This is really funny I like this. Although ninja's kit should probably be de-tuned a bit still.

Ninja is supposed to be a 1 on 1 powerhouse so I like this approach of disincentivizing murderboning. Quick questions : do people dying to the spider bomb count ? Should secoffs count, as they are likely to become necessary kills ?

Do people dying to the spider bomb count ?

Uhhhh good question. Let me test.

EDIT: Bombs do not count for this. It should be possible to update the killcount tracking system for it though.

Should secoffs count, as they are likely to become necessary kills ?

Security should count for the killcount; while Ninjas are more likely to get into valid lethal combat with SecOffs, Security as a department are not exempt from RR restrictions ruleswise.

in the EOR it says the ninja completed the survive objective, I know this is because they technically survived to the end of the round, but I think if the round ending is what caused them to die then it shouldn't count (same with paradox clone)

in the EOR it says the ninja completed the survive objective, I know this is because they technically survived to the end of the round, but I think if the round ending is what caused them to die then it shouldn't count (same with paradox clone)

This is a known issue listed in the Technical details section, and left as out of scope for this PR.

I think mechanically this does not make a lot of sense.

First of all, from a technical perspective, the kill tracking system is not granular enough to actually be used in this context. Any kill that occurs from an explosion or atmos threat is very likely to count as environmental and not be tracked properly. not to mention various other murderboney activities like electrified grilles. It only really works with melee, throwables, and guns.

Ninjas are not meant to go on murder sprees, yet their equipment does lend itself to extremely effective 1v1 combat

I feel like what you are bumping up against is just an extremely poorly designed feature. If you don't want a player to go on a murder spree, then they shouldn't be receiving some of the most powerful offensive tools in the game. Ninjas have high melee DPS, stuns, teleports, and throwable weapons. Trying to turn this into a stealthy antag just feels like putting lipstick on a pig.

Additionally, the consequences of this PR only matter once the round is over (something that doesn't even matter a lot of the time, as the Ninja will get killed while fighting security or tiders). Nothing is really meaningfully mitigated during the round, and the only real consequence is failing one objective (with the survive objective still completing, kinda obviously a bug).

At this point I would honestly just recommend a full redesign with actual defined expectations of how the ninja should function instead of just taking the most obvious murderhobo antag ever and trying to squeeze it into an inoffensive hole.

Additionally, the consequences of this PR only matter once the round is over (something that doesn't even matter a lot of the time, as the Ninja will get killed while fighting security or tiders). Nothing is really meaningfully mitigated during the round, and the only real consequence is failing one objective (with the survive objective still completing, kinda obviously a bug).

I disagree. Having an actual written objective not to kill people will absolutely incentivize players not to murderbone so they can get the coveted greentext. That's the entire point of greentexting : the game itself telling the player that they did well.

At this point I would honestly just recommend a full redesign with actual defined expectations of how the ninja should function instead of just taking the most obvious murderhobo antag ever and trying to squeeze it into an inoffensive hole.

That I 100% agree with, every antag should have a design doc instead of just being ported from ss13 "because parity".

I disagree. Having an actual written objective not to kill people will absolutely incentivize players not to murderbone so they can get the coveted greentext. That's the entire point of greentexting : the game itself telling the player that they did well.

If you want to actually disincentivize people, then the game should take proactive steps to prevent or mitigate actions from being taken. An objective is a good first step but it's also little more than text on a page at the end of the day. When you're trying to push behavior in a way that runs pretty much counter to design, then there should be more concrete incentives than just end-of-round text.

The ninjas items should also be deleted, similarly to activating their death acidifier.

But otherwise I approve

Could the ninja just auto acidify instead of gib ?

I agree with emo but I think it fits thematically so I think we should add it

First of all, from a technical perspective, the kill tracking system is not granular enough to actually be used in this context. Any kill that occurs from an explosion or atmos threat is very likely to count as environmental and not be tracked properly. not to mention various other murderboney activities like electrified grilles. It only really works with melee, throwables, and guns.

I half-agree. There are going to be instances where the kill tracking can't follow the source. And that's fine to move. You don't need to cover all edgecases to establish a pattern of behavior that the players will follow. Thieves are a good example of this; pacifism doesn't cover all instances of creating harm, but it does enough to make it feel consistent.

Ninjas are not meant to go on murder sprees, yet their equipment does lend itself to extremely effective 1v1 combat

I feel like what you are bumping up against is just an extremely poorly designed feature. If you don't want a player to go on a murder spree, then they shouldn't be receiving some of the most powerful offensive tools in the game. Ninjas have high melee DPS, stuns, teleports, and throwable weapons. Trying to turn this into a stealthy antag just feels like putting lipstick on a pig.

The intent is not to turn ninjas stealthy (as was noted in the PR description). It's to softly disincentivize a certain gameplay style.

Additionally, the consequences of this PR only matter once the round is over (something that doesn't even matter a lot of the time, as the Ninja will get killed while fighting security or tiders). Nothing is really meaningfully mitigated during the round, and the only real consequence is failing one objective (with the survive objective still completing, kinda obviously a bug).

