Cult word alternatives

[Xhuis]

I'm currently working on a rework of cult, and I've been told by many people that they dislike the research system and arbitrary words that block progress of runes. So, tell me: what would you like to see instead?

[invisty]

Thats a very broad question youre asking. What are your designs for the revised cult?

The problem with words is that they represent minimal power gain for the cult compared to aggression and mass conversion. Reward the cult for the meaningful things they do, and empower them accordingly with some sort of scoring & spell power system where they start off with subtle stealthy magicks, but the more things they achieve, the more "easy, overt" options become available to them.

Remove tomes. Theyve never been a good feature and their only value is as a robusting tool.

[Xhuis]

-snippity-

I'm not sure what direction to take with revised cult, which is why I'm asking the playerbase what they want. As for a power system, I've been thinking about this idea for some time and I might go through with it.

[Falamazeer]

It should all start with sacrifice. I propose when dropping a sacrifice rune a popup menu akin to the changelings transform ability appears with all the words, and you write the sacrifice rune that will provide you with the word you selected being translated for you upon someone being gibbed over it.

Allow all cultist the words required for sacrifice, but not for conversion, meaning the ability to unlock conversion would have to be payed for in blood, either through traditional experimentation, or sacrificing crewmembers.

Remove forced reliance on incompetent team-mates. Conversion should be do-able by one cultist, and sacrifice should be doable by one cultist, primary word discovery should be via sacrifice, thus giving doubt to those who suspect cult and conveniently stand around crowds hoping to become an antagonist, as they dunno if the cultists wants your for an ally or a word, or even if they have conversion figured out yet.

Remove the tome and run the whole thing through commands like the changeling tab. Require something sharp to be in hand to draw runes, such as a knife, glass shard, hatchet, fireaxe, etc etc then you don't have to beg for a tome when you are converted late.

The bits where you set your proper words in your tome should be a button called define words. and as you define things, more of the spells pop up, and of course, just like the tome getting words wrong leads to failure.

Experimentation to discover words would still possible under duress, but this makes the game mode faster paced, and less reliant on some vague idea of teamwork that the server has proven it cannot muster up consistently.

[Xhuis]

I probably will not do sacrifice-reliant cult.
Conversions will likely have a method for converting with only one person.
Tomes are staying, and will have expanded functionality. I may give cultists the ability to draw a rune in their own blood to summon a tome, similar to the emergency communication.

[Falamazeer]

That sounds perfectly acceptable.
Any step back from overreliance on disinterested teamates is a good step.
And if conversion gets past that hurdle perhaps with more cultists the team based spells will be more prevalent.

Thanks for trying to fix it, cult has a lot of potential for fun, and I'd hate to see it go the way of the monkey or the nations.


Another thought for you to consider would be bloodbags, if you want to keep word experimentation and the tomes a nifty idea might be to allow cults to pay for their runes with bloodbags should they have some on hand. Just seems culty.

[Amelius]

Honestly, as-is the system is fine, it just needs to be a bit more transparent, and the papers need to have some sort of way of telling what they are. I don't know how many times I've had no fucking clue which was an EMP or stun talisman until I actually used it.

Also, papers should basically be free to use for low-cost spells. For instance, reveal / hide on papers cost you quite a bit of health, and they make it feasible to stunpaper someone and return to your cult base, or leaving runes around safely, while reactivating them with feasible speed.

There's alot of potential in CURRENT cult for magick schenanigans, but most people are, retarded, and it's always impossible to get multiple people around runes for defense, i.e. blood boil which I see used maybe once every year. Also, conversion is invariably fucked, because there's always that-one-asshole that either won't get on the rune, runs around in the hallway with cult shit, or stunpapers people in front of the entire security force AND brings them to the hideout.

