There’s been enough PRs at this point talking about traitor balance that it deserves its own dedicated thread or maybe several.
I’m hoping with this post we can either agree on issues and nail down an action plan or agree on some spin off threads depending on how things go.
To start with a non-comprehensive list of traitor issues:
Traitors is a boring greenshift gamemode
Traitors are overly oppressive and frequently wipe security with no repercussions
Traitors have basically no fear about being betrayed and almost always work together
“Keep fellow traitor alive” is not fun as an objective
Uplinks don’t have enough stealth items
(Note: These are not solely my opinions but rather concerns/criticisms gathered from various other SS14 contributors/admins/maintainers. They are contradictory because they come from multiple sources)
I think we should keep implant discussions to a minimum since we already know the storage implant is oppressively meta and there’s already discussion to address that.
But for everything and anything else regarding traitors let’s at least have a thread to start talking about this.
I am also going to add another section here to stoke more discussion, here’s some ideas which have been discussed for helping with balancing the traitor gamemode:
Traitor reputation (Uplink starts off with most items restricted and require you doing small contract objectives to unlock more of the uplink. Harder objectives unlock more stuff and also can give TC or item rewards. This would be in addition to your normal objectives).
Removal of Certain Problem Items (The list is quite long but explosives, armor, some weapons have been noted to possibly be problematic)
Addition of internal affairs objectives (Kill another traitor, ensure another traitor does not do their objectives, prevent a traitor from killing their target)
Addition of non RR kill objectives (Kill a person and leave a calling card without RRing them)
Let traitors steal TC from other traitor PDAs
I’ll try to update this list as I either remember more or more get discussed. Hopefully this thread can branch off into more dedicated threads to specific aspects of traitor balance in the future.
Kinda? I mean, it isn’t flashy, but it does let people do their job while still having to be wary. Unlike other game modes where the station has to grind all its activities to a halt to stop the threat. It is fun trying to find out who is doing all of these crimes and their very existence makes just being in the same room with someone more than just “hey, you exist”.
Also, again, it is nice to get to do your job.
Traitors are overly oppressive and frequently wipe security with no repercussions
No? Sec has been getting steady buffs, and traitors are the weakest antags in terms of combat (after thief). They are the last ones who could topple sec.
Traitors have basically no fear about being betrayed and almost always work together
Not really. It is rare to see them work togheter, and they often do betray or at least abandon each other. Even without the objective to do so. It is also risky to try and contact other traitors, the risk should be rewarded.
Uplinks don’t have enough stealth items
What else would you suggest? There are already items for turning into literal objects on the floor, or posing as entirely different crew members and even disruption tools.
I agree to some extent. Part of this is RNG part of this is skill level and creativity of the antags themselves.sometimes there will be 9 traitors and there are only 7 total objectives between them that aren’t escape to centcom, keep such and such alive, or help such and such finish half their objectives. Some traitor rounds are very hectic and fun because the traitors put up a good fight. A few days ago @ThatGuyUSA was a traitor, got chems to make them medicine and went on a rampage with an elite suit and an Esword (but were quickly valid-hunted by the entire crew). Rounds like that have so much potential to be amazing and chaotic for everyone. I would personally like a limit on the keep traitor alive, escape to centcom, and help traitor finish objectives. as these are all pretty boring if they get rolled too frequently and have DAGD be more common.
Now looking at your first point you can’t have it both ways. The traitors can’t be too oppressive AND boring greenshift. I don’t see them wiping security out with any frequency when I play.
I would 100% agree. not all 9 or so traitors are going to be working as a cohesive unit, but they do usually find at least 1 or 2 others to work with.
I feel like they have quite a few tools. Maybe they should get more TC to be able to use these. I agree with @Nancok , what would you suggest be added?
honestly i like this one, it makes syndies feel more like a team and less like it’s just you. i like to get us both syndie comms implants and give them whatever i can get from my department (usually they help in return, too)
I’d like to note that not all of these are my opinions and are gathered from what I’ve heard from admins, contributors, and maintainers. It is also not a comprehensive list so feel free to add more issues if you think there are more.
