Disable Heretic in the config until it becomes less “murderhoboey”

[The Wrench]

Imagine being semi forced to Unga bunga round remove people for power. With the current state of LRP and the potential banning of lowpop murderbone, I say we purge one of the biggest threats to remaining in the shift. Being forced to murderbone and round remove for power =bad. Heretic bad, traitor good. Nuff said

[Mothblocks]

Basically agree with whatever was said back in the thread for disabling heretic on MRP, because basically all of that applies to LRP too.

Heretic doesn't leave much room for gimmicks like traitor does, so you're incentivized to just murder as many people as you can, which is a bit lame.

Round removal is especially lame, equally as much on MRP even though it's not rule-breaky for antags.

I'll quote this message from Spookuni, since I genuinely believe all 3 of these apply to LRP as well. Emphasis is mine.

The main issues with heretic (in no particular order) as I see on MRP, though parts of this will be apply to LRP too are

1. Defacto uncontainability - Heretics gain access to an undisarmable pseudo-baton almost immediately, and the only easy ways to get rid of it is to dearm them entirely, to brainwash them with the E.P.I.C, or to mute them forever, two of which (E.P.I.C and genetics muting) are unavailable to security at roundstart, one of which (muting) dramatically cuts down on possible interaction between the captured antag and security anyway, and one of which (dearming) is basically just GBJing someone to a degree largely indistinguishable from locking them in a windowless room. This undermines efforts by security and the crew at large to non-lethally arrest and detain heretics, and promotes a kill the valid on sight mentality...[snip]

2. Automatic Round Removal - When heretics kill and sacrifice people they entirely gib their bodies, destroying any gear they were carrying and leaving their bodiless head in some dark corner of maintenance. Even in the absolute ideal cases this dramatically slows down how soon it is POSSIBLE to get people back into the round and playing the game, on a server where rounds can last upwards of two hours, and realistically once things start going to shit bodiless heads are at the bottom of the triage pole, and probably aren't getting revived at all. People as a general rule don't like being killed and round removed, even people who are happy to take a fall if it makes the round more interesting overall generally aren't too thrilled to get summarily yeeted from playing the game, and thus people push back at successful heretics even harder than with other antagonists, because a heretic being successful almost always means people are getting round removed, and that's both not fun to actually play...[snip]

3. Ascension is stupid - In hindsight having an antag who gets a murderbone pass for being really good at reliably murdering people was a stupid fucking decision. Ascension is too hard for new players to the antag type, requiring a pretty good idea of what you plan to do and how you plan to go about it to succeed, and is way too easy for experienced Heretics with a cookie cutter plan on how to make as many targets dead as quickly as possible so that they can stop bothering with targets and just kill everyone. I get that Heretic is a massive ripoff off cultist sim flavour and cultist sim flavour is very good flavour, but ascension in it's current format is just terrible, and needs either a massive rework to how it works or to just fucking go.

[Farquaar]

I've had at least one incredibly memorable round facing off against an ascended heretic. It was already a sad thing that Heretic was disabled on MRP. Don't let LRP let itself become more boring too.

[The Wrench]

In counter to that, I’d argue that being gibbed and removed from the shift is also boring.

[Farquaar]

In counter to that, I’d argue that being gibbed and removed from the shift is also boring.

False. If nobody dies, then threats have no meaning. Imminent danger raises the stakes and makes the game more interesting.

[The Wrench]

In counter to that, I’d argue that being gibbed and removed from the shift is also boring.

False. If nobody dies, then threats have no meaning. Imminent danger raises the stakes and makes the game more interesting.

Again, I’d argue the opposite, heretic you are railroaded into murdering the maximum amount of people in order to gain more power to murder more people. There’s a reason why changelings don’t gain more adaptation points for each person they husk (excluding another changeling) and why traitors don’t gain more telecrystals for round removing people.