At this point I would honestly just recommend a full redesign with actual defined expectations of how the ninja should function instead of just taking the most obvious murderhobo antag ever and trying to squeeze it into an inoffensive hole.

This comment reads to me as bumping up against something I call "Engineering-brain" (I get to say this, I am an engineer and have it too). It's examining the issue from the lens of something that requires hard boundary solutions to a mechanical issue. Which is oftentimes very good, but is not what this PR is tackling.

This PR is not "how do we prevent ninjas from murderboning?" but "how do we frame the ninja experience to make players not want to murderbone?". You bring up the lack of in-round impact as a failure of addressing the issue but that overlooks the effect that comes from having this kind of text shown to the players. It's not a hard mechanical limitation or disincentive but players and the playerbase put value in "greentexting" (or rather, impressing others with their accomplishments), and that value does change their behavior and priorities.

I think a good example of this is the PR that added a restriction to secglasses that prohibits HoP from wearing them, labelling them as Security-restricted. There were zero changes to HoP's ability to go into Security and pick up a pair of glasses roundstart, yet there's been a noticeable change in the number of HoPs wearing secglasses after that PR. Doesn't stop it always, but it doesn't need to stop it always to be an effective change in player behavior. From a purely mechanical perspective it's a total wash but that does not change the observed effect.

If I put it this way:

Why do Ninjas mass murder? There may be variations depending on the player, but primarily because it makes it easier for them to complete their objectives.

How do I know that? Because players are trying to complete their objectives. There may be some inherent fun in sneaking into Science and clicking on the R&D server a few times, but it's not like a Ninja can't get the same (or more!) action from performing other activities on the station. I find it extremely dismissive to claim the greentext has minor impact on how players interact with the game when it is in fact core to building the instrumental play that the playerbase values. I'd put more stock into that claim if players didn't care about it, but clearly they do!

This PR does not try to mechanically disincentivize Ninjas from going on murder rampages, but instead it makes it nonoptimal by reframing the overall objectives. And since players trend towards optimization, by necessitating low lethality as part of instrumental play it provides strong influence for how players will behave.

If we get to a point where players individually or collectively decide that this objective is pointless, then sure, it's useless. But I don't think that the parameters I've set will lead to that, and I think the responses to this PR shows it too.

From a cursory glance this encourages even more passive play from ninja players, which I think is the exact opposite of what ninja needs to be as long as Survival is a round type (as you need each midround that spawns to actually want to muck with the station in interactive ways).

There's a nasty web of problems here.

That said making a design call to go "ok, the ninja is a stealth antag where going loud and violent is their lose condition" is a great place to start a conversation about a ninja overhaul.

EDIT:

Thinking about it actually, it's a thing in MGS games to do no-kill runs etc, and Snake is basically a ninja. So.

Maybe try and collate a few ideas together somewhere and then synthesize into a set of changes to make, of which this can be one?

My two cents is there should just be a way for the Ninja to extract.

Once a Ninja has all their objectives done they don’t really have much else to do, so of course a lot of them may end up resorting to just murderborning. I don't think it's out of malice or directly wanting to, most of the time it’s just boredom and having no real next step along with the expectations of being an antagonist.

It doesn’t entirely stop murderborning, sure, but I don’t think there’s a reasonable way you’re ever going to without putting baby safety guardrails on literally everything to the point it detriments gameplay. The goal shouldn’t be to punish people for being bored, it should be to give them something better to do or at least a way out once they’ve hit their main goals.

A player might not feel comfortable just going /ghost after finishing, especially with how antagonist roles are usually expected to stay active and “drive” the round. Giving the Ninja specifically a natural way to extract would solve that. It’d let them wrap up their mission cleanly, maybe even get the chance to go play another ghost role, it just feels better from a gameplay and thematic standpoint in my opinion.

Generally speaking a player usually wants to remain in the around and keep messing with the crew - especially considering that by the time someone completes their objectives they're usually very powerful.

Making them auto-leave upon objective completion makes it so that they will intentionally leave an objective incomplete. If you go down this route further you will end up in a cat and mouse game.

Note that having antagonists leave the game is usually suboptimal for chaos ramping/progression in a round, and this type of leaving should probably only be allowed for neutral ghost roles like the Pizza Delivery Critter.

Making them auto-leave upon objective completion makes it so that they will intentionally leave an objective incomplete. If you go down this route further you will end up in a cat and mouse game.

It should not be automatic, it should be player choice.

It should not be automatic, it should be player choice.

Generally speaking murderboning Ninjas are explicitly looking to kill and make a big impact, so I don't think that the option will be taken quite often.

I agree with Emo's statements and it's a sentiment I share with the ninja - their kit is extremely powerful and built for killing, not really for disabling or sabotaging. While this PR has good intentions to try and curb that, the Ninja will always be a killer with a killing kit at the end of the day, and adding an objective fail for killing too many people isn't a good mechanical solution, it's merely just a dissuasion. Ninja's kit should be changed to encourage saboteur gameplay if this is the gameplay we're looking for.

It should not be automatic, it should be player choice.

Generally speaking murderboning Ninjas are explicitly looking to kill and make a big impact, so I don't think that the option will be taken quite often.

