change dynamic on manuel to only select restricted antagonists

[dendydoom]

this is a nuclear level take i dropped in adminbus earlier. i would also be entirely open to lowering the weight of unrestricted antagonists, and of course, in any case that this is implemented, exempting nuke ops (which i consider its own gamemode still)

the reason for this being suggested is NOT so that we don't see unrestricted antagonists, it is so that admins themselves can manually inject very destructive antagonists into the round at a narratively appropriate moment where it doesn't completely destroy the current story of the round with a totally random "hey guess what the world is ending!" scenario which has no correlation to what's going on.

what this will also mean is that the manuel community will have to accept an admins right to choose to push those buttons, and to not get upset when it happens, but rather to accept it like they accept dynamic right now.

this way, destructive antagonists that halt the entire round will come at more appropriate times, and will have more of an opportunity to have a narrative point. there will be more of a story to these world ending threats.

of course, you will still have things like heretic ascension and progression traitor final objectives, which are round ending mechanics in themselves.

it will also, perhaps, encourage some people to check out our other US servers, maybe the lrp ones, where these antagonists will still appear in full force.

this will possibly mess with the general coder idea of the 1h30m round, but i don't care about this very much. sorry. i'm not sure how else to word it. in the words of david lynch, "who gives a fucking shit how long a round is?"

once again, i feel the need to preface this with:

this is not set in stone. this is not a suggestion i'm set on. this is not something i'm going to aggressively push because i really want it. this is not something i think will even necessarily work. i just want to hear what players think about it, because it is a change that will affect them the most.

[TheSmallBlue]

I very much don't like this, at least not on Manuel.
I like Manuel's MRP exclusively because it practically has the same mechanics and antagonists as the LRP servers while being calmer / more manageable. It forces unrestricted antags to do more interesting things than just get a double bladed e-sword and a syndicate modsuit then go on a mass murder spree.
But like, this is entirely dependant on the players actually rolling an unrestricted antag. Take that away and place it on an admin's whim, and the people who could enact those interesting things no longer get an opportunity to do them.

Like, for example, one day I want to roll traitor as a robo, only to go off into space, get the AI ship, and make a new AI core with specific laws (given via syndicate law boards) that turn that AI into a pirate, to make it plunder the station!
That's something that can really only happen on Manuel, I doubt LRP players would care much about role-playing as a pirate as an AI.
Enacting this change would mean that this would be impossible for me. I wouldn't be able to get traitor as a robo anymore, unless an admin sees it fit that I do, or if I get lucky as an observer. And even if I do, God knows if I will have enough time in the round to find the ship, make the core, make the laws, etcetera. And I don't think an admin would be happy if they turned someone into an antag only for them to go off into space.

If we had an HRP server (like the one goof suggested a while back that one was sick) I'd be down with it, but I don't think Manuel is the place for it

[mrmelbert]

On Goonstation's RP servers, like 80% of their antagonists are disabled.

No wizard, no nukies, etc. The only antags around are like, Traitors, Vampires, Revs. A handful more.

It's a curated list so only antags which encourage roleplay are around. Also, antags in general are far, far more restricted than in our ruleset.

It's interesting, but I don't think I like it.

If you play Goon RP in any tangible amount, you will barely notice antags at all. Antags, 99% of the time, are resigned to interacting with security ONLY (and their targets, but rarely, as most go for gimmicks instead).

I'm not saying this is bad, per se - roleplay is focused more around crew-crew interaction and the shenanigans you can get up to on goon code, but it's certainly different.

(Also: If you're ever interested in policy discussion, check out their RP discussion forum - there's some interesting takes there we may learn from)

[Jacquerel]

To be clear this would be the full list of enabled rulesets assuming the wiki rules are up to date:

Traitor,
Blood Brother,
Spy,
Heretic,
Changeling,
Ninja,
Abductors,
Pirates,
Obsessed,
Cult,
Revolution

And these would be disabled:

Malfunctioning AI,
Space Dragon,
Wizard,
Nuclear Operatives,
Revenant,
Blob,
Xenomorph,
Nightmare,
Spiders


Personally this sounds like a real PITA idea from the code side in terms of "I guess headmins are more regularly going to arbitrarily turn antagonists off based on a policy decision" and I think will severely exacerbate the problems we already have with dynamic not really having that many options to draw on.

[iwishforducks]

considering that manuel is one of the only US servers getting consistent pop, i do not think maintainers would appreciate having some of the antagonists just flat-out disabled. you will absolutely need some nods of approval from the maintainer team before you can do this… probably. they might not actually care.

but as for my personal opinion: this heavily reminds me of how Skyrat/Nova operates, where antagonists are only given to people by admins. bleugh. not that admins will be personally handing out antag with this, it just gives me the same vibes. i would like to be able to play the game normally as the coders intended with a reasonable pop.

i do not think this is the correct solution for lrp pop, too. we should be looking to make lrp better rather than trying to push players away from manuel.

i’ve also never felt like unrestricted antagonists have foiled roleplay at all. sometimes you die. and that’s that. if someone can’t accept that there are bigger forces than them, then they need to quit it with the main character syndrome.

