Team antags and doing your job

[kinnebian]

Recently, I've been confused on whether or not it is allowed to ignore your team antag status and continue to just do your job.
In this thread, multiple admins encourage it.
However, this ban included punishment for it, afaik.

Please clarify!

[sinfulbliss]

I think it's sort of a "don't ask, don't tell" kind of thing. If you get converted and go back to doing your job no one's going to ban you. In Crag's case he was just so openly forward about not contributing that it probably pissed off the admin into creating a ban for it.

It'll be a really annoying thing to enforce people not contributing. Some people are bad at combat, some people are newer, maybe they're just not feeling like going full gamer mode, maybe they were working on a big project for an hour and don't want to abandon it. What if they're trying to be stealthy and don't want to get caught and out their team? Is there even a meaningful way of differentiating that from "not contributing"? It's way worse to have some rev or cultie get caught by sec and out their team in 5 minutes than to do nothing the whole round.

[Vekter]

I'm still firmly on the side of "If you don't want to play a conversion antag, you should ask for a job ban from that antag". There's no reason not to.

[vect0r]

I'm still firmly on the side of "If you don't want to play a conversion antag, you should ask for a job ban from that antag". There's no reason not to.

If I’m not mistaken you get ghosted, and “not being able to play the game” seems like a reason to me.

[DaydreamIQ]

Revs seems to be the one that suffers the most from this because its a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. At least with cult you get an arsenal of new spells and equipment to play with, but as a revolutionary you're just...forced to tide. Which leads to a lot of people straight up ignoring it in favour of letting other people fight on their behalf cause if they let themselves get mindshielded they'll be killed anyways.

[Higgin]

I'm still firmly on the side of "If you don't want to play a conversion antag, you should ask for a job ban from that antag". There's no reason not to.

If I’m not mistaken you get ghosted, and “not being able to play the game” seems like a reason to me.

It's as much preventing you from playing the game as getting killed by anything else - which we consider fine and acceptable table stakes even if we try to mitigate it through ghost roles and midrounds that bring you back in.

Take it from the other side for a second: converting people exposes you to risk. It requires spending time and effort to do, even if not much, and it therefore asks you to make a decision about "is this going to be worth it?" when you do it.

The answer to that question should not be "no, because this particular person is going to drag feet at best." If you don't want to play the antag, full stop, everybody wins or at least saves time by you being force-ghosted and the option handed back over to somebody who does.

Round-ending conversion antags like rev are totalizing. If you set out to avoid playing them by basically no-selling a conversion and acting just like you did before, you are choosing to not play the game. You're also putting the converter in an unfair position, or one that depends on metaknowledge of how players, not characters, will respond.

Part of it being a sandbox is that it's okay for not everyone to be playing the same game. Thankfully revving people is quick and cheap enough that you don't notice as often, or you're less likely to be fucked over, when somebody refuses to be an active part of conversion antag red rover.

Still, we'd be better off if everyone who gets grabbed wants to play that game too, so getting ghosted and replaced (since the mode was likely to disrupt or end whatever you were focused on anyway) is a better outcome best achieved by asking for a ban.

[Vekter]

This is honestly going to be one of those situations where there's not going to be a simple solution that makes everyone happy. The options seem to be either:

1) Expect players to contribute in some fashion after they've been converted and ask those who outright refuse to interact with conversion antags to request a ban from them, in which case they will basically be round removed if converted and replaced with a ghost.

2) Allow players to not interact with conversion antags even after being converted, which is an obvious issue for the antags themselves as they are expecting to get a cooperative convert and not someone who's just going to blow them off and go back to doing their job.

If anyone has any other suggestions, by all means, but at the end of the day, I feel like this isn't going to sit right with everyone.

Personally, I see 1 as the best choice as it inconveniences the smallest number of people and makes more sense in the flow of the round in general, but I doubt everyone will share my opinion.

