Should people be allowed to suicide at roundstart

[Sometinyprick]

Currently killing yourself at roundstart as an assistant or as an unimportant role is allowed.
If you have a reason to go of course this is fine and can be provided, this is strictly for no reason kill yourself and leave shit. (Leaving or disconnecting is effectively the same thing too here)

[Scones]

I think this is fine as something that happens from time to time.

However, when you do it every round, only staying alive when you get antag - I feel it becomes a problem. There are a few people who do this and you know who you are.

[Shaps-cloud]

I'll walk around the station and see the same person turn up suicided again and again and again, it's really shitty and they should just observe from the start

[onleavedontatme]

Banning the behavior would be addressing a symptom rather than the problem. I've probably said it before elsewhere but

Very little to do job wise (other than farm weapons to kill people)/lack of crew goal + no PVE (station is very safe) + light griff catching more admin attention (can't go make your own fun if it at all bothers another person) + bans on validhunting means there's very little to do as a crewmember.

All the fun new things that are added to the game (lightning spells, new antags, fire spreading on bumping) are only things that you'll ever get to use when an antagonist, so it honestly makes sense to just kill yourself if you're not one and are going to be locked out of using 90% of the games content.

That being said, the above issue is way harder to address, so yes, it should probably be bannable if you're not going to take your turn being an NPC punching bag but still expect to play the fun part.

[ThatSlyFox]

Fuck people who do it.

But I agree with kor, there is very little to do that doesn't involve valid hunting and science.

[onleavedontatme]

Fuck people who do it.

But I agree with kor, there is very little to do that doesn't involve valid hunting and science.

Even science mainly yields new and exciting ways to kill people (bombs, mechs, xray guns, etc).

There are lots of cool destructive tools to obtain but pretty much zero ingame incentive to build things.

[Madjura]

I'll walk around the station and see the same person turn up suicided again and again and again, it's really shitty and they should just observe from the start

Or on the arrivals shuttle, during rounds with higher populations where they sign up, hope they get latejoin antag, don't, then suicide and waste the job slot for people who might actually want that job
Or the people who max suit sensors THEN commit suicide to make people waste time retrieving the body thinking it's an actual death (I'm pretty sure the suit sensors setting is random and sometimes it's max, but I find this happens too often to be random. Random assistant shows up as dead in maint, turns out they are in a locker, suicided)

To a lesser extent this also causes problems at lower populations - nuke ops I believe occurs only if 20+ players ready up?
- 4 (or is it 5?) people who are selected to be ops
- 2-3 suicides who didn't get antag - but now have a chance to be a Syndiborg
Now it's 13~ people against a team of heavily armed operatives
This is more of a code / server setting issue but I feel it's still relevant here

[onleavedontatme]

Also "occasionally" is very poorly defined.

[Arete]

The middle option leaves open the question of what exactly is considered making a habit of it. This probably isn't the sort of issue that would benefit from a specific limit on the number of roundstart suicides allowed per month or whatever, but it probably would be good to set a guideline for all admins to follow when determining whether abuse is happening.

I can think of only two reasons to suicide at roundstart.

Firstly, if you accidentally left a job preference on and you really don't feel like playing that sort of job. Ideally, people should be more careful about making sure their preferences are set right from round to round, but practically we have to allow a bit of leeway for when people are forgetful.

Secondly, if you just wanted to roll for antag. This is understandable due to the points Kor raises, but it's still pretty awful in that you're taking an antag round from someone who's more willing to do their time in the game's less fun roles. Banning for this sort of behavior would be an okay band-aid until non-antag roles are made more engaging, I think.

[Sometinyprick]

Banning the behavior would be addressing a symptom rather than the problem. I've probably said it before elsewhere but

Very little to do job wise (other than farm weapons to kill people)/lack of crew goal + no PVE (station is very safe) + light griff catching more admin attention (can't go make your own fun if it at all bothers another person) + bans on validhunting means there's very little to do as a crewmember.

