don't care so much about how often they actually happen, nor how deadly they are, but how they impact a player's relation with the game and with other players.
I am not going to be forgetting that I think these are a problem (some say "a player problem", but we cannot deny that our game design sculpts the attitudes of players), but they will need to be approached from a different angle.

NecromancerAnne wrote: ↑Sat Nov 18, 2023 3:34 pm It's a wonder that people don't give themselves an aneurysm playing sec half the time.

the tragic tale of Pai Mei

kieth4 wrote: ↑Fri Nov 17, 2023 9:21 pm Even looking at the ascension rats it's 10% that's really kinda low and imo a minority of rounds

10% is not low, especially considering we have upwards of 6 heretics a round and more likely than not, 8 rounds with that many heretics in it per day. If 1 in 10 heretics ascend you're seeing an ascension every other round which really takes the style out of it.

mrmelbert wrote: ↑Sat Nov 18, 2023 9:47 pm

kieth4 wrote: ↑Fri Nov 17, 2023 9:21 pm Even looking at the ascension rats it's 10% that's really kinda low and imo a minority of rounds

10% is not low, especially considering we have upwards of 6 heretics a round and more likely than not, 8 rounds with that many heretics in it per day. If 1 in 10 heretics ascend you're seeing an ascension every other round which really takes the style out of it.

I can confirm that 1/2 rounds do not result in an ascension. It's still a dramatic event whenever it happens.

idc but i havent seen an ascension in like 4 months on sybil. Of course, i'm not an admin so i dont play enough that anything interesting seems ungodly repetitive. You know what actually is repetitive? Mindless tdm antags like cult after revs after cult with the godsend of a warops round to give a much calmer experience.

Imitates-The-Lizards wrote: ↑Sat Nov 18, 2023 10:28 am Also, (anecdotally) I still feel like 95%+ of shifts end with the shuttle. Is that not good enough for you? Why can't we have some of them end in other ways?

They do. It's called "Cult Wins", "Nukies Win". Neither final objectives (except Battlecruiser, I guess) nor Ascensions force-end the round, they just create a situation where the shuttle has to be called, potentially by admins, because the situation is now completely untenable. So it wouldn't change that.

But let's say, for the sake of argument, that it does.

You know why 95% of rounds still end in the shuttle? We'll even be generous and say that Heretics only have a 10% ascension rate at all in any round they're in.

Do you know why that is? Because even on MRP, they have to be wiped the fuck out. There's no option to catch and release, there's no option to play coy. There's no option to see where their gimmick is going to go. Because if you do that, you won't hear from them for fifteen minutes and then they've ascended. Which probably contributes to why so many people do prioritize the ascension.

If you have a gimmick, or you try to just have fun and be spooky, people can't trust that you're not going to be a round-ender ten minutes later and have no choice but to wipe you the fuck out with all the fury and precision of the navy seal copypasta.

The same holds true for Traitor, to a lesser extent. People are wary of the gimmicks, instead of letting them play out and dealing with the aftermath after, because that "aftermath" is probably going to be the call of Nukies+ or a Singulo or something, not done for the fun of it, but because the game told them to.

I also apologize if it sounds like I was saying ALL PEOPLE, yourself included, only go for it for the competitive nature, that wasn't my intention. But I hope you understand now why I still think the Genshin/Gacha comparison applies, because people have less of a choice than you think.

CMDR_Gungnir wrote: ↑Sun Nov 19, 2023 3:15 am

Imitates-The-Lizards wrote: ↑Sat Nov 18, 2023 10:28 am Also, (anecdotally) I still feel like 95%+ of shifts end with the shuttle. Is that not good enough for you? Why can't we have some of them end in other ways?

They do. It's called "Cult Wins", "Nukies Win". Neither final objectives (except Battlecruiser, I guess) nor Ascensions force-end the round, they just create a situation where the shuttle has to be called, potentially by admins, because the situation is now completely untenable. So it wouldn't change that.

cascade ends it and darkmatter singlo makes the station zlevel unusable

Blacklist897 wrote: ↑Sun Nov 19, 2023 3:20 am

CMDR_Gungnir wrote: ↑Sun Nov 19, 2023 3:15 am

Imitates-The-Lizards wrote: ↑Sat Nov 18, 2023 10:28 am Also, (anecdotally) I still feel like 95%+ of shifts end with the shuttle. Is that not good enough for you? Why can't we have some of them end in other ways?