[sinfulbliss]

What exactly is defined as contributing or interacting with their conversion antag? Are rev converts forced to attack sec and command? Break shit? What do cult converts have to do as the bare minimum? Convert people? At what point is the line drawn that they’re “not contributing?”

Not only is it an insanely arbitrary line to draw, I genuinely cannot envision an admin bwoinking someone for this. Could you imagine… “Hey, why are you setting up solars as a cultist engineer? You need to contribute.”

Simply existing as a member of the team is a form of contribution, ESPECIALLY for cult since they need a certain number to summon, but also for revs since even people who don’t contribute know not to harm other revs. It’s a sort of immunity you’re building to crewmembers who otherwise might become hostile to you.

[Higgin]

...

The rationale for #2 (they don't want it, so they shouldn't have to follow it in order to play the game) opens a lot of doors around asking whether or not people can ignore brainwashing, silicons can ignore or opt out of nonstandard lawsets after changes, etc.

Losing agency over your overall goals and allegiance is a tricky thing in games - players naturally bristle and rebel against it if they feel like they're losing a choice they would have made otherwise or have been shoehorned into a bad position (i.e. getting brainwashed and told to go maxcap the captain, getting revved just as sec is getting mindshields and lasers and killing the second-to-last headrev.)

It might be better to ask how being put in those positions can be made more rewarding, but a lot of it is also just on setting expectations that it might happen and is a part of the game - a self-ban and swapping the role over to somebody else avoids giving the converter unreasonable expectations to deal with.

[Higgin]

What exactly is defined as contributing or interacting with their conversion antag? [...]

It's hard to sus out, and you made that point very well up top - we're in sort of a DADT state right now where if you're not actively harming your own side, it's hard to punish anyone for malingering.

Personally, I'd look for some change from the behaviors previously if they can't be extended to helping out your team. Being a warm body isn't uniformly beneficial for cult or revs - getting eyes/halos are big tells, and its function as a way of telegraphing the cult's advance* relies on the cult also becoming more powerful and more of a threat by the time that they do.

People doing their projects in chemistry, xenobio, atmos, or the library do not necessarily help their team by just existing. If they don't translate that project or behavior into helping their team, it may remove potential enemies for the team antag, sure - but were they ever going to be enemies anyway?

If you really just don't want to do it, giving it to somebody else is better.

[Cobby]

I can understand intentionally sandbagging your team by passively resisting as a nono, but you also have to keep in mind the antagonist doesnt necessarily have the full information to deduce "Someone needs to help me convert at dorms" means THEY need to immediately go to dorms or if the other guys got it covered.

Revs are a big offender because the expectation is the heads are converting aggressively enough to where you dont need to help.

Outright refusing to help or admitting your sandbagging should obviously be disallowed, but the tricky part to enforce would be people passively sandbagging.

High level, as long as these methods that force you into doing something else than your intended plans exist in the game, you should follow along or have someone play for you that will.

[Sightld2]

However, this ban included punishment for it, afaik.

Please clarify!

It does not. That sentence is providing context. It factored into the conversion antag ban, but I lifted that on request. This ban was about OOC in IC. Saying “admins” in character. The note history it relied upon, were entirely limited to OOC IC or IC OOC.

[CMDR_Gungnir]

I'm still firmly on the side of "If you don't want to play a conversion antag, you should ask for a job ban from that antag". There's no reason not to.

I'm against people just outright refusing to help (though going back to your job until Shit Hits The Fan and then doing your job on the side of your team, is perfectly fine, sleeper agents are Good Actually and not everyone has to fight) but I also fundamentally disagree with "there's no reason not to"

Being instantly round-removed by a Flash is a fantastic reason not to, and having some mouthbreather from deadchat take over your character is just a cherry on top.

And just in case of "But if you don't want to play the mode, being roundremoved isn't that bad" you can still do stuff until shit hits the fan, the revolution/cult might Lose, you could get Deconverted. None of those bring you back if you get ghosted from the job ban.

