Player's Club Dynamic Discussions

[TheRex9001]

Here to collect opinions on current dynamic, what works? What doesn't? What would be nice to have changed? Now that dynamic changes are logged in viewtopic.php?t=35296&view=unread#unread we can actually see what changes are being made. Most recently, maximum of one heretic (not counting latejoins)

[Itseasytosee2me]

The crew to antags ratio feels like its been off since the inception of dynamic. The theming feels all over the place, and it all just feels so unbalanced compared to old game modes. The prevalence of midround traitor sleeper agents also drive me mad, but its a little bit better now that they aren't prog tot.

[Turbonerd]

Rounds with current dynamic are pretty much unplayable below 40 pop. It really should have better scaling with population, because a quarter of crew being roundstart antags is just ridiculous.

[Imitates-The-Lizards]

Am I crazy or has Sybil been rolling white dwarf an absurd amount lately? I used to feel like greenshifts were something that popped up once a week-ish, but I got like 3 greenshifts recently...

[Itseasytosee2me]

Am I crazy or has Sybil been rolling white dwarf an absurd amount lately? I used to feel like greenshifts were something that popped up once a week-ish, but I got like 3 greenshifts recently...

One of the most unintuitive things about dynamic is threat scale with pop, but the effects of threat (like how many traitors get rolled) ALSO increase with pop.

[RedBaronFlyer]

(MRP player opinion)

Way too many antags compared to crew most rounds, that combined with a lot of antags (like traitor and heretic, the seemingly most common antags*) being station killers usually means that security has no time for dealing with small scale crimes a majority of rounds.

This isn't to say that Manuel should never have rounds where the station gets fucked, just that currently dynamic is super heavily weighted towards being an antag gang bang most rounds.

*this is to say nothing of blob, cult, revs, xenos, spiders, etc. that also end the round or basically end the round

One of the most unintuitive things about dynamic is threat scale with pop, but the effects of threat (like how many traitors get rolled) ALSO increase with pop.

This is something that's been bugging me. We have, like, three people who 100% know how dynamic works. I get that 100% knowing how a system works can remove some of the magic but I think an exception can be made for something so important.

It would probably help users be able to voice their opinions with dynamic better than just “I feel like something is broken, it spawned Nuke Ops four rounds in a row”

[Imitates-The-Lizards]

Way too many antags compared to crew most rounds, that combined with a lot of antags (like traitor and heretic, the seemingly most common antags*) being station killers usually means that security has no time for dealing with small scale crimes a majority of rounds.

Just wanna make sure you're aware round start heretic was very recently limited to one, it's in the dynamic config changes thread

[RedBaronFlyer]

Way too many antags compared to crew most rounds, that combined with a lot of antags (like traitor and heretic, the seemingly most common antags*) being station killers usually means that security has no time for dealing with small scale crimes a majority of rounds.

Just wanna make sure you're aware round start heretic was very recently limited to one, it's in the dynamic config changes thread

I haven't played in the last few days, but that's good to know. Interested to see how that will affect the ratio of other antags.

[Jacquerel]

Enjoying this discussion? What if we added five pirates, seven traitors, a blob, and a couple of changelings?

[CPTANT]

Dynamic should also spawn single antag rounds.

Dynamic is fun, but shouldn't be the sole gamemode, I miss pure traitor or pure ling rounds.

[Not-Dorsidarf]

I feel like it often gets way too chaotic, but i'm aware that as someone who primarily plays disaster-facing roles like ai, captain, hos at the moment im getting a lot more exposure to antags and their repetitive horseshit than most crew and so rounds that feel keyboard-gripping the-shit-never-stops to me might have been fairly low chaos to say, chef player.

[warbluke]

Enjoying this discussion? What if we added five pirates, seven traitors, a blob, and a couple of changelings?

I would like five pirates please.
Make them a main antag.

[kieth4]

My biggest issue with this I suppose is the meta aspect. I do not think that there should EVER be a case of "oh I killed the heretic that means there are no more this round" even with wizards you're not sure if there was only 1 or they have apprentices really do not like this aspect of it. I think that's really boring and just removes the paranoia aspect out of the game really unhappy with this choice. I suppose it's RNG but with how dynamic works you can be sure like more than 50% of the time that there will be no more or you can just pick them off 1 by one when you suddenly see something new pop up

[Higgin]

Dynamic introduces more threats over time and varies them up from one set script of the old gamemodes.

