Fixing Rev

[paprika]

Rev can be simultaneously fun as hell (when you get decently balanced fights between revolutionaries and security) but also extremely terrible (one head of staff killed in 30 seconds) so I have a solution that might fix rev.

If revolution was on a delay (as in, rev heads were chosen from a pool of players still alive) after 5-10 minutes into the round it would remove the game mode from the roundstart rush and make it so you couldn't flash all 15 greyshirts in tech storage at roundstart as a rev head. Converting people would be much harder because security would already have their pants on, and you wouldn't have such an easy time overwhelming everyone with sheer numbers due to sanic (this is especially the case on NT atm).

Rev is rare because of this and it really shouldn't be, it has the potential to be a great game mode when it's not awful 5 second round crap. This is currently the only gamemode (with the exception of the wizard suiciding) that has the potential to be over extremely quickly can drain the server of players because after setting up sci/robo/engine/etc and having the round suddenly end can be funny the first time but it's a joke that gets old extremely fast.

So please, add a delay to revhead picking that's at LEAST 5-10 minutes into the round to avoid the speed run shit that kills the server and is generally anti-fun.

[Lovecraft]

Hypothetically, how would the flash appear on the chosen head?
In the pocket, or if the pocket's full, in the first open slot on person?
Just wondering. I think it sounds interesting.

[Kavaloosh]

hypothetically i can light you on fire

[paprika]

Honestly it'd probably work better if the rev converting didn't use a flash. If you find a greyshirt with a flash that flashed a ton of people at roundstart fnr and the flash at the sec checkpoint is still there he's a rev head and you're going to loyalty implant him to check. Why not change it so it says:

You are a rev head! (yadda yadda)
Say *scream to summon your flash into your active hand!

etc.

[Incomptinence]

It is okay for a antagonist to be simple and strong.

Maybe better scaling between rev heads and starting heads should be a thing but not every antag should be beaten by dumb luck or game mechanics before you even lay eyes on them.

[Tokiko2]

The delay is a really good idea. So many heads of staff overwhelmed simply because they were too busy gearing up.

[bandit]

This is... actually a fantastic idea. Gets rid of:

- Overwhelming numbers within two minutes of roundstart, AS WELL AS
- Idiot revs whipping it out too quick and the rev getting fucked early on because of one guy

That said 15 minutes might be a bit long. Something like blob's timer might work better.

[Lo6a4evskiy]

It's not gonna fix rev, but it's gonna be a nice improvement.

Examples of other problems that rev has:
- Instant conversions that require no effort or resources (yeah yeah, flashes can burn out, but they are also extremely common and easy to get)
- Absolutely no way to detect it apart from arbitrary "acting like antagonist" (so much from brainwashing). Game mode practically makes metagaming the only way to play it. If you see that a person has a flash, they must be revhead (it's a good bet), even though flash is pretty common, if you see them doing something normally against the rules, they must be revolutionary. That's pretty lame way of doing things.

Replace the damn flash with something else. Persuader from SYNDICATE, alien parasite thing from Star Trek, whatever. Add a cooldown to it. I'm not sure how to tackle instant conversions, because restraining people can be quite challenging, but limiting conversions should absolutely be the case. Add some way to detect it, for example via health analyzers or some blood test or whatever.

[MisterPerson]

There's already a test for revolutionary status: Loyalty implants.

Keep in mind that if there's a special, rev-only item that converts people, a rev-head caught with it is fucked. The entire point of using flashes is exactly to counter that meta. It doesn't work because now people just meta flashes, but replacing flashes with another item won't change anything about the meta.

I have my own ideas about rev and how it should be that involve removing the conversion aspect, but I'll save those for another thread. I actually like the OP's suggestion with the current state of things. As to giving them a flash, I think it'd be fair to not give them one at all and demand they acquire one on their own. This may require placing more flashes around but that's ok.

[Steelpoint]

The biggest problem I have with Rev is that it forces Security to metagame in order to figure out its Rev's they are dealing with a lot of the time.

Round after round when I'm in Security and we defeat the Rev's, we get blasted time and time again by people calling us out for metagaming, along the lines of us discerning the Mime/Assistant/Whoever for having a flash in their backpack or something to that effect. It gets old, and I don't like the same argument always popping up.

But this idea is good, in many cases I find fellow Heads of Staff dead before they have even finished suiting up for the round, its a shitty way to die two minutes into the round and its not really fun.

[miggles]

but I'll save those for another thread.

why this is a thread about making rev good

[Lovecraft]

Rev is good though
50% of the time

[Steelpoint]

To give some context to the situation.

Rev has a 64% win rate (For the Revs) on Sybil, and a 83% win rate on Artyom.

