Shadowlings post mindshield thralling nerf

[zwan1990]

Since this PR has been added slings have gone down to a 5% -10% (I guess I personally have never seen them ascend since the PR) win ratio.

 

Do you think the PR should be reverted or other changes must happen?

 

What are your thoughts. Ill add some ideas as I think of them. 

 

I have seen rounds be murderbone sec, ERT be called by command and them lose over and over. 

 

Maybe the duration of thralling someone lowered or even the cooldown be brought down? This will allow then to have a faster playstyle and encourage the round to be quick.

[Spacemanspark]

I did predict this happening. The PR put shadowlings into the exact same ballpark as revolutionaries, with security encouraged to immediately bumrush cargo to order implants, and slings inevitably forced to go lethal or die once the crew has started to become implanted. This doesn't make for good gameplay, and I wish the PR that changed this feature had been put on hold a bit longer to be discussed more. 

Frankly, I'd be down for just outright reverting the PR that changed this all in the first place. It turned something that was debatable as an issue in the first place into a massive gameplay problem. For most, the gamemode is no longer fun or even interesting to watch. 

[thatdanguy23]

aye, all the PR did was make killing security become the be-all end-all necessity that slings require in order to win the round. reverting it would probably be best, although it wouldn't change much in the end.

 

slings kinda suffer from being ass on either sides if you swing changes to them one way or the other. it sucks when slings recruit security because it's too easy, it sucks when they have to kill security because it's too hard. slings just...sort of suck, honestly, and they'd need an entire re-write. 

[Qwertytoforty]

Slings are far from a perfect gamemode, and not one I enjoy, but sadly the mindshield PR made it worse, made being sec on a sling round suck more, made slings suffer as crew mass mindshields, and overall not fun to play as a sling, when rolling it means you die and loose 95%~ of the time.

Revs get by mindshields with instant rapid converts. Cult shards and gets strong gear. Slings get teleporting stunny dark boi that dies in 3 laser shots.

Edited November 15, 2020 by Qwertytoforty
Adding how other roles bypass mindsheild

[AffectedArc07]

2 hours ago, zwan1990 said:

Since this PR has been added slings have gone down to a 5% -10%

What data do you have to quantify this? I have seen a fair few sling ascensions myself.

[Qwertytoforty]

Quote

2 hours ago, zwan1990 said:

Since this PR has been added slings have gone down to a 5% -10%

What data do you have to quantify this? I have seen a fair few sling ascensions myself.

This is actually my quote, based on rounds I have observed, asking around other admins, and other players. I have not witnessed one shadowing accession since the nerf. I have only heard of 2 so far, from other players after this change, one of which being a few days ago. (Would be nice to have some sort of way of automaticaly tracking win rate of various antags and midrounds, to get truely accurate information, but as far as I can tell, shadowlings almost never win now)

[PPI]

Think you can ask kyet for data on win rate.

This just shows you how big of a win condition being able to convert security round start was.

Thing is, sling wins the same way security wins, by gathering up, and taking people down one by one, if you do go loud, you will more often then not get stomped by sec, this is true for all antags, be it traitor, vampire, changeling.

This had the same issues as paper cult often had, they got discovered before they got close to their win condition, and was unable to win.

I am actually interested in the sling winrate after what 1.5 months since it was merged

[Spacemanspark]

Except for the fact that one single slip up screws over slings completely. 

One little cry of slings in maintenance, one officer (or group of officers) that decides to patrol maintenance and comes across a thrall that was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and that's all security needs. After that, they start mass ordering implants and the whole shebang begins where slings are forced to murder large chunks of crew because lol implants. This is exactly why revolution was removed from rotation, because it more or less requires mass murderboning to accomplish the tasks. It's not fun for the shadowlings and its hardly interesting for the majority of the crew. 

Antagonists like shadowlings should have some leeway--it enables the rounds they inhabit to be made far more interesting. It was intense, being the last or one of the last officers left after all the others had been mindwashed by a shadow-y demon thing. 

The roundtype is now excessively short and dull, repetitive. We may as well remove it from rotation at this point, if we keep it like this. 

[Eler00]

Maybe if the issue is mass ordering mindshields, we should do something about those instead. Make the crates massively more expensive or just remove them entirely.

[AffectedArc07]

On 11/15/2020 at 9:42 PM, Qwertytoforty said:

(Would be nice to have some sort of way of automaticaly tracking win rate of various antags and midrounds, to get truely accurate information, but as far as I can tell, shadowlings almost never win now)

I mean if I fast-track feedback2 we can have stuff like this

Edited November 17, 2020 by AffectedArc07

[Drakeven]

I really enjoy slings, but I see the issues inherent in them. The mindsheild nerf has just sort of  exacerbated those problems. I think Slings need a look at but... I'm afraid if they do they'll be taken off rotation and end up in 'fix up' hell like the devil game mode.

