ehem The Self Antag rule and its consequences have been a disaster for all Beeople. They have greatly decreased the dynamism of rounds for those of us who play on “advanced” servers, but they have destabilized shifts, have made gameplay unfulfilling, have subjected players to frustrations and have led to widespread psychological suffering and have inflicted severe damage on the natural order of rounds. The continued development of the plannedemic will worsen the situation. It will certainly subject human beings to greater indignities and inflict greater damage on the natural order, it will probably lead to greater meta social disruption and psychological suffering, and it may lead to increased physical suffering even for “advanced” players.
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MODERN BEEGAMING
Almost everyone will agree that we play not ideal rounds. One of the most widespread manifestations of the craziness of the self antag rule is validhunting, so a discussion of the psychology of validhunting can serve as an introduction to the discussion of the problems of the Self-Antag rule
But what is Validhunting. During the first half of rounds the validhunter is characterised by an impation dance and preperation for what they feel is inevitable. and in the second half they unleash their prepared potential to seek out le valid. This is a manifestation of the abject failure in gameplay ambiguity, someone covered in blood is unlikely to be a ghetto surgeon, and someone shooting it out with the cops is unlikely to just be a violent protester. So once the validhunter sees a candidate deviating from the norm their guilt is all but determined. In a more ambivilent world, without the self-antag rule there would be many possibilities for what someone is for acting strange, the certainty and forced sharade of needing to supress meta knowledge about antags would end, and players finally be able to engage with people around like they arent just presets who either arrest the valid, are the valid, or hide from the valid. Player interactions would be dynamic, and allow for people to determine the bounds their character is willing to set for themselves. No longer would security beat innocent clowns for lack of anything else to do, only to then die all in a 5 minute span to a plan so well hidden and un-roleplayed that even its creator was taken aback by its successs.
Continueing, the necessity for the self antag rule to moderate gameplay and maintain order on the server is questionable. Firstly the No Powergaming rule is a good example of this, any player who plays purely with the itent of harming others, and ending role play experiences will already fall under the remit of this rule. Secondly the you must roleplay rule protects against those who simply use their new freedom to be an unmitigated annoyance to other players. In Short even without the self antag rule players would still have to roleplay, and still have to give a decent chance to those around them. This was all proven during that great No-Antag Event Round, which provided for some of the most engaging gameplay bee has seen in a long time.
It should be clear that the Self-Antag rule is a tourniquet restricting the flow of rounds, and starving roleplay of useful and genuine material. It should be removed, and we would all be better off for it!
all starts with community action babyyyy find people that are cool with roleplay and harass them until they harass you back. salt in dchat and round-end ooc about people who make your round too spicy but don’t report them. ignore or report nerds that salt in looc (these are almost always the people who report you for minor stuff). encourage this mentality in others.
I like the no self antag rule event rounds, but I do wonder if they’re so much fun because they’re an exception to the usual running. Honestly not sure!
I’ll let you in on one thing.
Self antag rounds fucking sucked for me.
As a new player you’re ALREADY clowned on by people with 2k hours on this game WITH the self antag rule.
That just sounds like any new player experience, lol. So do you think it was exacerbated by the self antag rule removal? Or was it just that people weren’t trying to give you a chance to be part of the RP?
On another note, the more I read this the worse it gets. Do people think that IC “criminal behavior” doesn’t exist?
The only excuse saw in there is that self antag makes you able to roleplay a criminal, which you CAN do right now (unless by criminal you mean breaking into the AI sat and changing the laws, screwing over entire departments, which in this case you just want to play traitor without rolling it, and you’d be VERY WEIRD for wanting that).
Then it continues to go on about how with the “you must roleplay” rule people can already potentially fuck with you so removing self antag wouldn’t change anything? And how the “no powergaming” rule would be somehow unaffected when it such cases it would be excused? People still powergame under this rule AND the self antag rule.
Do people think that blowing stuff up and killing people is only way to have fun in this game? Aren’t antag rolls frequent enough?
100% Exacerbated, mostly because everybody was doing it, not just antags or annoying people. It’s a pretty unfair dynamic too, the tools given to you on each job for fucking shit up/ “defending” yourself are NOT equal.
I analyzed why killing and blowing up is popular waaaay back, and my leading theory was that since you don’t usually get to do it, the roles that are permitted to do it get elevated to a higher status for no real reason. It’s the taboo effect or whatever it’s really called, when something is not allowed it only makes it more desirable.