I’m updating the initial post to specify this because, yes some of the notes are contradictory.
It is fun trying to find out who is doing all of these crimes and their very existence makes just being in the same room with someone more than just “hey, you exist”. Also, again, it is nice to get to do your job.
I agree with this actually, I don’t think traitors should be an oppressive game mode. It’s a nice change of pace, but as someone who’s played a lot of security it can often just boil down to nothing happening and nothing to do way too often.
No? Sec has been getting steady buffs, and traitors are the weakest antags in terms of combat
I also agree with this but there’s been complaints/concerns that they have it too easy with wiping security due to admin intervention (and a good reason why a lot of tots don’t immediately wipe security is because of rule 2.9)
Really from my experience the issue lies less with traitors and more how oppressive chems are from a medical perspective. If I can get a hypo and chems I can wipe sec. Without them it’s significantly harder.
It is rare to see them work together, and they often do betray or at least abandon each other.
I see traitors work together extremely often and in the cases where they don’t, they’re usually just ignoring each-other. There’s not a whole lot of risk in contacting other traitors from my experience, and the few times I’ve been betrayed it was because they either had the job to protect me or kill me.
What else would you suggest?
There’s a lot of stealth items in SS13 that we could port over. This is a concern I’ve seen others raise and I’m not sure if I agree with it. I think stealth items are poorly balanced is my take personally. Storage implant and thieving gloves is oppressively good, and everything else feels like a waste of TC compared to the utility of those two alone.
Some traitor rounds are very hectic and fun because the traitors put up a good fight. A few days ago @ThatGuyUSA was a traitor, got chems to make them medicine and went on a rampage with an elite suit and an Esword (but were quickly valid-hunted by the entire crew).
I’ve had many good tot games with Jane, even if so many of them end horribly. However as someone who plays a decent amount of sec. Most traitors games are: Wait for something to happen, one thing happens and you have to savor it for the whole shift.
Traitors need to be encouraged to do more imo. I should probably highlight that getting rid of rule 2.9 is a goal of the admin team in the initial post. Right now the only thing traitors can do above and beyond their objectives is help another traitor or go on a rampage which is quite lame.
Rounds like that have so much potential to be amazing and chaotic for everyone. I would personally like a limit on the keep traitor alive, escape to centcom, and help traitor finish objectives.
I agree, I think traitors should have less “you need to escape alive and unrestrained” objectives. DAGD is at a good place in how uncommon it is, and there needs to be less “help another traitor out” (I think getting rid of keep x guy alive is good enough for that).
honestly i like this one, it makes syndies feel more like a team and less like it’s just you.
I feel like “ensure traitor completes half of their objectives” is a better version of “keep traitor alive” and traitors helping each other objectives are too common imo.
This came up internally a bit in discussion today.
Traitors are incentivized to always team up with 0 reason to ever not do so. (A solution is being looked at.)
Traitors that do team up have disproportionate access to extremely strong shit (super surplus, or straight up buy a Lake).
2.9 and traitors wiping sec isn’t really an issue with sec anymore, it’s a skill issue on the side of sec. Sec needs to actually use the shit in the armory.
Chem med is broken allowing completely absurd combat longevity.
I think sec underestimates how much they can do just snooping as usual. You can look for contraband while patrolling. You can just mediate disputes. Try to help solving a “case” by asking around about suspicious activity, like asking cargo who was going around when guns where bought or pester engi to clear dangerous stuff someone may have built. You are can do way more than just bonk and jail antags.
I am not sure how this meta is doing right now? I mean, someone can inject nucturine which is the fastest acting chemical, which still gives you time to shoot back. If you are so alone that no one can hear the gunshots then that was your first mistake. Atmos is a bigger issue imo, but that is mostly a design issue if you ask me (why is atmos so hard for sec to access in all maps while engi usually has a shortcut for sec to enter?)
I genuinely do not see them work togheter often, specially because just using the keywords effectively is a barrier, and then having the others care enough to reply is another and only THEN can the cooperation part begin, if it even goes anywhere. I DO sometimes see join in the chaos when one starts going loud. But at that is their peak point, after that you should be armed and ready for them. For better or for worse, the chaos is not something you can have complete control over and it will overwhelm departments often, it is just how it goes.