I agree with Emo's statements and it's a sentiment I share with the ninja - their kit is extremely powerful and built for killing, not really for disabling or sabotaging. While this PR has good intentions to try and curb that, the Ninja will always be a killer with a killing kit at the end of the day, and adding an objective fail for killing too many people isn't a good mechanical solution, it's merely just a dissuasion. Ninja's kit should be changed to encourage saboteur gameplay if this is the gameplay we're looking for.

PR to replace ninja sword with smoke bombs

I agree with this PR and I also agree that it's not something that will be solved with text.
I also agree that we shouldn't need to bend everything to 2.9 or remove things to make it compliant, that's how you start ending up with a stale game.

As a start, the PR is good. It shouldn't be used as a wipe hands we're done, but as a theoretical testing ground to see if it effects playstyles in any way.

Then we should be looking at the ninja kit to see what can be changed, what mayh or may not be intentional. The core of the kit should still have the teleporting sword, smoke bombs, stars, and the charge.
Unless we add a capture & sell mechanic, the stunglove should be reworked to something like an alternative taser.

I agree with Emo's statements and it's a sentiment I share with the ninja - their kit is extremely powerful and built for killing, not really for disabling or sabotaging. While this PR has good intentions to try and curb that, the Ninja will always be a killer with a killing kit at the end of the day, and adding an objective fail for killing too many people isn't a good mechanical solution, it's merely just a dissuasion. Ninja's kit should be changed to encourage saboteur gameplay if this is the gameplay we're looking for.

I'm not necessarily opposed to Ninja getting some sort of overhaul (like you say, its kit is pretty strong just looking at the killing aspect, though I'd argue some lethality is desired) but I think it's an issue that can be approached from two fronts at once. Framing and incentivizing behavior through goals is still very important (I take issue with calling it "merely just a dissuasion"), and I am doubtful that we'll fully find a set of disabling/evasive powers that don't also allow for some lethal strategies.

I also agree that we shouldn't need to bend everything to 2.9 or remove things to make it compliant, that's how you start ending up with a stale game.

The players are subject to the rules of the game, regardless of whether or not the game enables them to easily break them. If your issue is with limiting antag strength because it's stale, then that's something that should be taken up with the rule itself. The point of mechanical enforcement of rules as a philosophy is to bring things to a point where rules are no longer needed to mitigate potentially problematic play.

I'm rewriting Rule 2.9. I would rather the ninja be given freedom to kill like other antags (with justification) but have weaker equipment to avoid murderboning.

Rule 2.9 wouldn't need to exist, but currently the station is far too easy to sabotage and individual antagonists are far too destructive or powerful. (However, I don't want the pendulum to swing the other way and make the game too easy for security. Each round needs more antags who are weaker but have clearer goals.)

Should secoffs count, as they are likely to become necessary kills ?

If they don't count, I imagine ninjas will just murderbone them. And given how Ninja's can just stun you to death, there's not really that much you can do about it

If they don't count, I imagine ninjas will just murderbone them. And given how Ninja's can just stun you to death, there's not really that much you can do about it

You also can't really mechanically enforce "kill secoffs only" because players can be hired as secoffs or lose the access but still act as one.

If ninjas are supposed to be disincentivized from killing people, then why was the ninja's ability to non-lethally rob people via stacking stuns removed? Now the ninja has to lethal uncooperative people in order to rob them which seems contradictory to the idea of an objective that requires them to not lethal people.
Not to mention that there is no way to stop people that the ninja crits from /ghosting or giving up out of spite to prevent the ninja from greentexting.

I would rather the ninja be given freedom to kill like other antags (with justification) but have weaker equipment to avoid murderboning

This should be the solution

If ninjas are supposed to be disincentivized from killing people, then why was the ninja's ability to non-lethally rob people via stacking stuns removed? Now the ninja has to lethal uncooperative people in order to rob them which seems contradictory to the idea of an objective that requires them to not lethal people.

Ninjas could at one point:

• Instantly stun you with about 10 shock damage
• Stunlock you with very little cooldown
• Strip you of all your items
• Teleport with you into space

Now I do agree with giving antagonist stun abilities, but in this case, they were often using it to just kill you faster.

Their whole system of abilities and equipment needs to be looked at. I would suggest just making it so they can't teleport while holding something or they teleport without the thing they were holding, but that would be a band-aid fix.

Now the ninja has to lethal uncooperative people in order to rob them

Ninjas have thieving gloves and a cloak. Just sneak up on them.

Now the ninja has to lethal uncooperative people in order to rob them which seems contradictory to the idea of an objective that requires them to not lethal people.

The objective effectively tracks round removal, not kills. If a person you have killed gets revived their death does not count towards the objective failing.

This means you are not discouraging killing for stealing or whatever, just that you shouldn't do it in a way where the body isn't found.

Not to mention that there is no way to stop people that the ninja crits from /ghosting or giving up out of spite to prevent the ninja from greentexting.

If a ninja crits you, and you ghost... Either you would be in a position where you would be RR'd anyways and it wouldn't matter for the objective, or you were in a position where you were recoverable at which point you kinda played yourself.