[toemas]

Imagine being semi forced to Unga bunga round remove people for power. With the current state of LRP and the potential banning of lowpop murderbone, I say we purge one of the biggest threats to remaining in the shift. Being forced to murderbone and round remove for power =bad. Heretic bad, traitor good. Nuff said

theres nothing wrong with murderboning/round removing. it creates conflict, which is far more interesting than some friendly gimmick or stealth antag that just silently does his objectives

[The Wrench]

Imagine being semi forced to Unga bunga round remove people for power. With the current state of LRP and the potential banning of lowpop murderbone, I say we purge one of the biggest threats to remaining in the shift. Being forced to murderbone and round remove for power =bad. Heretic bad, traitor good. Nuff said

theres nothing wrong with murderboning/round removing. it creates conflict, which is far more interesting than some friendly gimmick or stealth antag that just silently does his objectives

I don’t believe just wanting to do your job and then getting gibbed by funny man so he can increase his murderbone powers is fun for the person getting gibbed.

[toemas]

Imagine being semi forced to Unga bunga round remove people for power. With the current state of LRP and the potential banning of lowpop murderbone, I say we purge one of the biggest threats to remaining in the shift. Being forced to murderbone and round remove for power =bad. Heretic bad, traitor good. Nuff said

theres nothing wrong with murderboning/round removing. it creates conflict, which is far more interesting than some friendly gimmick or stealth antag that just silently does his objectives

I don’t believe just wanting to do your job and then getting gibbed by funny man so he can increase his murderbone powers is fun for the person getting gibbed.

Then close the game. This is not a job simulator.

[Redrover1760]

This solves no issues and simply removes a whole antag instead of trying to fix it and make it better. Coder logic at its finest.

Go next.

[Mothblocks]

Round removal or murderboning isn't against the rules, requiring them by virtue of the antagonist itself is lame. Better to let people actually decide their gimmick as a traitor.

[bastardblaster]

Heretic has a great thematic, and I'd hate to see it go to waste. I've noticed that most heretics forego doing objectives completely, perhaps giving another alternate way of getting points from a series of objectives given to you would allieviate the amount of round removal, although this would require some point-reshuffling

[The Wrench]

Maybe that would work, but either way, that still doesn’t change the fact that heretic doesn’t give you the type of freedom that other antagonists do. It’s railroaded into contractor style gameplay, but the people who you catch never come back

[datorangebottle]

Hell no. Heretic is awesome on LRP. If you're mad about getting gibbed, you can play a ghost role, wait for a midround antag, hang out and observe, server hop, or just... play another game? We do have a lot of features designed specifically for people who are dead for a long time and bored.
Also, you can definitely roll around as a heretic without gibbing people; you just need a bit of luck. It'd maybe be a little more fun if there was a hard limit on the number of heretics that can spawn in a single round, so we don't have multiple people competing for the same resources and being forced to resort to murderboning to get their power.
You can also do fun gimmicks, even while being "required" to murderbone.
As an example, I recently managed to get lucky and get several influences as a void heretic clown, and ran around selling my heretic potions/gear for money instead of killing people. I sourced all my ingredients by breaking into the morgue and using monkeys.

[Mothblocks]

The primary objective of heretic is to ascend, which is not possible without gibbing several people, considering how infrequent realities are (which had to be lowered a long time ago).

What gimmicks you can do as heretic are paltry compared to what you can do with traitor, which is a lot easier to design with considering how vast the uplink is.

[wesoda25]

I think it’s fine but imo gameplay differences between MRP and LRP should be addressed sooner than later. Would rather just see code changes.

[datorangebottle]

The primary objective of heretic is to ascend, which is not possible without gibbing several people, considering how infrequent realities are (which had to be lowered a long time ago).

If heretic gibbing people is a problem, undo this change so that they have to gib less people? There are ways to adjust heretic without removing it from the game.

What gimmicks you can do as heretic are paltry compared to what you can do with traitor, which is a lot easier to design with considering how vast the uplink is.

Yes. There are a couple of reasons for this: one, heretic is harder to design for given its paths system. Two, it is a much newer antagonist than traitor. Traitor has been in the game since almost the beginning. It is ancient and easier to design for.
There are other antagonists in the game that greatly enable murderboning and it's a pretty common occurrence. I don't see why heretic in particular should receive hate for it.