All the fun new things that are added to the game (lightning spells, new antags, fire spreading on bumping) are only things that you'll ever get to use when an antagonist, so it honestly makes sense to just kill yourself if you're not one and are going to be locked out of using 90% of the games content.

That being said, the above issue is way harder to address, so yes, it should probably be bannable if you're not going to take your turn being an NPC punching bag but still expect to play the fun part.

This can be fixed, I would agree that currently too many things are catching admin attention, and I suppose in time this will be addressed. I'm trying to think of a way that my fellow head admins will agree on but it's probably going to be a task.

Even so killing yourself at roundstart for not getting antag isn't really in the spirit of the game imo.

[bandit]

No. At the end of the day, spessmens is just a game, and we should not be punishing people for deciding not to play a game.

Firstly, if you accidentally left a job preference on and you really don't feel like playing that sort of job. Ideally, people should be more careful about making sure their preferences are set right from round to round, but practically we have to allow a bit of leeway for when people are forgetful.

This is a cause of more suicides than people think, particularly for people rolling for high-demand roles (silicons, clowns, etc).

[onleavedontatme]

Even so killing yourself at roundstart for not getting antag isn't really in the spirit of the game imo.

Of course it isn't, and I don't do it myself, but I feel like the spirit of the game is severely weakened anyway, so I can't really players people for doing it. People got sick of the validhunting/antag killing/grief/shuttle call cycle and worked their hardest to restrict it with rules and code changes, but they've neglected to add anything substantial in its place.

Somehow the little minigames and distractions are now being presented to players as the focus instead of the actual game, but the jobs really don't have enough depth to carry the experience.

Hell we've lost half the fun bugs,been restricted in space exploration, and had gameplay slowed down in the name of balancing the validhunt while simultaneously insisting the game isn't about validhunting, so even those side experiences have been severely diminished.

[Saegrimr]

Somehow the little minigames and distractions are now being presented to players as the focus instead of the actual game,

You mean roleplaying?

If people aren't having fun, they should probably rethink why they're on the server and maybe take a break to play something else.

If you're just here for skull toolboxing simulator 255X then I don't feel single ounce of guilt for those people being "bored".

[EndgamerAzari]

While I voted for the middle option (because I don't have a spine/opinions of my own), it really is irksome when this happens sometimes. I've had times as an engineer where there were four engies on the manifest, but I was the only one who wasn't braindead/word-go suicide. As you can imagine that makes things pretty trying.

EDIT: You know what, considering the reasons people have addressed for why people do this, I'm changing my vote to no. Having to suddenly leave is one thing; ragequitting because you can't get your murder on is horseshit.

[Shaps-cloud]

If you're bored of SS13 why not just

you know

do something else?

[Lovecraft]

Yes, they should be.
Why is this even a thread? Who does this directly effect in a meaningful way?

[Cheimon]

I'm okay with it so long as they're not in an important role (or rather, so long as if they are in an important role, they make sure someone else can fill it first or do the preliminary work). If you're the only engineer and you kill yourself without setting up power, or you're the head of security and you kill yourself without saying so much as "warden, you're up", then that's bad.

But there are situations where I'm okay with it. Some days I know I personally only want to play one of a few specific jobs. I'll ready up, I'll roll for those jobs, and if I don't get them I get pushed to assistant. This is especially true of jobs you cannot typically job change to, like certain security roles and some silicon positions (it's not normal for people to let you be a second ai, in my limited experience). This is a situation where I had to get pushed into a job, whether I liked it or not, and if I get stuck with assistant instead of something important that I don't want to do, I want to be allowed to suicide. Normally I'll play a round as an assistant or try to get a job change, but 5% of the time I'll really only want to play my job preferences or not play at all. I don't think I should be punished for that; it's a weird product of a slightly weird system.

[Scones]

While I don't agree with a lot of what Kor is saying he is right in that there isn't a huge amount to do, especially considering a community with very low tolerance for roleplaying. I don't even have a proposed fix but he's right - Sometimes, you just get really fucking bored. I've played pretty much every job pretty extensively and I play command now solely for the fact that the jobs are both ubiquitous and give me something to do constantly.