[LiarGG]

I feel like the note is poorly structured. The way it reads is that the ban was for not contributing, cause that's how the note starts off. Framing it as "was Ock ICking after not contributing" would make more sense than "Was not contributing, which led to Ock Icking".

For why people don't like conversion antag bans? Being insta RRed by a single flash by a revhead is not fun. As much as it can be somewhat fun to have high stakes slapped to the gamemode, where you are very strongly compelled to fight or hide, cause you only have one life. Earlygame where you have no real prep can just pose a shit way to die.

As for what to do when you are converted. Quoting the rule "Team antagonists can do whatever they want as per lone antagonists, as long as it doesn’t harm their team." On revs I am completelly fine if this was just "if you are an MD, just heal revs and don't heal sec and heads." Not contributing is pretty whatever in most cases. For cult? botomline if there is a fellow cultist dragging someone to a conversion rune and you are the only one around, you stand next to the rune. I am fine with you fucking off the base and doing your own stuff afterwards, just don't do some dumb shit where you sandbag the team by blowing the cover for no reason.
I would still slap people who suicide on these rounds tho. If you don't wish to participate in the round as a whole, just ahelp it and we will fill the body with someone who does. Actually ruining the effort of whoever converted you is just being an asshole imo.

I am a big rule 4 person and I very much like the idea of tot having as much freedom as possible, that includes team ones as well. If you want to do nothing for the whole round as an antag, I think it's lame, but I think you should not be pressured to do antag stuff. Bottom line for cult - stand on the final rune. For revs - don't help security and heads. Otherwise don't intentionally blow the cover and you are cool in my book.

[sinfulbliss]

If you really just don't want to do it, giving it to somebody else is better.

you should follow along or have someone play for you that will.

just ahelp it and we will fill the body with someone who does.

I have a very big issue with this line of reasoning, namely because I once made the mistake of offering my body up one (1) time. The player pretended to be a pedophile with my name in dchat thereafter. Lukas also mentioned similar,

ages ago now someone had to go, got offered to ghosts and the ghost now in their body said a bunch of freaky shit to me...asked them recently and found out it wasnt them.[...]thought they were a freak for a good year

Now before the onslaught of "ahelp it!" and "that is an administrative issue" gets mentioned, consider the fact the player getting banned doesn't undo what they say and do as your character. That is a reflection of your character and by extension, the player behind the character. If your character starts doing cringey suspicious shit, people will assume that is you doing that as your character.

This is ignoring the fact that often times admins aren't online, it may take a few hours for supportmins to respond, etc. So this should not be suggested as a solution, people should never be forced to just let someone play as their character. It was mentioned admins can randomize your appearance. I'm not sure this is standard practice; I think it's rare. Requiring this request on-top of ahelping is also requiring way too much from a player who simply wants to close the game or grow weed.

A ruling like this is essentially forcing people to play the game, and makes it rulebreaking for someone to do something as innocuous as growing weed or working on the SM. That is a very railroaded and strict requirement that ignores the fact this is a game people play for fun.

I have never found it an issue that my converts didn't do anything, even as cult. It comes with the territory - some converts will be awesome and productive, some will be interns, other will just chill at the base, some may just continue doing their jobs. I don't care, I'm getting more every few minutes at least, it's really not harming your team.

[LiarGG]

Gonna reply in regards to my post cause I was tagged.

just ahelp it and we will fill the body with someone who does.

Understandable concerns.

What I was talking about specifically was people wordlessly ghosting out or suiciding, not the antag ban. The concept of "ahelp and we will get a willing player" is predicated by and admin being present and if the person who wants to tag out in this ahelp say "oh ye and change my name, I am concerned about people being dodgy with it", I would just do it. It's not standard practice, but if it's requested, imma take that concern seriously.

