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Yeaaaaah, nah. I would be profoundly against that. What you are suggesting is that characters shouldn't exist at all. Because that's what this suggestion would achieve. Your look is randomized, your name is randomized, you get to decide nothing about yourself. And frankly that's just a terrible idea in general when it comes to trying to achieve roleplay, if you don't care about your own character that you are playing, you're not going to care enough to roleplay it. Arcana, my slime, is named Arcana because she's obsessed with magic. Like, REALLY obsessed with magic, will hoard items she things are magical or enchanted an would do a LOT of things in order to learn the secrets of the Wizard Federation. She also may or may not have a pet fish named Cantrip. That above information exists BECAUSE I was able to name and create MY character, not be given some random hunk of failure from SS13's randomization. This is what you'd be expressly removing from the game by mandating Randomization and denying people the ability to make characters. The cons far and away blow the pros out of the water.

I appreciate you putting up this suggestion and sharing your opinion but I agree with everyone else here the main appeal of paradise are the personalities it’s a very essential part of what we have and we’d be losing a lot by taking away everyone’s freedom to play who they want to play

As Alffd points out, this suggestion eliminates one of the biggest incentives we have for positive behavior towards other players. That is not a good thing.

This is a bad idea and will have the opposite consequence of what you think. Most of the time I see people greytiding or LRPing, they are using random names. I have mentally come to associate random names with greytide. It takes time to flesh out a character. If they are actually a new character each shift, they will either never get defined, or people will treat it as the same. This has happened before on a smaller scale, back when Vox were first introduced as a race, they would get a random Vox name at the start of each shift. I always played it as "Other species can't understand Vox names." But it did not have a meaningful effect on much other then reinforcing the Vox clique. Without an individual identity, the Vox identified as a species. Which was really cool for the development of the Vox culture, but also created the Vox greytide hivemind. The effect both created higher RP, in the form of unique Vox culture, but it also created greytide birbs. The "Kin, Shitcurity has steel VOXYGEN! SKREEEEEE!" thing came from when that would be yelled, and all the Vox would swarm security to rescue their kin. So.. I guess mixed? It will stop the IC favouritism, and replace it with OOC favouritism, you are suggesting removing the IC component. We already talked about the group-greytiding aspect (Cappy is crappy, is demand Vox rights Ya ya! Kikikikikiki) It will not create a healthier role playing environment, it will create a healthier PVP environment, as we move from a repeated game to a non-repeated game. This has consequences in player behaviour that is going to focus very much on the round, and payoff to ones self. A non-repeated game is call of duty. More on this at the end on what I have seen in the past from players who make this argument. I don't view this as a problem. It is a problem, if that OOC friendship starts moving to other characters that did not become friends IC. First, from a community perspective, people will be more OOC friendly to each other if they have some sort of OOC bonds. SS13 does not always have the best community, but we are not the CS:GO or Call of Duty communities either. Second from an IC perspective, we are a MRP server. We can't really say "Everyone should try to RP realistic characters" while at the same time saying "Except for the most fundamental part of the human social experience." ]-----Endnote-----[ This has come up before, it essentially boils down to "People should not be able to know who plays a character or use information from previous experiences in the round." I have been around long enough to notice a trend. This argument is most frequently raised by players who are concerned with "Metagaming" which they define as "I am an ass to people, and people have started to react poorly to my characters in game. SS13 should really be each round being unique with no pre-existing relationships." I am not saying the OP is in this category, just that whenever this has been brought up before, its brought up by people in that category. The end goal is to not just have randomized character names that opt them out of the "meta-grudges" but to make everything randomized so that "meta-friends" do not exist as yes, that does provide an in game advantage. Characters who are known as being friendly and well meaning, get way more leeway with other station staff then those who are known to be anti-social or murdery who are treated with less mercy. What these proposals seem to come down to is "Anti-social behaviour should not have a negative effect beyond one round, and positive behaviour should also not have a positive effect for more then one round." Where people fall on this seems to be controlled by where they fall on that spectrum. This is essentially "Why do I get the bad ending in Prey/BioShock/MassEffect if I murder everyone? That sucks."