The reality: (Barring round enders like blob, nukies or xenos) Antags play a villanous role in the round. They can do some damage but the point is making rounds more interesting.
What people seem to think: Antags get to do some damage, the crew does not, therefore antags are all about doing damage, effects on round be damned.
Personally, what confuses me more is stealth antags, because not only are you not affecting the round if you go stealthy, but you don’t get to experience combat or murder either. What’s the point? Greentext? Really? I’ll laugh at murderboners all day but i’ll take them over stealth antags personally.
Why does this matter?
Well, if my conclusions are correct, it means that after a while, after people get their fill of carnage, things would calm down - since violence would no longer be restricted, people wouldn’t seek it out.
It still creates a horrible environment for new players, however. Potentially one where you cannot learn at all without guides.
you can already bend the self antag rules to a degree if you’re sensible about it and act in character. Removing it for the odd round or two is fun but I think it introduces some bad actors
I’d say lets reintroduce greenshifts and relax the rules a bit (even if right now you can get away with doing almost anything short of round removing someone). Removing the rule so suddenly would just encourage all the TG/Monke shitters to just get in and blow it for the rest of us.
I am honestly more worried about the resurgence of powergaming, maybe greenshifts would give some of these people a chance to see that the antag-based gameplay loop Bee is so fond of SUCKS and that there are more to do that chase the valid or make weapons to defend myself “just in case I am a target”
This has been on my mind a lot. Every round as of late feels like it’s a deathmatch, and everybody pretends like it’s the only way to put some “incentive” to the game. An MRP server has no business rolling war ops twice a day.
If you remove action from the game it just leads to more infighting and boredom, leave people inside an enclosed environment for extended period of times with nothing to do and they get cabin fever, the ss13 equivalent of this would be drama (ss13 drama fucking sucks). mass destruction antags such as xenos, nukies, or blob force people to put differences aside and fight them. If you cannot RP while any of these events happen then you should look forwards to improving your roleplaying and creative writing skills.
Greenshifts fucking suck because the game by design needs antags to be interesting.
You and Edward should do a master class on how to self antag properly IMO you guys have been the bests for a long time.
You follow IC escalation and do thinks that your character would do, you involve others and not only yourself, it never goes too out of line that overshadow antags and if it end up happening it does it feels justified and it’s always something fresh and not something like:
“Eff u Captain i’m an engineer and i’ll sabotage the SM or cut power”
people like violence because there’s little else to spice up painfully boring shifts…
collaborations include validhunting and conesntual thunderdome action
stealth antags exist because its optimal for objectives… for all the greenpilled antags
and
it exists for the less experienced antags and the antags that know they cannot keep up with sec and will eventually burn up and die / antags who dont wanna get RR’d in 10 minutes. after they rolled the precious antag
stealth antagging probably isnt related to carnage being fun or otherwise due to possibly the thrill of stealthing for the antag / the fear of loosing
theoretical conclusion… in the current state of affairs… cranage will never stop not being the most intersting thing to do (there is little else)
I disagree, I think people like violence because they think that:
Basically, that the only way to engage with the game is by filling the role of sec.
Antags obviously spice up a round, but they completely trample on other, equally (if not more) important aspects of the game that people pretend don’t exist, like the casual, quiet (and not so quiet) character moments, the experimentation and the game’s whole sandbox element.
I can’t stress this enough, the sandbox aspect of ss13 is the reason I started playing, and it’s the biggest reason I’m STILL playing, though people pretend it bares no weight.
Sidenote:
Sage for as long as I can remember has had the MRP tag,
and “just rp” sounds vague, almost like a rhetorical shield to not ask for people to rp more, I dunno :\
dissagree all you want. we all know a greenshift is no good
one can chitter in the bar or learn/practice the repetitive jobs for only so long
besides… some character moments. some roleplay… its all foam and cardboard there are no systems to facilitate anything its all gimicking… and about as sturdy as said cardboard
I’ve always been an advocate of blue shifts, like, yeah obviously there’s an antag or a handful doing some shit, but things are progressing in a way that doesn’t feel like I just sprayed my face with Nitroglycerin (it doesn’t make you feel good), unlike red shifts and delta shifts where I get the immediate feeling of,“okay, let’s wrap this up, this is basically just ooga booga left click”