[Mothblocks]

Code changes haven't been made for heretic, despite several calls for it. The scope then moves into policy discussion until anything is done to change how dreadful it is to play with.

[datorangebottle]

Code changes haven't been made for heretic, despite several calls for it. The scope then moves into policy discussion until anything is done to change how dreadful it is to play with.

While i'm not a coder, adjusting the number of rifts per round seems like a simple change. More rifts should give them less of a reliance on gibbing people.
Speaking from personal experience, I often don't end up gibbing anyone during a normal round of heretic. I'm not very good with it and it's rare enough to make hunting a little stressful.
Anyway, I don't see a major difference between george melons breaking into my workplace with an esword and telebaton and killing me, versus him breaking into my workplace with a funny hand and a curved knife and killing me. Both times, i'm likely to end up dead for the rest of the round.

[Mothblocks]

While i'm not a coder, adjusting the number of rifts per round seems like a simple change. More rifts should give them less of a reliance on gibbing people.

They used to have more rifts, and that just led to ascensions coming quicker, whose only purpose then is to murderbone again.

Anyway, I don't see a major difference between george melons breaking into my workplace with an esword and telebaton and killing me, versus him breaking into my workplace with a funny hand and a curved knife and killing me.

Traitor's sole reason for existence is not to murderbone and round-remove, heretics reason for existence is.

[TheFinalPotato]

Code issue. This is how it's been done in the past though so eh, give people time to save it if they want to

[Archie700]

Heretic has a great thematic, and I'd hate to see it go to waste. I've noticed that most heretics forego doing objectives completely, perhaps giving another alternate way of getting points from a series of objectives given to you would allieviate the amount of round removal, although this would require some point-reshuffling

Most heretics forgo objectives because if you ascend, you greentext regardless of how many objectives you completed and the objectives themselves are NOT required for ascension.

The objectives feel much more superfluous than even changeling or traitor.

[Pandarsenic]

I wouldn't hate seeing Heretic disabled until someone who likes it enough to make it entertaining gives it some combination of...

• Meaningful lore/hooks for RP. Part of why it's so murderbone-driven, in my opinion, is that there's no real flavor of fluff to it.
• Power variety. They have no mechanical support for any playstyle other than Assassination Murderbone or Open Combat Murderbone, and a bunch of the powers seem sort of superfluous, either being skipped entirely
• Literally any ability to figure out what the fuck you're doing without the Wiki. Even basic tasks like sacrifice are beyond new players without looking it up.
• More methods of getting points, maybe? You've basically got "Rush the nodes" and "Murder," and murders seem to be a bit inconsistent in terms of how secure the target is vs how much you get for sacrificing

[Hulkamania]

Code issue. This is how it's been done in the past though so eh, give people time to save it if they want to

It wouldn't exist in the config if it wasn't a config/headmin issue.

► Show Spoiler

Hidden Content

This board requires you to be registered and logged-in to view hidden content.

[bastardblaster]

plenty of other antags have gimmick options, is having one without one that bad?

[TheFinalPotato]

Code issue. This is how it's been done in the past though so eh, give people time to save it if they want to

It wouldn't exist in the config if it wasn't a config/headmin issue.

► Show Spoiler

Hidden Content

This board requires you to be registered and logged-in to view hidden content.

I mean like, if it's horrible we should just remove it from the codebase. But traditionally that happens after a period of disabling so hell it doesn't really matter

[Mothblocks]

Correct

[nianjiilical]

The primary objective of heretic is to ascend, which is not possible without gibbing several people, considering how infrequent realities are (which had to be lowered a long time ago).

What gimmicks you can do as heretic are paltry compared to what you can do with traitor, which is a lot easier to design with considering how vast the uplink is.

what if heretics had some way to spend their points on bringing more pierced realities to the station, as a way to try and go for a more passive break-and-enter playstyle

[CMDR_Gungnir]

The primary objective of heretic is to ascend, which is not possible without gibbing several people, considering how infrequent realities are (which had to be lowered a long time ago).

