TC trades are out of control

[bandit]

Contrary to what people probably think, I don't hate the idea of TC trades. But they should ideally be something that makes the round more interesting for everyone, not just the traitor, and creates a situation that otherwise not might happen. Ideally they should also be explainable IC if it's Manuel. (The example I always use is a botanist who made a lot of poisoned plants, noticed nobody was eating them, and requested to TC trade to make the entire station catastrophically hungry so they'd be forced to eat. That was a good TC trade. Maybe a little difficult to explain in the context of the Syndicate doing something, but nevertheless, presented a new source of conflict in the round that's otherwise hard to come by.)

However, almost all TC trades admins get fall into one of a few very annoying categories:

1) People asking to TC trade for a gimmick antagonist like revenant/devil/blob/etc. These antags tend to be on the griffy/OP side and, as such, only really work if they are uncommon, not if there are 2 traitors requesting to get them every single round.

2) People asking to TC trade for things they could do/get themselves with relatively little effort. "Can I TC trade for a stack of uranium?" etc.

3) People asking to TC trade for overpowered admin crap like singularity hammers or whatever. This happens less often than you think but it's still annoying, and also tends to go hand in hand with the player being shocked and outraged the admin doesn't just give them a pulse rifle.

4) People trying to exploit the system like ahelping "hey can I TC trade for a L6?" when they're a blood brother or security or whatnot.

5) Any of the above, but every single fucking round, and always with a sense of entitlement if the admin says no: "how dare the mean admin not give me morph, I've asked 25 times this week!" People don't realize just how many lame TC trade requests the admins get, sometimes multiple per round. It gets very, very old. But I realize there's also a mismatched expectations issue. There aren't really any guidelines as to what TC trades are, or written rules about it, so you can't really blame players for doing something they haven't explicitly be told not to.

So, I believe it would be a good idea to either place an outright moratorium on TC trades, or to significantly raise the bar by asking players to give a reason why they think this will improve the round for everyone, rather than providing some mild fun for one person while degrading the round for everyone else.

[wesoda25]

Just say no like what? This seems like a thinly veiled complaint about how annoying players are when they ask for tc trades. Freezing them makes absolutely no sense, just ask the player for their reason and if it doesn't satisfy you then they don't get it.

[Tlaltecuhtli]

just dont respond and let other admins with more will of life to answer the ahelp if you are outraged by tc trades

[Akrilla]

Was this based on the plasma fist round on Bagil..?

[angelstarri]

just say no bro

[annoyinggreencatgirl]

#2 honestly, sounds fine-ish? Can't somebody sacrifice TC for something that might be even a slight risk to acquire?

[SkeletalElite]

The singularity hammer isn't admin stuff, its a wizard thing and isn't even that OP.

[skoglol]

Go admin event hall, in all my hours over there I have had a single tc trade request. Its like they dont know the option exists (they dont)

Frankly I have been hinting to them that they should be, admins can make a lot of fun stuff. I had a clown ahelp if I could give his traitor away to someone else, cause he didnt wanna murderbone. Instead I made him some clown shoes that occasionally bwoinked, and he had lots of fun terrorizing the station.

I think its also worth keeping in mind that beside the obvious dumb requests, your 100th request for revenant might be the players first.

All in all, I think tc trades are great but players should know they can be creative with it.

[terranaut]

make "request tc trade" a seperate verb that
a) doesnt play an annoying bwoink sound
b) you can mute people from
i know thats a code solution and not a policy solution but its better than just removing them, not like thats not gonna stop precisely the kind of annoying people you're complaining about from asking anyway.

[capn_monkeypaw]

If you don't want to hand out TC trades, don't hand out TC trades. I very rarely do it myself.

"Sorry, not this round."

[Gigapuddi420]

I rarely bothered with them myself. If there are multiple admins you can check with them on admin chat to see if they want to field it, if no one wants to bother just tell the player so they don't sit on their thumb for forty minutes waiting for their gimmick to come true. If the player gets uppity about it after a clear refusal just put your foot down and point out your decision is final, if they keep it up you could always move to mutes but there is no reason it should ever get that far.

TC trades are completely optional, the only thing you have to lose by refusing one is some reputation as a cool admin. I turned down like 95% of trade requests to no real consequence. It's fine for players to ask but it's also fine to tell them no.

[NikNakFlak]

However, almost all TC trades admins get fall into one of a few very annoying categories:

1) People asking to TC trade for a gimmick antagonist like revenant/devil/blob/etc. These antags tend to be on the griffy/OP side and, as such, only really work if they are uncommon, not if there are 2 traitors requesting to get them every single round.

Some of these are weaker than traitors like rev or morph. If you, as an admin are letting them trade for blob, a more overpowered antagonist. That's on you. Bad admins shouldn't trade every round, but ultimately it's the admin's call and I see no reason to freeze over this.

