Sleepy Pens

[Incomptinence]

Bottom post of the previous page:

They are just minimizing risk. They don't really care for creative assassinations, they just care about enforcing increasingly sub par ones because they have a better chance of pulling through.

If you wanted to spice up murder you would add more ways to die.

[Miauw]

Seems like nerfing, decreasing, removing, is a trend in the gaming universe nowadays.
Changelings got nerfed, C4 got nerfed, mining drop-rates got nerfed, and now this.
Everything fun and/or efficient gets labeled "overpowered" and cut out.
Overpowered for the sake of the eternal "giving a chance to the opponent". So, should we also give a chance to the attacker to react to the victim's defensive move ? When does it end ?
A game like SS13 should reward initiative. And the antagonists are the personification of initiative. They make shit happen. They kill, steal, wreck, and must be feared.
To the people pulling out the "click to win" argument, you forgot about cloning.

I remember a round in which i was the traitor had to kill my target twice. Because it was cloned. And i destroyed the cloning console and pods beforehand with C4.
I met my target in the shuttle after killing him twice. He survived. I try to kill him a third time in a desperate attempt, i was out of ammo and got my shit rekt by security.

You all forgot that cloning, combined to blood trail, and the lack of efficient manners to gib or space someone quickly enough for no-one to notice, make assassination objectives way harder than you think.

BACK IN MY DAY WE ONLY HAD AN EMAG AND NOTHING ELSE! AND WE KILLED OUR TARGETS WITH TOOLBOXES AND NOT THESE FANCY ESWORDS ALL THE YOUNG KIDS USE!

More seriously, you just proved that you were 100% reliant on C4 to win.
Assassination should be hard, and now it is. Clean up the blood trail, lure your target, be a bit creative. If you want a boring skinner box where you always do the same thing to win, go play farmville.

[Kuraudo]

I heard your trash-talking, not your arguments.

Assassination is not "hard." What's hard, is to pull of a stealth assassination, in order to nullify or greatly reduce the chances of your target being cloned.
You can destroy the cloning console, like i did. But it can always be built back.
Then you have to take or space the cloning pod/console circuitboard, but it can be remade.
Then you have to blow up R&D, etc... etc...
It nevers ends.
All that course of action to prevent cloning, because, like a said, gibbing and spacing in a 40+ populated server is super hard without being noticed.
And if you don't, the body WILL be recovered. In such a populated server, every place, every locker gets interaction at least once a round.

Fucking up with the sleepy pen, is like denying a construction worker his hammer and throwing to his face: "Be creative."

Stop nerfing and decreasing everything. Just stop.

[Kelenius]

You're basing your train of thought on an idea that traitors exist to win.

It's incorrect.

[Incomptinence]

If they lack a reasonable chance to win they don't antagonize, if traitors don't betray they don't function. Look at newling rounds prior to armblade for how a declawed antag rarely drives a round and results in extended 2.0.

[Lo6a4evskiy]

I heard your trash-talking, not your arguments.

Assassination is not "hard." What's hard, is to pull of a stealth assassination, in order to nullify or greatly reduce the chances of your target being cloned.
You can destroy the cloning console, like i did. But it can always be built back.
Then you have to take or space the cloning pod/console circuitboard, but it can be remade.
Then you have to blow up R&D, etc... etc...
It nevers ends.
All that course of action to prevent cloning, because, like a said, gibbing and spacing in a 40+ populated server is super hard without being noticed.
And if you don't, the body WILL be recovered. In such a populated server, every place, every locker gets interaction at least once a round.

Fucking up with the sleepy pen, is like denying a construction worker his hammer and throwing to his face: "Be creative."

Stop nerfing and decreasing everything. Just stop.

You are the first person ever who thinks that preventing cloning is hard and requires gibbing. Jee, just stuff them into closet, move closet somewhere, there, chances are body will never be found.

I've never seen people complain about how cloning ruins their greentext before, honestly.

[Miauw]

I heard your trash-talking, not your arguments.

in that case, I can safely ignore your arguments too

You really just rehashed everything you said in your last post, so I will rehash what I said in MY last post: be creative.

Also, I am fairly sure that my changes move traitor AWAY from extended 2.0 rather than toward it, because you no longer have antags that parapenc4 their target and do nothing else the entire round.

[cedarbridge]

If they lack a reasonable chance to win they don't antagonize, if traitors don't betray they don't function. Look at newling rounds prior to armblade for how a declawed antag rarely drives a round and results in extended 2.0.