I wish the station had something to do - Station round-end objectives outside of the common sense "kill all antags, evacuate all crew". At the very least it'd be fun to have some function like "GATHER X RESOURCE, BRING X LEVELS OF R&D TO CENTRAL, MAKE X ITEM" so that the crew can have something to strive towards as a team.

But similarly I think Saegrimir makes a valid point. This game is not all raw gameplay. This is a roleplaying game by it's nature. This is not skull toolboxer XX25.

[onleavedontatme]

Somehow the little minigames and distractions are now being presented to players as the focus instead of the actual game,

You mean roleplaying?

If people aren't having fun, they should probably rethink why they're on the server and maybe take a break to play something else.

If you're just here for skull toolboxing simulator 255X then I don't feel single ounce of guilt for those people being "bored".

"Roleplay" has never been, and never will be, an excuse for poor gameplay design.

I love roleplay. Roleplay is why I changed the nuke to only kill on Z1, despite you being dead/alive having zero practical effect on round end. Roleplay is why I found out Jack Steiner was my father last night. Roleplay is why I'll trade an antag his objective for a sob story. I fucking hated xenostation because it was all combat and no roleplay. Hell I don't like the xenomorph antagonist much in general for that reason.

But it is an objective fact that the game existed first as a game, and roleplay was added later. Roleplay has never been the core of the game, and it still isn't. It is not the meat of the game. We still let our antags kill people for no reason, we still let our admins spawn crazy shit that will kill you, we still code more ways for people to die and little else.

Deep roleplay requires collaboration (not going to happen with 70 people in a competitive game) and freedom (not going to happen because you're very constrained by both the game and by server rules). You get in trouble for disrupting the round but you get mocked for caring about it. You get told to roleplay and not be a validhunter, but we have some horrible lottery system where players get to ignore the rules and kill you in the middle of building your autism fort. Talking to a traitor gives them another chance to silently kill and space you. Bay wanted deeper roleplay and they banned antag murderboner. People here call for deeper roleplay but won't take that crucial step, even if they swear they hate murderboner.

To restate what I said in my headmin thread

I wouldn't run a game of DnD and tell people they were all locked in an empty inn, and they weren't allowed to kill people, then mock them for being bad roleplayers if they wanted something to happen.

There are rule fixes to this (let players go nuts, make their own stories, declare indepdence on mining, etc or just straight up ban antag murderboner if you want a different game), there are code fixes (more in depth jobs, crew objectives like what I tried with away missions), but simply yelling "roleplay" over and over while handing out a license to grief to random players every round is not the fix.

This is a roleplaying game by it's nature.

It really isn't though. It's an atmos simulator with game modes added in afterwards, and light roleplay after that. Which is the problem. People are trying to do deep roleplay in a game that really isn't built for that but they're afraid to either admit it's a game and not a deep roleplay platform, or alter the game enough so that it actually works for roleplay. Bay did the latter, and while I'd rather not see us become Bay, at least they have a cohesive vision for what their playstyle and community is supposed to look like.

EDIT: Forgot to say, in regards to freedom to make your own stories, only the admins really have the power to alter the rules on the fly while changing the round structure. Everyone else has very mundane powers. They can't decide to go study an SCP or build an ice cream shuttle or whatever. Certain jobs are stuck with basically access to only a couple rooms of the station with a dull minigame and not much power to alter that without security or admins kicking their ass.

[Saegrimr]

"Roleplay" has never been, and never will be, an excuse for poor gameplay design.

Yeah look where that took D&D 5e.

Cater to the number crunchers long enough and then you have people who claim it was always meant to be a tabletop war simulator.

Deep roleplay requires collaboration (not going to happen with 70 people in a competitive game) and freedom (not going to happen because you're very constrained by both the game and by server rules). You get in trouble for disrupting the round but you get mocked for caring about it. You get told to roleplay and not be a validhunter, but we have some horrible lottery system where players get to ignore the rules and kill you in the middle of building your autism fort. Talking to a traitor gives them another chance to silently kill and space you. Bay wanted deeper roleplay and they banned antag murderboner. People here call for deeper roleplay but won't take that crucial step, even if they swear they hate murderboner.

