Request For Feedback Regarding Metashield Removal

Development Feedback
1

This is the work of a few weeks now of bouncing stuff back and forth internally, so I’m asking for the community to review this planned change before it is implemented across all Wizards Den servers.

My goal is to have this with a PR in the upcoming week, however this may be delayed to other outside factors.

Metashield Removal

The below is intended to replace rule 2.4, also known as the metashield. It will not longer link to the metashield page which will be depreciated.

Do not use information your character would not have knowledge of.

Metagaming in Space station 14 is the term used to typically describe actions based on knowledge during a round that is inaccessible to your character. While dead or as a ghost, you cannot use information gained while in the dead or ghost state, you are not your character while in these states. Use of information gained while dead is considered metagaming. This does not apply to knowledge of what antagonists are capable of doing. We expect players to understand what options are avaliable to antagonists.

Out of character information and metagaming.

Unless otherwise specified, when playing as a different character (such as taking a ghost role or being changed to another character via admin intervention), you are to act without knowledge of what occurred in the round as any prior characters and as a ghost while playing a character (ghosts are not considered a character for this rule). Failure to follow this is metagaming.

The knowledge that a round will end is out of character information. Knowledge that the shift will end however, is not out of character information. The intention of this rule is to prevent preparation for End of round griefing (EORG). Utilising the knowledge that the round will end is metagaming.

MRP Amendment

Being in the critically injured state or otherwise unconscious (includes sleeping) prevents your character from remembering anything that happened to or around them while unconscious. If brought out of the critical state to the alive state, you may remember what caused you to enter critical state. Entering the dead state causes your character to forget all events related to their death (if you can tie it to how you died, do not remember it). If revived, placed in a MMI, or in the case of Diona, splitting, the character is aware of the fact that they have died but not how.

Do Not Metafriend or Metagrudge

Giving a person or character preferential treatment based on the events of a previous round is considered metafriending. Treating a person or character negatively based on the events of a previous round is considered metagrudging.

Metafriending Examples

These are all examples of things that are prohibited.

  1. Giving a character additional access or a job because you are friends with the player who is playing that character.
  2. Trusting a character because you are friends with the player who is playing that character.
  3. Not fighting a character because you are friends with the player who is playing that character.
  4. Ignoring your objective to kill a character because your character and theirs became friends in a previous round.

Metagrudging Examples

These are all examples of things that are prohibited.

  1. Not giving a character additional access or a job because you are mad at or don’t like the player who is playing that character.
  2. Not trusting a character because you are mad at or don’t like the player who is playing that character.
  3. Starting a fight with a character because of something that they did in a previous round.
  4. Starting a fight with a character because of a major event that happened in a previous round.
  5. Starting a fight with a character because they killed you while you were playing a different character.
  6. Targeting or harassing a character based on anything which that character did in a previous round.
  7. Targeting or harassing a character based on anything which the character’s player did while not playing the character.

[We want to unshield previous rounds, but without giving people a reason to hunt people that killed them the last round.]

Explicitly Not Metagaming

  1. Protecting high value crew items (will be labeled as such), such as the nuke disk, with the understanding that a bad actor may attempt to steal or use them.
  2. Remembering the general events of previous rounds (shifts) up to the extent that you do not metagrudge or metafriend any other player or character, such as remembering that you survived a violent shooting in the medbay. Avoid making remarks about specific characters, such as calling out someone who was an antagonist in a prior round.
  3. The fact that antagonists exist and may be present on or off the station in any form.
  4. A characters typical appearance if it is a familiar character that you know as a player over the span of other rounds.
  5. Knowing that enemies may have concealed items that may have function that are not immediately apparent.
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Looks good, my only fear is the use of the term “metagaming” with the open ended “Metagaming in Space station 14 is the term used to typically describe gameplay that acts knowledge that characters would not have in regular gameplay.” as it carries the same vagueness problems that Powergaming has (Whereby it’s largely subjective) and the word itself has its own meanings (“Is having xyz item on you metagaming?”)

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I think it looks good. If nukies are still intended to be considered a myth, I would add that part from the current metashield page about where nukies are a myth. Existing players know but new players would have no idea. If it is the intent to remove nukies being a myth from the metashied then the current revision looks fine.

2 Likes
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Metashield seems to cause headaches for everyone so removing it would be better overall.

Prior to implant rework, metashield used to be really bad because finding one 1 min into a round meant every secoff suddenly gained implant knowledge.

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Add the New Life Rule to LRP too while you’re making sweeping changes to the meta-knowledge, I beg. It would enable so much more nuance to antags because you can just KILL witnesses and then ensure they still get medical attention afterwards.

