A system to make Antag selection less rng

[Lonelyspaceman]

Everyone knows the feels of never getting antag for many rounds in a row because rngesus hates you, but what if it didn't have to be that way?

The idea here would be the creation of a system that keeps track of how many times in a row you did not get any antag roles. It would then raise your chance for antag slightly for each shift without antag until the point where you actually got antag, where at that point the antag chance would be reset back to standard.

Now there would probably have to be some checks in place to stop people from trying to afk farm till antag, but on the other hand I believe that joining rounds only to instantly afk if you didn't get antag is already against the rules anyway.

I fully admit to not knowing if its even possible to have a system in Byond that keeps track of the number of non antag rounds for each individual Player. I'll have to wait for feeback from someone who does know this.

[Jazz]

The fact that you can store custom user settings per person alludes to the fact that is it possible, so I'm going to go with a yes It's possible.

I think two scenarios could arise with this

1.) People would have more of an incentive to play the game as it gives them more of a chance to have the opprotunity of an extra fun antag round. This would increase playtime and get more people to play more rounds, therefore encouraging growth within the server.

2.) If somebody recently get's antag, they know that their odds of becoming an antag are jack squat compared to those who haven't been chosen for multiple rounds in a row. Henceforth, they don't feel as if it is worth it to play the game, as the chance of becoming an antagonist motivates those who are on edge as to whether or not they feel like playing around of paradise.

3.) Too big of a change, devs would never allow it.

[Tayswift]

tg did merge a system that would give you points for playing certain roles that would "increase" your chances of being antagonist. However, that system was extremely flawed and broken and was never enabled on tg. The key issue was that it would only increase your chances by reducing other people's chances to be antag. Assuming that we solved that problem though (in some rounds, we would simply have more antags than would usually be added. In that github thread I proposed a few suggestions that would fix the issue), there's a few reasons why I don't think such a system would fit with this server.

I don't think we want to overvalue antagonist status. Some people already really like being antag, other people like being either, and some portion of players just don't like being antag. Obviously, I won't blame you if you prefer playing antag over normal crew member, but imo trying to develop your non-antag experiences a little further will help make your non-antag rounds a bit more enjoyable as opposed to just playing it out to roll for the next round. I think our server atmosphere would be negatively impacted if we were to focus heavily on antag status. That's why we have a karma system rather than an antag token system.

There's also a lot of implementation issues, like how to count the playtime toward increasing your chances of being antagonist. tg's system put a point value on each job. If we didn't care about jobs, then there's still the weirdness of giving you antag% by the minute. Basically, it's a lot of work for no particular reason, since as bad as rng is sometimes, over the long run, it gives everyone a fair shot at being antag.

And then there's round flow issues. Assuming we're not taking other people's antag% for your antag% to increase, in some rounds, we will have more shadowlings or cultists than usually prescribed. That could throw off the flow of the round significantly.

Basically, while it would be nice to smooth out rng a little bit, there's a lot of complications that make it not really worth the time and effort.

[Lonelyspaceman]

Thanks for taking the time to write out this full sized answer to my suggestion. I don't really have anything to add to the end conclusion that it would be too much work for too little payoff. If there's some kinda declined status for suggestions this one could probably be moved into that now.

[Tayswift]

1 hour ago, Lonelyspaceman said:

Thanks for taking the time to write out this full sized answer to my suggestion. I don't really have anything to add to the end conclusion that it would be too much work for too little payoff. If there's some kinda declined status for suggestions this one could probably be moved into that now.

Thanks! I'm glad that you liked what I wrote. However, it's just my personal opinion and not representative of the staff or playerbase as a whole, and we don't have a "declined suggestion" section, so I will leave it up in case more peeps want to chime in

[MrMagolor]

Time for me to pitch in as ye olde goon shill:

An adaptation of their system of antag weighting:

For every round that you ready up for, it will look at what antag you did (or didn't) roll, based on the roundtype. The goal of the weighting system is that 10% of each time an antag is spawned, you will be that antag. So, if you are above 10%, you are less likely, if you are under 10%, you are more likely, and if you are at 10%, there's no advantage or disadvantage.

 

At least, that's how I remember being told it works.