[Jacquerel]

considering that manuel is one of the only US servers getting consistent pop, i do not think maintainers would appreciate having some of the antagonists just flat-out disabled. you will absolutely need some nods of approval from the maintainer team before you can do this… probably. they might not actually care.

to be clear while I just said I think it would be annoying, the separation is absolute
head admins already have the power to do this if they wanted to via tweaking dynamic config (see: heretic count differing on MRP from LRP), don't need my permission

[dendydoom]

I very much don't like this, at least not on Manuel.
I like Manuel's MRP exclusively because it practically has the same mechanics and antagonists as the LRP servers while being calmer / more manageable. It forces unrestricted antags to do more interesting things than just get a double bladed e-sword and a syndicate modsuit then go on a mass murder spree.
But like, this is entirely dependant on the players actually rolling an unrestricted antag. Take that away and place it on an admin's whim, and the people who could enact those interesting things no longer get an opportunity to do them.

Like, for example, one day I want to roll traitor as a robo, only to go off into space, get the AI ship, and make a new AI core with specific laws (given via syndicate law boards) that turn that AI into a pirate, to make it plunder the station!
That's something that can really only happen on Manuel, I doubt LRP players would care much about role-playing as a pirate as an AI.
Enacting this change would mean that this would be impossible for me. I wouldn't be able to get traitor as a robo anymore, unless an admin sees it fit that I do, or if I get lucky as an observer. And even if I do, God knows if I will have enough time in the round to find the ship, make the core, make the laws, etcetera. And I don't think an admin would be happy if they turned someone into an antag only for them to go off into space.

If we had an HRP server (like the one goof suggested a while back that one was sick) I'd be down with it, but I don't think Manuel is the place for it

thank you for your response, though i am a little confused here. traitors are restricted antagonists, they would still be chosen, and if anything, they would be chosen more often because the selection pool is smaller.

thank you to everyone who has shared their thoughts so far, much appreciated.

[mrmelbert]

And these would be disabled:

Malfunctioning AI,
Space Dragon,
Wizard,
Nuclear Operatives,
Revenant,
Blob,
Xenomorph,
Nightmare,
Spiders

Of these I think there's an argument to be made in disabling Space Dragon, Spiders, and maybe Wizard and Blob. The rest feel fine to me.

[iwishforducks]

► Show Spoiler

And these would be disabled:

Malfunctioning AI,
Space Dragon,
Wizard,
Nuclear Operatives,
Revenant,
Blob,
Xenomorph,
Nightmare,
Spiders

Of these I think there's an argument to be made in disabling Space Dragon, Spiders, and maybe Wizard and Blob. The rest feel fine to me.

blob is imo the best antagonist out of these for mrp. you’re crazy. but i digress… something something bikeshed

[Jacquerel]

Blob heads the list at strongest candidate for "this is something you literally cannot communicate with" however I think that the crew being essentially given a sapient obstacle is still fine and good on MRP (this is also what Spiders, Xenos, and Dragon are, although I can understand the feeling that Dragon is the least interesting of these).
Wizards conversely are problematic not because they aren't people you can RP with but because on MRP they tend to be boring as hell and players will literally ignore them while they fuck things up six times out of ten, until the issue is forced.

Space Dragons and Space Carp can be spoken to in plain english for some reason. Personally I don't like this but would be pilloried if I removed it. I think it is funny when people arrest the space dragon.

[dendydoom]

i'd also like to be clear that i'd have absolutely 0 intentions of setting restrictions on admins pressing these buttons. if an unrestricted antagonist is appropriate every round, then they should inject one every round. it would just add a human director to the timing of it, and allow them to attempt to naturally tie it into the narrative of the round, which is much more important on mrp.

the goal is not to decrease the amount of unrestricted antagonists, though that is a very obvious and certain side effect of this sort of change, but ultimately it is to make unrestricted antagonists more impactful by ensuring their entry into the round creates an enjoyable narrative moment for the crew, instead of an inconvenient obstacle that destroys any story they were already a part of in order to now handle this new random threat.

melbert is completely correct in that the list should be refined down to what is actually "world ending", and his shortened list is probably a much more sensible and moderate idea. thank you!

[PapaMichael]

i'm all for more dm'd rounds by admins
but like
admins can already force disable rulesets and manually trigger midrounds if they feel like kicking dynamic to the curb for that round?
the fact that they typically don't (i don't read the logs of literally every round, but i still feel confident in asserting that they typically don't) must mean that they're usually not particularly interested in doing so
i'd be much more amenable to it if it weren't the default, if admins had a streamlined button to press to toggle this and would only do so if they are actually following the narrative of the round and not dealing with ahelp ticket #28

[TheSmallBlue]

though i am a little confused here. traitors are restricted antagonists, they would still be chosen, and if anything, they would be chosen more often because the selection pool is smaller.