They do. It's called "Cult Wins", "Nukies Win". Neither final objectives (except Battlecruiser, I guess) nor Ascensions force-end the round, they just create a situation where the shuttle has to be called, potentially by admins, because the situation is now completely untenable. So it wouldn't change that.

cascade ends it and darkmatter singlo makes the station zlevel unusable

Fair points, but I think the most of my point still stands, let alone strengthening the other areas of it.

kieth4 wrote: ↑Fri Nov 17, 2023 9:21 pm Let's say there's a real thug heretic, he goes into sci and gets caught doing something bad and called out. On Terry he's over, let's say there are no validhunters that round or anything, the security team will wipe him out and he will like get caught 99.9% of the time. Does this not happen on manuel?

Even looking at the ascension rats it's 10% that's really kinda low and imo a minority of rounds

on manuel ideally people who recognize restricted antags and have no reason to attack them, ie they're not in any mortal danger and the antag isn't doing anything that warrants it, should act in good faith toward them. it doesn't mean you have to be nice to them, you can throw them out or be an asshole or report them to sec or out them etc, but you're not supposed to just activate like the manchurian candidate and gun them down in the street the second you notice a tell that outs them as an antag.

of course, if the antag is messing with you or attacking you or you've caught them attacking someone else then you can gently place them into the dumpster.

the endgame round ending finisher move of a restricted progression antag is antithetical to this because people know if you let them off easy then you're just going to eat shit later when they come back and kill you. once they ascend, they are unrestricted, that is, a round-ending threat, so you can open up on them. but at that point it's already a game over.

i like heretic. i think it has cool mechanics, cool lore and feels fun, deep and rewarding to play. but it's ass on mrp and i would like to see it work. the short term solution i see to this is either keeping them restricted but take out the lethality of the ascension (weaken it, disable it, force the antag to "unrestrict" early to give people a grace period to fight them, anything), or unrestrict them and let them fend for themselves. these both have pros and cons and different impacts on mrp that i'm still thinking about.

mrmelbert wrote: ↑Sat Nov 18, 2023 9:47 pm

kieth4 wrote: ↑Fri Nov 17, 2023 9:21 pm Even looking at the ascension rats it's 10% that's really kinda low and imo a minority of rounds

10% is not low, especially considering we have upwards of 6 heretics a round and more likely than not, 8 rounds with that many heretics in it per day. If 1 in 10 heretics ascend you're seeing an ascension every other round which really takes the style out of it.

Do you have the rates by server? I'm curious as to how many ascend per day where

kieth4 wrote: ↑Sun Nov 19, 2023 11:03 am Do you have the rates by server? I'm curious as to how many ascend per day where

Not super easy to obtain unfortunately - while I do have the round ID of every round that had an ascension (making it theoretically possible), writing a script for that is a little beyond me at the moment

mrmelbert wrote: ↑Mon Nov 20, 2023 9:34 am

kieth4 wrote: ↑Sun Nov 19, 2023 11:03 am Do you have the rates by server? I'm curious as to how many ascend per day where

Not super easy to obtain unfortunately - while I do have the round ID of every round that had an ascension (making it theoretically possible), writing a script for that is a little beyond me at the moment

Sounds like a skill issue, I know a guy or 2 let me see if I can get them to do it.

I still think that prog traitors rob a lot of creativity from the player in terms of how they should "complete objectives". People rarely follow traitor's objectives and just do anything since they get a blank check to be the round's antagonist in a way they see fit. Heretic's got a cool kit, but it's pretty lame that the only way they can play is to steamroll all of the station rather than play King in Yellow like cult does.

kieth4 wrote: ↑Mon Nov 20, 2023 10:08 am

mrmelbert wrote: ↑Mon Nov 20, 2023 9:34 am

kieth4 wrote: ↑Sun Nov 19, 2023 11:03 am Do you have the rates by server? I'm curious as to how many ascend per day where

Not super easy to obtain unfortunately - while I do have the round ID of every round that had an ascension (making it theoretically possible), writing a script for that is a little beyond me at the moment

Sounds like a skill issue, I know a guy or 2 let me see if I can get them to do it.

This is honestly the way to make decisions, before saying "heretics ascend 10% of the time" to justify something we should know if it's actually 10%.

That was never a reason for making these PRs, is a reason for Melbert making an unrelated one