Let's talk about shadowlings

[Eler00]

Shadowlings are, I think, one of the less popular gamemodes. Often, it feels rather hopeless and as if the slings are almost guaranteed to win (at least to me).

Here are my thoughts on the shadowling gamemode:

1. It is too snowbally

Each thrall you capture not only deprives the station of a crew member but also gives you one more. Now, this isn't unique, cult can convert as well. But the thing with cult is that deconversion is a lot easier, as you just forcefeed someone some holy water while a shadowling thrall requires surgery and gives the slings ample time to burst into the OP and get you back, on top of also taking the doctor. On top of that, being able to thrall mindshielded personnel, especially sec officers, makes this entire factor a lot worse, as slings then use the newly turned officer to then 'arrest' and convert people. It isn't rare for slings to turn most or all of sec to their side, at which point the station is basically completely fucked. And there's never enough time for an ERT to be called, arrive and save the day, which brings me to issue two:

2. There is no proper progression towards a goal

Here is how a group gamemode should play out, IMO: Gather resources and manpower -> accomplish objective-> (get rewarded for success -> accomplish additional objective) -> win

The issue with Shadowling is that gathering resources, aka getting converts, is also your actual objective. You can just lurk in maint forever, picking off people that wander and suddenly win out of nowhere. The crew gets, if you do it right, almost no warning or indication of how far you've progressed or even that you've done anything. You could in theory do a full stealth win. No other antag type has such a lack of progression. Cult converts, then has to go in and grab the warden or a sec officer for a ritual, then has to take over one of very few specific locations for the summoning ritual, giving everyone a last chance to stop them. Individual antags often have to murder a specific person or steal a specific object, which forces them to go out and be proactive. Even nuke-ops have to get the disk and then set up the nuke. Shadowlings just lurk in maint, grab assistants that come by, then grab occasional sec officers that come by, then they win. They don't need to steal anything or gather any equipment.

3. People let themselves be converted far too easily.

It is still not rare for people to run into maint on sling rounds, looking to be converted. While this is something admins can act against via liberal application of bwoinks, we could also stand to make sling thrall less attractive in other ways to discourage it.

 

And here are my thoughts on how to improve the mode:

1. Buff mindshields or make deconversion easier

Probably the more controversial proposal. But I don't quite get why cult can't cult through a mindshield and shadowlings just need some additional time to do it. IMO, mindshields should block conversion like they do for cult. Getting a sec officer is still a good catch because you now have all his equipment and access. I'm not quite sure how to make the dethralling easier, but am open to suggestions.

2. Give Shadowlings additional objectives in order to ascend

Gathering thralls and then you win feels just too easy. It gives the crew not enough time to respond and very few warning signs. For all you know the ascension could be happening any minute now, even if there's actually just 2 thralls left. Giving slings objectives they have to do before ascension would give a good landmark of how far they've come, give the crew something to rally around, etc. As for specific objectives, I had several ideas: Thralling or killing a certain person, like the captain, could work, encouraging a direct assault on bridge and forcing the slings into the open. Or something more creative like 'make sure XX% of the station is shrouded in darkness' and so on. I'm sure there's many possibilities here.

3. Play up the 'thralls are just used by their masters' angle

Slings already have a power that sacrifices their thralls for things, but they are rarely, if ever, used. So my idea here would be to make slings more parasitic towards their thralls, to make being a thrall less desirable. Maybe have the heads of all thralls explode when a shadowling ascends, gotta use all that psyonic energy. This would probably require some reworking of the sling powers for more big, flashy effects with a cost in thrall lives or health. Like maybe teleport to any thrall's location, but it gibs the thrall as you as a living shadow burst out of his chest. Things like that.

Edited October 18, 2018 by TDS

[TheClosetMailman]

All of this 

Fucking Amen

Every Fucking Sling round is exactly like that

No warning, everyone freely thralls themselves. 

Ive played as Captain and i kid you not, the HOS, HOP and RD gladly ran off the moment slings had been sighted. 

Actually making thralls, well, thralls, expendable and very likely to be killed by the ling would help alot regarding people willingly getting thralled

[Irkalla]

They need a clear tell when they are close to ascension. Like if 85% of the thrall requirwment is reached central should send a message basicly saying that theres a massive psionic energy surge and that thralls and slings are now open game for anyone.

Also why do people get thralled intentionally? Gib happy ascendants. In general Ascendants should behave more like gods and not like 3dgy teenagers going through puberty with godlike powers.

Edited October 18, 2018 by Irkalla

[Eler00]

85% of thrall requirement would mean you get a warning when they are like 1 or 2 thralls away. IMO, that's just not enough.  Heck, you could even meta it by capturing and cuffing people but not converting them yet until you have enough to get over the treshold all the way to 100%

 

And I am not sure people's behaviour is that heavily influenced by post-round ascendant gibbing, but I could be wrong.