What gimmicks you can do as heretic are paltry compared to what you can do with traitor, which is a lot easier to design with considering how vast the uplink is.

what if heretics had some way to spend their points on bringing more pierced realities to the station, as a way to try and go for a more passive break-and-enter playstyle

Campbell would eventually reach a state where there's a pierced reality on every single tile, and I, for one, am all for it.

[sinfulbliss]

Why is an antag being “murderboney” even a concern on LRP? Free antag allows this.

Also, heretic is not even close to murderboney. Most heretics don’t even get 1 sacrifice, judging by the roundend reports, and few make it beyond 1-2.

Heretic is one of the least “murderboney” antags in the config. Why would they murderbone if they 1) have no tools to do it with and 2) need specific individuals to progress? The answer is they wouldn’t and they don’t. They only murderbone after ascending, which is a difficult task that not a lot of people get to do anyway.

[Cosmodeus]

Potential banning of lowpop murder boning? I've yet to see low pop murderboning = bans and more so low pop murderboning = people putting you on their personal shit lists. If you're playing heretic in low pop and kill only your targets, then good for you. Tis not low pop murder boney. Guess what else? You can CHOOSE as a heretic to kill people or to wait for more players to join the server and make a one for one trade off as new players join the station. You don't have to kill people as heretic unless you are preventing a shuttle call or things like that. Give some examples of heretics getting banned for not killing anybody.

[sinfulbliss]

To push back a bit on Spookuni’s points:

1) Uncontainability: as are changelings, wizards, and every form of nonhuman threat (blob, dragon/carps, kudzu monsters, etc.) It’s okay for an antag to be uncontainable.

2) Round-removal: heretics only have to round-remove 3-5 people for their ascension. Likewise a headless body is not much harder to revive than a husk from a ling. Nor should it matter on LRP whether people are round removed by antags. This is why sec exists. It sucks for people to be round removed, that’s why antags are antags! Let’s nerf bombs also if we want fewer round removals.

3) I agree ascension is way too hard for new players, but I don’t think it encourages murderboning prior to the ascension. Murderboning before ascension actually seems like a great way to get caught and round-ended, provided you could even accomplish this with such a weak kit.

It also doesn’t seem anyone has considered the heretic perspective of this. That is: people hate playing heretic. So much so that there is now a policy thread asking if you can antag-ban people for asking to trade away heretic. The biggest issue with heretic is for the heretic himself, not for the 2 people he manages to sacrifice.

[Mothblocks]

You're missing the point, Sinful. Whether or not an antag can murderbone and round remove is a separate concern from requiring it. If someone wants to, as a traitor, murderbone and round remove everyone they see, that's a decision they're making, and there's not much to do at that point.

The difference is heretic offers you much less leg room, and near exclusively tells you to just gib a ton of people so you can murderbone some more. It's an unhealthy style of gameplay to promote. Uncontainability is a problem because it reinforces that security should just gun down every antagonist they see, which is an unhealthy style of gameplay to promote, we get that plenty with other antagonists and don't need another.

[Ryusenshu]

Potential banning of lowpop murder boning? I've yet to see low pop murderboning = bans and more so low pop murderboning = people putting you on their personal shit lists. If you're playing heretic in low pop and kill only your targets, then good for you. Tis not low pop murder boney. Guess what else? You can CHOOSE as a heretic to kill people or to wait for more players to join the server and make a one for one trade off as new players join the station. You don't have to kill people as heretic unless you are preventing a shuttle call or things like that. Give some examples of heretics getting banned for not killing anybody.

"Real" Low Pop Heretic hasnt been a thing for while now
https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/pull/59468

Also i brought this idea up on discord regarding changing how points are gained

Maybe something like rituals, that will take a while to do and requires certain objects, dependend on path

edit: this might make heretic way harder though

[sinfulbliss]

The difference is heretic offers you much less leg room, and near exclusively tells you to just gib a ton of people so you can murderbone some more.

Again though, gibbing a few people because they're your targets isn't at all "murderboning." You have specific sacs to make, and need to gib the sacs. Murderboning would be killing several people indiscriminately, not 3 targetted sacrifices.