On the one hand,
* this can add more trouble and drama later in a round - and makes it less of a potential loss to latejoin
* this can let people do more of their mechanics and gameplay content by not making the game a reliable 15m gangbang of all the tots teaming up and rushing (though this is still quite possible, see the congalines of antags you get occasionally, there are likely fewer roundstarts to blanda up)
* it gives you variation - more permutations of threats, more combinations of stuff

On the other,
* it makes more rounds where there is no actual victory or loss and denouement. You stop the big bad,, say a blob there's still the dick-ass traitors and heretics about. If the traitor wipes the station, pretty much, there's very little for the latejoin tot/heretic to do at that point, even if they get the roll.
* giving people more time to do their gameplay content can also become the excuse for them not being engaged with the 'dynamic' of the round. Everyone gets more time, dead or alive, to roll antag - even if the drama of the round is long gone, Dynamic doesn't necessarily do anything to wrap it up. If you just want to cook, do silly projects, or build stompy mechs, assuming you aren't a target or a validhunter, most threats generated by Dynamic aren't necessarily things you are incentivized to attend to. war ops and blob are two good counterexamples, ninja and pirates are bad ones, progtots and heretics exist in an uncomfortable middle ground where they can eventually be "something we need to do something about," but until then, only have by in large limited, discrete targets that don't necessarily invite a whole-of-crew response, plus a bunch of toys and bennies that make it a tough proposition for normal crew to deal with them if sec is nonexistent/already wiped. To tl;dr this point, antags that don't actually put the larger crew on a probable win-or-die timer are uncomfortably easy to ignore, and there's a stigma against not ignoring them if you're not a designated validhunter. This was not the case back in the day of antags speedrunning objectives and singuloosing every round - it also is not the case if you end the round when the wizard dies, which means that for most folks "WIZ BRIDGE" is a call to grab your weapons and rush his ass, not something you can ignore, because whatever else you were gonna do atops mattering after he dies anyhow. Giving people more content and time to use it is cool, but the actual tie-in to using it in a satisfying way is much less reliable with Dynamic threats that don't end the round or even necessarily show up.
* more variation in any one round means less thematic consistency in any one round. Basically, everyone is pushed to play to the level of the loudest living threat, and tying back into the other two points - a lot of them you don't have to give a shit about, and a lot of them you finish up with and there's no final sigh of "it's done" or "it's over."

[oranges]

The crew to antags ratio feels like its been off since the inception of dynamic. The theming feels all over the place, and it all just feels so unbalanced compared to old game modes. The prevalence of midround traitor sleeper agents also drive me mad, but its a little bit better now that they aren't prog tot.

Do you have any proof

[LEDDDriver]

Dynamic was, and still is, complete utter dogshit. No amount of fine tuning will make rounds enjoyable because heretics lings traitors and cult all rolling together is not fun at all. Surprisingly, the better rounds remain those that are "purer", like purely traitors, traitor lings MAYBE with a wiz. You know, good old fun.

I remember the main argument for "dynamic good" being "people see halos and meta; no halo-good guy. We don't want that!" And we could have that, had we had old gamemodes and dynamic spicing things up; think old traitorlings or dynamic threat based antag spawning.You still get rid of the meta problem but you aren't stuck with one shitty version of it. Instead dynamic replaced gamemodes and now we are wondering why everything has been neutered. Who could have guessed?!

I am truly curious, if anyone is able to do so, to see the some data and graphs. How do November's rounds look like for each main server? How often was there a mixed gamemode? How many times did we have purely only cult (that would mean either just enough threat that was all spent, or spawning cult and dynamic refusing to further spend threat) out of X total rounds? Ultimately, how much does dynamic diverge from the older gamemodes based on data?

[Redrover1760]

The crew to antags ratio feels like its been off since the inception of dynamic. The theming feels all over the place, and it all just feels so unbalanced compared to old game modes. The prevalence of midround traitor sleeper agents also drive me mad, but its a little bit better now that they aren't prog tot.

Do you have any proof

They play the game, unlike you.

[oranges]

That still doesn't provide any proof

This discussion wont be particularly useful if we are all just basing things off our assumptions and feelings, if people actually gather data about what is happening then people can make concrete informed decisions about what to change.

You can already see that people in this thread can't even agree about the source of the supposed problems, so the default response from maintainers will be to ignore it because there is no consensus on the issues.