To hear these discussions you'd think that people couldn't kill others/steal things without access to uplink items or super powers.

[Incomptinence]

They can do it worse, more timidly and less interestingly.

[cedarbridge]

They can do it worse, more timidly and less interestingly.

Somehow I've done alright with an emag or nothing at all. Granted, some of the items (emag) add interesting things to the game and allow for a lot of creative uses. However, para/c4 was never interesting or creatives. Ebow/sword is neither interesting nor creative. "Timidly" doesn't really mean much for me in this context.

[Kuraudo]

I heard your trash-talking, not your arguments.

in that case, I can safely ignore your arguments too

You really just rehashed everything you said in your last post, so I will rehash what I said in MY last post: be creative.

Also, I am fairly sure that my changes move traitor AWAY from extended 2.0 rather than toward it, because you no longer have antags that parapenc4 their target and do nothing else the entire round.

That's not how it works.
Rolling an antag role don't make you go "Welp, APC destroyed, mission accomplished" after completing an easy objective, but instead "Why the fuck I'm I wasting a chance to do something fun with my antag status ?"
I can't count how many times you see traitors getting caught or killed for something not related to a known objective.
People don't want to waste the antag status. So they go around and do stuff. Being a traitor, a changeling, a wizard or whatever is an incentive to act by itself.

I was a wiz today. I got my objectives very easily. Kill some random assistant, steal the hand tele. I spawn guns, assistant get killed in the chaos, I snatch the hand-tele, hide and it took me one minute to go "Fuck it" and try something funny.

Saying that leaving the parapen the way it is encourages traitors to aim for easy kills and do nothing is only valid in theory and for people with an extreme powergaming mindset. (Plus the c4 Nerf made those kills even harder to pull off)

[cedarbridge]

I heard your trash-talking, not your arguments.

in that case, I can safely ignore your arguments too

You really just rehashed everything you said in your last post, so I will rehash what I said in MY last post: be creative.

Also, I am fairly sure that my changes move traitor AWAY from extended 2.0 rather than toward it, because you no longer have antags that parapenc4 their target and do nothing else the entire round.

That's not how it works.
Rolling an antag role don't make you go "Welp, APC destroyed, mission accomplished" after completing an easy objective, but instead "Why the fuck I'm I wasting a chance to do something fun with my antag status ?"
I can't count how many times you see traitors getting caught or killed for something not related to a known objective.
People don't want to waste the antag status. So they go around and do stuff. Being a traitor, a changeling, a wizard or whatever is an incentive to act by itself.

I was a wiz today. I got my objectives very easily. Kill some random assistant, steal the hand tele. I spawn guns, assistant get killed in the chaos, I snatch the hand-tele, hide and it took me one minute to go "Fuck it" and try something funny.

Saying that leaving the parapen the way it is encourages traitors to aim for easy kills and do nothing is only valid in theory and for people with an extreme powergaming mindset. (Plus the c4 Nerf made those kills even harder to pull off)

I only mention it in this thread because its tangentially related, but the c4 nerf feels alright to me from a counterplay perspective. I suppose it feels that way for me the same way in respect to the parapen. If I get parapenned, the only thing that I can do is hope somebody else saw it happen and is in a position to help. With c4, the only thing you can do is get gibbed. Even if I get away from my attacker and even if I find "help" the number of things you can do to avoid being permanently removed from the round are close to zero (technically I guess you could syringe yourself and hope botany knows how to use replica pods and gets what's going on. Since these are totally one-sided events, the counterplay aspect of antag vs victim is entirely moot. Objective complete, sure. Fun created for anyone involved remains minimal.

[Miauw]

and for people with an extreme powergaming mindset.

ding ding ding we have a winner.

Stop caring about greentext and have fun. Parapen was not fun, now you can still use it for kidnapping without it being an instant loss if you get penned by a powergamer. C4 can now still be used to blow shit up, but doesn't permanently put people out of the round anymore. The entire point of this change was to make things more fun.

[Jalleo]

and for people with an extreme powergaming mindset.

ding ding ding we have a winner.

Stop caring about greentext and have fun. Parapen was not fun, now you can still use it for kidnapping without it being an instant loss if you get penned by a powergamer. C4 can now still be used to blow shit up, but doesn't permanently put people out of the round anymore. The entire point of this change was to make things more fun.

Please see this video for further information
[youtube]e31OSVZF77w[/youtube]

[Kuraudo]

and for people with an extreme powergaming mindset.

ding ding ding we have a winner.

