Traitor Corporations [Traitor Objective Rework] #508
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This does seem to fundamentally change the traitor antagonist from a solo antag to a team antag. Especially with the corporations giving out the names of the people working for them, which would make traitors less of a "trust no one" kind of gamemode and more of a team death match or team extraction kind of game mode. But on the other hand, I can see this design make more emergent RP and stories come along, as well as more tools being developped for syndicates to counter other syndicates |
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I am a fan of this design. I like how it is based in the reality of the game instead of a gameified system like we have now. One thing I worry about is that antags being given the names of other antags allows for plea deals to be made, so even if an antag hasn't done anything yet they can be sold out to Sec. I also like the inclusion of pink texting, and while I've heard of it conceptually I've not seen how it works when implemented. My one concern is that an antag may think they killed someone and hid the body well enough when really the person was revived and went to centcom in a pod (I know this isn't considered making it to centcom right now, but frankly that's just wrong). One final thing that I think this would allow is for late join traitors to be implemented more easily. If the number of traitors in a round is chosen based on population, then once the station gets full enough a new hidden traitor slot could open and if someone with traitor enabled joins if their job can be a traitor a coin is rolled and they may be assigned traitor. This would work just like sleeper agents, but would happen more randomly during the round, and would make late joins less metable as safe. |
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I like the idea of corporations mattering, but i have a lot of concerns balance wise. Usually tots have the ability to get better gear than security, something they need since there tends to be more sec than tots. If you have three tots, usually they all need different things and sometimes the same item. This leads to a conflict of interest in a way that stops them from acting with the unity and thus allows cracks from Sec to stop them. But if three tots all have the same goal, they are basically half the effectiveness of a nukie team now. I would argue an entire person fully acting with your same goals is more powerful than any single tc item. |
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Attempting a rework of the traitor gamemode without touching the antagonist seems like a generally insane method of operation. The two are obviously and inseparably linked and I don't think a proposal like this can earnestly be considered without giving at least some thought to traitors themselves and how their kits should be reoriented.
I'll outline general concerns section by section:
Traitors All Have the Same Codewords [...]
There is nothing inherently wrong but I think codewords in general become extremely strange when traitors are just given inherent knowledge of each other. The only purpose they serve is signaling to neutral parties, which seems unwise given the potential of enemies who want to attack you.
As a general note, the "neutral" relation is severely weakened by the looming presence of an "enemy" corporation relationship. Interacting with allies is mutually beneficial, yet exposing yourself to any other traitor doesn't actually benefit you more than just working with your own corporation.
Syndicate Corporations Can Help Or Hinder Each Other
Enemies
I'm a longtime hater of traitor v traitor mechanics so allow me outline my position briefly. I believe the purpose of antagonists to be to prompt conflict with the crew via doing various malevolent actions, for the purpose of causing harm unto the crew and giving security things to respond to. Traitors attacking other traitors, while cool, pulls the interaction away from neutral third parties and centralizes a lot of the conflict within the antags themselves. I don't think this is particularly healthy, and would much rather see things that bring more involvement to the crew.
That being said: I also don't feel super compelled by the implementation outlined here. Only presenting a single objective out of the entire set of enemy objectives feels unnecessarily limiting, and really doesn't give the team of traitors enough information to reasonably work against the others. I do also think you would need to require a substantive overhaul of the objectives traitors receive, as objectives which complete themselves (random kills, etc.) would feel excessively unfair if someone cryo'ing in a round resulted in an objective becoming permanently unable to be 100%ed for a team of antagonists.
Survive and DAGD
I feel like both of these objectives are extremely placeholder and do not offer much to the game. I don't get what they offer to this proposal. Their inclusion just feels like an arbitrary addition in order to retain elements which people would label as "iconic"
End Of Round
EOR on MRP
Pinktexting plainly does not make sense with the central objectives of corporations. Does each individual traitor record whether or not they thought they won? How does a traitor accurately deduce if they blocked another corporation from completing their objectives, especially if they are not aware of what objectives they have? I feel like this concept was simply put in here without consideration for how it works with the changes to objectives.
SECONDARY CONCERN I FORGOT TO INCLUDE IN MY INITIAL COMMENTChanging traitors from a primarily-solo antagonist to a primarily team-based one has major balance concerns with regards to the uplink. With the current balance, even if traitors are aware of each other and collude, differences in objectives means that there is at least some incentive to play greedy and keep TC and equipment for yourself. If people are regularly teaming up, have ensured alliances, and don't have a reasonable fear of betrayal, there will likely be a lot more extreme TC sharing where an individual is able to acquire excess of 20 TC to spend on extremely overpowered nukies-tier gear. I consider this to be a major issue that will very likely skew traitors into being far too aggressive and dominating as a mode. I think a much more logical way to do it would be to pretty aggressively weaken each individual traitor's gear and abilities in exchange for the increased leverage you get by working with a team of people. If cooperation is the major element you want to emphasize by adding teams to the mode, then cooperation should ideally be the default operation and not provide people with ways of becoming substantially stronger (like it does in the current traitors mode, where solo play is the assumed default). |
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While I do love making lore (as it is) more prevalent in SS14, despite what the intro says this proposal does change the Traitor antag significantly, from a primarily solo antag to a primarily team antag. This also makes syndie vs syndie violence more likely, which nudges traitors towards a self fixing problem for the station (which is undesirable). This rework also makes codewords mostly obsolete. What I'd suggest : keep the corp politics mechanic, but make them more subtle by making the Syndicate keep their agents on a strict need-to-know basis so they have to interact more.
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Thanks for the thoughts! I will need to go through in detail. Emo: you're right on saying it would/could badly distort balance and it could end up needing traitor abilities/TC amount etc looking at. Balancing this in the design phase is probably impossible though so it is hard to debate specifically about it beyond "yeah". "Team antag": yesn't. This change proposes being able to customize things like corporation count and number of traitors per corporation via YAML. The idea is to be able to make an underlying design that can flex into both the current style of traitors and one that can have a role for alliances/enemies. My hope would be that it can be a bit like Nukies where "stealth" and "war" are essentially two variants of the game mode. I like the flexibility idea because it allows for more experimentation inside the Tot antag than is currently possible. Really the main thing I want to tackle is trying to find ways of keeping "help this guy complete his objective" or "stop this guy completing his objective" or "two traitors are fighting over the same objective" without the current design problem where it is easy to end up with a Tot with 20tc and "help the SSD guy with his objectives" as the to-do. Ergo "where are these objectives coming from and how do they work, and how can we make the world feel a bit more alive in an LRP/MRP friendly way". |
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I think this rework could make syndicate agents into a proper main game mode, so it COULD be that we have both kinds of syndicate agents, one round they are a sub game mode, working as they are currently implemented, and another round they are the MAIN game mode, and this rework is used |
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This is a proposal for a rework of the Traitors game mode. It is not a rework of the Traitor antagonist.
This proposal adjusts some of the current game mechanics surrounding the game mode. It is designed to build a stronger round narrative and give players involved in the round more fun and engaging experiences.
This rework primarily focusses on the role of distinct corporations within the Syndicate and their interactions with NT and each other. It reworks the "every tot for themselves" approach of the current Traitor game mode, allowing for a more diverse set of things that can happen. It also proposes some further work that would build on the intitial rework, that would touch on the Traitor game mode more commonly.