Now for the antag ban, as much as it's shit to have your likeness handed to someone else, it's also predicated on the person having an antag ban = doing something that's been deemed shit enough so that they should rather be replaced with someone else if they gain that specific antag. Now if the proposed solution to this was that when you get yeeted out of your body on a conversion, your name/body is also randomized - I would prolly support this. It ruins immersion in the moment for people around, but people can also be assholes and in this case, admins actually don't have to be around. And even if that person was rule 1 slammed for being an asshole, the damage could've already been done. At the same time, it's gonna ruin the immersion of people around and it can be argued that it's not worth it for someone who's done stuff to actually warrant an antag ban.
Still lean towards scramble being better, but I would hope there is actually some smart way to handle this.

With your other points I don't necessarily disagree, again, I like antags having more freedom.

[Indie-ana Jones]

What if we made the antag ban player swap change your name or something?

[blackdav123]

What if we made the antag ban player swap change your name or something?

"sec check crew manifest for a culty mcantaggins please, looks exactly like our bartender"

[Indie-ana Jones]

Ok, how about name and appearance?

[Vekter]

I will say that if you're that concerned about your character's identity, just ask when you get swapped out and I'll change your name. I have zero issue doing it.

E: I wonder how difficult it would be to have it so you could choose for your name to be overwritten if a ghost takes over... I'll ask coderbus.

[Itseasytosee2me]

I don't know how you would even BEGIN to to justify having the game automatically reroll your character once a ghost takes over from an RP standpoint. I don't think even we have such an egregious miscarriage of verisimilitude as something like that.
If you even attempted to put any in character context to that process it would be the dumbest excuse since "sleep space disorder"

[Cobby]

your post

I mean I understand the fear but like we have people who get replaced already and their stand in doesnt diddle space kids or whatever. Your situation is an anomaly and one not exclusive to your character being offered to ghosts. A simple voice changer could largely replicate that problem, and we have had thousands of rounds where neither this item or the ghost replacement tool ruins people's character.

We have an entire antagonist built around ruining the sanctity of your character, Changeling. We have items that can make it appear as if your character is performing the actions, such as a chamkit/agentid/voicechanger. These items/antags have been present since I started playing around in 2013-14 without issue.

[Shadowflame909]

I don't know how you would even BEGIN to to justify having the game automatically reroll your character once a ghost takes over from an RP standpoint. I don't think even we have such an egregious miscarriage of verisimilitude as something like that.
If you even attempted to put any in character context to that process it would be the dumbest excuse since "sleep space disorder"

Becoming an antag gave them an Identity Disorder

[sinfulbliss]

I mean I understand the fear but like we have people who get replaced already and their stand in doesnt diddle space kids or whatever. Your situation is an anomaly and one not exclusive to your character being offered to ghosts. A simple voice changer could largely replicate that problem, and we have had thousands of rounds where neither this item or the ghost replacement tool ruins people's character.

It may be an anomaly but it doesn’t change the fact it happens and is a risk you would now be forced into taking due to potential policy. I also don’t think it’s rare enough to be deemed invalid since Lukas also mentioned this happening, and that sample size alone of the few players that actually post here is enough to show it as a valid concern.

We have an entire antagonist built around ruining the sanctity of your character, Changeling. We have items that can make it appear as if your character is performing the actions, such as a chamkit/agentid/voicechanger. These items/antags have been present since I started playing around in 2013-14 without issue.

… Except these are all antagonists. Most of which exist while you’re also in the round, have various tells or roundend disclosures, and usually a court of ghosts around establishing who they are in the peanut gallery. And probably one of those ghosts is you yourself, unless you’re still in the round — in which case the disguise is kind of a moot point.

That’s far different from taking someone’s ckey and sticking it into your character. It’s really not some petty thing like the “sanctity of your character” either, it’s allowing someone to play your character and by extension larp as your ckey in a way no one could figure out except by searching the logs of scrubby.

[WineAllWine]

Guys this is a really weird feeling: I completely agree with everything sinful has said in this thread

[TheLoLSwat]

Other than pulling a crag, how would an admin even be able to tell if you’re “not contributing”. I think that’s a much more important discussion that a hypothetical antag ban.