You don't need to roleplay with all 70 people on the server, you probably wouldn't even see all 70 people in a round even if you were on a murderboner rampage. Nobody is asking that.
You lose freedom because we're having to constantly remove horrifically exploitable and balance breaking things because people will not settle for anything less than the strongest most robust tool they can use to get their valids. If there was a literal Golden Gun in the traitor uplink that killed instantly on a single shot, do you honestly think the majority of traitors would skip that in favor of something more "in character"?
Fuck no. Welcome to /tg/station, next stop: NoX.
And why would the traitors stop to roleplay with you in your autism fort when you're just as likely to whip out a stunprod and cuff him randomly just because you think he might be there to fuck you up? They don't want to lose their turn as antag due to random validhunters, so in turn they just go straight to the murder. Players don't want to get straight up murdered so they turn to the validhunter combo pack and beat down anybody that gets within one tile of them or taze people who look shady. It all goes in circles.

To restate what I said in my headmin thread

I wouldn't run a game of DnD and tell people they were all locked in an empty inn, and they weren't allowed to kill people, then mock them for being bad roleplayers if they wanted something to happen.

You also wouldn't run a game where your players just run around and murder random townspeople and then eachother, would you? Sure might be a fun one-off but you know that'll just devolve into who can make the strongest character the rules will allow. OH SHIT I MENTIONED POWERGAMING.

[onleavedontatme]

You also wouldn't run a game where your players just run around and murder random townspeople and then eachother, would you?

That is literally what we let traitors do though.

No shit there is going to be no valuable role play when you let people act like that.

If I wanted to run a game of DnD and all the players wanted to murderhobo I'd either roll with it and make the world react to them (here comes an army, you're now playing an outlaw/raider campaign! Again, actual roleplaying games have freedom to make stuff up on the fly like this), or I'd just stop playing with them, I wouldn't tell them they weren't allowed to murder, that wizards are now banned for being too strong, and that they still aren't allowed to leave said town. I'd give them something to do in the town. I'd take it in one direction or another, not tell 5 players they have to sit still and stare while one player fights the badguys for them, and everyone rerolls at the start of the session to see who gets to play this time.

[Alex Crimson]

I think it should be allowed so long as you only do it as Assistant. Other job roles arent the kind of thing you should be using to role for antag. Not only is it a shitty thing to do, but you are taking up slots that other people might want to actually use.

Antag ban anyone else.

[Shaps-cloud]

Playing only as antag ruins the game. Either play both sides and contribute positively on rounds you're not antag and break shit down hard on rounds you do roll antag, or just play something else if you're so bored of spessmen

Seriously, if you're bored of SS13 just play something else, it's that simple

[imblyings]

Saegrimr, you mentioned how constantly catering to number crunchers made DnD 5e what it was and then you mentioned constantly having to balance the game to remove exploitable items. That almost sounds like the same thing, unless that was your point. You're right about it going in circles, people don't want to risk getting murderboned, antags don't want to risk getting valid'd but I think what Kor said still applies- someone has to take the first step, and that most likely has to be the server laying down policy to stop murderboners first.

>playing something else
w-what else is there

[onleavedontatme]

Playing only as antag ruins the game.

All my tl;dr bullshit about what the game is/should be aside, this sums it up.

someone has to take the first step, and that most likely has to be the server laying down policy to stop murderboners first.

I'd rather really rather it go the other way and have things less strict for everyone. Even the most hardcore roleplay advocate probably doesn't want to see the end of plasma fires and bombs. Hell when I was tempin for a couple rounds I watched Paprika use a locker to save up magic missiles to kill everyone after hacking the AI was a wizard, despite posting constantly about how he hated murderboner. It's fun and people know it.

