Pirate Antags - Your True Thoughts!

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Pirate Antags - Your True Thoughts!

Postby Mr_Signmeup » Thu Jan 10, 2019 9:09 pm

Now, I've been seeing this over the past few days ever since Ace reintroduced Pirates back into the fray again of the server! People have been mentioning it in DMs to me and in space lobby on the discord server, so it's time to finally collectively get all our thoughts together into one definable place to refer to and see what can be done!

What are your thoughts on pirate antags? Are they good? Bad? Do they bring another edge of RP or do you think they simply cause people to revert to typical SS13 gameplay of; 'must win, whatever the cost'? Honestly, tell us your true thoughts because I've seen some people swayed from joining the server because at the sheer thought that shift may contain an antag.

With such a divide and nobody taking the initiative to make this into a proper topic of discussion on a place meant for discussion, let's finally settle the debate as a community!
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Re: Pirate Antags - Your True Thoughts!

Postby Aethirshero » Thu Jan 10, 2019 9:15 pm

Personally, I was excited to see that the pirate event was still ongoing. It gave me great inspiration to try and make one of my own, while avoiding the dangers of descending into normal SS13 mechanics. I think that if people keep in mind that this is a HRP server and play like it is one, on both sides, it could be fun for everyone involved. It should be possible to be an antag while not resorting to brute murder and shooting, especially when you consider Vore being a thing. People are here to be eaten and to eat, and this is a great way to involve that, especially for those who prefer noncon or dubcon.
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Re: Pirate Antags - Your True Thoughts!

Postby Scree » Thu Jan 10, 2019 9:15 pm

Last time we had a run of them, they seemed to go a lot more smoothly about a week after the initial announcement was made and most people had stopped trying to catch them and thought the event had run its course.

In other words, when people stopped metagaming that every new character that showed up might be a pirate.
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Re: Pirate Antags - Your True Thoughts!

Postby Xindii » Thu Jan 10, 2019 9:33 pm

It's difficult to understand what would be a fun objective for a place like Virgo. It feels like there is unspoken pressure/taboo about doing more than a simple theft. If feels like if you cause any damage, be it a single breach, people will gripe about it candidly and openly. Even those who weren't in the round for it.
Lastly, it's hard to do something that involves the crew in general. A few times a pirate has been arrested, caught, called-out, or cornered, they're usually ushered away by the HoS or someone of similar rank and sway. Then it becomes an exclusive experience where security tend to shoo others away.

It's especially difficult trying to work vore into it, since there is a large divide in preferences at times.
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Re: Pirate Antags - Your True Thoughts!

Postby Aethirshero » Thu Jan 10, 2019 9:45 pm

To me, that's something that falls upon the admins. If someone's looking for an objective and you want to give something voreish, take a look to see who's on and who has prefs that line up with being abducted and/or nommed, then set them as the target. Ideally the objective should be something that can be accomplished without causing too much mayhem.

Security sweeping in and shooing everyone else away is a bit of a problem, but that is -always- a problem when it comes to events here. They inevitably become exclusive when one department, whether science, security, or Command, takes control and decides that onlookers shouldn't be involved. Not sure how to fix that, short of don't get caught. ;P
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Re: Pirate Antags - Your True Thoughts!

Postby iiVoracious » Thu Jan 10, 2019 10:01 pm

I want to say that I've been enjoying it so far but I honestly can't say I have. I've been wanting to just get the chance to participate in an event of some kind for ages now, but half the time there are pirates on board I end up having to quit a scene, like when The Dragoon threatened to flood the station with Phoron, sorry that's kind of hard to deal with. It also doesn't help that every time I've asked to be a pirate I've been declined. Plus the whole metagaming thing it makes being the antagonist impossible because right off the bat, everybody is watching you. I can't say I've enjoyed this, and despite multiple staff members saying I'll get a chance to antag, I haven't really gotten one. I love the idea of a whole, evil vore pirate event, but this execution just isn't working. This isn't even mentioning the last time we overhyped a pirate event and it just ended up with a majority of the crew hiding while a fraction of us actually end up doing things.
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Re: Pirate Antags - Your True Thoughts!

Postby Wickedtemp » Thu Jan 10, 2019 10:24 pm

It terms of mechanics gameplay, Virgo is something of a small boat in a pond. Still waters, no wind, no real risk to the crew on board.

Antagonists would be like the weather, or small hazards. A hole in the sails, a small wave, depending on what the antags do. But, sometimes, they go bigger. A large storm, harsh winds - the crew doesn't know how to react, they aren't used to actually having to truly be sailors, and now a lot of them just want off. Some of them jump ship.

