Space Station 13: A New Paradise

[Lurapa]

Greetings all,

This suggestion will be layered and built upon as the post is read.

]-----The Suggestion-----[

I suggest that we trial a thing I will herein refer to as 'Randomisation (RS)'. RS is a feature that is already in the game, under preferences. It alters your name, and other details that are displayed by your avatar to other players. Meaning each time you spawn into the shift you will have a different name, or look, each time.

]-----Why The Suggestion?-----[

I believe, personally, that this suggestion will help combat OOC in IC Met buddying. One of the most negative things about Paradise. Administration will have an easier time spotting patterns, and therefore an easier time enforcing the rules.

This suggestion also connects with the lore that Paradise is built around: https://nanotrasen.se/wiki/index.php/Lore

]-----The Positives-----[

- Fresh faces. Perhaps a new Roleplay Character each shift... because it is a Medium Roleplay Server and not a Low Roleplay Server. 

- It will stop the OOC interactions, or the favouritism, or the group-greytiding, based off who the Player is behind the Character name. Promoting a more health, unbiased gameplay experience.

- Respects the lore.

- A more IC experience.

- OOCly become more attached to the Ckey at the end of the Shift instead of the IC name during the Shift.

]-----The Negatives-----[

- Roleplay Characters will be randomised. Thus established figures won't appear. Meaning the main opposition to this suggestion are those who Roleplay a select few gimmicks or Characters.

]-----The Summary-----[

This suggestion is to promote a defence against met buddying while providing a fresh, new, shift-lore friendly experience to veteran players who are fatigued by seeing the same faces, act the same way, with the same people, each round, every round. It feels less like a Roleplay Game and more like an OOC self-insert most of the time. With established names being given favouritism because of their name. 

These IC bonds were formed IC. But have evolved into OOC friendships that are rarely handled in a way that promotes RP. As Characters become prominent, and played, the more they become OOC.

]-----Endnote-----[

This suggestion will get a lot of negative responses from those who have established characters, and have grown to play a certain way or RP a small manner of ways. It's an RP Game and they should be capable of adapting to a new RP each shift. Not reinforcing the same RP, over and over, that eventually turns OOC.

[BeanOS]

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.

[Allfd]

This is a bad idea and will have the opposite consequence of what you think.

54 minutes ago, Lurapa said:

Fresh faces. Perhaps a new Roleplay Character each shift... because it is a Medium Roleplay Server and not a Low Roleplay Server. 

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?

 

1 hour ago, Lurapa said:

- It will stop the OOC interactions, or the favouritism, or the group-greytiding, based off who the Player is behind the Character name. Promoting a more health, unbiased gameplay experience.

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.

 

1 hour ago, Lurapa said:

These IC bonds were formed IC. But have evolved into OOC friendships that are rarely handled in a way that promotes RP. As Characters become prominent, and played, the more they become OOC.

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."

[Lurapa]

5 minutes ago, Allfd said:

It will stop the IC favouritism, and replace it with OOC favouritism, you are suggesting removing the IC component. 

They cannot perform OOC favouritism if they do not know who the player is. People cover up their OOC with IC. It is extremely difficult to catch meta-buddying, and it is extremely easy to perform meta-buddying under the guise of IC being built up, and then enforced.

8 minutes ago, Allfd said:

I have been around long enough to notice a trend.  This argument is most frequently raised by players who are concerned with "Metagaming"

I don't make friendships because it reduces my fun for the game. I genuinely dislike being given aid, or being shown favouritism based off of my past exploits /or name I use. I don't push my IC connections into Discord, or get to know the player behind the Character. I just want my experience on Paradise to be what the IC is. A repeated instance of the same Shift. Where I know nothing of what Mike Murdock did as Security Officer 1 OOC year earlier, therefore I treat Mike better Icly because of my OOC knowledge of his past rounds.

You can't assess what people have is IC or OOC knowledge. The end result is that X player can and will treat C player better if they know of the name, or exploits of that person.

e.g Fiddler is a good example. OOCly and in past rounds he is hilariously robust. Very much so most people just go - 'oh fuck' in their brains, and oocly impact their IC when handling Fiddler.

13 minutes ago, Allfd said:

"I am an ass to people, and people have started to react poorly to my characters in game

The server is medium roleplay, so I do understand where this concern comes from. People do seep their IC into their OOC and vice-versa. Especially if one character acts a certain way, people assume the OOC of that character is similar. People were annoyed at how incompetent one of my characters were as Security - and that they were still following SoP and Space Law, just extremely annoyingly. Thought I didn't understand SoP and Law, then realise my other RP character is Han Sprite, one of the older Magistrate mains.

Essentially. I'm suggesting this because I'm bored of the same-old same-old. The Roleplay feels low-rp, and isn't getting any better. A lot of the established characters project their IC into their OOC and it's just boring. If I see certain characters I know 100% how they'll play the Shift.

[Dinarzad]

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.

[Kyet]

4 hours ago, Allfd said:

"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."

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.

[Pokebro2000]

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.

Edited July 7, 2019 by Pokebro2000
You know what? I still got more to say

[DerpehBoi]

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)

[Coul]

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