Stop caring about greentext and have fun. Parapen was not fun, now you can still use it for kidnapping without it being an instant loss if you get penned by a powergamer. C4 can now still be used to blow shit up, but doesn't permanently put people out of the round anymore. The entire point of this change was to make things more fun.

Did you read what i said about the wiz round i played yesterday ?
While i'm being constructive on this matter, you are just trying to troll me, showing off on the forums to appear as a rhetorical badass in front of unknown people. How sad is that ?

Those extreme powergamers i talked about are a minority. And i'm against a nerf on the parapen because the underlying idea is that "Everyone should stand a chance against antags".
I'm playing SS13 since 2009 and this is against the spirit of the game. SS13 inherent paranoia-driven social mechanics are nullified by this kind of mindset. Anyone playing this game should accept death. Accept that some things can happen to you that you can't counter. Dying can also be fun, the course of events leading to your death can be fun. And you can identify your mistakes to try and stay alive longer the next time.
If you start putting in-game counters to everything, you basically tell the players to put their instinct of self-preservation switch off, and this is not SS13.

[Incomptinence]

Posting a video about subtle imbalances to keep games fresh at all play levels. Ignoring that most round types are in the crew's favour by sheer numbers except rev where the ravening horde flips.

Solo antags do not win most of the time they have not been at any point I can recall predominantly victorious, that includes oldlings well especially since ling objectives have always been demented. Sure parapen + c4 is boring as hell but when like parasting it is replaced by what is functionally (at least for now) a suicidal joke option pretty much only good for getting caught ASAP you have straight up narrowed the field of play.

The anti antagonist sentiment seems to boil down to damning those who follow their objectives and try to minimise their impact AND those who ignore them and commit mass murder. Leaving what? If you say role playing I will laugh in your face, the populace is so invested in lowering their deaths (even without a kd ratio) they will gut you on the spot with blunt implements.

[Miauw]

and for people with an extreme powergaming mindset.

ding ding ding we have a winner.

Stop caring about greentext and have fun. Parapen was not fun, now you can still use it for kidnapping without it being an instant loss if you get penned by a powergamer. C4 can now still be used to blow shit up, but doesn't permanently put people out of the round anymore. The entire point of this change was to make things more fun.

Did you read what i said about the wiz round i played yesterday ?
While i'm being constructive on this matter, you are just trying to troll me, showing off on the forums to appear as a rhetorical badass in front of unknown people. How sad is that ?

*tips fedora*
i'm being constructive too.

Those extreme powergamers i talked about are a minority. And i'm against a nerf on the parapen because the underlying idea is that "Everyone should stand a chance against antags".
I'm playing SS13 since 2009 and this is against the spirit of the game. SS13 inherent paranoia-driven social mechanics are nullified by this kind of mindset. Anyone playing this game should accept death. Accept that some things can happen to you that you can't counter. Dying can also be fun, the course of events leading to your death can be fun. And you can identify your mistakes to try and stay alive longer the next time.
If you start putting in-game counters to everything, you basically tell the players to put their instinct of self-preservation switch off, and this is not SS13.

what you call self-preservation is actually called metagaming.
and it's not like anyone has any sense of self preservation as long as they can get valids. see: suicide bombing the wizard.

i really don't care that you're an oldfag. and i have repeated this many, many times: being afraid of standing next to people is NOT paranoia. it's metagaming and it only happens when things are incredibly shitty (see oldling).

there is no way to prevent being parapenned except for metagaming. you cannot "learn from your mistakes" because you made no mistakes. a dude walked up to you with a pen and you didnt instantly stun and cuff him and then gib him, gg.
you're basically implying that metagming is good, in which case, gb2goon

And yes, leaving an easy guaranteed kill combo encourages boring, 30-minute rounds where the singulo is released very quickly because there will always be powergamers that just want to get dat greentext.

Also, @incompetenicniencne:
there is no anti-antagonist sentiment. there is an anti-gg no re sentiment. being parapenned was not fun and has never been fun. get penned > get c4'd > gg no re you're dead hope you enjoy sitting out the rest of the boring round because the antag is just going to release the singulo so he can have greentext. there's plenty more ways and better ways to kill somebody.

[Scott]

Is actually called nerf things

[Incomptinence]

An individual player needing a way to fight back isn't essential in my mind. The station needs a way to fight back as a whole and it does it quite well.

Death is quite liberating if you bother to stick around and observe.

[Kuraudo]

what you call self-preservation is actually called metagaming.