Simply put, a lot of the players here aren't too experienced with antags. Being them, and responding to them. And that's unlikely to change if we don't hold perpetual antagonist rounds. They find themselves over their head, they don't know how to handle this situation because maybe as an engineer, all they've ever had to do was set the engine, and now there's a breach in a central location or a phoron fire. Maybe the doctor's never actually had to do anything other than an implant or resleeving, and now all of a sudden they have a few critically wounded patients with gunshot and laser wounds. Or Command, who's done little to nothing other than use their private office for scenes, now having to handle alert levels and be a voice of direction and reason. They aren't used to it, it's new territory for them, and its likely that they won't do so well, and they'll feel pretty bad about it after.

For antag actions specifically, let's be honest... we have a lot of edgelords. We have a lot of relatively uncreative people who may have never antag'd before. They're going to mess up and do violent and edgy things. I will bet actual money that we've already had, or *will* have, someone get a syringe or dart gun and start sedating people for easy powergamey wins. It depends on the objective. Some will likely just try to be as destructive or disruptive as possible, and personally, I'm fine with that. But I know that, probably, the majority of players aren't fine with that.

It's just a combination of new and inexperienced antags, inexperienced crew in general. Virgo isn't exactly a demanding atmosphere. Most jobs have like one or two central responsibilities, at most, and then they're done for the rest of the six hour shift, minus for emergencies, which tend to be few and far between. You don't ever actually need to be decent at a job because you'll *rarely* have to actually *do* it. Antags can kinda force that to happen, depending on what they do. Someone does a bad, Sec/Med need to respond, Eng needs to fix anything that broke or gets breached, Command needs to make announcements, change alert levels, start commanding, etc. Can get a bit annoying if you were in the middle of a scene and had to stop due to this.
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Re: Pirate Antags - Your True Thoughts!

Postby Heroman3003 » Thu Jan 10, 2019 11:14 pm

The antags are same as any other concept that has a split controversy about it. Its a good and fun thing when its done right, and its horrible and exhaustingly unfun when done wrong. I think there are two examples of pirate shifts that highlight both: Snaptrap shit and Dragoon shift.

Snaptrap shift had stealthy antags. Said antags were doing almost everything through charm, followed by vore. And when caught, they didn't create too big a ruckus for people outside sec and command. Scenes themselves were great too, from what I've heard. They had unique antag flavor to it, rather than feeling like regular unwilling, they were direct way to acomplish the goal, rather than just being a checkmark along the way and they were plentiful. Thats the antags that should be, I believe.

Dragoon on the other hand, I will say, was disgustingly horrible. There was absolutely no vore aspect, no scene aspect even, it was just antags wrecking shit. And if only they did so in that one secluded area to escape the station, but then they came back, flooded even more areas, killed people. And all without a hint of vore and all RP being "Can you fucking not wreck shit"-"I will unless you hand me full antag win". Yes, busywork for crew is expected, but this antag was most disruptive and pretty much all over the spectrum. It was NOT stealth antag, it was a full-on attack-on-station level antag. Every department got completely sent to working overload, when the event is supposed to be focused on the sec specifically.

Both shifts had 2 prominent pirates working together. Both duos were played by same players. I don't know what really went wrong second time. But I do think rather than doing what they HAVE done, they should have just damned given up and allowed themselves to be caught or escape the first chance they got. NOT create several fires, not flood research, not continuing to threaten station. Thats the big problematic factor with pirates if there will ever be one. They need to learn to lose. Because if pirate goes full-out, crew may just stand no chance. But similarly, if crew went full-out, pirates wouldnt. And if its everybody going full-out, RP disappears, because it gets in the way of full-out.

Although in new wave of pirates I see a big problem that wasn't there in original: AIs. We didn't have anyone really playing AI at the time, so it wasn't as prominent, but lately I noted that AI players now focus their boredom from being an AI on Virgo not towards trying to come up with entertaining crew interactions, but towards the metagamey pirate paranoia. So far, specifically AIs have been biggest offenders in power/meta gaming during new pirate wave, and their actions should be either better monitored by admins, or limited by event rules.

Basically, pirates should not be able to completely screech station to a standstill halt of the tense confrontation at it happened during Dragoon. And station should not be able to shut down any pirate chances to do actual fun stuff, because someone joined AI and has nothing better to do than monitor every movement of someone they see for the first time.

Also, as personal note, goals feel like they should be specifically based around the fact that you need to vore/scene to achieve them. And if you can't go about it that way, its best to give up on goal entirely. Because otherwise you're being a completely regular traitor, not a vore pirate, and completely regular traitors have no place on virgo, IMO.
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Re: Pirate Antags - Your True Thoughts!