Currently in LRP an antag who wants to have the highest chances of “getting away with it” is encouraged to RR anyone who might potentially out them or otherwise they risk having security chase them for the entirety of the round. Worse yet, you can’t even let your targets get borged unless you want an MMI to immediately rat on you for gibbing them.

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This is good, because general rules are always better than special rules. It is also good because I like the changes, especially being explicitly allowed to remember other characters across rounds! I think some of the text, especially the examples, could be tightened up to make sure it conveys precisely what you want to convey.

Here’s a list of specific suggestions: (separated by section separator lines)

“While dead or as a ghost, you cannot use information gained while in the dead or ghost state, you are not your character while in these states.”

It is not clear to me what the first part of this sentence (“While dead or as a ghost”) means. It could mean that it only applies while a character is dead or a ghost, and that makes no sense.

Does it just mean that the sentence relates to things happening while being dead or a ghost? Then I would phrase it like this:

“Information gained while dead or as a ghost: you cannot use information gained while in the dead or ghost state. You are not your character while in these states.”

I also think that whole paragraph should be reorganized. The definition of metagaming (“Use of information gained while dead is considered metagaming. Metagaming in Space station 14 is the term used to typically describe actions based on knowledge during a round that is inaccessible to your character.”) shouldn’t be in the middle of the paragraph, it should be at the start.

“Entering the dead state causes your character to forget all events related to their death (if you can tie it to how you died, do not remember it)”

This needs to be more concrete and needs some sort of cut-off. I know that nobody wants to put an undifferentiated hard cut-off like “forget everything up to 5 minutes before you died” in place because it is unnatural and can be gamed. However, “if you can tie it to how you died, do not remember it” is too vague because any piece of information about what your character was doing at any point before they died gives some information about where and by who they were killed, however vague.

I’m not sure how to fix this. Maybe “only remember things that are already common knowledge”? E.g. sometimes a character will be moved after they died, but most of the time they will just be left where they fell and will be found there by another player, and then where they were found is general knowledge, and so where they died is also general knowledge.

“[We want to unshield previous rounds, but without giving people a reason to hunt people that killed them the last round.]”

Great! Love this, want this, will pay for this to be put into the game. But this is put in as a thought bubble, so what is it? Is it a rule? If it is an explanatory statement, what does it apply to?

My suggestion would be to put this BEFORE the examples, and say WHY you want to unshield previous rounds:

“We want to unshield previous rounds so characters can have ongoing relationships and to make it easier for flavorful roleplay to occur between characters. However, players must never use this for retaliation or collusion - you cannot hunt, harass, or favor another characters based on what happened in a previous round, e.g. hunt a character because they killed you in the last round”

“Protecting high value crew items (will be labeled as such), such as the nuke disk with the understanding that a bad actor may attempt to destroy the station.”

As written, this is a license to powergame. It needs qualification. E.g.:

“Protecting high value crew items (will be labeled as such), such as: If a character has a reason to believe that a bad actor may attempt to destroy the station, they may want to protect the nuke disk. MRP amendment: This has to be based on concrete in-round events or information such as a credible report of nuclear operatives being sighted.”

“Knowing that enemies may have concealed items that may have function that are not immediately apparent.”

I know the whole thing we’re trying to get rid of here is the metashield which this certainly does but as written this is another license to powergame because it is too vague.

I don’t know what the aim here is - how much ingame justification does there need to be for sec to know about rev flashing? As far as I understand it currently is:

  • Crew sees non-sec flashes and reports it
  • Sec has to pretend “flashing? wow, wacky, no idea what that’s about” and if they actually end up arresting someone for flashing give them a 1 minute sentence for being a public nuisance
  • There is no way for crew to inspect the rev flashers and determine “this is an antag item”
  • The only way for crew/sec to IC find out there’s revs is based on heads being attacked
  • The only way to connect flashes to revs and mind control is by pretending that someone noticed somebody “acting like they’re mind controlled” after they were flashed

Is the intent of this example to completely do away with all this and allow sec to immediately go “non sec flashing? probable revs! red alert, lock everyone down, go door to door and search everyone for flashers, confiscate all of them, and mindshield everyone who had a flasher”

If yes, then that rule example is fine, but I would make it more specific, e.g.:

“Knowing that enemies may have concealed items that may have functions that are not immediately apparent, such as: if a head rev is arrested and they do not have a really good explanation for why they have a flasher, you are justified to conclude that the flasher is directly connected to their criminal activity.”

