I figured now would be a good time to open discussion on Midround Antagonists in general.
I like Midround antagonists, as someone who is basically a ghost main these days. Midrounds help expand the round, and inject new variables into a potentially stale round. I am particularly fond of midrounds that exist to be minor nuisances, like Revenant, Nightmare, Pirates, Abductors, and Swarmers.
Lately, however, Midrounds have been a point of frustration for a lot of players. Be it nightmares breaking all the APCs, or Pirates breaking ore silo, and then murdering 7 people. These complaints tend to come in waves all at the same time, for a specific antag. Previously, It was Abductors. Then it was Pirates. now, recently, nightmares seem to slowly becoming a problem for some people.
Personally, I think part of it is the lack of alternatives. There are several midrounds that either arenāt part of dynamics spawning options, or simply require too many players. I havenāt seen swarmers or fugitives in some time, let alone midround slaughter demon. I think expanding the potential midround spawns would be an overall net positive for the station. Maybe even split normal fugitives from Waldo fugitive, because they are drastically different. Maybe change it so that fugitives spawn as long as at least one person hits yes, and donāt require traitor to be enabled in preferences for it to pop up. I also think we could probably use some new midrounds. Ultimately, the issue with that is that coders would have to work on them, and that probably wonāt happen.
I also donāt really know exactly, but I think Dynamic Midround spawns occur AND normal round midrounds can still spawn despite that, which might be why some rounds feel heavily oversaturated.
i think dragon and slaughterdemon got like a 0.001% of spawning without wiznerd interferance(the item or the Event spell) also people hate fugitive cuz it rp focused midround so usualy dream vs 6 hunters
I never liked rounds being dynamic only. They focus too much on midrounds, making any rp pointless past the 1 hour mark as itās probably filled with blob, pirates and xenos despite their chances being lowered already.
Well luckily no one likes playing abductor anymore since the changes make it harder to do, and less fun for the abductors themselves. I see the abductor pop up often enough still, but I donāt take it anymore, and neither do most others that I see in Dchat.
This is an interesting point. Slaughter demon obviously shouldnāt happen a ton, but I think in all my time on Bee, Iāve seen in naturally spawn once. I also think that the current player cap is actually lower than the required number of players for it to occur. Space Dragon is an interesting one. Sometimes it leads to really good RP, and sometimes it just becomes a valid hunt the dragon situation. I wouldnāt mind seeing it slightly more often than it shows up right now. For example, one time the space dragon wanted to protect the station, and all the humans aboard it. I was the AI with a Shell, and the Dragon made a bargain with me. It would not harm any humans on the station, in exchange for me letting it eat the CMO, who was a moth. RIP that moff CMO. It was over before they could object.
I got to play fugitives actually not long after posting this, and I had a pretty good time. It was during a Hivemind round, and me and one other fugitive convinced HoP that we were new hires, and hid out in engineering, pretending to work, while avoiding the police. Unfortunately, the round devolved into Xenos V Blob V ERT, and basically everyone on station died as a result.
Maybe midrounds donāt have as many problems as I thought people thought they had. I guess I just wish there was more variety. Byond RNG always selects the same 2 events for like a month at a time.
I got like 400 hours and Iāve only seen slaughter demon once. It was fun and exciting. I made a smoke machine and filled it with space cleaner to fight it! However, slaughter demon been guaranteed to spawn every round? I would be sick of it after 20 or so rounds. The issue is not how cool, interesting or well designed any given threat is, but unique it is. Iāve seen and fought a whole list of threats and know how to act accordingly given my role. Blob? Print saws or laser scalpels and move my chemistry fridge to the front line. Xenomorph? Grenades. Traitors? Sulfonal. But thenā¦ there was the slaughter demon. āO-okay? What the fuck is that?ā, I had no idea how to fight it or stay safe from it. The lacking of knowing is fun. Dying is fun if I know I couldāve prevented it.
As of now the game is basically a case of: Traitors, maybe Pirates and or Blob, then Xenomorphs for finishing the round. It isā¦ stale. Could be argued that people, especially myself included, play this game way too much.
I suggest removing any player limit. 4 players? Fuck it. Spawn a fucking dragon! Holy fuck what a story to tell when the whole station of 4 people destroy that dragon! Then, I suggest to make antagonists threat level scale with the players hours in the game and their hours in that particular antagonist. Just so you donāt have a case of getting professional Xenomorphs, Pirates, Blob, Traitors, and griefers against a newbie Security team. Finally, I suggest to make things interesting and fun!
I havenāt given it much thought but I think the idea of a player Dungeon Master would be good for this game. Both in the sense of dealing with issues like griefers but also keeping games dynamic and fun.
Add to it! Make threats less likely to be picked if it has been picked before in the last 10 rounds. The more times it has been picked, the less likely it is to be picked again. Perhaps be generous with it, so it isnāt too noticeable at first.
Dynamic on its way to spawn literally nothing because 2 rounds ago had almost every possible threat, and the only options left are too high threat cost for it to spawn them. Add Slaughter Demon, Space dragon, Swarmers, Morph, and so on, to the dynamic midround pool. Currently they only spawn as a result of normal midround spawns that for some reason still exist along side the dynamic ones
Thatās why I suggest to not make it a hard cut off when it comes to play numbers. Make it all probability. Sure, some dragon might kill those four poor crew members but itād be more fun when it doesnāt. What else should it do? Spawn a xenomorph, blob and pirates for the 100th time in a row? A few days ago I saw a pirate, HoS, and a xenomorph fight different sides of the blob. lol
Unfortunately, the current number of times that Ive seen antags v antags like xeno v blob v whatever, is rapidly increasing. Ive seen xenos v blob at least 4 times now in the last week. Cult v xenos v blob, or blob v xenos v ERT, or pirates v xenos v deputized crew, or nightmare x3 plus revenant, or whatever. The variety is lacking, and as a result, even the rounds that i initially thought were interesting ended up being just the status quo
I donāt think that a major threat is bad, but dynamic desperately needs more variety. like i mentioned above, there seem to be several midrounds that donāt occur at all right now because they arent in dynamic, which bloats the round to 3 nightmares and 5 sleeper agents or something. sometimes we get rounds that are explosive, but those rounds are all the same too. a blob and xenos spawn, the xenos end up having to fight the blob, xenos robust the hell out of the blob because stat diff, and then the round ends after blob holds the round hostage for an hour and a half.
