Cult/Antag Practice Sleepers

[Floiven]

From observing and playing for a little while, the biggest hurdle and learning curve that I've seen for newer players including myself is "What the heck am I supposed to do now that I've been converted to a (insert cult) here?". Getting dragged away then expected to know how to accomplish your goal, while not wanting to let down your teammates tends to lead to hard feelings from both the converters and the converted towards each other. (Revolutionaries are self-explanatory, you just kinda get to do whatever and fuk da police).

Perhaps add sleepers for ghost roles on Reebe and another space ruin for clock cult and blood cultists during round that those don't spawn, similar to how you can practice building defenses now as a clock scarab? Adding a target dummy or a neutral NPC that you can toss spells at would be helpful as well, to get a feel for the spells. Obviously, restricting the teleportation/summoning spells so that they're confined to their spawning area would be needed.

This came to mind after playing through the ruined station, and noticing that it's an excellent primer in engineering, followed by some light combat against hostile mobs, as well as things like the lavaland roles giving time to practice a few different jobs. Maybe even a fight-club sorta deal like the thunderdome being available for ghosts to practice kicking the crap outta each other, so people don't spill their spaghetti (as much) from choosing not to engage in combat normally. I know there's a training ring of sorts at least on metastation, but I rarely see anyone near there other than using the holodeck, and when you're alive, you tend to have other priorities.

[Grazyn]

At the end of the day, the best testing environment is a private server. Everything else is covered in-game on a page in the slab/tome.

[Floiven]

At the end of the day, the best testing environment is a private server. Everything else is covered in-game on a page in the slab/tome.

This is true, and there's a lot I messed around with on my own on a compiled build, but I'm not sure the average player would want to or know how to do that. I might be wrong about this of course, seeing as just the fact that we're jumping through the hoops to play this on BYOND lends to a bit more patience with these sort of clients and diy-knowledge hunting.

Just having other people to shoot the shit with as you toss spells at each other or attempt to brain each other with weapons without worrying about the consequences of ruining the round for others is a large draw for me, as well. (I am aware how to host a server so that others can join it, here there are normally people sitting around in deadchat or more experienced players that I'd think would be willing to mess around and go over mechanics with people to pass the rest of the round time away doing something.)

[EagleWiz]

If everyone actually learned how to play cult halfway decently cults would always win and then they would have to get rid of cult altogether

fund it

[D&B]

read the fucking wiki

[Cobby]

Trial by fire is !FUN! and getting burned is part of the game.

[Floiven]

Trial by fire is !FUN! and getting burned is part of the game.

I agree, and I personally have fun running face first into things and ending up in hilarious situations because of it, but I see a lot of people raging in deadchat at others who don't know what they're doing, and the experience leaves them mostly just feeling like shit, or frustrated, and not wanting anything to do with the gamemode which I think they'd find fun if they did have some stress-free way to mess around with the mechanics. That's the perspective I'm coming from here.