If not, it needs to be qualified, e.g.:

“General knowledge that enemies may have concealed items that may have functions that are not immediately apparent, but no specific knowledge of which antag items exist, e.g. the revolutionary mind control flasher.”

1 Like
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As I understand it, this will strongly nerf stealth items as they are no longer considered shielded.

In a sense this is good because those were probably one of the most unintuitive parts of the metashield and needed them to “work”, because an overzealous Security Officer can go through the rigor of doing a thorough check fairly quickly and it just feels awful when that happens.

However I am willing to conceded that maybe killing the rule allows us to get newer ideas on how to solve that issue. Stealth items shouldn’t be the lynchpin stopping the metashield from being removed. It’s also worth noting that it’s only “powergaming” if we consider it such: if we give players a carte blanche permission to know about all Syndie items, then they know about them, simple as that.

Overall: I don’t love the change gameplay-wise, but it’s the correct choice.

  1. Protecting high value crew items (will be labeled as such), such as the nuke disk with the understanding that a bad actor may attempt to destroy the station.

This seems like it is about stealing first, but then veers into NukeOps. Please consider the following:

  1. Protecting high value crew items (will be labeled as such), such as the nuke disk, with the understanding that a bad actor may attempt to steal or use them.

Should be general enough to cover any and all uses.

Of note, there is nothing stopping crew from walling up the nuke, reinforcing the entire area the R&D server is in, or hide the hand teleporter in a jacket in the back of Science roundstart.

Another thing to note is that, as written, there is nothing stopping Security going “Oh John Doe can’t be a Traitor, he’s a Medical Intern”. This might be fine if we consider it fine, but it’s something you’d have to be ready for.

There will be an adjustment period but overall I think this is a healthy change. Thank you for writing it.

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This shouldn’t be a rule but rather enforced by game mechanics. As in, if your character is alive and you as a player can see what is happening on your screen but have to pretend it’s not happening - that’s badly designed.

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This has to be based on concrete in-round events or information such as a credible report of nuclear operatives being sighted.

I really don’t think you should need justification to defend THE NUKE DISK. Any bad actor getting their hands on it could theoretically activate any Nanotrasen nuke.

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Being in pitch black for 5 minutes while you’re getting rescued is not fun, me still being able to see what is going on entertains me a bit at least while my character is out.

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Not being able to see whats around you while crit would also render the last words, fake deathgasp, and give up buttons effectively useless. You could end up choking out a desperate warning to an empty hallway, or give up the ghost when Med is two seconds from waking you up.

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Until it’s mechanically enforced, it has to stay as a rule.

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Adopted your suggestion for the high value items.

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Enforce it.

Moderating stuff like this on a public LRP server is hell.

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The most significant change from the meta-shield to this document seems to be that players are allowed to expect, even in MRP, that several syndicate thieves, a wizard, a skeleton, and a team of nuclear operatives are likely show up during this particular shift, possibly all at once. I’m not sure how I feel about that.

I also think the MRP amendment should apply to LRP, but I realize that’s creating a lot of work for people who aren’t me, and understand that the admin team might not have capacity for that, so I’ll defer to them on that front.

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We get many new people daily, and even then a lot of the people that have significant playtime haven’t even read all the rules in their entirety. We still have players on MRP that haven’t read the amendments. I would love for the amendment to be on LRP, but I would hate to moderate it.

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The PR is made.

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I’m for the removal of the metashield in favor of mechanical enforcement. I do want to know if I’m understanding some of the changes and their consequences correctly though.

  • Nukies are no longer a myth. How far can someone go “just in case” of a nukie attack? Could an engineer, for example, decide to reinforce the space-facing part of the bridge or the armory just in case of the common nukie tactic of ramming their ship into the station?
  • Stealth items no longer shielded. Does that mean security would be aware of the fact that PDAs could be uplinks, and confiscate the PDAs of suspected syndicates? I did see the PR for “universal uplink codes” that would allow any PDA to be used, but it seems security could reasonably disallow giving them a PDA entirely as well.
  • Current game mode no longer shielded. Seems it would now be fair to react to what you think the round type is. If you think it’s survival for example, you could say “there are so many things coming out of the vents, this station must be cursed. Time to order guns to prepare for the inevitable nukies, wizards, ninjas, and dragons.”
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2 and 3 already happen despite the current rules, this just makes it less of a pain to deal with.
Both of which need to be addressed by game mechanics. I am aware this is forcing the issue, but it needs to happen.

1 could have been done for any reason nukeops or not. I don’t think anyone minds if engi wastes glass on a glass maze when one tider with a bat comes and tears it down because it’s mildly inconvenient.

20

This would seem to effect mindswap spells.

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