Wizards born after 2443 don’t know how to be an interesting antagonist, all they know is tesloose, charge they wand, jaunt, be crew, throw hot ball and die.
After a dozen or so rounds with them, I have never had a positive experience with a wizard. All of them have fallen into one (or more) of the following three categories
Wizard plays “friendly” Antag or Command/Sec doesn’t take them seriously as a threat - Frustrating when the naive (and rulebreaking) Command Staff get betrayed and slaughtered unprepared, boring in the rare cases they don’t. I don’t know what it is about wizards that makes this happen so often.
Unskilled wizard kills themselves immediately - might as well have not been in the round
Robust Wizard completely dismantles the station with Rod and some combination of Ethereal Jaunt, Fireball, Mindswap, and Animation, solo-ending the round slowly and painfully - Even worse since the spacing update.
This last one admittedly seems like a lot of fun for the wizard, but from my experience, and from the complaints I hear in dead chat on wizard rounds, it isn’t very fun for the other 79 participants. Rod in particular is the worst offender, it being a very strong weapon, a must-have defensive tool, and one that incidentally vents large sections of the station whenever it’s used.
When I brought this up in the discord, a couple people characterize me as being against the concept of antagonists in general (???) but the fact is I love Nukie rounds, I love Zed rounds, I love syndicate traitors. I bet I’d love Revs if the game mode ever showed up. They provide interesting challenges and fun scenarios. There’s potential with wizards, but it’s not here yet. Something needs to change, and until it does it oughtta be put back on the shelf because in its current state it’s making the game worse.
Never been a fan of remove instead of improve. Issues with the wizard were known when it was merged, at best I believe wizard should roll less frequently.
This is the only point I kinda agree on. Friendly wizards/friendly command can both be annoying, but as you said yourself, in most cases it’s rule breaking. Figuring out is it the involved players fault or bad antag design is up to anyone. Personally, I did have incidents where I shoot down the wizard and had cap revive them and let them escape, but I don’t hold it as the fault of the antag design. Overall this statement is kinda legit, but better reinforcement of the rules could be a way to fix it.
Unrobust players can be found everywhere. It’s not the antag design fault that someone who doesn’t know how to play wizard, played wizard. Not once I have seen nukie commander who said it’s their first time as nukie or even nukie agents who refused to make meds. I have seen entire nukie teams die in 2-3 minutes, that’s why we got the slang “flukies”. Even seen ninjas and solo ops being killed just in few minutes, this happens so often with all the antags.
First of all, wizard is a station ending threat on par with nukies so complaining that the wizard destroyed the station is the same as complaining that nukies nuked the station. And then how should a wizard act, if they can’t be unrobust as said in your previous statement and they can’t be too good, whar should they do. Secondly, players complaining about the wizard is just really stupid, but at the same time I have seen people complaining that nukies or revs or even regular agents with kill objectives killed them. Overall some players just like to complain about everything and players should realise that this not every round is supposed to go perfect for them, where they don’t die to spacing or whatever it is.
Yeah rod is really powerfull, but it’s also one of the only few real station damaging wizard spells. Other than the rod wizard has fireball and niche wand/hammer combinations. And once again, I have to repeat myself, I still don’t get why people are compaining about wizard spacing/destroying the station, if they want to do that, its up to them, because they can. I had a round where I got insta killed by wizards just as they arrived or died to some secondary wizard station damage effect and I never had a problem with it. Removing rod from wizard would be a huge loss.
I was hoping that explicitly calling out and pre-empting this argument in my original post would keep people from barging into the thread to tell me I’m a stupid salty loser who complains about everything and that my real problem is I don’t like that antagonists exist, but alas my hopes were too high.
Until, not instead. If someone is about to push improvements to wizards I’d love to see it, but it’s been three months since they were introduced. Do we really need more data? Are there recent changes I’m not aware of that need testing? You don’t have to accept my premise that wizard as-is is bad for the game, but if you do, I think it only makes sense to remove it until it gets some more love.
I am of the opinion that the rod is simply just too powerful of an ability due to its versitile and easy usage.
Fireball is an instant AOE kill ability with a cooldown that is on the short side, but still fairly lengthy. Crew can play around this by attacking during the cooldown.
Jaunt is an instant escape ability that allows the Wizard to displace himself in a very freeform manner, with decently short cooldown. While the Wizard is invisible, it makes a loud directional sound upon re-entry and there is a risk the Wizard gets stuck.