I recently noticed something. Every time the armory is opened and the officers come streaming in to get their lethals, the shotguns are always the first to go. If you join late into a round as an officer and come in to see the armory is open, you might find energy guns or laser guns left, but the only thing remaining of the ballistics are the rubber shots scattered all over the floor. I'm pretty sure this is due to a simple reasons a lot of sec and probably antag regulars will likely agree with. Energy weapons kind of suck when it comes to lethal force. Sure, tasers and disablers are nice since the game's entire combat system focuses around stuns, but as soon as you are up against something that is very resistant or even immune to them, you'll need a lethal option. Let's go with an example. You have a laser gun, and a traitor released their lesser hellhound on you. You land every shot your energy gun is willing to give you, 12 shots all dealing 20 damage (Assuming I'm reading everything on the github correctly). That is 240 damage, but a lesser hellhound has 250 hp. Sure, one more whack with your gun will do it in, but if it gets in even one attack it might break a bone, or in the case of a hellhound depending on your internals setup knock you out and easily turn the fight around. And all of this is assuming you hit literally every shot. A shotgun on the other hand can deal enough damage without needing to reload, and even if you miss, you can, you know, reload. I've decided to list what I think are the advantages of both energy lethals and ballistics: Energy Only requires energy to recharge, which is effectively infinite. More locations to get ammo (chargers), which are scattered around the entire station, as opposed to just lathes. Burn damage is slightly harder to heal without preparation compared to brute damage. Chargers bundled up in a location can make an area sustainably defendable in a siege type situation, such as a fight against a blob. This takes time to set up however. Can be cheaply mass ordered from cargo, mostly useful against blobs. Doesn't leave lasting damage such as IB or bone breaks when lethaling someone you don't want to stay dead. Can be printed on station. Passes through windows (Lasers at least). Ballistics Deal lasting damage that is very hard to deal with without help and preparation (Bone breaks, IB), extremely useful when fighting a KOS enemy. Causes bleeding. Can carry as much backup ammo as you can carry. Can be reloaded very quickly, compared to waiting in front of a charger for half a minute. Significantly higher damage output. Variety of ammo (Technological shotgun shells, Different Auto Rifle ammo) Best way of dealing with enemies that can block/reflect energy projectiles (How often do you see people screaming "For fucks sake, cargo ordered lasers against nukies!" "Shitsec just tried tasing a desword." etc.?). Also became a more important factor since blobs got reflective tiles. While you don't see this happen, you could technically set up more autolathes to have ammo available in more locations, while chargers cannot be built. While energy weapons have a couple of things going for them, a lot of their pros are situational, and they are severely outclassed when it comes to the primary use of lethals: Causing damage. Looking in the #changes_wanted channel on the discord, the headmins and maintainers are not a fan of ballistics in crew/security hands. Which makes sense, given this is supposed to be a sci-fi with energy weapons, and the fact that ballistics are more the Syndicate's thing. I therefore have some suggestions as to how one could make energy weapons more viable and popular, rather than have everyone run around with ballistics. Suggestions as to how energy lethals could be made more effective Have energy gun batteries be upgradeable: Simple one, if energy guns could have their batteries upgraded and therefore ammo capacity increased, people using them could actually sustain fire long enough to deal with a threat without having to carry several guns on themselves, and without the need to run to the nearest recharger after every fight. Have energy gun batteries be rechargeable in the field: If there was a portable charger which could be used to recharge an energy gun in the field, it would allow people to stay in a fight without having to run to a charger, while still forcing periods where they can't fire. Have lasers cause bleeding: Lasers don't necessarily cauterize IRL, and it would make sense to design a lethal laser weapon to not cauterize the wounds it causes. In game, this would be dangerous to species that have blood or a blood analogue if they didn't prepare medicine in advance, forcing them to seek help. At the same time, this doesn't cause serious lasting damage, lost blood is easily fixed with the correct medicine on hand. Have chargers be constructable: This would just be a nice addition in general, especially in rounds where the chargers end up destroyed. Coul has since ported them over. Problems with buffing energy lethals Even with the addition of reflective blobs, the default reaction to blobs is to order a dozen laser gun crates. Blobs would have to be rebalanced around buffed energy lethals. Science antags already get access to a ton of really dangerous stuff, and buffing energy guns which they can print will make them even more dangerous. Drask. Oh poor, poor Drask. Security vs. Antag balancing in general, as security are the ones that start out with energy weapons. Now I'm sure I didn't think of everything, and there are more things that need to be taken into consideration. Feel free to give your own opinion and further suggestions. Telling me to just git gud is also an option.