Uncontainability is a problem because it reinforces that security should just gun down every antagonist they see, which is an unhealthy style of gameplay to promote, we get that plenty with other antagonists and don't need another.

This gameplay is promoted because any other response is impractical for security. As a rule of thumb, I usually execute antags above 45-50pop, simply because it is almost impossible to contain them safely. There are too many other threats to risk having them back in the round. Every security player on LRP does this as well apart from a select few.

The reason murderboning is allowed on LRP is because people enjoy that form of chaos. It shouldn't be viewed as "an unhealthy gameplay choice which we have to accept," it should be viewed as part of the game which adds to the chaos and LRP flavor. There is a reason it's allowed on LRP, and discouraging it through policy or through disabling an antag config is dragging in MRP enforcement to LRP servers.

[Pandarsenic]

Uncontainability is a problem because it reinforces that security should just gun down every antagonist they see, which is an unhealthy style of gameplay to promote, we get that plenty with other antagonists and don't need another.

This gameplay is promoted because any other response is impractical for security. As a rule of thumb, I usually execute antags above 45-50pop, simply because it is almost impossible to contain them safely. There are too many other threats to risk having them back in the round. Every security player on LRP does this as well apart from a select few.

I think that's what they're saying is the problem though

[sinfulbliss]

Uncontainability is a problem because it reinforces that security should just gun down every antagonist they see, which is an unhealthy style of gameplay to promote, we get that plenty with other antagonists and don't need another.

This gameplay is promoted because any other response is impractical for security. As a rule of thumb, I usually execute antags above 45-50pop, simply because it is almost impossible to contain them safely. There are too many other threats to risk having them back in the round. Every security player on LRP does this as well apart from a select few.

I think that's what they're saying is the problem though

I don’t see how this is a problem. As long as antags are allowed to murderbone, plasmaflood, cause massive grief etc., sec will execute them when they’re caught. If you want sec to treat them leniently, we have an MRP server where this is standard (because antags can’t do these things on MRP, so the risk in keeping them around is lowered dramatically).

Even if it is a problem, it’s not a problem with heretic, it’s a problem that exists for every antag. I’ve seen way, way more people get murdered by changelings, traitors, xenos, revs, etc. than a heretic of all things. Heretic is perhaps one of the least murderboning antags in the game, which is why I find this entire line of reasoning bizarre. 90% of heretics just harvest realities and sac 0-2 people because heretic is difficult and fairly weak.

[Mothblocks]

As a rule of thumb, I usually execute antags above 45-50pop, simply because it is almost impossible to contain them safely.

Gee, doesn't sound like something we should be promoting more of to me!

You are still neglecting to acknowledge that murderboning, round removal, etc is all very much doable as traitor. There's a difference between allowing unhealthy styles of gameplay and actively promoting them.

[Not-Dorsidarf]

Had an amazing round where a guy kept showing up increasingly-suspiscious and bloodsoaked while I was trying to do my round and I would say "yo" every time, and he'd be like "heya" back.

Then finally we meet in a quiet corridor and he says "Sorry buddy, its for a good cause" and knifed me, but I cheered him on with lastgasp and he ascended.

(Then was instapwned by a sec officer shooting a fueltank next to him then blatting his critted body with an ebow until he was dead but oh well)

[sinfulbliss]

As a rule of thumb, I usually execute antags above 45-50pop, simply because it is almost impossible to contain them safely.

Gee, doesn't sound like something we should be promoting more of to me!

Perhaps, in which case we should make perma/gulag stronger or make mindshields take away antag status to incentivize keeping traitors in the round after they're caught.

You are still neglecting to acknowledge that murderboning, round removal, etc is all very much doable as traitor. There's a difference between allowing unhealthy styles of gameplay and actively promoting them.

You haven't yet qualified why it is an "unhealthy style of gameplay." In LRP it is allowed. Would banning murderboning on LRP make it better, in your opinion?

I fully understand traitors can murderbone. My whole argument is that heretics are the least murderboney of the antags - traitors are much better equipped for it and do it far more often than heretics. Heretics can't murderbone period until they ascend, which is fairly difficult.