This is not metagaming.
The SS13 world in which your character evolves, is delimited by a background.
Your character know about Nanotrasen, but also the Syndicate, the Wizard Federation, etc.
In this hostile context, being cautious is not metagaming. It is self-preservation. Your character know that NT stations are a prey for various entities: Syndicate agents, changelings, aliens, wizards etc. In this context, why the hell should i let a total stranger violating my personal space by putting himself so close to me that i can smell his bad breath ?
I avoided assault many times by following this simple rule, including sleepy-pen attempts. I also failed them. This paranoia is a part of the game.

[Lo6a4evskiy]

Those extreme powergamers i talked about are a minority.

I don't remember anyone ever using parapen on me for something other than c4 or toolbox in the head. Minority, sure.
[quote="Kuraudo"And i'm against a nerf on the parapen because the underlying idea is that "Everyone should stand a chance against antags".[/quote]
There isn't anything fun in parapen for killer or for victim. It's just silly.

I mean, being ling is just so much more fun and you have so much versatility after parasting removal. Before it was literally the only combo.

I'm playing SS13 since 2009

You may also have Ph.D in SS13, it doesn't make your opinion more important.

Dying can also be fun, the course of events leading to your death can be fun.

And you can identify your mistakes to try and stay alive longer the next time.

This is literally the reason why parapen is being removed. So death can be fun and caused by mistakes, not by cheap overpowered item that has no counter to it.

spirit of the game

SS13 inherent paranoia-driven social mechanics are nullified by this kind of mindset.

Anyone playing this game should accept death. Accept that some things can happen to you that you can't counter.

If you start putting in-game counters to everything, you basically tell the players to put their instinct of self-preservation switch off, and this is not SS13.

Oh my God, this is retarded. This game doesn't even have any single developer or development team behind it. Due to its nature we can decide what we want from it. We can change it however we want. Nobody gives a fuck or shouldn't give a fuck what kind of game this was five years ago, it's just not important and should have no influence whatsoever on new changes.Your opinion is just a fucking opinion, stop presenting it like it's the only truth.

This is not metagaming.
The SS13 world in which your character evolves, is delimited by a background.
Your character know about Nanotrasen, but also the Syndicate, the Wizard Federation, etc.
In this hostile context, being cautious is not metagaming. It is self-preservation. Your character know that NT stations are a prey for various entities: Syndicate agents, changelings, aliens, wizards etc. In this context, why the hell should i let a total stranger violating my personal space by putting himself so close to me that i can smell his bad breath ?
I avoided assault many times by following this simple rule, including sleepy-pen attempts. I also failed them. This paranoia is a part of the game.

If self-preservation means I have to run every time somebody is on adjacent square, I don't want it anywhere near this game.

[Scott]

If self-preservation means I have to run every time somebody is on adjacent square, I don't want it anywhere near this game.

You say that, but ebows are ranged and you're not complaining about them.

[Lo6a4evskiy]

Ebows are very powerful, but what do they have to do with the quote in question?

[Cipher3]

[Miauw]

If self-preservation means I have to run every time somebody is on adjacent square, I don't want it anywhere near this game.

You say that, but ebows are ranged and you're not complaining about them.

ebows being op is completely irrelevant.

[Scott]

doublethink

[Miauw]

this thread stopped going anywhere after we reached page 3

[Kuraudo]

Oh my God, this is retarded. This game doesn't even have any single developer or development team behind it. Due to its nature we can decide what we want from it. We can change it however we want. Nobody gives a fuck or shouldn't give a fuck what kind of game this was five years ago, it's just not important and should have no influence whatsoever on new changes.

This is just dumb. According to what you just said, concepts like beta-testing and simple improvement should not apply to an open-source game with multiples branches/servers/whatever.
This forum section is called "feedback", to actually be able to give feedback without being told to fuck off.
Guess what, that's exactly what's happening right now. The fact that this topic is 6 pages long make a point by itself on how controversial this decision is.

Your opinion is just a fucking opinion, stop presenting it like it's the only truth.

Then, stop objectivizing your own notion of "balance" and "fun".
If you reason like that, then yeah, why not nerfing anything that doesn't have an immediate counter. Here's a short list:
Nerf bombs, to make them explode in slow motion and give you the ability to escape the blast.
Nerf the ebow, putting on an attack message, a louder noise and reducing it's stun time to one second, to give you the ability to get up and retaliate immediately.
Nerf EI NATH, give it a charging time of one second to let the guy escape. After all, it's insta-gib. Not fun, etc.
And so on...