I totally didn't forget that traitors aren't restriction exempt and my point totally isn't null and void and you should totally not just ignore everything that I said. Totally.

[iwishforducks]

Blob heads the list at strongest candidate for "this is something you literally cannot communicate with" however I think that the crew being essentially given a sapient obstacle is still fine and good on MRP (this is also what Spiders, Xenos, and Dragon are, although I can understand the feeling that Dragon is the least interesting of these).

blob is the best because it rallies the entire crew. often times i find that blobs will define the relations i had in rounds. who saved me? who covered me? who did i witness just leeroy jenkins into the blob? who was the motherfucker THAT SHOT ME IN THE BACK? time to yell at cargo to buy guns. time to yell at sec to open the armory. time for medical to get their shit together and get to the frontline.

i think measuring an antagonist’s “roleplay” factor based on If They Can Talk is very much mislead. the blob being an unfeeling force that cannot be reasoned with is what makes it a very good breeding ground for roleplay. this is not to say every round benefits from a blob, though.

… sorry LOL this is bikeshed as fuck. (but also i like unrestricted antagonists because i do genuinely feel like they help roleplay, not hurt it.)

[Jacquerel]

Blob heads the list at strongest candidate for "this is something you literally cannot communicate with" however I think that the crew being essentially given a sapient obstacle is still fine and good on MRP (this is also what Spiders, Xenos, and Dragon are, although I can understand the feeling that Dragon is the least interesting of these).

blob is the best because it rallies the entire crew. often times i find that blobs will define the relations i had in rounds. who saved me? who covered me? who did i witness just leeroy jenkins into the blob? who was the motherfucker THAT SHOT ME IN THE BACK? time to yell at cargo to buy guns. time to yell at sec to open the armory. time for medical to get their shit together and get to the frontline.

i think measuring an antagonist’s “roleplay” factor based on If They Can Talk is very much mislead. the blob being an unfeeling force that cannot be reasoned with is what makes it a very good breeding ground for roleplay. this is not to say every round benefits from a blob, though.

… sorry LOL this is bikeshed as fuck. (but also i like unrestricted antagonists because i do genuinely feel like they help roleplay, not hurt it.)

i don't disagree with this, this is basically what I meant by saying "I think that the crew being essentially given a sapient obstacle is still fine and good on MRP"

[Vekter]

Yeah, I do not like this idea. I feel like SS13 needs at least some chaos to really be a fun game, and while I agree that restricted antags can provide some of that, I believe the true SS13 experience involves sometimes just having a wizard appear next to you and pulling your skull out of your mouth.

I agree with the idea that having a round full of interesting interactions and projects ruined by nukies showing up kinda sucks, but it's also just outright part of the game. I hate using this term, but I can't think of anything better: It's soulful. It's how the game has always been and I think that's to its benefit. It's Just Another Day on Space Station 13.

[DrAmazing343]

I one hundred percent approve of more curated rounds via admins, but I don’t know if a blanket change like this helps.

Some antagonists often will end rounds without creating much meaningful roleplay, interaction, or stories, and I’d be more than amenable to those being disabled except for bus.

Spiders and Xenomorphs are on the same tier of difficult to stomp out, high hurdle antag that I’ve noticed doesn’t do much but create a binary “this will force shuttle call or it will be stomped out” without creating much roleplay around opposition.

Space Dragon is almost always a shuttle call, and ESPECIALLY just does not feel like an antagonist that fits for MRP. A robust dragon will force a shuttle call and most of the time if the crew isn’t truly on the ball, the havoc it wreaks by smashing toxins and atmos cans and all of that will force the call anyway.

Blob as a sentient but incommunicable obstacle for the crew is one of my favorites overall. As people have already said, it rallies the crew, provides a smokescreen for smaller fish antags, and does an excellent job at creating a vibe of desperate unified battle against an overwhelming creature. I like it!

Revenant still has a place, either way, and is much too small fry to really be disabled I think. It can’t murderbone and it can voice in head to influence crew (which is fantastic fun and roleplay) alongside being a sort of “transitory antag” that can and will be owned and never come back, much like—

—Nightmares, which have offered a lot of roleplay for me in the past, but otherwise as long as there’s a Sec force, just gives you a reason to fear the dark and a common enemy for the station to oppose. Truly robust Nightmares are, well, nightmarish, but I don’t think there’s cause to remove them based on their unrestricted status, except maybe Supermatter sabotage being consistently just piss-annoying when a Nightmare on Icebox does it for the 999th time?