The rod feels like it is both of these abilities combined, and supercharged. Need damage? It downs anyone in your path instantly. Need an escape? It launches you super far away instantly. Need destruction? Half the station is spaced from one use. It is offset by a longer cooldown but, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, that cooldown can be offset by using the other two spells (not to mention regular combat, e.g. if you get a suit or god forbid Captain’s laser).
If a Wizard has a rod spell, there’s little counterplay to approach for crew. Dodge the fireball? You’re still at risk of being immediately downed by the rod, which you are likely to be hit by since level design encourages long hallways. Dodge the rod? It travels so far that you’re unable to chase the Wizard down. By the time you catch up to them (good luck in your mandatory hardsuit) a competent Wizard will have spaced out their spell usage to either have a fireball or jaunt spell ready again.
The only times I’ve seen these spells fail is from the Wizard’s own incompetence, or sheer luck where the rod just happens to end up near crewmember with a gun by pure luck. There’s no viable strategy on the crew’s side because you simply aren’t gonna get enough coordination to go “Okay Wizard has a rod, I need an officer located in X/Y/Z, in case he rods there” due to a bunch of factors including chaos, dead crew, spacing and Wizard having comms. Counterplay becomes reduced to luck, and I just don’t find that engaging.
Fwiw I do not think the rod spell needs to go, but it could use some tweaks to make it less versatile. I’d go with:
Make the rod travel path shorter. Not by much, but maybe 3/4ths of what it is currently? The distance gained right now is too far in my opinion.
Require channeling. Instead of being an instant-eject button (which we already have in the form of Fireball and Jaunt), make it require some more planning and give crew time to react if they see it. A 5 second doafter would make it unviable to use in direct combat, but be fast enough that you can dip in behind cover if the opportunity arises. A channel would put emphasis on its destructive capabilities: get in position, channel the spell, and now you’ve torn a hole in the station. Plus you can surprise the Captain through a closed door which seems funny.
Would this be a fairly hefty nerf? Yeah, for combat scenarios. But the rod still excels in station destruction, and frankly the Wizard has a lot of other tools at their disposal that are fulfilling the combat niche.
Having played Wizard another time I must say that it really depends on the creativity of the Wizard themselves.
The Fireball strategy is just the obvious choice for a Direct Impact, but there’s lots of creative choices to be a hazard to the people on the station.
If I had to be honest, the Fireball IS pretty powerful because it mostly deals explosive damage, and no one has resistances or even solid protection against it unless you’re the RD at least, haha.
I’d expect the FIREBALL to do way more FIRE damage than just EXPLOSIVE damage.
Anyways, a serious lack of creativity is the usual thing seen; being the Fireball only Wizard.
I think the design of the wizard is inherently flawed regardless of how you look at it.
It puts the entire round in the hands of a SINGLE glass cannon antag. This is as polarizing as it gets and simply VERY unlikely to work even for a highly mechanically restricted game, in this game it fails entirely at its design goal nearly every time.
At best that failling is “impressive” to look at when the wizard can’t be stopped. Results in a boring wait for evac to complete its cycle when it is stopped late (why do nukies result in an instant round end but wizard does not?). And leads to a greenshift if they do get him early.
Wizard has no actual objectives nor rules. Their single objective honestly looks like an april fools addition in the way it is worded and how it is supposed to be interpreted.
Wizard’s whole kit is designed about having the destructive power of an aghost with a shell to damage. I think it is easy to see why this is not fun. Specially when you can get round removed by simply being clicked on. As has been expressed in other antag’s design, the point of an antag is to give crew something to do, instantly deleting people at will without counterplay isn’t it.
I am still wondering what was the train of tought that led to this beyond “SS13 had it”, which as has been said many times by leads, is not a valid reason to add stuff.
The wizard is supposed to be the solo antag, as damaging to the station as a whole nukie team. They’re not perfect, but they could do with slme tweaks.
Rod: Even as someone who’s been rodded more than a badly behaved schoolboy, it doesn’t need too much. Perhaps less of a guarantee to gib (adjust it for severe damage? The victim can be revived, but be ready for some work.) Perhaps give it a cooldown on everything else after rod ends? Several longer moments. Maybe simply require the robes for rod to work. No need to make it much harder for combat, let it be the spell it is, just minor tweaks.
Fireball: I see quite a few wizards splatter themselves with this… it’s quite a hit or miss spell.
Smite: It’s a powerful spell but a long cooldown… I only ever see wizards use it as their last ditch effort or as part of a bit.