[Corocan]

On 10/17/2018 at 7:26 AM, TDS said:

Each thrall you capture not only deprives the station of a crew member but also gives you one more. Now, this isn't unique, cult can convert as well. But the thing with cult is that deconversion is a lot easier, as you just forcefeed someone some holy water while a shadowling thrall requires surgery and gives the slings ample time to burst into the OR and get you back, on top of also taking the doctor.

But also different to cult, thralls are more easily identified. For a cult, you have to catch the cultist in the literal act of doing something cult OR have cult paraphernalia on them. In the cult situation, the situation is entirely reactive in terms of the crew. That meaning, the crew has to REACT to the cult. With thralls, the crew can be PROACTIVE, since thralls can be more easily identified by their 'strange features'. Security simply has to examine people they walk by, or tase, cuff, and unmask people who are hiding their faces. Additionally, it's very textbook to make sure that the medbay is being guarded since it's a likely target for sling divebombs. Dropping even one guard on medbay can cover both the ORs pretty well. Plus, the de-thralling surgery is so easy and quick that it's actually faster than holy water deconversions.

 

On 10/17/2018 at 7:26 AM, TDS said:

Probably the more controversial proposal. But I don't quite get why cult can't cult through a mindshield and shadowlings just need some additional time to do it. IMO, mindshields should block conversion like they do for cult. Getting a sec officer is still a good catch because you now have all his equipment and access. I'm not quite sure how to make the dethralling easier, but am open to suggestions.

So, this is an interesting point. From a security perspective, it's really, really easy to see that there's a security officer without their mindshield. They might as well have approached you screaming they're a thrall. From a non-sec perspective, I can see how it's frustrating to get bumrushed and stunned, then dragged back to maints while no-one really bats an eye. I think that security converts are what really solidifies the "snowball" effect. Once you've got a thrall with a ranged/melee stun and restraints readily available, it can get out of hand super fast. As sec on a sling round, when you lose that first officer that's when you know it's about to get really rough.

So now that I've made those two statements, here's what I think of your proposals:

On 10/17/2018 at 7:26 AM, TDS said:

1. Buff mindshields or make deconversion easier

If we buff mindshields, it'll become meta to just mindshield everyone in medbay as they get de-thralled, making it too hard for slings. Deconversion is already a pretty easy and quick thing to do as is.

On 10/17/2018 at 7:26 AM, TDS said:

2. Give Shadowlings additional objectives in order to ascend

I can see this being a thing, but assuming that the station's so far out of control that you've got 15 thralls, by this point if an ERT is called in or there's still enough security to pose a threat, they're just killing thralls to deny them a chance for the sling to ascend. By the time you've gotten close to your objective, it's likely you'll be under the necessary thrall count.

 

On 10/17/2018 at 7:26 AM, TDS said:

3. Play up the 'thralls are just used by their masters' angle

I actually think this is the best way to balance out the shadowling mode. There's a nice ability that sacrifices a thrall to delay the shuttle's arrival so you can buy more time to get those precious thralls. Here's the thing though: slings get access to an ability called 'Black Recuperation' at the 9 thrall mark and typically once the shuttle's called, you've got 9ish thralls so naturally the most common play is to use 'Destroy Engines', kill a thrall, then revive them. It completely nullifies the cost of Destroy Engines.

 

I like this idea, but ultimately it would be at the cost of a complete rework of slings, which no-one really has the energy to do. Their abilities would all have to be either scrapped or almost unrecognizably changed. A good blanket change would be to make some abilities literally harm the thralls. A good strategy is to make each ability do a set amount of damage and then divide it equally among the amount of thralls. For example, Veil would deal 25 brute and burn to all thralls. If there's 5 thralls, it'll deal only 5 brute and burn to all thralls. Compound this with the fact there's probably 2-3 slings running around, it'll become very annoying to be a thrall since they're basically living batteries for the slings. Additionally, this fixes the issue of the fact that a good sling will always beat the best security officer, because slings have so many round start abilities to get out of any mistakes they make, it's really hard to actually catch one. Example: Sling is stunned, shadow walk, sling gets stunned again before the 30 second cooldown is up, icy veins, sling is stunned AGAIN before the 30 second cooldown, sonic screech and by then, shadow walk/icy veins is back up and they continue to slip out of any engagement. Combined with their regeneration in the darkness, it's quite difficult to pin down a sling even if they made three consecutive mistakes.

Adding the blanket damage will actually harm the slings intent in the long run, since for each time they have to use abilities to cover up their mistakes, they are actively impeding themselves by damaging their thralls. If they don't make mistakes, their thralls live. If they do, their thralls die.