I’d also very much like us to keep Malfunctioning AI. It’s a personal preference thing, and I can understand those who would and will champion it’s disabling, but it’s another unified threat thing that becomes a game mode a la Nuke Ops once it’s unmasked and I kinda like that. Perhaps, in the end, it's just that I enjoy when even The Walls Are Trying To Kill Me

[Higgin]

I'm afraid to say I tried something to this effect in a past life and, although I think it would have worked well, it was ultimately rejected on a narrow margin vote.

From a time of running it like this behind the scenes, for the most part, these were some of my lessons.

Relevant to admins:
- Putting the stuff behind admin hands makes admins responsible for every round that somebody thinks was too boring or that was too much of a stomp - let alone one where an antag might have been ICly cool/appropriate (a Spider Clan ninja makes an announcement threatening to call in spiders if nobody defeats them; sec/command go on a tear, there's a revolution.)
- It takes more admin work, coverage, and judgment. Not every admin who does good work refereeing the game and helping players has the same level of Dungeon Master dog in them.
- Tying both together: it relies on admin trust and a shift in expectations that basically every round on MRP might be an event round in order to be the SS13 people currently enjoy on MRP. There's a lot more trust here than in the communities I've worked with in the past; all the same, when there isn't a felt problem, this is dangerous territory to step out into without full buy-in all around.

Relevant to players:
- It doesn't solve the problem in Dynamic of the existence of these higher-powered/unrestricted antags, or antag gameplay in general, necessarily hanging like an axe over every round interaction. Antags are still gonna antag for no more appreciable reason than antag - even if they might get a bit more room to cook with narrative, people aren't necessarily going to use it or play like they have it.
- This is to say: it doesn't set expectations on all sides to behave differently round-to-round or to play to a certain level. You don't know if the admin is going to press the Beno button or not, and you don't know if the guy who runs in with a gun might not have you as an objective before you start running or fighting - you don't know if the restriction applies, much like you have no idea of the round because the threat report just lies.
- It may lower the range and overall felt threat of every round, on average, but this for a lot of people will feel like a loss. A lot of people approach the game saying "let me be surprised" - possibly by that roundstart wizard roll and a license to go bananas with it.

Relevant to the overall game and left in spoilers because it's too damn long:

Spoiler:

the reason for this being suggested is NOT so that we don't see unrestricted antagonists, it is so that admins themselves can manually inject very destructive antagonists into the round at a narratively appropriate moment where it doesn't completely destroy the current story of the round with a totally random "hey guess what the world is ending!" scenario which has no correlation to what's going on.

what this will also mean is that the manuel community will have to accept an admins right to choose to push those buttons, and to not get upset when it happens, but rather to accept it like they accept dynamic right now.

this way, destructive antagonists that halt the entire round will come at more appropriate times, and will have more of an opportunity to have a narrative point. there will be more of a story to these world ending threats.

We are in a difficult situation with 'narrative' or even I'd go further to say 'the fiction of characters as people existing in a separate real world.' Our antags don't require it, our solutions to antags don't require it, and Manny is a big-tent server that caters both to the game played between players playing the game (most crudely classed by antag status) alongside the games of people playing characters.

The latter are trying to do so in a world without persistent or even agreed-upon IC stakes. The sorts of development and character expression needed for them to really have a narrative people buy into - and that has meaning - are precluded by the rounds rolling over after a 'disaster simulation,' rules on metagaming restricting IC carryover between rounds, and more than just unrestricted antagonists, but basically all of them. It's a rare set in any era that usually get accused of being a metagang or clique that really see development across time - a narrative you can really buy into - within these limits.

Beyond that, the narrative within any single round is in many ways conditioned by the antag game, even if it seemingly has nothing to do with it - if security takes a too-harsh response to somebody tiding tech storage for gloves for a project that leads to a move against security, a trial, whatever, it too often comes from the conditioning of there being antags in every other round to which the script applies more neatly. The time that could be spent on handling the situation more delicately or giving more room for character expression is sacrificed to the uncertainty of Dynamic and antags out of their fear of getting cold-clocked for not. The same applies to antags dealing with security, targets, crew, etc. And a lot of people seem happy enough with what they can get - with a slightly greater degree of protection and predictability to feel like they're effective without being in an all-against-all state of nature on LRP, or the ability to scratch out their characters more comfortably in the margins - while this action-without-content formula is at some level still the ultimate rule.

Within these limits, the way tg runs and plays is strongly tilted towards players playing a game through avatars that might be characters - not players playing characters being the game itself.

So when we talk about narrative appropriateness at any given moment and, as I read it, making more room for on-station stories to unfold, for people to have those opportunities to play up their characters rather than being blasted by contentless/contextless unrestricted antags, or random bullshit tedium events, or whatever else at a whim? Quietly hitting a cancel button and deferring something blowing up a good, natural conflict, or substituting in something more apt for the round? I'm happy to do it behind the scenes and may well do, but there's only so much I can do.