Something like indiscriminate murder in public which gets your entire team revealed is still “contributing”, even if you plummet your teams chances. Going back to your job can be “contributing” unless you pull a crag and denounce your team.

I think the rule is the way it is now because how the hell do you codify “contribute to your team” in a sandbox game in an enforceable way?

[Vekter]

E: I wonder how difficult it would be to have it so you could choose for your name to be overwritten if a ghost takes over... I'll ask coderbus.

Update on this, at least one maintainer is against the idea because it'll muddle things like Changelings taking someone's identity or Traitors impersonating others. This is going to have to be something we solve administratively.

I think it might just be a matter of people learning to live with the fact that you'll either have to help the funny conversion antags sometimes or deal with someone having control over your static for a little while.

Other than pulling a crag, how would an admin even be able to tell if you’re “not contributing”. I think that’s a much more important discussion that a hypothetical antag ban.

Something like indiscriminate murder in public which gets your entire team revealed is still “contributing”, even if you plummet your teams chances. Going back to your job can be “contributing” unless you pull a crag and denounce your team.

I think the rule is the way it is now because how the hell do you codify “contribute to your team” in a sandbox game in an enforceable way?

This is probably my biggest issue with the matter in general. It's not really enforceable because we basically have to figure out how to enforce competency. The only thing we could really objectively say is not helping is either going AFK/SSD or doing something that completely tanks their chances of winning, which is already covered under rule 4. Unless someone is dumb enough to just outright tell the person who converted them to fuck off and that they're not helping, we can't realistically enforce it.

[Boot]

I'm still firmly on the side of "If you don't want to play a conversion antag, you should ask for a job ban from that antag". There's no reason not to.

I'm actually really confused by this because you were one of the admins in the other thread saying

I can't speak for other admins, but I would not punish someone who got converted and just went back to doing their job like nothing happened.

The only difference I can really see is one guy is being open about it and the other side is just wordlessly ignoring the antag status.

[Vekter]

I'm still firmly on the side of "If you don't want to play a conversion antag, you should ask for a job ban from that antag". There's no reason not to.

I'm actually really confused by this because you were one of the admins in the other thread saying

I can't speak for other admins, but I would not punish someone who got converted and just went back to doing their job like nothing happened.

The only difference I can really see is one guy is being open about it and the other side is just wordlessly ignoring the antag status.

Okay? Those aren't conflicting opinions, nor is that relevant to the discussion here. I still think people should request an antag ban if they don't want to play it, but if someone doesn't want to do that and instead would rather just do their job for the time being, either because they don't feel like participating or they can't meaningfully contribute at the time, I'm not going to punish them unless they're being dicks about it.

[kieth4]

I think the biggest issue is just how you notice this. I guess you've gotta ahelp then make sure it isn't a skill issue/ w/e I cannot imagine realistically enforcing this esp when we have some giga npc players like sinfulbliss. I think his contribution could be mistaken for doing nothing (he is noob and sucks)

Let's say we have 5 ppl doing their jobs after they can just lie and say yeah I'm waiting for the rest to go loud. Very tricky

[BrianBackslide]

What if I'm a botanist that got revved, I go back to grow warcrimes, and by the time my warcrimes are ready the revolution's over because revheads all got killed doing dumb stuff. Am I not contributing? Technically I did absolutely nothing to aid the revolution's cause.

[Higgin]

It might be said that rather than making it a point of policy, outside of obvious sabotage or spoiler behavior covered elsewhere, the best outcome is people who know they don't want to play a conversion antag coming forward when they know to either get banned from it or to hand it off.

As far as the concerns about putting your identity on the line by handing it off to another player, there's nothing sacrosanct about it - we allow voice changers, changelings, comms agents, and now with the advanced plastic surgery that too - so I don't make too much of a fuss about that. If it's abused to try to really smear somebody OOCly or bait a ban, I imagine that would be a pretty quick Rule 1 violation and easily ruled-out in logs - but so many of the consequences of statics are quiet and opaque, there is no avoiding some possibility of blowback.