 

tl;dr, if you want to fix slings, make them actually be what they're advertised as: Parasitic and manipulative beings.

Edited October 18, 2018 by Corocan

[EvadableMoxie]

 

So, I'll just repost what I said the last time this got brought up:

On 4/26/2018 at 3:07 PM, EvadableMoxie said:

Balance doesn't matter.

I know, crazy, right? Give me 5 minutes of your time and I'll prove it to you. 

Nuke Ops is not a balanced game mode. A well executed Blitz is basically impossible for the crew to counter.  Blitzes fail only because the nukies make mistakes, not due to the actions of the crew.   And yet... Nukies don't always blitz.  A lot of the time they declare war, even though war isn't the optimal path to victory and they know it. Sometimes they even stealth or do gimmicks, even though, again, doing so is not optimal.  Ideally, we'd balance the game so that there isn't one optimal path, but that's a whole different discussion. The take away is this:

When you give players multiple viable paths to victory, they will not always choose the optimal one. 

Which means that balance isn't really all THAT important.  It's better to have balance than not have balance, but imbalanced game modes can work because we have players who are not just interested in greentext.

So what does this have to do with shadowlings?

The main problem with shadowlings isn't that the mode is imbalanced (although it is), it's that there is only one path to victory.  There are no alternative viable paths to victory that are sub-optimal for the shadowlings to take. As a shadowling, you do the same. thing. every. round.  You know the meme rounds where operatives decide to try to pose as NAD inspectors? There is no shadowling equivalent to that. Shadowlings can't do that type of stuff.  The mechanics force them to bulldoze towards greentext, the exact behavior that is shunned by the community in every other type of antag. No one blames shadowlings for doing it because they have no choice but to do it. 

So even if things were balanced it would be a bad game mode. Sure, it would be better if it was more balanced, and balancing it isn't a bad thing, but it's not the thing that is going to ever fix the issues with the round. What shadowlings need is to be able to actually use different tactics like other antags can, rather than being forced into the same thing over and over.  If shadowlings had many viable paths to victory, they wouldn't need to always pick the optimal one.  The best part is we don't even really need to worry about balancing those paths to make them equally strong as the way things shadowlings do things now. Even if the other paths were objectively non-optimal, players would still choose to use them. 

 

To summarize: The problem isn't so much that it's too easy or too hard to win, because that really depends on the skill level of the players, and there is a huge gap there. The problem is that the high skill players don't have sub-optimal paths to challenge themselves with.

You'll never balance shadowlings because the difference between a new player and an experienced player is way too wide.  If you balance for the newbie, the experienced player always wins.  Balance for the experienced player, the newbie has no chance.  So instead, give multiple paths to victory and what happens is the experienced players will challenge themselves.  This is how basically all other antags work.  Except shadowlings.  For shadowlings, experienced players snowball to a quick victory because there's literally no other way to play shadowling. 

 

Oh, and one easy way to improve the mode I think would be to end it as soon as a shadowling ascends.  If any antag doesn't deserve a 5 minute gloating murderbone victory lap, it's shadowlings. 

Edited October 18, 2018 by EvadableMoxie

[Bxil]

All I can say is: https://github.com/ParadiseSS13/Paradise/pull/8937

TL;DR, what maintainers said:

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Shadowlings are able to ignore loyalty/mindshield implants for a reason - they need the extra help from every department.

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Disallowing security from being thralled is too large of a nerf, and means that Shadowlings wouldn't really have any way to combat sec aside from trying to conventionally killing them.

 

[davidchan]

3 hours ago, EvadableMoxie said:

 

So, I'll just repost what I said the last time this got brought up:

 

To summarize: The problem isn't so much that it's too easy or too hard to win, because that really depends on the skill level of the players, and there is a huge gap there. The problem is that the high skill players don't have sub-optimal paths to challenge themselves with.

You'll never balance shadowlings because the difference between a new player and an experienced player is way too wide.  If you balance for the newbie, the experienced player always wins.  Balance for the experienced player, the newbie has no chance.  So instead, give multiple paths to victory and what happens is the experienced players will challenge themselves.  This is how basically all other antags work.  Except shadowlings.  For shadowlings, experienced players snowball to a quick victory because there's literally no other way to play shadowling. 

 

Oh, and one easy way to improve the mode I think would be to end it as soon as a shadowling ascends.  If any antag doesn't deserve a 5 minute gloating murderbone victory lap, it's shadowlings. 

Nail on the head. The problem with Slings is no alternate viable actions. They have to snowball because that is the only thing that works. In a game mode that's supposed to focus on the interaction between thralls and masters, there is relatively little interaction. I've always been disappointed a Sling can't empower specific thralls to help them from the shadows (no punintendo), or sacrifice thralls into void/null beings with extra powers but otherwise fail to empower the Sling or count as an active thrall, or the ability to resurrect dead non-thralls through possession or what ever negative essence they thrive upon.

