The whole point of this game is to RP it as if it were real. It makes total sense to know who a nukie is and what they look like and why we should be afraid. it makes no sense as to why we should be afraid of wizards. To a normal crew, they’re just a man dressed goofy. Also, nothing in their guide mentions anything about harming crew, just messing with them. Everything about man dressed goofy with magical powers screams free agent at the very least. makes no sense to be as high a threat as he is.
they are able to explode large parts of the station, rod large parts of the station, gib anyone who they see fit (though with a hefty cooldown), force people into lockers and toss them into space, turn people to cluwnes, turn people to carp, body swap, honestly quite a lot of rather dangerous actions
they aren’t exactly friendly
But not all of their spells are inherently dangerous. And their goal is to show off their powers, not necessarily bring harm.
However, it is confirmed that the wizard is an antagonist role and is expected to antagonize the station to a degree. Although I do agree that wizard shouldn’t be forced to do that if they just wanna use their goofy silly magic, I’d like to see them be a free agent
Honestly I think Wizard should come somewhere between free agent and Antag. according to the lore right now they have an uneasy but tense relations with NT. Maybe something like “Adversarial” where they are persumed hostile but dont have to be and crew should assume they are there to kill them until prooven otherwise kinda like a more tense verison of Free agent.
This would open RP such as a Wizard Diplomat trying to open negotations while leaving the core sec arm side in tact as well as opening up other avenues of RP. While The synicate are an enemy the Wizard Federation is just treated as dangerous and unstable (Evil Vs Chaos)
Wizards are space terrorists, a colorful robe is not enough for them to be goofy, they turn people into piles of blood and organs with a touch.
They’re antagonists who’s purpose is to drive rounds by causing conflict, free agent wizard means 70% of every wizard will just be friendly, and suffice to say a friendly wizard sitting in bar or bridge all shift does not drive the round.
From current matches where a wizard is rulebreaking by being friendly or just pretending to be in order to play the long game its immediately apparant it does not work, it’s so boring for the matches Big Bad to just sit around and talk.
Additionally, free agent status spawns the exceedingly common “I’m only an antag towards you”, where they’ll be friendly to the crew but selectively target a couple individuals that have wronged them in the match or as a metagrudge, you would see this all the time with raki.
Lastly granting wizards Free Agent status also will mean sec is far less likely to KoS them, which in the case someone intends to play full aggro wiz is a very bad thing, as they can easily fuck up the entire station if they get a foothold.
Wizard kinda is as close to free agent as they can be without being a free agent role. Their objectives are literally Survive and Show Off.
Wizard, being an driving force of the round (if they are the lone roundstart antag, or supporting if theyre the additional antag) should by no means be a free agent. It leads to people siding with the station (which already happens and is a big problem, also against the rules) or trying to be the “protagonist” of the round.
Having a friendly player with an instakill spell will just lead them to eliminating every single antag afterwards, and if they get shot down we get spammed by ahelps like “Security killed me without mercy while im instantly valid and very dangerous!” (which happens with a lot of things already) and this is not fun for either side.
So basically, they are meant to drive the round forward, a free agent wizard might as well mean the round is gonna be Greenshift cause they will kill all antags and not cause any issues themselves. It would not work well.
EDIT: Also yeah, they can be goofy and not murder, in fact they are encouraged not to murderbone cause its not fun for anyone. That itself is not a valid reasoning to be a free agent however.
They are a walking WMD
the only reason we still see any wizards that are/are bordering friendly is because their objective gives players enough leeway to RP wizard bureaucracy the 10th time
lmao well consider my opinion changed, seems it’s already been very much thought about
Except free agents do not have objectives and cannot do whatever they want.
Excessive damage/murder is forbidden for them, as an example.
This shows that if we were to make wizard a free agent half of their arsenal is against the rules now
I’ve long said wizards need new objectives and an inherently harmful presence. The examples I’ve had are demanding things the crew cannot (physically or legally) give. The tesla in a box, all the plasma they’ll ever have (like plasma they don’t have yet), a handful of left hand sandwiches, the station’s nuke. Things that are perfectly reasonable to a wizard, so why can these normals not do it? They’re just being difficult. Perhaps pick a (randomly selected) apprentice with a pinpointer.
As for inherently harmful, something as simple as slowly converting materials around them could help, or electronics nearby just start to fail or malfunction.
Free agent is a bit of a hard sell, but it really is no fun for anyone when the wizard gets toolboxed in a tunnel. Green shift hell… Ideally the wizard is hostile and should be fought, but after the crew has had to prepare a bit or be given enough reason to justify the killing.
I believe the reason why people don’t want the wizard to be valid on sight, is just lack of any in character information about what wizards actually do. So due to the lack of that information, people will try to talk RP with the wizard to get idea who and why they are on the station - free agent enthusiasts -, instead of lead security RP to kill possibly station ending threat, or in worst case kill funny looking person NRP.
is just lack of any in character information about what wizards actually do.
Sure, there is a wizard figurine, that has the chance of playing the name of spell, but its not specified anywhere what its supposed to actually do.
I guess what wizards do is not shielded information, so I guess IC most of the crew should at least heard what may happen to them, and respond with setting the red alarm with arming the security, but that only really works if there is at least one person who out of character know what wizards are capable of - yes shocking, but there might be rounds where only new players play and have not yet heard about the wizard.
To sum up, there is no safe way for the crew to discover the threat the wizard brings.
If they can be goofy and not murder everyone, then why are they to be considered such a high threat and KOS? i think that’s where the confusion lies with why they are not free agents is the threat level. They can be that high of a threat if they wanted to be, but they don’t have to be.
I personally think that we should have a good wizard with different spells and a dark wizard with the bad stuff, just my opinion.
It’s already annoying to try and kill the wizard immediately as security just to have a head tell you “noohhhh look he’s friendly :))” and then the wizard decides to kill everyone on the station the next minute later. Same thing used to happen with rat kings before they were made antagonists. If there’s a clear way to tell if they didn’t choose harmful spells, yeah sure, but for the time being they should stay antagonists.
Wizard Federation is apparently at war with NT, according to what admins have said in round.
Half the problem, again, is the constant battle between NRP and high LRP. Some people want to roleplay and it’s absolutely amazing when they do, it’s what makes the game uniquely fun.
Others are happy walking up to the wizard and shotgunning him in the back while he’s typing, and it’s perfectly legal by rules and space law… Welcome green shift, that one NRP guy sank the round.
I’m pretty sure it just said “Tensions are high with the wizard federation” and not just war, it would probably make better sense with just war though.
I kinda like the idea that the high tensions means KOS wizard but its still allowed to try and not die, like your still always valid but if you want to do social wizard then you can try to do so. but command has to treat you like your gonna be hostile. kinda like we’re the ones at war and the wizards are like lol these corpos think they can match magic.
It is known IC they are destructive terrorists.
If crew can KoS nukies (which are supposed to be a myth) they have 0 reason to ignore wizards
Now we just kill rat kings. Like they just die.