[MooCow12]

I dislike how much dynamic has gone out of its way to hurt gimmicks, rolling a round start tot, you dont have nearly as much time as you used to in order to setup a gimmick without the round suddenly and arbitrarily ending because the last head of staff got off the station or because a space dragon pooped on the supermatter and now the shuttle is called because people dont want to set up solars (and if you recall as a tot you just get adminbused, like that guy who was trying to do final objective about 35 minutes into the round and the admins blew him up for it)

If content is to be locked behind the "standard 90 minute rounds" surely midround spawns should at least try to keep the higher impact stuff past the 1 hour mark.

[Capsandi]

I too shall obfuscate the source of the problems.

I didn't hear much complaining about dynamic b4 progtot happened.

[Itseasytosee2me]

The crew to antags ratio feels like its been off since the inception of dynamic. The theming feels all over the place, and it all just feels so unbalanced compared to old game modes. The prevalence of midround traitor sleeper agents also drive me mad, but its a little bit better now that they aren't prog tot.

Do you have any proof

I don't need proof to justify my personal experience playing the game. I didn't make any claims that weren't based on subjective opinion.

[Jacquerel]

it is kind of funny to back up oranges point though that there's two separate replies in this thread saying "dynamic is bad because it has stretched round length out" and "dynamic is bad because rounds are too short to do gimmicks"

[MooCow12]

Hes asking for proof that dynamic is driving you mad, do you have proof of insanity?

[MooCow12]

it is kind of funny to back up oranges point though that there's two separate replies in this thread saying "dynamic is bad because it has stretched round length out" and "dynamic is bad because rounds are too short to do gimmicks"

I dont believe for a second that the avg round is longer than 45 because every round i play on high pop ends at around 35 minutes (and this is not counting the 4ish minutes of the server setting up and actually starting)

[Not-Dorsidarf]

it is kind of funny to back up oranges point though that there's two separate replies in this thread saying "dynamic is bad because it has stretched round length out" and "dynamic is bad because rounds are too short to do gimmicks"

its almost like this is a thread asking for players personal thoughts and opinions, so individual anecdotes is most of what youre gonna get instead of data on "survival percentage compared to threat spent on X kinds of antags", which is the kinda stat analysis you just give atlantaned five bucks for.

"Different players cant agree if the rounds have become shorter or the rounds have become longer" is good feedback

[Jacquerel]

it is kind of funny to back up oranges point though that there's two separate replies in this thread saying "dynamic is bad because it has stretched round length out" and "dynamic is bad because rounds are too short to do gimmicks"

I dont believe for a second that the avg round is longer than 45 because every round i play on high pop ends at around 35 minutes (and this is not counting the 4ish minutes of the server setting up and actually starting)

wait nevermind i linked a graph here but i read it wrong this data is 5 months old lol
I'll see if I can dig up some stats for you

[MooCow12]

Although each server does go through a short period where its so lowpop that the rounds literally last 2 hours because either nobody is on or 1 or 2 are on.

[oranges]

it is kind of funny to back up oranges point though that there's two separate replies in this thread saying "dynamic is bad because it has stretched round length out" and "dynamic is bad because rounds are too short to do gimmicks"

its almost like this is a thread asking for players personal thoughts and opinions, so individual anecdotes is most of what youre gonna get instead of data on "survival percentage compared to threat spent on X kinds of antags", which is the kinda stat analysis you just give atlantaned five bucks for.

"Different players cant agree if the rounds have become shorter or the rounds have become longer" is good feedback

it's utterly useless because we know exactly how long rounds are and it's available to everyone to see https://moth.fans/data/round-lengths

[Jacquerel]

it's utterly useless because we know exactly how long rounds are and it's available to everyone to see https://moth.fans/data/round-lengths

thats what i was linking but it does say "last updated 2023-06-24"
unless that means "last time the page was updated manually" not "last time the page drew on data to automatically update these charts"

[datorangebottle]

Hes asking for proof that dynamic is driving you mad, do you have proof of insanity?

He can post here, that's legally admissible evidence.

[Constellado]

so.. if I get heretic roundstart...

Its special and its basically wizard because there is only one. (till they latejoin)

Oh jeez. I have the work cut out for me now.

Also my first reaction to that news: nooo heretic is harder to get It's going to be for sure a once a month antag for me for real!

