Traitor Flavors - Still Broken

[Itseasytosee2me]

Many of the traitor flavors are completely inconsistent with the realities of playing traitor.
Side objectives, final objectives, and many other tangible things about traitor are directly at odds with many of the "independent" flavors like cooperate climber or gone postal.
Even forgoing the independent flavors, syndicate aligned players are quite often given objectives that directly contradict the information we give to the players in game about the factions.
Its to the point where it is basically irreconcilable, and it seems to me that the only reasonable course of action is to spin such antagonists off into their own traitor sub types, or remove them entirely.

And now for a more general critique of the system, the flavors currently give player very little to go off of in terms of how they role play or how they might structure their game plan. I think it might actually be harmful to the potential roleplay experience. You are the traitor is a very open ended prompt, and if a character wanted to sprinkle in bits of a backstory they had in mind, it would be exceedingly easy. It encourages you to say whatever witty one liner you want before you shoot the captain to death. I think a poor prompt is much worse than an open ended one.

And I know you'll say, "oh the flavor is totally optional, you don't have to follow it at all if you want, make up your own story." but that doesn't change the reality that you are showing players a big bold sign telling the player who their character is supposed to be. I've asked a lot of people, and not one has told me that they have ever found that opening prompt helpful for creating a character or shaping their actions. The solution to a code issue should not be to pretend it isn't there. I really think we should have more respect for ourselves.

[warbluke]

I see traitors being legitimately upset that I'm putting them in perma after crimes because "I'm a champion of Evil I'm not with the syndicate!"
Also if internal affairs background exists still please rectify that. Best case scenario you've created a crew-oriented validhunter with syndicate gear, worst case scenario you've made someone who will ahelp any action against them since they believe they outrank all command.

[Capsandi]

oh the flavor is totally optional, you don't have to follow it at all if you want, make up your own story.

[mrmelbert]

Who up Ludonarrativing their Dissonance

[Itseasytosee2me]

I'm wondering how people would actually want to resolve this.
Like sure, if we took the route of turning some of these flavors into pseudo traitors, that would be fine for maybe a couple. Like I could see something like coorperate climber being an obsessed-like antagonist with a few objectives an a minimal skillset, but if we did that for all of them then we would be bloated with 5 or so antags that are generally all really simple and simpler. How would you even make something like "in legal trouble" fun?

I hate to say it for all the contributes and maintainers who worked on this thing, but maybe its best to axe the system and go back to the drawing board.

Alternatively, we could remove all the non-syndie stuff, and leave our selves with a vestigial system instead of a broken one.

[DrAmazing343]

I actually really love our flavors despite our dumbest playing stupid cards with them because of what our brightest take inspiration from and make of them.

I'll hardly call myself our brightest, but I got into a really cool character arc after becoming enamored with the Internal Affairs Agent flavor text. NOT a crew-aligned antag, STILL committing murder, just desperately trying to keep corporate dirty work under wraps.

[Itseasytosee2me]

I actually really love our flavors despite our dumbest playing stupid cards with them because of what our brightest take inspiration from and make of them.

I'll hardly call myself our brightest, but I got into a really cool character arc after becoming enamored with the Internal Affairs Agent flavor text. NOT a crew-aligned antag, STILL committing murder, just desperately trying to keep corporate dirty work under wraps.

I love the flavor too! Theirs a reason that IAA has stuck with us for the past decade despite multiple implementations.