Most if not all " security is ass " " security is so bad " players complain about the fact security is outmanned by antagonists and the fact robust players in the community go civilian roles as security is unable to roll any kind of antag thus making the role be kinda unwanted , thus a main argument point is requesting syndicates be rolled before security , yet I’ve seen the mentions of a No from developers towards such an idea and wanted to know what exactly prevents the system from being put into place , as honestly it seems like a nice fix albeit kind of a metagameable fix.
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I can only speculate with what I know, but I would assume the staff don’t want it in upstream because of the metagaming potential.
Something like Nukies or any future equivalents could probably be rolled before sec, but for traitor roles, it’s a bit too revealing on round start.
I beleive the main problem with this is “Mr command/sec main isnt command/sec, must be synidcate”
which seems a little silly, bacause by that logic you already have people who know its Nukeops because X isnt on station but they were in lobby right before! Its physically impossible they wanted a break/to observe!
And if this and a few other imrpovements are implemented, then wouldnt there be less open slots, less people who feel obligated to play security (explainging not being security) and similar? Making this less easy to meta anyhow.
I’ve mentioned in my post already that
is the only problem that can cause massive headaches in my post as
But as Flesh mentioned this sort of metagaming can be done with nukies already thus is kind of a silly reason to outlaw like a solution to many problems for causing one problem.
2 Likes
Its a really bad argument, yeah, and there are tons of things with metagame potential that are already in the game. We already have rules against metagaming, and assuming someone is an antag because they are a security/command main and aren’t either of those things in a round crosses over to metagriefing. A player that is metagriefing will break other rules too, its like the most extreme rulebreaking you can do in the game after all (Outside of just spamming awful things).
Instead of punishing all players by keeping a system that does not work for anyone, actual rulebreakers should be punished.
Is there a way to solve the metagame dilemma? I think so, in a mechanical standpoint, by putting a bunch of smokes on the system, reducing metagame potential
- Remove Preference system on secoff/cadet, making it on/off
- Do not fill up security on roundstart, have a percentage of people who chose sec + syndie be non-sec non-syndie (can be sleeper agent eligible I guess). They’re the placebo group.
This only works if many people opt into syndie roles (sorry lowpop) and/or opting into sec + syndie.
Not sure how to tackle command though. Let me know what y’all think, thought of this while high.
1 Like
Oh im sorry i didnt see you already mention it, I appear to be blind as hell lol
The meta game dilemma already exists. If you know a player really well, it can be obvious if they are an antag, especially if they are very predictable in their behavior. We’ve all heard stuff like “I knew you were an x but didn’t want to meta game it” at the end of rounds.
The solution is of course only one thing, and it would upset everyone: give everyone random names at start. I don’t think that is a good solution. But the problem itself exists no matter how antags are rolled.
I’d like to note, while matagaming roles of other players is an issue, metagaming your own role can be problematic as well.
If someone has, say, secoff set to High and ends up rolling traitor instead, they will know almost immediately they’re an antag, before they’re formally informed of that.
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This is what my solution is trying to eliminate. Having a placebo group + no preference system on secoff/cadet means they will never be sure that they got antag role in the first place.
I agree, metagame will always be here and the optimal solution is not ideal to the game, the question is where do we draw the line. As of right now, the nukie situation, metagaming revs, flashing the robust regular people as headrev, etc happen and largely ‘tolerated’
I simply think that the metagame potential issue of antag rolling before sec can be solved mechanically.
honestly a great idea can’t lie
Just don’t let the roster be viewed until the five minutes mark then when traitor rolls. People can be denied security when it is set to high when security is filled up. This entire change means that security will be filled up more often anyways because it isn’t an automatic “You can’t ever antag” choice.
Ultimately, people can metagame a million different things in the game, and there is no 100% protection against metagaming that you can have with a game this complex. At some point, quality of life must come before metagaming considerations. This change is basic quality of life for the security role, it allows people who wouldn’t otherwise pick security to be able to pick it, including robust antag players that security can sometimes be lacking in a round.
On TG, antags are assigned before roles. So at least there’s tradition attesting that it works.
Job selection and assignment - /tg/station 13 Wiki
Which isn’t to say that we must always follow tradition, of course.
How many of you are (or would be) sec mains? Those are the folks whose opinion matters the most…
- I am a sec and/or command main and I don’t care all that much about being an antag.
- I play sec and/or command a lot, but I sometimes take other roles to, maybe, be an antag.
- I would play sec and/or command, but I value the chance of playing antag above all.
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I don’t think the “Mr command/sec main isnt command/sec, must be synidcate” metagaming issue is a problem, at all.
What is a problem (as one observant forumster has pointed out) is that The Player can see that they didn’t get their sec/command role and immediately deduce that in 5 minutes they’re (probably) going to become a traitor.
Now, you could just… not do anything about this. That’s an option. The Proposed Change would still have a net positive effect if you ignored this.
(There’s also the proposed solution of “Having a placebo group + no preference system”, which would work but it feels unnecessarily complicated and not very integrated and blunt and I’d rather not do it.)
Assuming you did want to fix this new Metagamable Information Leak, the only solution (?) would be to get rid of the “5 minutes until you’re notified of traitordom” Existing Feature.