Objectives: Yeah this is my biggest contention with wizard. They really need to have a better objective system. I’ve said it plenty before but the wizards are entirely detached with a very strange viewpoint on the world. They may want something they think is entirely reasonable but is unthinkable to anyone else. Eg. The tesla in a box delivered to their ship, all of the captain’s blood, all of the station’s plasma (no not just what you have right now, all the plasma you’ll ever have! Just mine more after to make up the difference it’s not that hard!) Or the nuke. Things that the crew cannot (practically or physically) provide but the wizard thinks is normal. The wizard could also have some harmful effects on the station by simply existing, damaging flow of electricity in nearby wires for example.
Friendly wizard: This is contentious… love or hate. Wizard does have some amazing roleplay potential, but it’s hard to do that when the wizard is forced to show up and immediately start blasting. The wizard should not be there as crew aligned or friendly, but I see no problem with the wizard “coming down to see the lessers and peasants playing crew on their little station.” Because something will eventually set them off. This of course relies on command/sec not shotgunning the wizard in the back while they’re talking. On one hand yes, foreign invader, they’re supposed to. On the other hand, roleplay. Also if that wizard gets blasted that early welcome to green shift. Enjoy your pAI and mouse ghost roles for the next hour or so while truly nothing happens.
It’s exactly as you said. If the wizard dies too easily or too early, the round is a boring greenshift. If the wizard just demolishes all of Sec, the round takes forever to truly end cause the wizard is holding the reins.
I think a lot of this stems from roundstart wizard being the only antagonist. If there were more antags, greenshift wizard rounds wouldn’t be as likely. On the flipside, more antags means more people with the tools to oppose the wizard.
Another issue is the complete lack of spells. You see the same spells every shift because those are the only ones worth taking. Have you ever seen a single wizard take the spider polymorph and it not be by accident? IMO the wizard needs a few more spells in the major categories: offensive, defensive, and utility. Where the wizard needs a LOT more spells is in the silly category. We need the ability to turn the wizard into a super clown. What’s more disruptive than a clown with magic?
I am also of the opinion that Wizards should be handled under space law like normal. If they fireball a single person? Murder. If they fireball the whole station? Mass Murder. You will still end up executing murderbone wizard, so nothing changes there. What this does change is carve out a space for the Wizard to skirt the line with how antagonistic they can be without the guarentee they’ll be round removed if they get arrested. I feel like a lot of wizards go murderbone route because it’s highly likely they get killed on sight anyway, so they might as well have some fun and blow everyone up.
I played Wizard last night, and even with ne doing an A Train bit, I demolished that round.
Spells were Rod, Smite, Jaunt, Blink and Void Applause (I still dont know what that does).
Rod was devastating to the station - I was making sure not to aim for TEG and I still ended up knocking out power and killing so many people.
Blink and Jaunt, as well as Rod, meant I could evade a LOT of problems with access and combat - I was on poor health for a long time, even after raiding medical’s topicals.
Smite and Rod let me pick off enemies easily. I Smite Captain in Engi within a few seconds of engaging - no collecting 200, no passing Go.
Mirror Shield. This thing turned me from a glass cannon into a bruiser. It invalidated half the station’s gear and forced them to either arrest or lethal me with bullets - which I could avoid with Blink, Jaunt or Rod a lot more often now I wouldnt use them to escape lasers.
I can’t speak for how to balance things, but as a Wiz and a player, i was definitely unstoppable.
I volunteer that maybe Wizard should get a much slower Rod? The destruction is less stationside and more localized that way. Alternatively, maybe Rod shouldn’t gib but crit the uninjured or lightly injured.
Or...
… make wizard earn their robe and hat by doing other spells in front of crew?
I agree with your sentiment that round-start wizards being the only antagonist is a problem, and that they’d be more fun as an disruptive and amoral super clown than an all powerful station destroyer, but I disagree that wizards should be subject to space law, at least not until some major overhauls take place.
Skeletons and Rat Kings as free agents have both suffered from the problem where they have OOC permission to start aimlessly mass-murdering whenever they want, they’re much better at mass murder than normal crew, and the longer they’re allowed to plot without interference the more damage they’re going to do. Wizards (when not treated as a nuclear-level, open the armory and hand passengers your spare guns level threat) have that same problem, but also they start out more powerful than an entire team of nukies. You say that “You will still end up executing a murderbone wizard” but in my experience that’s not true; when a wizard really decides to start killing everyone, you can’t stop it.