The entire traitor kit is geared around murder - murdering people as a traitor is actively promoted through the items in the uplink itself. Aside from clown traitors, there's really not much the uplink can do for you other than provide you with weapons to kill/escape after you've killed.

[Mothblocks]

SS13 is a game about interacting with other people and creating interesting stories from the chaos that arises. These stories are best when they are past there was a guy killing people and I killed them, and especially not in the vein of just executing every antagonist you see, when they are meant to be the driving force of the round. SS13 is a game about stories, and not about raw PvP.

Whether or not I think murderbone should be allowed (a question of policy, and out of scope for the topic at hand) is different from whether the code of the game should encourage it (a question of design), which is a direction maintainers have been moving the game away from.

[sinfulbliss]

SS13 is a game about interacting with other people and creating interesting stories from the chaos that arises. These stories are best when they are past there was a guy killing people and I killed them, and especially not in the vein of just executing every antagonist you see, when they are meant to be the driving force of the round. SS13 is a game about stories, and not about raw PvP.

Sparing antags won't really drive the story of the round - it will moreso ensure the station is destroyed and people are killed wordlessly. A plasmaflood and getting silently killed by an antag sec let off isn't really a story. I'll agree though that there are exceptions. But you have to trust the antag to make a story and not just kill people when they're released, which is quite risky.

Whether or not I think murderbone should be allowed (a question of policy, and out of scope for the topic at hand) is different from whether the code of the game should encourage it (a question of design), which is a direction maintainers have been moving the game away from.

This seems to dodge the question. It seems to me that if you think murderboning should be banned on LRP as a matter of policy, you would be more inclined to encourage game-design choices that discourage it on LRP. Which is sort of the gripe I have with this viewpoint. It seems to be trying to skirt around policy through configs and game design.

[Mothblocks]

No, they're completely separate areas of concern. You can encourage better storytelling through the game design, whereas enforcing policy upon people both limits what people can do as well as increases burden on administration.

There is no such thing as skirting policy through configs, maintainers have no control over that--that's why this thread exists in the first place.

[Pandarsenic]

"The antag got away and murdered" doesn't have to be the whole story if Heretics get some sort of actual lore or non-murder mechanics to make a story with

[Mothblocks]

Which is not in the realm of a policy discussion, as we can't configure heretics to have different spells.

[sinfulbliss]

No, they're completely separate areas of concern.

I feel like you missed what I said... The philosophy of "murderboning is bad on LRP" will inspire policy and config changes. But murderboning isn't bad on LRP, it's part of the game and fits in perfectly to the chaos. If it's bad, then ban it outright. If it's not bad, then heretics being "murderboney" (which they aren't), is completely immaterial.

[Mothblocks]

I'm not going to entertain slippery slopes. Everything I said in my last message still applies.

[EdgeLord_exe]

how to make Heretics not murderbony in single (1) step : change this SINGULAR line of code.
alternatively port changes that yogstation made to heretics ( which i personally i really really like ) :
https://github.com/yogstation13/Yogstation/pull/12548
https://github.com/yogstation13/Yogstation/pull/12169


real java developer hour lol, 20 meetings for a single line of code change smh.

[Pandarsenic]

Which is not in the realm of a policy discussion, as we can't configure heretics to have different spells.

My official take™ is that Heretic should be disabled until and unless the people who like it can make it Not Suck at a code level.

Even if that means Heretic goes away forever, I think that's better than what we have now, though the linked stuff from Yog seems like it could be interesting.

[Mothblocks]

@Pandarsenic Yeah, that's more or less my thoughts.

@EdgeLord I think removing the gib would be a good place to start, but one thing I consider is, if you're already there, why wouldn't you just throw them in a locker while you're at it?

One thing I was thinking of is having a sacrifice keep them in place for a bit (to incentivize you to go somewhere else), then throwing their body somewhere in maint, probably somewhere behind airlocks. Stops the round removal, as well as stopping people from just round removing while they're there, because there's no reason not to.