[imblyings]

It's kinda like guns. We either end up like Switzerland or we end up like Detroit. More freedom would be great but there has to be some sort of simultaneous effort by admins to instil a certain mindset on the playerbase.

[rdght91]

Or just put a timer on the suicide verb so they at least have to do something creative.

[Saegrimr]

Changing the suicide verb is pointless, as they'll just walk out an airlock instead.

[rdght91]

Changing the suicide verb is pointless, as they'll just walk out an airlock instead.

Yeah, and it'd be funnier.

But really, never underestimate the power of inconvenience. Psychology-wise, in real life, something as permanent suicide is a great example of this- making suicide inconvenient actually dramatically decreases suicide rates.

[Bluespace]

>i open ss13
>the idea of running around as an assistant watching people do things i have literally seen them do 1000 times before sounds uninteresting as fuck
>i would love to try shadowling gameplay
>i do not get shadowling
>i am now an assistant who would rather exit ss13 and play another game

[Steelpoint]

Assistant suicides are fine, but anything else is bad and should warrant a antag ban if someone is constantly taking up a role and suiciding if they don't get antag.

E: Stress the word constantly. Suiciding/Logging off once in a while due to real life or something else is fine.

[lumipharon]

I'm disturbed by the number of sec officer I see round start suicide or brain dead (often in the fucking public halls where they get looted).
I mean, it's a bloody implanted job so if you're rolling for anag why the fuck would you choose sec?

[Not-Dorsidarf]

As a security role, any officer who doesn't sign in and is standing braindead in the spawn locations after about ten minutes gets reassigned to the permabrig. If they come round they can shout at us, and if they don't they're out of the way and serve as valuable protein for captured changelings.

[Shaps-cloud]

>i open ss13
>the idea of running around as an assistant watching people do things i have literally seen them do 1000 times before sounds uninteresting as fuck
>i would love to try shadowling gameplay
>i do not get shadowling
>i am now an assistant who would rather exit ss13 and play another game

Rolling an antag is rare enough that you shouldn't be joining with the expectation of being an antag in mind, much less expecting to be a specific antag like shadowling, like you could go for days or weeks without rolling antag at all. SS13 needs Average Joe nonantags to make the game interesting for everyone, and if you won't play unless you can smash someone's head in with a toolbox, what are you contributing to the game?

If we're gonna allow people to consistently kill themselves as assistants or whatever, we should be allowed to meta the few times they actually play a round. Not straight up validing them, but at least have a reason to be suspicious of them

Edit: Seriously though, there are other things you can do that play spessmen. Go play a game on steam, learn dorf fort, learn some useful or marketable skill, go outside, do some work, clean up your desk, talk to people, anything. The answer to finding the game boring after playing it for hundreds of hours isn't to play it more, take a break

[onleavedontatme]

>i open ss13
>the idea of running around as an assistant watching people do things i have literally seen them do 1000 times before sounds uninteresting as fuck
>i would love to try shadowling gameplay
>i do not get shadowling
>i am now an assistant who would rather exit ss13 and play another game

>I kill myself until I get shadowling
>finally get shadowling
>everyone who did not get shadowling has killed themselves because they wanted antag
>look at how much fun I'm having now as a shadowling on a station full of corpses

Also we'd ban people for random murder, but somehow if they only stay active in the game when they're allowed to random murder that's okay?

[peoplearestrange]

Suicide, imho, is better than just being braindead for the remainder of the round. At least it gives some definitive answer that the player has actually left the game and isn't willing to rejoin it.

[Sometinyprick]

This was due to a poll so I'm going so I'm going I'd like it to run a little longer, please vote if you haven't already done so.

[Amelius]

Banning the behavior would be addressing a symptom rather than the problem. I've probably said it before elsewhere but

Very little to do job wise (other than farm weapons to kill people)/lack of crew goal + no PVE (station is very safe) + light griff catching more admin attention (can't go make your own fun if it at all bothers another person) + bans on validhunting means there's very little to do as a crewmember.