Postby Konkons » Fri Jan 11, 2019 12:27 am

Oh hai our two shifts were brought up! The snaptrap and the Dragoon shift
[+]
Of course yall had to title them off of Bite's characters. smh I was there too!


So being as one of the two pirates in both scenarios, perhaps I can let you on a little insight where things went wrong on BOTH of them and why the dragoon one came across as a terrible idea.

Starting from the beginning, both had similar goals, both involved the use of vore being our main tool. The first in the most basic form was; Get [number] of valid crew IDs. High valued IDs, as in command were the most lucrative.
The second was simply; target HoS/CD, use them or impersonate them to steal something. (I am leaving that a mystery in case it wasn't said yet.)

Both of these goals had us targeting heads, both required some levels of finesse, and both involved vore in the plans to accomplish these goals. Where both went wrong was when certain things lined up where certain players used their positions to power game or went to the straight use of mechanics. I didnt hear a word from the AI before they started to lock me inside maint tunnels, watching my every move. I was tempted to just call it off right there. Had they confronted me, offered me a chance to roleplay an interaction with them, things would have gone very differently, but because they used mechanics, it forced the use of mechanics in return. Something I had to commend Resh for was his attempt in salvaging this with an RP interaction with Dragoon. Eventually, with another Mech brought in by crew, the mechanics came back into play and all chance of vore was gone at that point and with no chance to salvage it, escape was the goal. Now had this been another server about antaging, our goals would still need completing, but vore was gone, effectively ending and ruining the shenanigans, leaving a bad taste in everyone's mouth as there was no one inside of our mouths! Or the other way around if we were successfully caught. Now with the snaptrap, we ran into the same issue as stated, the difference was that we weren't able to react with the same force like we had with Dragoon and the mechanics weren't brought in until we had accomplished most of our goals with vore, but the threat was handled the same way, tossing people at it with mechanics and since there was no large two-ton machine, this made this route actually effective with minimal consequences compared to Dragoon. We didn't even have a chance to vore with Dragoon as we were outed the second the event started. Had there been sufficient interaction from start to finish, I am sure the dragoon event would have been just as enjoyable for those involved like they did wtih snaptrap.

Although in new wave of pirates I see a big problem that wasn't there in original: AIs. We didn't have anyone really playing AI at the time, so it wasn't as prominent, but lately I noted that AI players now focus their boredom from being an AI on Virgo not towards trying to come up with entertaining crew interactions, but towards the metagamey pirate paranoia. So far, specifically AIs have been biggest offenders in power/meta gaming during new pirate wave, and their actions should be either better monitored by admins, or limited by event rules.

I couldn't agree with this more.

My suggestion to those that wish for a better environment for High roleplay with antags showing up here and there is to take a step back, understand that you will gain nothing from winning mechanically unless that was the intention of the game at the start, but here, aside from certain fighting events, the winning goal is RP. If you stumble upon some pirate shenanigans, roleplay it! Don't just scream your exact location and their names to security! Roleplay an interaction, at the end of it if calling security is the route that is taken, then great, there was RP! If you still want to come out on top, most of the pirates are switches for a reason, confront them and eat em! If you are a prey, you already know what to do you belly filler. For those that have preferences that don't match up with the pirates, there is still RP value even if there is no one getting ate.
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Re: Pirate Antags - Your True Thoughts!

Postby An Angry Frenchman » Fri Jan 11, 2019 12:33 am

For only having been present during the dragoon event and been an old acting pseudo pirate before the new wave i think what the main grief is boils down to this: Action or RP.

I think Heroman's post shows what some peoples might not like about the pirate events and it's a common trait for antags in general, the fact that they do not go through the RP course and does more violent actions. I do not mind if someone in a mech starts firing at peoples, it keeps command and sec occupied and force the use of weapons just like in any other stations (also gives engineers some work to do). However,i can understand peoples that went to vorestation for vore heavy RP might not want this to happen and would push for RP focused pirates, not moments that puts scenes to a stop because you joined as an important job.

I also join Wickedtemp in the fact that those same peoples might not be experienced in dealing with such events and might want to back off when they happens, though holding perpetual antag events might be a bit much for HRP focused station. If anything, try to have a vote to see if the said pirates should stick to RP and light (illegal) tricks to attain their objectives or be authorized to use more lethal means to reach it. As an aside: I did not feel the ai to be particularly powergamey or meta during the round i went in. for a visitor to climb up in a mech and roam around that is bound to raise suspicions.
yay to old ghosts!
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