I hope not to sound like a doomer here, but I don't think there's a good way to fairly or effectively honor narrative without more fundamentally changing how the game plays or how we run things here than this. Other servers and games I've been on and helped run have much more full persistence, running plots, smaller communities, and much higher buy-in than we are willing to admit here, and shifting one part of the slider towards that sort of a game around unrestricted antags is going to be felt much more strongly by people who want unpredictability/unrestricted antags/gaming than it is by the people really wanting to go in on narrative.

[mrmelbert]

IMO a huge thing to me, IE one of my personal biggest gripes, is trying to set up gimmicks and trying to be an engaging solo antagonist is nigh impossible because dynamic sees "oh the antags aren't doing much" and injects a ton of midrounds which really disrupt a solo antagonist's ability to do something fun. That's why I gave the list that I did

When I'm a solo antag I almost always end up 'validhunting' some midround spawn because they end up killing all the people that I'm trying to put a show on for. It sucks

[Higgin]

IMO a huge thing to me, IE one of my personal biggest gripes, is trying to set up gimmicks and trying to be an engaging solo antagonist is nigh impossible because dynamic sees "oh the antags aren't doing much" and injects a ton of midrounds which really disrupt a solo antagonist's ability to do something fun. That's why I gave the list that I did

When I'm a solo antag I almost always end up 'validhunting' some midround spawn because they end up killing all the people that I'm trying to put a show on for. It sucks

Same token, if you're a solo antag just trying to play your solo antag straight, those midrounds may actually be doing you a favor by attritting security/the crew or drawing their attention...

...and in turn making them more prone next time to dealing more harshly with you when you're trying to do your gimmick because pirates/nightmare/a dragon/some other stock traitor might get up to shit in the middle of a scene.

[Vekter]

IMO a huge thing to me, IE one of my personal biggest gripes, is trying to set up gimmicks and trying to be an engaging solo antagonist is nigh impossible because dynamic sees "oh the antags aren't doing much" and injects a ton of midrounds which really disrupt a solo antagonist's ability to do something fun. That's why I gave the list that I did

When I'm a solo antag I almost always end up 'validhunting' some midround spawn because they end up killing all the people that I'm trying to put a show on for. It sucks

I wonder if it would be possible to have Dynamic only roll team antags when there aren't already a bunch of solo antags? Maybe make team antags require more threat?

[Jacquerel]

I think something else to think about here is "what is the difference between restricted and unrestricted antagonists"?
Chiefly, as far as I am aware, this distinction exists to decide who is allowed to just pick a fight with someone for absolutely no reason and who isn't.

On a fundamental level then, removing all unrestricted antagonists means that nobody can attack and kill you without some form of prior interaction.
On the surface I guess I can see why this sounds like a good idea conducive to roleplay, but is the effect this would have on the game something we actually want?
What it would be indicating to players, essentially, is "nobody is allowed to kill you unless they have an objective saying so or have given me warning through roleplay" and I think the attitudes that this approach can cultivate in a playerbase can tend towards the toxic when it comes to how they react to other players, admin events, and admin enforcement. This can emphasise people's worst tendencies to object to anything bad happening to their spaceman that they don't personally agree to, puts more focus on whether someone's violent acts towards you were "legitimate", and ultimately whether it was "fair" for an admin to choose to run an unrestricted event antagonist which spoiled your fun (because now that's always an admin's direct decision, not the arbitrary hand of the game).

Basically what I am leading up to is that I think that having something (controlled by another player) which can pop up and kill you without your consent is ultimately pretty important for keeping people "humble" in a way.
Every player should be playing with the idea that they are essentially risking putting their OC into a meat grinder to manage their expectations, if we remove that expectation an important pillar of the game ("losing is fun") starts crumbling.

[Cheshify]

I remember when I was at the code meeting and it was universally agreed upon that we need MORE antagonists to keep the game fresh and to make dynamic better. I don't think cutting half our antag roster is a good idea.

[Higgin]

I remember when I was at the code meeting and it was universally agreed upon that we need MORE antagonists to keep the game fresh and to make dynamic better. I don't think cutting half our antag roster is a good idea.

Moth has said this and that also designing them well + making them distinct is a lot harder than people give credit, so seconding this - part of making them better and making more of them is not abdicating them on the server, even if we have code/server separation.

[DaydreamIQ]

I'm really not a huge fan of this idea personally, sure admins would be able to spawn in threats when they saw the round was starting to drag on but I feel like that'd make rounds with little or no admin supervision be boring as hell, blobs and dragons are a good way of getting the crew to have an excuse to pack up when they're done fighting usually.

[Armhulen]

Cool gamey response: If it doesn't work on MRP, it isn't healthy on all other servers. From what melbert said, the most agreeable choices to disable are actually just antagonists that are problematic to begin with.