To be honest, I'd rather it constructed not for the lowest-possible-denominator, generally speaking, and to maintain viability to go solo with it, as we can now with constructs (which are also retarded because every single time there's a jugg that ALWAYS destroys all the walls in proximity to space, attacks it's master, or runs into the hallway and dies while alerting the crew to a cult presence). There should be a fairly hefty learning curve to it, and plenty of room for utility, kinda like what we have going now, but less obscure and costly. Also, fuck this three-people-around-a-rune thing for conversion, if you're going to force that type of thing, at least make it do scaling amounts of damage to you (e.g. 40 brute with two, and 0 with three) so you CAN convert, despite retards, at a cost. (Three people is unmanageable, two is reasonable).

I mean, most cult rounds I have multiple people listing the fucking starting words, or asking someone to sac to do research or something really really stupid that hasn't been ever necessary, or ought to be. As a result, I play most cult rounds solo (construct cultist), since invariably whenever I try to get a team going of 3 or so people, either no one stands around the rune, or after a couple successful stunpapers and conversions, one retard convertee or core cultist stuns/cuffs an officer without removing their headset or something equally stupid and ruins everything by luring the entire station to our position, which is beyond infuriating when your entire success is agnostic on your own performance, but rather 100% reliant on other people not doing stupid shit, when they ALWAYS do. So, as stupid as it sounds, if you're competent, providing as little information to your fellow cultists as possible, sans words, can only help, not hinder you. Constructs are equally infuriating, and honestly, I've started taking to not building a single construct sans an artificer until I have 5+ souls on-hand because it's impossible to trust anyone to not be a total retard, or, ignoring that entirely by making a trillion papers of various kinds.

I mean, look at bleb. Despite the gigantic blurb at the start, how often do you see blebs not build resource/fac nodes, or not build them near nodes? Probably half the time, and so how can you trust someone who can't even read the very very basic information on an antag they've never played to not fuck up in a massive way in a team setting that requires any level of knowledge beyond 'go whack stuff'?

That said, there's a ton of value in at least one gamemode being markedly complex (but not meaninglessly so), at least at the level cult currently is. It adds depth, variety in strategy, possible viability to escape no-win situations with Batman-level preparedness or creativity, makes the meta murkier, etc.

FYI, this is why gang is such a hit - you get converted? Well, go whack people who aren't unless you're one of the few leaders. It's also why many of the gang leaders fluke because so many cannot perform at a level that requires actual reading comprehension or thought beyond 'stab people with pen!', if even that.

Yes, I'm on my period, and yes I'm :salt:y.

[Atticat]

maybe make a way tomes can be disguised?

[Pybro]

I'd say you should worry about what niche the cult fills before you go off on just generally improving everything. Not that that's bad at all, but quality of life changes are different from a rework.

The traitor is the standard "stealthy bad guys". Revs are a seething mass. The AI is the station turning against you. Flu Cops are highly armed highly dangerous explosive intruders. So what is cult? Are they a construct factory? Do they take and hold territory? Are they rev with magic? What exactly do you want cult to DO as a whole?

[Bombadil]

I'd really like to see Blood Spirits.

As in you can using a rune convert a body/multiple bodies or soulstones into one monstrosity capable of draining blood from a person with magical abilities. It slowly hemorraghes its own blood to sustain its true Master. Nar'sie(Praise Be) and must replenish itself off the mortals. It sucks up blood like a vacuum cleaner to replenish itself. Its blood stat has no limit but its abilities require you use blood.


Abilities:
Hermorraghe: With this touch attack the spirit instantly bursts and ruptures blood vessels in the touched living being causing massive bleed damage.
Ethereal Jaunt: The Blood Spirit is composed of both blood and Aether allowing it to jaunt into astral space to rematerialize elsewhere.(Normal Ethereal Jaunt)
Blood Drain: Target must be still the spirit begins draining the target of all blood this can be used on corpses. If used on a living being upon all their blood being taken the human dies painfully.
Fear: The grotesque form of the blood spirit can cause someone to paralyze when its gaze is focused upon a human.

Has 15 damage melee attacks.

It is composed of blood in a humanoid figure faces of those who were made in its creation can be seen in the blood it is composed of... the faces stuck in an eternal scream