[TheLoLSwat]

viewtopic.php?t=35296&view=unread#unread

This is rlly good and I think dynamic updates are important enough to warrant a discord channel too like policybus

[Indie-ana Jones]

Threat saturation is highly polarizing. I wish we could see that threat poll separated by server.

[Capsandi]

INB4 heretic influences get fucked with code side cause the design is all about causing conflict among heretics at roundstart and wasn't made for 1 heretic to have free reign to gobble up all of the free knowledge.

[MooCow12]

Threat saturation is highly polarizing. I wish we could see that threat poll separated by server.

I think its polarizing because before dynamic, solo antags were able to consistently spend most of the shift powergaming , subverting ai, etc to become unstoppable and then theyd roll over the server, and then now that we have dynamic other antags not only prevent that by messing up the station to begin with but also fill in that power vacuum that would be present simply by existing.

Some people and jobs will find that they are very good at dealing with different types of antags that dynamic has either uplifted or taken a peg down, security players inherently love beating tots/heretics/lings and expect / want there to be plenty of them for them to kill every round although dynamic fails at this and instead throws antags that they dont necessarily have the equipment to deal with unless they focus their efforts on them.

[Striders13]

INB4 heretic influences get fucked with code side cause the design is all about causing conflict among heretics at roundstart and wasn't made for 1 heretic to have free reign to gobble up all of the free knowledge.

number of influences spawned depends on number of heretics, so it actually makse the single heretic weaker cause all 3 influences will spawn in armory and permabrig

[saprasam]

INB4 heretic influences get fucked with code side cause the design is all about causing conflict among heretics at roundstart and wasn't made for 1 heretic to have free reign to gobble up all of the free knowledge.

if there's a single heretic roundstart only 4 of them actually spawn + they're all in random bum-ass spots

[knightlyeli]

Dynamic should also spawn single antag rounds.

Dynamic is fun, but shouldn't be the sole gamemode, I miss pure traitor or pure ling rounds.

This reminds me of a round on Manuel where mostly everyone on station was a Traitor, but barely anything happened because we were using our tot powers to get some major projects on station done. The shuttle is where everything just descended into complete chaos, becoming a mini thunderdome.

That being said, despite some of the fun, chaotic moments that can shift power really quick on hi-pop, I feel like it has its moments where things just completely slip into extremes and doing your job can be straight up impossible. I've had moments where I wanted to experiment with stuff cut short because the game decided now was the time to spawn a lone op or a space dragon. I'd be happier if we had a mix of both dynamic and other focused gamemodes, just so neither get stale. That's all I ask for.

[Indie-ana Jones]

Every round I play on Sybil is a snorefest. I want more threats more often.

[itsswagga]

they definitely fucked with the dynamic settings. terry rounds are a snoozefest. it wasn't like this when i played actively around ~Feb/March
I don't care if Manuelbabbies want comfy RP rounds but please turn up the dial on Terry.

Antags actually die on Terry, we have ruthless Sec players like Bradley who eat traitors for breakfast, and then the round turns into extended until a random event carp blows up the SM 2 hours later

[Constellado]

I miss playing heretic.

[TheLoLSwat]

Sybil had two green shifts in a row from 3 - 9 PM approx. it sucked so much ass

[CPTANT]

Sybil had two green shifts in a row from 3 - 9 PM approx. it sucked so much ass

The problem with greenshifts is that they can just take so damn long and only end when people reach a boredom threshold.

[Itseasytosee2me]

Might be cool to add a greenshift exclusive round end condition.

[warbluke]

Might be cool to add a greenshift exclusive round end condition.

Call in a big camera on a tripod from comms console and have the crew all gather for a picture and then the round ends.

[DATAxPUNGED]

I feel like we need more "crew" type antags (Antags which are mixed in with crew and have to disguise themselves as a normal person, like Tot, Heretic, Changeling, Paradox Clone) and less non-humanoid antags, like Dragon, Blob, Spiders. The former creates a bunch of interesting roleplay and experiences, ticks up the paranoia of our paranoia laden spess game, and are generally more interesting to interact with. The latter usually fucks up any kind of fun event the crew is doing at the time and devolves into a deathmatch.

[DATAxPUNGED]

Also, i always thought dynamic could borrow something from secret where it would have a "theme": It would prioritize one TYPE of antag instead of spreading itself thin, but not EXCLUSIVELY making that kind of antag.