Interesting player psychoanalysis: This obliterates a lot of round to round variety and I've been always fighting for knowing what to expect from a round less and less. The more people can predict what a round will contain, the easier they can figure out "the best strategy", something antithetical to roleplay, and the more we have to push administrative efforts to force playing suboptimally when the game mechanics should encourage roleplay and get people in the mood to roleplay more. Optimal strategies should be vague, changing from round to round, confusing, require cooperation, lock off other choices, and make you the best at something instead of a jack of all trades. If the best way to play is turning into a non-job mass of equipment that fills each slot the best and can be gained every round, people will eventually figure it out and do that and then we need to step in as admins. OK that's a lot of words so tl;dr: Less threats and more of the same kind of threats pushes the game in a spoiled and settled meta direction non-conductive to roleplay.

Boring maintainer response: I don't want to keep supporting the code for antagonists that are mostly perma disabled.

[Waltermeldron]

I don't think making restricted antagonists more rare in hopes that admins inject them into the round more often is a great idea. Right now, the best hope is a full rework in how dynamic works so that the storytelling aspect is more consistent and it doesn't feel as random as it sometimes feels.

The biggest issue with outright disabling antags is that we're going to get disparity and general issues between the LRP and MRP servers as one half of our playerbase will essentially not be testing and playing around with half of our antag roster. I think a better solution might be to encourage admins to curate rounds as they see fit.
But even this has issues if done with too much focus, as being a DM generally means managing the flow of a round, which can be a lot of work. You usually have to be observant and see what's going on to be able to react appropriately and inject threat as needed.

Ultimately, this is something that's probably better done as a code solution and trying to offload that work onto admins is probably going to result is a worsened experience. Dynamic isn't perfect right now, but I think rounds will just generally be more boring if we disable unrestricted antags on MRP
if the primary problem is that dynamic is too spontaneous with antag selection, changing the weights probably won't be sufficient either since there is still the concept of heavy/light events within dynamic

[TheBibleMelts]

Malfunctioning AI - These contribute to the round storyline
Space Dragon - Agreed, remove them. You either get 'friendly dragons' or a mass murder without a lot of IC reason or leadup for either.
Wizard - If you remove wizards I am going to spawn wizards every shift until they're re-enabled. Love wizards and the energy they add to rounds.
Nuclear Operatives - Could do without War-Ops, but otherwise I'd like these to stay.
Revenant - Grief ghosts. I'd agree with their removal as well - they don't really meaningfully contribute to a round.
Blob - They contribute to the round storyline and unite the crew, but in a more bland and Crew vs. NPC way (even though they're player controlled, the strategies and variance of their impact tends to be pretty stagnant)
Xenomorph - Love me some Xenomorphs. Storyline, threat, and chaos all in one.
Nightmare - These can add tension and paranoia for travelling in the dark, but otherwise don't really do much either way.
Spiders - A lesser stationwide threat, I like them for the reason I like Xenos, but they've got a unique enough flavor and pull ghosts into the round at a higher rate.

[Archie700]

Revenant - Grief ghosts. I'd agree with their removal as well - they don't really meaningfully contribute to a round.

Disagree on this.

Revenant's (deceptively) low impact is why I prefer they stay. It gives deadchat a way to impact the round by assisting the revenant being an irritant towards the crew while it slowly builds up to be a threat. Good revenant's can completely fuck over parts of the crew given enough lights and "distractions" (other antags).

[britgrenadier1]

I dont think we should be relying on admins to inject this stuff. I'm faaaaaaairly certain y'all can just disable dynamic and do what you want in any given round anyway, so why not just internally encourage that to happen more rather than removing normally spawning antags for the rounds where we dont have DM admins online?


We should delete space dragon separately btw.

[NoxVS]

I dont think we should be relying on admins to inject this stuff. I'm faaaaaaairly certain y'all can just disable dynamic and do what you want in any given round anyway, so why not just internally encourage that to happen more rather than removing normally spawning antags for the rounds where we dont have DM admins online?


We should delete space dragon separately btw.

Yeah, if we remove it we do it with the expectation that it's gone. None of this pretending like it's just making it a tool for admins to inject into the round. We want this game to run itself in an ideal situation.

On an unrelated note

Malfunctioning AI - Doesn't have a whole lot of tools to specifically target people, which tends to be the issue with unrestricted antags. It's sort of all or nothing, which encourages the entire crew to participate in dealing with them.
Space Dragon - My least favorite midround. Tends to focus on single targets, which can make fighting it pretty lame. It's either going to get steamrolled right away or the round is now over because a big chunk of sec is dead.
Wizard - I personally don't like it, but I doubt it's going anywhere. Plus it's pretty rare so w/e
Nuclear Operatives - I feel like the only enjoyable part is war ops. It's not fun to be going about the round when a delta alert suddenly pops up. War ops gives you time to prepare and for everyone to participate, even if it's mostly just senseless violence
Revenant - Pretty boring. They tend to be more annoying than anything. If it's competent enough to not die right away, just start spamming salt smoke.
Blob - Great! A stationary threat that requires multiple people to collaborate to deal with it. Gives baddies an opportunity to go for their objectives while the crew isn't focusing on other areas, only to realize all of the sudden that they've caused too many problems and if they don't drop everything to help kill the blob then we're all going to die.
Xenomorph - Eh. Stunlocks are pretty lame. Kinda hard to avoid so it's not like you can even use them to your advantage to go for other stuff while they draw attention.
Nightmare - They're probably going to die pretty quickly. They're going to take multiple APCs down before this happens. These APCs will never be fixed.
Spiders - Also kinda lame to fight but I'm mostly fine with them

Overall just axe space dragon.