Looking further, on Sybil for now. When comparing it to the population of the server, the win rate is at 80% if the population is between 20-29 people, the win rate hovers well over the 50% marker for any other population number, ranging from 75%(49-49) to 50%(70-79)

For the round duration success rate, rounds that last between 0-10 minutes have a 100% win rate for the Revs, 10-20 minutes is at a 80% win rate. The remaining numbers hover at around 60-66% with the only notable outliner being a 25% rate on 60-70(1 round only) and a 0% rate on 90-100(2 rounds only).

TL;DR
Win Rate: 64%
Pop Less Than 30: 80% win rate
Round Time 0-10 minutes: 100% win rate

However

Population between 30-80: 61% win rate
Round Time 20-60 minutes: Around 63% win rate

[Lo6a4evskiy]

Does rev even scale number of revheads with population?

[Facundo]

I like Paprika's Idea and would love to hear what Mister has to say

[Malkevin]

The biggest problem I have with Rev is that it forces Security to metagame in order to figure out its Rev's they are dealing with a lot of the time.

Round after round when I'm in Security and we defeat the Rev's, we get blasted time and time again by people calling us out for metagaming, along the lines of us discerning the Mime/Assistant/Whoever for having a flash in their backpack or something to that effect. It gets old, and I don't like the same argument always popping up.

But this idea is good, in many cases I find fellow Heads of Staff dead before they have even finished suiting up for the round, its a shitty way to die two minutes into the round and its not really fun.

That's because the player base right now are giant fucking cry babies that tick the antag options because they think it gives them some god given right to cause grief with no blow back, instead of ticking it because they want to cause rounds to be !!FUN!! at the risk of getting brutally murdered and their corpse spaced forever.


Anyway, I do like the idea of rev heads having to find their own flashes and also the delayed start.
I do think we should return rev head uplinks as well though, possibly with a lowered number of telecrystals, I want to see a rev head convert someone and hand them revolver and tell them to assassinate the captain. Although that type of thing relies on the playerbase being shit.

[paprika]

I don't think rev heads having a limited uplink is a bad idea, fluff-wise it's like the syndicate are sending in a team of agents to act as revolutionaries and cause a riot to take the station. Better than blowing it up, I guess.

Rev heads using their TC to get flashes or having to find their own sounds way more fun than flash everyone in tool storage the round

[Kelenius]

Because rev antagonists are already not strong enough?

I think latejoin heads should count for objectives.

[Lovecraft]

Yeah, we don't need the uplinks on /tg/.

[paprika]

Meh, rev heads are only strong because they have numbers, because of the roundstart rush, which is what I'm proposing removing.

These ideas aren't mutually exclusive or anything, the idea is to take away the roundstart rush from rev heads but buff their ability to send out single revs on missions rather than having a huge swarm that you can just trust to grey tide endlessly.

[Incomptinence]

With synthetic flashes in robotics there aren't many flashes outside security or head control. Maybe the one in tech storage? Oh sec checkpoint has one laying around.


The best thing the round has going for it is simplicity I don't think hoop jumping will improve it all that much. Maybe make the shuttle callable after an hour the worst part of rev and what really makes people leave is not the quick win it is the hide and seek post murderthon where half the station is dead and one guy is shifting between lockers or something.

[Lo6a4evskiy]

That's because the player base right now are giant fucking cry babies that tick the antag options because they think it gives them some god given right to cause grief with no blow back, instead of ticking it because they want to cause rounds to be !!FUN!! at the risk of getting brutally murdered and their corpse spaced forever.

Well, why shouldn't they think that? It's exactly the case. Revolution is basically a grief round.

Because rev antagonists are already not strong enough?

I think latejoin heads should count for objectives.

Yeah, this is true. I mean, it's still gonna be easy to just ambush them in arrivals, but at least it will require some effort.

[Kelenius]

Yeah, because no other mode has unique items that allow you to instantly identify an antagonist oh wait.

[paprika]

But you can identify rev heads easy as fuck?

[Steelpoint]

But the only way to identify a Rev Head normally is to metagame it, unless people are yelling "viva".

Hence the problem.

[Malkevin]

kill em all, let admins sort em out

[oranges]

I like rev

[Cheimon]

kill em all, let admins sort em out

Which is how you get banned from security, presumably. Unless there's a full-on riot kicking off, in which case it's already too late.

I agree with the 'replace a flash with something else' concept. At the moment it's weird and stupid, especially since rev heads can't be implanted to unrev them. It doesn't even need to be a different item type, like an uplifting revolutionary pamphlet. It could just be a functionally identical flash with a totally different skin and a different name.

[callanrockslol]

kill em all, let admins sort em out

Which is how you get banned from security, presumably. Unless there's a full-on riot kicking off, in which case it's already too late.

Not really, once a rev round gets into gear all bets are off and the rules are thrown out the window.