If people truly insist that Loyalty implants should prevent thrall conversion, then Slings need some means use for a corpse like how Cults can blood shard someone into a construct.

[Pennwick]

I haven't played a Shadowling round recently enough to be fully confident in my critique but one way I always thought might be a good way to balance mindshields to give them a tiny buff is to make them scream over the security/common channel than a mindshield implant has burnt out. This means the Shadowling still gets the thrall but they've also gone loud and the ID of that thrall is also known. A security pick is still strong for the access and gear but now its something that maybe would get avoided for a little while.

I have no idea how you're going to manage to stop people from throwing themselves to the antags though. I'm assuming its hard for Admins to catch and no amount of detriment is going to make people shy away from free antag status.

[davidchan]

29 minutes ago, Pennwick said:

I haven't played a Shadowling round recently enough to be fully confident in my critique but one way I always thought might be a good way to balance mindshields to give them a tiny buff is to make them scream over the security/common channel than a mindshield implant has burnt out. This means the Shadowling still gets the thrall but they've also gone loud and the ID of that thrall is also known. A security pick is still strong for the access and gear but now its something that maybe would get avoided for a little while.

I have no idea how you're going to manage to stop people from throwing themselves to the antags though. I'm assuming its hard for Admins to catch and no amount of detriment is going to make people shy away from free antag status.

This isn't really needed because once the mindshield is gone anyone with a security HUD can see the green block missing from the person's overlay. Security can and absolutely should be detaining members of the security force roaming the station without implants anyways, at least those not already known to have been recently cloned or had their implant destroyed through some rare and unusual means. And it only further reinforces that goodcurity patrols in pairs for this very situation that if one loses their headset or gets knocked out the other can call for backup and alert the rest of the force.

[Pennwick]

2 minutes ago, davidchan said:

This isn't really needed because once the mindshield is gone anyone with a security HUD can see the green block missing from the person's overlay. Security can and absolutely should be detaining members of the security force roaming the station without implants anyways, at least those not already known to have been recently cloned or had their implant destroyed through some rare and unusual means. And it only further reinforces that goodcurity patrols in pairs for this very situation that if one loses their headset or gets knocked out the other can call for backup and alert the rest of the force.

In theory yes. However I don't know about you but as a low to mid tier security officer I don't always notice when a green dot is missing. Plus the majority of the crew don't have such luxury of Security HUDs. This gives the crew a little more warning. Also, I'm not sure if this attitude has been changed lately or not but wasn't patrolling in pairs on green somewhat frowned upon as powergamey? Yes once things hit blue or red go ahead but on green you shouldn't be expecting any threats other than some minor greytide, trespassing squabbles, and the clown.

[Pckables]

In regards to balancing the gap between newbies and experienced players, and the snowballing:

When you think about it, experienced shadowlings snowball out of control because not only do thralls give them more power over the crew, but more POWERS, which just adds onto their immense advantage once they've got over half their quota.
Inexperienced shadowlings often have trouble getting thralls, so maybe they need a few extra powers to, if not help them thrall, make the round more interesting before they die.

Maybe instead, Shadowlings should start with almost all their powers, and lose them as they get closer to their thrall goal. This way, Shadowlings are more vulnerable as they gain more thralls, and are required to actually use them as bodyguards once they get close to ascension.
Say you had a shadowling needing 20 thralls.
At 0 Thralls, you have all your abilities aside from ascension.
After 5 thralls, you lose the Sonic Screech ability.
After 10 thralls, you lose Icy Veins, Drain Life, and Glare.
After 15 thralls, you lose Black Recuperation, Shadow Walk, and Rapid Rehatch
After 20 thralls you ascend, with all the perks that come with it.

What powers you lose and when is up to balance testing, but it would give newer players a better chance by giving them the strongest start possible, and then putting them on similar dependancy levels as experienced players once they get closer towards ascending.
This may also change the dynamic of "Oh Slings are almost ascended, let's just give up" to "Slings are almost ascended, they're at their weakest now! Hit them hard!"

[bryanayalalugo]

I once made this recommendation on another thread:

Make shadowlings work against each other. As far as I see at the moment, Shadowlings, as long as they aren't working against the objectives, don't really need to interact with each other.

I think they should each be their own "collective hivemind", where they do not share thralls, nor the same hivemind chat, making them independent entities and maybe a objective of "Do not let the other Shadowlings ascend"? Instead of making a station vs Shadowling effort that feels hopeless when one side starts to lose.

And on the mindshields, I honestly think they should protect from thralling, because, usually, the moment one Shadowling gets a security officer, it's where the round starts to snowball.

Edited October 19, 2018 by bryanayalalugo
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