[DrAmazing343]

-snipgrenadier-

Blob - Gives baddies an opportunity to go for their objectives while the crew isn't focusing on other areas, only to realize all of the sudden that they've caused too many problems and if they don't drop everything to help kill the blob then we're all going to die.

Spiders - Also kinda lame to fight but I'm mostly fine with them

Overall just axe space dragon.

Absolutely based takes— I've had the experience of being the Problem Causer and then realizing I have to turn all my fight prep into anti-Blob menace. It's quite fun. Blob is one of my favorite antagonists because it FORCES unity, one way or another, and is so so interesting for the sort of (and this is because I've been playing it a lot recently) way it makes you feel like you're a Marine or something in a big war. Corpsmen in the back, riflemen at the front, engineers putting up rechargers and fixing APC's and shit. It's all so exciting!

[TheRex9001]

I think this might make Manuel too admin reliant threat wise, this is removing a lot of heavy midrounds and leaving like Ninja and Heavy space pirates as the remainder and for those higher pop shifts without admins we will see a torrent of complaints about the rounds threats feeling samey.

[Vekter]

I think this might make Manuel too admin reliant threat wise, this is removing a lot of heavy midrounds and leaving like Ninja and Heavy space pirates as the remainder and for those higher pop shifts without admins we will see a torrent of complaints about the rounds threats feeling samey.

I think this is honestly very worth amplifying here - I really don't want to be responsible for every round, not to mention that I think this will straight up negatively impact any round where an admin isn't actively present.

[NecromancerAnne]

I feel like midrounds are just better as a tool for accelerating the conclusion of a really stagnate round via manually putting them into a round, rather than automatically. I think automatically spawning midrounds negatively impact the drama of an ongoing conflict derived from a crew-drawn antagonists. If those antagonists are actively creating conflict while that midround spawns, I think the crew get too strongly pulled in two directions and it just turns into a very hopeless set of circumstances and overall very frustrating from a player standpoint. Already, I think security are as fervent on MRP as they are due to feeling like they MUST neutralize any threat ASAP because they're trying to beat the clock to an incoming midround that they know will be spawning. That doesn't seem like a good environment for roleplay to me. It feels really, really gamey and I don't entirely blame them for that mindset either. It feels like everyone is too much in a rush for actually drawn out roleplay.

If they know that midrounds are more often going to be a problem at admin discretion, it will hopefully invite players to be a lot more focused on the happenings of the round itself and take it a bit slower. Alternatively, invite our crew-drawn antagonists to be a bit more willing to do anything but progress their side objectives ad nauseam. Dropping everything to go fight a blob usually just means forfeiting any conflict with established threats. I think, if an admin cares to insert some more excitement into a given round, they can do so via midrounds or something customized. Otherwise, players will usually make their own troubles without our input, so even if we don't feel like pushing buttons, it probably isn't a detriment to the game overall to just have things play out naturally with the circumstances established roundstart.

I do think there is one flaw to the plan, but it isn't a flaw with midrounds so much as population influencing the engagement people have with specifically progression antagonists. I think that discussion needs its own thread.

[britgrenadier1]

I think this might make Manuel too admin reliant threat wise, this is removing a lot of heavy midrounds and leaving like Ninja and Heavy space pirates as the remainder and for those higher pop shifts without admins we will see a torrent of complaints about the rounds threats feeling samey.

I think this is honestly very worth amplifying here - I really don't want to be responsible for every round, not to mention that I think this will straight up negatively impact any round where an admin isn't actively present.

100%. Sometimes admins arent on, sometimes they are knee deep in tickets. I dont want admins to have to juggle tickets AND watch the round to make sure everyone is thoroughly engaged.

[NecromancerAnne]

If we simply push no buttons, I think the game will run fine. In the situations where there are lots of tickets, that usually means that it is a situation that doesn't need us to push any other buttons.

[kayozz]

Edit: ignore, was too negative. Soz.

[Constellado]

I want to be able to get blob infectiooooon....

It's so fuuuun

No roundstart wizaaarrrrdd????