2) People asking to TC trade for things they could do/get themselves with relatively little effort. "Can I TC trade for a stack of uranium?" etc.

Cool, they are lazy and making a bad trade. I like to take these, call them lazy over the ear piece and take the trade because it's a bad buy which makes me more than happy to oblige lazy traitors. Don't like it? Just say no.

3) People asking to TC trade for overpowered admin crap like singularity hammers or whatever. This happens less often than you think but it's still annoying, and also tends to go hand in hand with the player being shocked and outraged the admin doesn't just give them a pulse rifle.

Admins should know if something is overpowered or not before they give something out. There have been instances where an admin has no idea something is super overpowered and gives it out and then has to face annoyed players at the end of the round. If you don't know what something does, don't give it to a player. If you want to give an extremely overpowered item to a traitor and ruin a round, that's a bad admin. Just say no again.

4) People trying to exploit the system like ahelping "hey can I TC trade for a L6?" when they're a blood brother or security or whatnot.

Maybe an admin should check if they actually have TCs then?????????

5) Any of the above, but every single fucking round, and always with a sense of entitlement if the admin says no: "how dare the mean admin not give me morph, I've asked 25 times this week!" People don't realize just how many lame TC trade requests the admins get, sometimes multiple per round. It gets very, very old. But I realize there's also a mismatched expectations issue. There aren't really any guidelines as to what TC trades are, or written rules about it, so you can't really blame players for doing something they haven't explicitly be told not to.

Not my experience and also, I get stuff from a lot of different players. Players can't read each other's minds. They don't know someone asked before. And if they are a serial asker, just deny them????? Why blame players at all? They aren't doing anything wrong, it's a privilege that you as an admin can grant or ignore based on whatever the fuck you feel like. It only gets old for you seeing them a bunch. If you don't want to do TC trades, Don't do them. Do NOT step on other admin's toes or force a policy on to other admin's that want to do it.

So, I believe it would be a good idea to either place an outright moratorium on TC trades, or to significantly raise the bar by asking players to give a reason why they think this will improve the round for everyone, rather than providing some mild fun for one person while degrading the round for everyone else.

Bad idea.

[Tarchonvaagh]

fuck the plasma fist its the worst thing ever

[Not-Dorsidarf]

i dont like the idea of codifying tc trades. let it remain as it currently is, aka "pray to admins for a meme and if they think you're boring/greedy they ignore you!"

[peoplearestrange]

Yeah TC trades are purely a "lets mix things up a little with some player creativity". If there creativity extends only as far as "gib wizard/blob" then obviously just don't.
Admins are also GM's, you have to allow the players to try new strange things, but honestly if its at the expense of everyone elses fun then obviously thats a hard no.

I don't think a roman rule for GM style things needs to exist. Same with events.

Basically what NNF said

[feem]

I'm a common revenant TC trader and I almost always go out of my way to try to RP with the crew. I rarely engage in outright mayhem and am more a hunter of opportunity. If the crew makes it explicitly difficult for me, like, nobody plays along or the second I pretend to be someone's mother's ghost or something they blanket the entire station in holy water, I get a little more aggressive, but I still try to be tactical because revenant is actually a really weak role unless you're clever about it.

There are definitely some revenants that minmax and go gung-ho and break as many windows in as many places as they can, or who abuse the emitter/projectile bug (which i admittedly did once before filing the bug report https://github.com/tgstation/tgstation/issues/50266 ) but I think that codifying it, as said above, will eliminate some interesting stories. This post is mostly about revenants but they were called out in the OP.

Edit: In fact there have been plenty of times where I've eaten an SSD and then gone and informed medbay to get the body back, or that I've just straight up made up rhymes to warn people about shit that's going on (i.e. delams), playing the ominous prophet.

[PKPenguin321]

Just nut up and tell them no

[bandit]

people are misunderstanding the point of the thread, I frequently tell people no, but it's also a bit disingenuous to be like "sure! TC trade all you want it's fine, the admins don't mind!" when they do

[Shadowflame909]

just start telling people that you don't want tc trades every time they ask on the server you frequent.

Eventually they'll stop asking.

[cacogen]

i have never done a tc trade when i've been a traitor because i expect the admins to tell me to fuck off or to just ignore me

[ATHATH]

"4) People trying to exploit the system like ahelping "hey can I TC trade for a L6?" when they're a blood brother or security or whatnot."

To be fair, the start of round sound for blood brothers is the exact same sound as the one traitors received, and I've accidentally put in a TC trade request before realizing that I was a blood brother and not a traitor quite a few times. Not being able to issue a correction of "oh, wait, I'm a blood brother, never mind" until an admin responds to me or the lengthy adminhelp cooldown expires doesn't help, of course.

[Coconutwarrior97]

We have no interest in changing how TC trades work, they have been, and will continue to be at the discretion of admins.
Headmin Votes:
Coconutwarrior97: Yes.
Phuzzylodgik: Yes.
TWATICUS Yes.