Also, it’s worth reiterating, or saying for the first time if I wasn’t clear in the title, I do want wizard to be in the game eventually, I even think rod is neat and should stay in some form, I’m just advocating that one or both be temporarily disabled until they receive an update.
Issue with wizz. That it was balanced around ss13 speed of gameplay.(player prediction > reaction speed).
While ss14 reward player reaction speed. Which makes current wizzard kit extremely strong with high reactive players
Balancing solution
Cut rod time by 3\5th of its of its active time and increase cooldown by 3\10th
Increase fireball cooldown by 1\10th
Reduce charges amount of locker staff\wand, reduce amount of time it takes to break out of said locker by 6\10th
Add downside to Smite spell. Using smite will deal 15 burn and 15 brute damage to a wizzard(bypassing armor). Making it an emergency high risk\high reward spell to take down priority target
Mirror is a bit too strong in my opinion
Jaunt should have 1\5th of a chance to insert you inside a wall everytime(would be funny)
P.S. Also i think Cluwne transformed people should randomly stam crit once every 2 minutes. So it would be actually more of a curse, instead of green clown. And Chaplin should be able to break said curse like they do in ss13
Rod and the antag won’t be removed. Just removing something we don’t like isn’t good.
There’s some things that do need adjustment that I’m planning on doing an actual balance sweep when the majority/all of the backend changes are ready for wizard. I’m not a fan of doing microbalance changes since they don’t look at the whole picture.
I will still say that the wizard is an extremely powerful glass cannon by design. Yes some of the spells are meant to one shot you. Think of it like playing a TCG or a board game. Being hit by a fat removal or losing chance time is just part of the design.
I’m also not planning on making the Chaplain a direct counter to Wizards. It puts too much importance on a singular role. The same goes for Holy Melons.
I mean, the terminator among other stuff got removed due to being poorly designed too.
It may not be ideal, but there is not just history of this being acceptable, it would also be a net positive at this time to remove at least the most problematic aspects.
I am very grateful for your work, but pretending a temp removal is not in the cards when it is done often is disingenuous. Specially when it was thrown into main servers with essentially 0 balance considerations, it should have been a test merge in the first place.
The mere fact that this is a singular glass cannon makes the issues here unavoidable. It just does not mesh with the rest of the game’s design choices at all.
A temporary removal of the role or spell, or at least restricting one of either to admeme, probably won’t hurt until the balance sweep occurs I think. If an antagonistic role can end the match with the simple capacity to delete portions of the starions on a cooldown, that doesnt feel fair to the other players in a round.
With nukies (from what I’ve seen and experienced on LRP), there’s at least a balance of the element of surprise versus time with the war declarator - they have the option of going in with less gear and high speed to overwhelm, but a bad nukie team will get stopped easily doing that, whereas the longer prep time and awareness of nukies for the station can undo any advantage the nukie team could afford. (Assuming they don’t try some kind of memeops.)
Well, wizard’s hardsuit was removed…presumably to be a “rod nerf” but as someone who used to be excited to play wizard, it’s actually an “everything else” nerf since as established, rod is god tier OP, I’ll just steal a hardsuit like roundstart. The real effect is I can survive significantly less sucker shots when I’m trying to type something funny.
I’m kill on sight to up to 79 people IC, and OOC, these 79 people played a game to be entertained. I have a handful of extremely powerful offensive spells/equipment and no way to make ghost roles for the RR’d.
This is. The exact formula to get large amounts of untalktative spammy deathmatch wizards, or friendly wizards who feel bad instigating anything.
And it’s where wizard main game mode is currently at. Just make it sub game mode only until dynamic is finished, it’s actually reliably the worst main game mode there is since they either mindswap all round on the other side of the station as your dept, or they rodspammed directly through your dept.
Either way, while I tend to not like things removed from this almost sandbox-like game for “balance” reasons, rodspamming is disproportionately the obvious way to “win” as wizard and people care too much about ‘winning’ so we always see it and they have no reason to even stop and laugh about it because they’re literally a glass cannon in the middle of multiple dozen hostile people
The need for overpowered spells comes from wizard player having 1 life against ~70 other players.
This could be resolved by having wizard have multiple respawns, so they don’t need to have such abilities just to exist on station. Could start with 3 lives, and earning more lives (respawns) for completing objectives such as performing rituals at specific places. That way even new wizard players get to retry and the spells could be fairer towards the crew.
Personally I don’t see a problem with wizard obliterating the round with no chance of being stopped.