Nuuuuuu

I do appreciate how there seems to be a push towards a very specific kind of Manuel that I like but I do want the random spawns that WILL NOT CAUSE ADMINS TO GET BWOINKS OR COMPLAINING PLAYERS if they push buttons.
Doing this would probably have people complain about real people instead of dynamic. People complain about antags all the time, and there is almost always complaints about any and every antag every round. I can see this as being an admin drain as the annoyed players will be venting to the admin instead of lady luck or coders.

And I don't want to lose blob infection or roundstart wizard thanks. Admins when pushing buttons never push before a round start and never click blob infection. Just normal blob.

I do think though that admins should be encouraged to make their own kinds of antags. Custom images and spells. Make players not know what to expect. Doing this proposed change will just encourage admins to push the already existing antags instead of making their own special thing.

[Indie-ana Jones]

Making code changes to Space Dragon is always a weird thing, because the different servers perceive them almost on opposite side of the power spectrum. Manuel, which seems exemplified here, sees it as a round-ender the moment it spawns in, with a shuttle call practically guaranteed. Sybil and Terry, on the other hand, make quite short work of most space dragons, which is what I'm accustomed to because that's where I play. My biggest issue with the current state of SD is that it's kit needs more pizazz, like some additional attacks, but that would almost certainly make it stronger when apparently its already too strong to Manuel. So that being said, I'm entirely sure how I'd go about making changes, because it kind of seems like making changes to favor one server is going to irk the other who sees it in the opposite light. Crocodile in the water, tiger on land.

Oh yeah, sorrying for honing specifically in on SD here, but I think given some of the commentary here it was worth giving some focus. If anyone has any ideas, feel free to comment on it here or reach out to me on Discord.

[Imitates-The-Lizards]

As a Sybilian migrant to Manuel, opposed. I feel like Jacquerel had the most reasonable take here - removing the unrestricted antags will remove too much of the fear factor of the funny looking maints hobo stabbing you because there's no one who is unrestricted to stab you without 10 minutes of HRP-lite textual roleplaying first where you both re-enact shakespeare and he dramatically stabs you to bring your dramatic performance to a close while a crowd of onlookers holding playbills wipe away tears at your acting performance.

No, sometimes people need to just get stabbed, and there isn't always admins around to inject those stabby people into a round.

[Not-Dorsidarf]

I don't like space dragon as an antag but I don't think it should be disabled on manuel only. admin-only means admin-never in most circumstances.

[Diasyl]

As a Sybilian migrant to Manuel, opposed. I feel like Jacquerel had the most reasonable take here - removing the unrestricted antags will remove too much of the fear factor of the funny looking maints hobo stabbing you because there's no one who is unrestricted to stab you without 10 minutes of HRP-lite textual roleplaying first where you both re-enact shakespeare and he dramatically stabs you to bring your dramatic performance to a close while a crowd of onlookers holding playbills wipe away tears at your acting performance.

No, sometimes people need to just get stabbed, and there isn't always admins around to inject those stabby people into a round.

You don't need to talk with people to stab them. It's just that Restricted antagonists cannot stab you unless they have to accomplish their missions, even if indirectly

[DATAxPUNGED]

I'd love more admins DMing rounds but i don't know if a blanket change like this is good

[Striders13]

admin-only means admin-never in most circumstances.

yep. Imo a change like this will lead to even less admins pushing those hard hitting antag buttons, cause the implication when you see a space dragon will be "look at this fucking shitmin button mashing ruining my bar rp"
cause people won't just magically accept it, and admins don't like making people upset

[Jake]

I'm honestly ok with the Idea, so far Manny has way too little roundstart antagonists and too many mid round threats.

Nightmares and Dragon specifically have become incredibly common.

Having more roundstart restricted antagonists increases the likelyhood of people going for gimmiks while lowering "antag anxiety".

[Indie-ana Jones]

It should be noted that Manuel has its weight for Nightmare set at 7. By default it's 4.

[Blacklist897]

kill spacedragon

[dendydoom]

thank you to everyone who participated in the discussion.

i knew the response would be a resounding "no!!!!!!!!" and the proposal itself was intentionally extreme.

i wanted to try to source honest opinions about the state of rounds and the attitudes towards destructive antagonists and the way in which they are injected into rounds by dynamic. each attempt prior at this discussion would inevitably collapse into very negative complaints about very specific aspects of things rather than a general attitude toward rounds and dynamic's style of adding antags to the round, so i threatened to take them away in the hopes that people would come up with much more tempered and honest opinions that would "talk me down from the ledge", as it were. it was an insanely over the top proposal which generated a lot of very very helpful input that i am very thankful for.

and the truth is, for as long as i've been adminning, i've already been removing threat and rolling antags myself more or less every time i admin a round. admins already have the choice to do this and it's to the benefit of players that they remain ignorant about it, unless they desperately want to dig up button pushing logs from scrubby.

you can rest assured that this will not be implemented even if you all begged me to.

thank you kindly to everyone who has participated, the posts here have been incredibly informative, and have lead to much saner proposals borne out of people's thoughts here.