[Vekter]

It might be said that rather than making it a point of policy, outside of obvious sabotage or spoiler behavior covered elsewhere, the best outcome is people who know they don't want to play a conversion antag coming forward when they know to either get banned from it or to hand it off.

As far as the concerns about putting your identity on the line by handing it off to another player, there's nothing sacrosanct about it - we allow voice changers, changelings, comms agents, and now with the advanced plastic surgery that too - so I don't make too much of a fuss about that. If it's abused to try to really smear somebody OOCly or bait a ban, I imagine that would be a pretty quick Rule 1 violation and easily ruled-out in logs - but so many of the consequences of statics are quiet and opaque, there is no avoiding some possibility of blowback.

I think this is something that people are forgetting about - if you're really that concerned that someone takes your name and says something shitty, it can be proven via logs that it wasn't you.

[kieth4]

I used to care about my static but I don't really anymore, so I see where the people are coming from but at the same time just detach bro. It doesn't matter.

People regardless of everything shouldn't really link ic behaviour with ooc unless it's super consistent. Some of my friends roleplay assholes and people INSTANTLY assume they are ooc assholes and will bring this up in most conversations.

We're an rp game where you can't rp anything other than the norm becuz you get flamed ooc. *smokes stoicly* and that's an actual issue with the tg society.

I'm not even sure how to fix that, but look at how people react when their static is changed (mass suicide) look at how people react when ling stung (suicide/disengagement) people don't ghost (suicide instead) the random name smite (mass suicide)

This seems to be the biggest barrier to cult banning people but I don't think it's one you can solve. In a community that struggles to roleplay and detach reality from the game why would you take a risk and get ooc consequences? (Unless you're past the point of caring but that's a point at the end of a long road for most)

[TheBibleMelts]

Ghosting out, going AFK, suiciding, or logging off when converted to a team antagonist position can result in warnings from an admin; extending to bans for repeated behaviour from an individual. This also extends to when Command/Security mindshield implanting an individual to their side in said modes. At most within team antagonist, it is expected players to not maliciously harm their team's progress and assist if they are able to the best of their abilities.

already have a precedent for this.

help your team when you're converted within your abilities, this is part of the whole good-faith contract that we all have to try and follow, or the game flat out stops functioning.

if you don't want to be a team role, request a ban, or request someone take over your mob. it's totally reasonable to ask that your name be changed as well.

[Vekter]

I really do think it's a matter of good faith. If we know a player's doing what they can to get shit done for the cause, even if it's something small, most admins won't bat an eyelash if they're not actively trying to convert or killing members of command. There's things you can do to help that don't involve actively participating, like Cargo ordering guns and breaking open crates, or Botany growing grenades or gatfruit, Chemistry making explosives or drugs, etc.

[Boot]

At the end of the day is Robust Mctider gets converted and decides to grow weed instead of playing cultist they aren't assisting to the best of their ability. If as some admins have said in this chat that they're only going to enforce the rule if they're being a dick about then just remove this section entirely as rule 1 already exists.

[TheBibleMelts]

At the end of the day is Robust Mctider gets converted and decides to grow weed instead of playing cultist they aren't assisting to the best of their ability. If as some admins have said in this chat that they're only going to enforce the rule if they're being a dick about then just remove this section entirely as rule 1 already exists.

i'd remove every rule except for rule 1 if it were possible, but there's a reason that things have to be specified sometimes. fortunately this was already specified in the rules, so this thread seems a little redundant.

[TheBibleMelts]

sticking with this ruling, where converted players are expected to assist their team to the best of their abilities.

Ghosting out, going AFK, suiciding, or logging off when converted to a team antagonist position can result in warnings from an admin; extending to bans for repeated behaviour from an individual. This also extends to when Command/Security mindshield implanting an individual to their side in said modes. At most within team antagonist, it is expected players to not maliciously harm their team's progress and assist if they are able to the best of their abilities.

chesh - uphold ruling
fikou - uphold ruling