All the fun new things that are added to the game (lightning spells, new antags, fire spreading on bumping) are only things that you'll ever get to use when an antagonist, so it honestly makes sense to just kill yourself if you're not one and are going to be locked out of using 90% of the games content.

That being said, the above issue is way harder to address, so yes, it should probably be bannable if you're not going to take your turn being an NPC punching bag but still expect to play the fun part.

Fucking this. Most of the jobs are rote crap, and the few that you can do some interesting stuff, by the time you've finished your creation the shift has ended. Note that extending shift lengths will just excaberate the problem because people will be even MORE bored.

Really, the prime issue I believe we need to fix, is the repetitive, slow, and boring nature of most jobs. This isn't easy to fix, but it's important for the overall longevity for the game.

[Shaps-cloud]

If you're bored of SS13...
STOP FUCKING PLAYING SS13

[Lumbermancer]

If you're bored of SS13...
STOP FUCKING PLAYING SS13

Yeah but before I stop I will roll as assistant to see if maybe I won't get an antag

[Erisian]

If you're bored of SS13...
STOP FUCKING PLAYING SS13

People enjoy the game. That's why they're talking about ways to make it more fun and add more depth. Going "lol then just dont fucking play" isn't a solution. Pointing out flaws in something doesn't mean they need to leave and get the fuck out, you ignorant child.

[Shaps-cloud]

If you've gotten to the point where everything about the base game is boring and the only way you can have fun anymore is toolboxing people in the head, just take a break from it and come back later when you'll enjoy it more. It's not the game's fault if you get bored of it after 100 hours, that's just you over playing it

[Sometinyprick]

This poll seems to be leaning towards a yes, so I will talk to sticky about this when I get a chance.

[Stickymayhem]

Still away so I'm cool with going with what we had already. Antag rolling as assistant is pretty much ok, suiciding at roundstart as a normal job is ok on occasion.

We brought this up in relation to a complaint about me going afk or brain dead a lot as assistant. I switched to primarily playing security since if that's the reason you were concerned about this.

[Timbrewolf]

It's funny that people would complain there's nothing to do in a scenario where you're locked in a giant metal box with sometimes as many as 70 other people.

You could

I dunno

Try talking to some of them?

Wasn't that supposed to be part of the draw? Part of the reason you play this game?

On topic: You should be able to suicide at roundstart but you shouldn't be able to roll for antag. You should earn shares on an antag lottery based on every x number of minutes you're on the server connected to your roundstart mob. If all you do is ready up and then suicide at round start you'll never get it. Play the game and survive the hellish nightmare that is SS13 and you'll have a better chance of getting picked.

This blocks antag rollers and also gives people an incentive to stay alive and survive.

[Stickymayhem]

It's funny that people would complain there's nothing to do in a scenario where you're locked in a giant metal box with sometimes as many as 70 other people.

You could

I dunno

Try talking to some of them?

Wasn't that supposed to be part of the draw? Part of the reason you play this game?

Oh my God that sounds disgusting.

Unless you just mean saying "Hi" to someone so they stop to type and then you can cut their head off with an axe.

[Timbrewolf]

Beating someone to death with a fire extinguisher is not a valid form of communication in this sense.

[Sometinyprick]

Still away so I'm cool with going with what we had already. Antag rolling as assistant is pretty much ok, suiciding at roundstart as a normal job is ok on occasion.

We brought this up in relation to a complaint about me going afk or brain dead a lot as assistant. I switched to primarily playing security since if that's the reason you were concerned about this.

EDIT FUCKED IT
I meant it seems to show most people either have a slight issue with it or none at all

[LNGLY]

Yes but people seem to disagree and think just playing assistant to roll antag is bad, most people and so do I think we should disallow that in some form or another.

This isn't at all what the poll says.

[Stickymayhem]

Yeah bud I'm pretty sure we said we were going to go with the poll on this one.

Clearly it's not most people because most people voted the opposite, and we had a reasonable turnout too.

51/65 don't mind assistants doing it or are even ok with normal jobs doing it occasionally.