I feel your "outcomes" or what you would like to call them are better fit into the word "hopes" or even "distant dreams". I'm not trying to be rude i'm just saying that what you wish is extremely unlikely and not how this all can work. Alff i honestly love that vox respond like that. Its very interesting and i think its awesome that vox always have each other's backs (at least most of the time)

I am, of course, on the side against this proposal. I also want to add this would completely invalidate the point of races, karma races moreso. "Oh, you spent 30k on vox? Too bad, you now have a random chance to play it instead playing what you worked for" Heck, karma in general would become obsolete. I, personally, struggle to identify 16-bit spessmen without a unique name attached to them. If I see civilian A saying some snappy dialogue in the bar, unless they have a name I can actually remember, I'll probably mix them up with greytide B. And if I don't give them karma right then and there, good luck finding Mr generic among the swarm of other Mr generics on the shuttle. In short, no. EDIT: Ever played D&D? The original (and best IMO) roleplaying game? Yeah, you don't randomise your character every session. You build on your character and each others. There's literally a bonds section on your sheet. The game would die pretty fast if, instead, you had to go from cowardly but charismatic rogue to boring, calculating wizard, then dumb, hillbilly barbarian. You would only remember and bond with characters because you can physically see the people playing them. Literally every other RP server I know, not just for ss13 either, focuses on having your character as one you build on and interact with, not randomly assigned whenever you get on.

A lot of what I do when I play on para is social RP related things, which generally does lead to becoming friendly with familiar faces, but really that is not an issue. I am friends with a lot of the players ooc now, but that by no means actually effects how I interact or get interacted with, when it comes to antags. The only real effect knowing a character has on my game play is being able to differentiate grey tide from regular crew, and as the majority of interactions with grey tide are a negative experience, with instances of random application of toolbox to the head, and as I wish to RP with people, it is nice to know when I am confronting someone unlikely to do that. What's more, backstory and quirks would suffer heavily if this idea was implemented, and to me, someone who enjoys the complexity people develop when playing characters regularly, this would be a true killer to my enjoyment and ultimately drive me away from para. You mention meta buddying, and yes this does happen on occasion, but generally not so among vets, but among those who join the server together and play for technical advantage. The majority of veteran players of paradise have adopted the mindset of trying to make the round more entertaining, not merely something to win or green text, and all your suggestion would do is annoy said players, who enjoy playing how they want to be represented IC.

You want my honest opinion? Adjust the Librarian role to be Media Curator in general, not just print media but digital as well. Books should be a nice throwback to simplier times in the 26th century and a large collection of them in the age of digital media something for niche audiences. Move the holodeck to the Library and give the Curator/Librarian authority over it. People want to goof about in it they can ask the Librarian for access or to load a program. Add programs based on books and stories. Give the Librarian a random set of programs the start of each shift that can vary from random Shakespearean play, a movie of some sort or some last stand like Thermopylae or aliens with hostile holographic entities attacking everyone in the room (non-lethal knock outs of course). With a few upgrades from science/engineering the LIbrarian could outfit mini shows for entertainment to any place on the station with a holopad (which the AI uses to talk to folks.) There is no reason for anyone to really want books in SS13 when books in the library don't do anything. Even if we slipped sleeping carp scrolls and wizard tomes randomly into the shelves, nobody would explore the library after the round start. The Librarian needs more to do than write fanfaction and run a gossip column. The ultimate ideal implementation of this would for a digital library of entities and customization tools the librarian could use to craft their own stories to put on shows or run Holo-LARP D&D campaigns.

Dayana Shaffer - Carefree Innocent Sociopath