The lack of betrayal may be a culture thing. I think most traitors do not realize that they are completely free, if not even encouraged, to betray, and there are PRs in the work to make this more enticing.
I have not played 13 in a while. But porting tools seems like a safe bet. But thieving gloves are obvious if you know they exist “Oh, this person with black gloves just decided to stand right next to me for a prolonged amount of time, i shall ignore all my inventory slots until the interaction ends”. Storage implant is poopy in design, yeah. But jammers are almost meta for stealth play, voice modulators are ridiculously risk-free and have a LOT of potential for deception from ANYWHERE in the station and some subtle ones like a chameleon projector can provide free escape routes by just turning into trash in the ground before picking it up to replace it.
I am just going to throw in my two cents, it’s good to have at least one person you can consistently work with to get the job done, as it is much harder to kill 2 people, it’s nice to have a contact should you get imprisioned or have something go wrong.
Honestly I don’t like the idea of sleepers being quiet. Since basically any untargeted sabotage breaks rule 2.9 and there is no reason to put more heat on yourself then nessarcy.
It seems a lot of the topic on traitor issues are contradictory, not just on the complaints, but on the balance as well.
For example, if traitors are boring greenshifts because they are too stealthy, then adding more stealth items will amplify the issue. Additionally, if weapons, armor and explosives are removed, then the issue will be compounded. And adding internals affairs objectives of antag on antag violence will once again amplify the issue with antags now diverting their limited resources on eliminating each others.
On the other hand, if antags are too overtuned compared to security (I’m not saying if either is true), then the addition of stealth items could make them even more powerful depending on the specifics. The removal of weapons, armor and explosives might also amplify the issue, if for example, all the armors, big explosives and heavy weapons are removed, then the options for standard crew intervention over sec’s might increase, leading to MORE massacres as traitors have to stay on station and kill every passerby with a crowbar that thinks they can stop them (if all armors are gone, then they cant hide in space, and with heavy weapons and explosive removed, then the crew has a higher chance to be able to intervene as spacing and raw firepower is removed from the equation ).
Additionally, if one or the other interpretation hinges on factors that have nothing to do with traitor’s balance ( for example chems or sec’s skill) then these measures might bring into reality these issues.
I think this is primarily because of two reasons. The prevalance of strong stealth items, and the kill objective just sucks. Mostly because you have to RR them. If you want to do it quiet, you normally see noct or bomb them while they’re in med. If you want to do it loud, good luck getting away with it without having to fight all of Sec. If the kill objective changed to where RR wasn’t necessary, and instead it was “Send a message - Just be the one to do the deed.” where you only need to kill, not RR, then it would be better.
Traitors are overly oppressive and frequently wipe security with no repercussions
I think this doesn’t happen that often, and when it does, its a result of the OP chems in the game and not really anything to do with the traitor. That, and Sec just is not robust enough to make it work.
Traitors have basically no fear about being betrayed and almost always work together
Well yeah this is partially by design, half of the objectives are “Make sure they live” or “Make sure they do their objectives.” They need to add more “Kill fellow traitor” objectives if this needs to change, and honestly if it was guaranteed that at least one syndie rolled another syndie as a kill target every round, that alone would do enough IMO. The PR about letting Syndies take other’s TC from locked uplinks is insane and will only promote Syndie murderbone against each other. I do not want to live in a world where my codewords put a target on my back and I’m not incentivized to collaborate with fellow traitors at all.
“Keep fellow traitor alive” is not fun as an objective
Typically, I like having this one (or the help with objectives one) when I also do NOT have to make it to CC. When I’m not worried about making it to evac myself, it opens up so many more options for me to help my ally, such as going loud and becoming the ultimate distraction.
Uplinks don’t have enough stealth items
This will lead to more boring greenshift moments unless the stealth items are well implemented.
My favourite game mode is traiots. It helps break up war ops. wiz ops, surivals manicness and zeds by being a slowpaced cold war esc mode where departments can focus on there own objectives without worrying the crisis over everyone.