I know what the game was, i know how brutal those recent changes are compared to a status quo that lasted for years, where the main mechanics of the game remained stable and the coding team was actually slowly adding and improving instead of brutally nerfing everything.
If you play since last week, it means my standpoint weight more on the balance. Not because "hurr durr i wez her befor" but, because i can pinpoint any brutal changes if some dumb coder happen to decide to transform this game into pony fucking station or "The Sims: Space Edition, No risk shift Addon"

It's like a kid playing games since 2012, saying to another on the gaming scene since 1990 that he has no problems with shelling out 20 € for a crappy DLC because it was always like that.
The guy playing since the Atari can say "Fuck you" to the gaming industry going the wrong way, when the PS3 noob has absolutely no idea what's going on because he lack the retrospect.

SS13 is not always fair. Maybe never fair. You can die brutally, unexpectedly, without you being able to do anything. If you don't accept that, the sleepy pen is on the first spot of a very very long list of things you'd want to nerf.

[Lo6a4evskiy]

According to what you just said, concepts like beta-testing and simple improvement should not apply to an open-source game with multiples branches/servers/whatever.

Can you please explain yourself? Which part of what I said leads to this?

This forum section is called "feedback", to actually be able to give feedback without being told to fuck off.

Then provide feedback about the change itself, not your feels about the fact that something was changed. That is not useful.

Oh wait. You decided to keep doing that. Suit yourself.

If you decide to say something constructive, like, I don't know, why is this mechanic worse and what are the bad consequences, give me a call.

[Miauw]

Oh my God, this is retarded. This game doesn't even have any single developer or development team behind it. Due to its nature we can decide what we want from it. We can change it however we want. Nobody gives a fuck or shouldn't give a fuck what kind of game this was five years ago, it's just not important and should have no influence whatsoever on new changes.

This is just dumb. According to what you just said, concepts like beta-testing and simple improvement should not apply to an open-source game with multiples branches/servers/whatever.

why do you think this game is so buggy. we test to our best ability but really you will basically never catch all the bugs.
and we are improving the game.

This forum section is called "feedback", to actually be able to give feedback without being told to fuck off.
Guess what, that's exactly what's happening right now.

then try throwing around less insults. you will see that i have been argueing the same thing for over five pages.

The fact that this topic is 6 pages long make a point by itself on how controversial this decision is.

something being controversial does not mean it is bad. look at this
even if that fallacy didn't exist, the amount of people that want this to be reverted is small tbh and in the poll for changing the parapen on the old forums only like 5 people voted for keeping it as it is.

Your opinion is just a fucking opinion, stop presenting it like it's the only truth.

Then, stop objectivizing your own notion of "balance" and "fun".
If you reason like that, then yeah, why not nerfing anything that doesn't have an immediate counter. Here's a short list:
Nerf bombs, to make them explode in slow motion and give you the ability to escape the blast.
Nerf the ebow, putting on an attack message, a louder noise and reducing it's stun time to one second, to give you the ability to get up and retaliate immediately.
Nerf EI NATH, give it a charging time of one second to let the guy escape. After all, it's insta-gib. Not fun, etc.
And so on...

this is irrelevant.

I know what the game was, i know how brutal those recent changes are compared to a status quo that lasted for years, where the main mechanics of the game remained stable and the coding team was actually slowly adding and improving instead of brutally nerfing everything.

opinion opinion, no actual arguments here. a status quo can be really fucking shitty too.

If you play since last week, it means my standpoint weight more on the balance. Not because "hurr durr i wez her befor" but, because i can pinpoint any brutal changes if some dumb coder happen to decide to transform this game into pony fucking station or "The Sims: Space Edition, No risk shift Addon"

just more insults, blah blah. if you think it was better in the olden days go host the laggy shitfest that is r4407.

It's like a kid playing games since 2012, saying to another on the gaming scene since 1990 that he has no problems with shelling out 20 € for a crappy DLC because it was always like that.
The guy playing since the Atari can say "Fuck you" to the gaming industry going the wrong way, when the PS3 noob has absolutely no idea what's going on because he lack the retrospect.

this actually strengthens my point. you don't want the parapen to be removed because it's always been that way, while people newer to the game are more willing to allow changes.
unless you think that we should all vote for the republicans since most old people vote for them, and they have been here longer so they know how much shittier the world has become, right?

SS13 is not always fair. Maybe never fair. You can die brutally, unexpectedly, without you being able to do anything.

some ways to die unexpectedly are worse than others.

the sleepy pen is on the first spot of a very very long list of things you'd want to nerf.

yes, yes it is.