This wouldn’t be great, because this Existing Feature serves to solve 2(?) problems:
- (the big one) without the Existing Feature, syndies immediately buy an emag and do all their objectives as soon as the shift starts before anyone can get their footing. How unfun!
- (bonus) the Existing Feature makes antag-rolling harder (because now you need to wait 5 minutes before you know whether to /ghost or not) and less desirable (because now you’re hooked, sucked into the round, enthralled ect. and you don’t want to /ghost any more)
Therefore, if we want to remove the Existing Feature to plug this Metagamable Information Leak, we want to re-solve those problems, again.
- (the big one) The Syndies Rushing Everything issue can be mostly resolved by just putting a 5 minute delay before anyone can actually use the uplink (this system already exists, see syndicate bomb). Of course, syndies can still rush via mundane means (engineers), so this isn’t perfect.
- (bonus) I have no idea how to re-solve the antag-rolling issue. Maybe 90% of antag rollers are actually antag-starved sec mains and would go away when the Proposed Feature is added? who knows.
I’m preeeetty sure “remove the Existing Feature and add an uplink delay without fixing antag-rolling” is better than “keep the Existing Feature and its Metagamable Information Leak” (both of which are better than just not implementing this Proposed Change), but there’s still a loss in quality there and thus room for improvement.
3 Likes
The bonus isn’t really applicable anymore because now, every round, you can roll traitor mid round through the sleeper agent event. There is no reason to ghost at the beginning of a round for antag rollers who specifically only value playing a syndie anymore. That being said though, I can understand why the existing feature wouldn’t be removed because it means you don’t have to have an admin ruling not to do traitor stuff until five minutes and saves on ahelps of people who rushed things they shouldn’t have.
The other issue though, about the no-preference system. I honestly think this would be a great feature even regardless of antag rolling. There are some rounds that I just… feel like playing something truly random. Preference should be just that, I -prefer- to play something, not -I must- have that role. I think its fine if there is a system that bypasses that by giving you a truly random role for eliminating the metagaming concerns (Which I think are overblown and not really worth considering, but if they have to be considered, this is a fine option and would be a feature even if rolling antags first was rejected.) Like, integration issues are something that can be worked out, I don’t think they are a reason for not doing something.
I’d also like to point out that people ghosting in the beginning of a round isn’t always something do because they couldn’t antag role. I see command members do this with alarming frequency. I see sec officers do this. I see players who I know don’t roll antag or care about it do it. Sometimes people queue up for rounds they are not prepared to play and then wander off to cyro sleep. Sometimes a round is boring regardless of antag status and people get impatient. Sometimes real life stuff comes up. Nothing is going to “solve” these issues, and the cyrosleep function has at least meant that players coming into a round aren’t impacted by it.
someone note everything down that this guy has said… because wow is he right.
tl;dr
sleepers creates more issues than it solves, ‘mr command not in command’ issue is a abased example, even hardcore syndie players don’t get grudged or sussed by sec anyway, ultimate goals should be to make people want to play sec/command. get antag players into sec, facilitate their gameplay desires.
firstly a quick tangent paragraph on sleepers;
I consider the sleeper agents event a failure in design, the event typically happens too late into the shift to properly plan or act on your new objectives, you may have ensure X survives on people that are already dead, or help X’s objectives and they’re akin to the former/perma/suicided. sleepers are typically a new source of 20tc to evac bomb, and typically creates a larger imbalance in the playercount between sec and syndies (in regards to syndicates as a gamemode, on war or nukies the event plays completely different).
and now real points and thoughts on the headline;
as it goes for “command guy not in command hmmmmm” its part of the rules, don’t meta it, play the game for the roleplay, those people playing command that this kind of feature are for are generally robust enough to understand how to counter general levels of angst from security over their alignment, theres plenty of players currently who never play command or security that practically always get syndicate that people don’t put hard accusations on, you need to catch people doing something first or you’re breaking rules and meta grudging, this is a null issue and creation of this feature would probably shift this issue out of worry anyway.
the real benefit to this system would be the point that a lot of shifts have missing round-start command members or thin security teams, the game is at its best when the rounds antagonists have a challenge, and ‘1 QM on revs’ or ‘2 security cadets and a warden into 5 syndicates’ makes the round less fun for everyone.
having more people be ok with putting command and security to medium or low is an ultimate goal future changes should be aiming to accomplish and I think that letting antagonists (typically the most robust players) want to play the antagonist catching role as a backup is a better option than saying “but guh what about metagrudging or metaknowledge” and making no decision alongside the understaff sec/command issue.
final comment;
antag rolling is and will always be an issue, get those people antag rolling into sec instead, if its all they find fun, find a way to facilitate what they want in the game instead of trying to chastise or shun them.
considering the inactivity doubt we’ll be getting this implemented
This is such a non-issue where the alternative is a massive QoL buff. So many command/sec mains usually switch up manually when they don’t want to play sec for a shift, and nobody consistently gets the roles 100% of the time anyway.
If the main servers in 13 do it and it works without issue there, it should work without issue here. Not sure why everyone’s so hellbent on reinventing the wheel.
1 Like
The issue isn’t with us but rather whoever is deciding that due to " metagaming " this feature won’t work and not caring any further. We all know this works and the fact metagaming aspect goes for every feature out there , but oh well. Its the Admins/Project managers deciding if this gets added.