[zwan1990]

AOE glare like vampires that doesnt affect thralls or other slings?

[Corocan]

When mindshields became sling-proof, it only downgraded the game mode to revolution with more steps, except worse for shadowlings. In revolution it made sense to make revs harshly curtailed by mindshields because it was a good balance to the fact that revs can very easily recruit because it's merely a click to do so.

Slings don't have this benefit. Conversions are much more laborious on their part. The problem wasn't really that slings 'snowballed' because there's not really such a thing for slings, imo. They're just winning. When cult wipes out security and starts converting people en masse, they're not 'snowballing', they've just removed the only obstacle that all antags generally have. I'd posit that the real problem isn't that slings 'snowball' per se, it's just that they can win very early and very easily by getting the drop on security before security really has a chance to actually react to their presence and the fact that victory can be so assuredly locked down so early in the game makes people not even want to try to fight back and just slip into apathy as we see ascension 20 minutes in.

Maybe a better solution to this is to prevent the potential for an early game locked in ascension by preventing slings from melting mindshields until they have a certain amount of thralls, or requiring one or two thralls to be present for the melting of a mindshield. This contrasts with the current change that pretty much guarantees a crew victory or endless murder bone depending on the ability to mass mindshield. Now if security is captured and enthralled it's often after the crew has had time to actually call out the slings and at that point security should be able to put up a worthwhile and fair fight, meaning that victories are earned rather than quickly stolen like a round start teleporter emag.

If we're going by the original PR that made this change, the problem was that security was getting thralled and causing the slings to 'snowball' (i.e., win) and if the problem is that security shouldn't be able to be thralled, I don't understand why mindshields were made sling-proof, because that goes far, far beyond the original scope of the problem and just seems like the nuclear option rather than the sensible one.

Edited November 18, 2020 by Corocan

[PPI]

See, the way both cult and sling win, is by queuing up in a line, and walking in one at a time with a minute between, this is an player issue we can't resolve.

There is also the fact that sling is a rare gamemode, and if you have a security who is less bald then the slings, which is also an player issue we can't resolve.

in the past 12? days, there have been 7 rounds of shadowling, which means there is a 5% chance of sling, and looking at the stats two of those rounds might have been sling victory, and both was during low pop, this is also an issue we can't fix.

Now, what can slings do.

They got a ranged 10 second stun and silence, which is plenty of time to cuff and remover their headset, at a 30 second cooldown

They got a 15 second aoe 5 tile range light removal, which does not put a handfull of lightsources.

They got a 30 second phase shift, that allows them to move from one side of the station to the other, as well as extinguishing them, disabling stuns and weakens.

They got a 25 second aoe 5 tile frostoil, body temp reducing, minor burn and two second stun, this slows them down, and are easy to stun for a longer time.

They got a thrall that takes 21 seconds

They got a 4 second blinding smoke grenade with a 60 second cooldown, that can blind, and has a 25% chance of a 3 second stun, that also works as a small heal for sling and thrall.

They got a 30 second aoe 7 tile stun that confuses humans for 10 seconds, and stuns borgs for 6, allowing them to safely destroy borgs.

They got the the ability to empty an apc of power every 60 seconds

They got the ability to revive or empower thralls every 60 seconds, turning thralls into lesser shadowlings, which gives the thrall the ranged 10 second stun/silence and 30 second phase shift.

And lastly they can use a non-thrall to delay a called shuttle by 10 more minutes.

They don't take pressure damage, don't slip, are shock immune, got thermals, and 25% melee armor.

Further more, to take whats commented in the code

Shadowling strengths:
	- The dark
	- Hard vacuum (They are not affected by it)
	- Their thralls who are not harmed by the light
	- Stealth
Shadowling weaknesses:
	- The light
	- Fire
	- Enemy numbers
	- Lasers (Lasers are concentrated light and do more damage)
	- Flashbangs (High stun and high burn damage; if the light stuns humans, you bet your ass it'll hurt the shadowling very much!)

Like many has said, it takes only one to have seen a sling, but thats on the player for not being stealthy enough, sling is intended to be a stealth antag, this is why thralls are so hard to check, as you need to stand next to them while they wear no masks.

Slings got it's strength, that are countered by some fairly hefty weaknesses, they can slow down de-thralling brutally by robbing surgery of some of it's tools, and get remove the mindshields and thrall any role, they can thrall anyone if they lose their mind shield implant.

Slings respecting mindshields is healthy for the game, but the primary issue seems to be a player issue, many people in maint, making hatching hard, or finding someone to thrall hard, and being unable to thrall security who seems to be the primary people in maints after the maint loot goblins had their run, after that, maint is mostly used as a shortcut to some places, maybe to look for some gear you are missing, so less people in maint, with security being the primary people there, and slings being unable to check if people are implanted or not, they can't just ungabunga.

Overall this is a playerbase problem, both as a sling, a thrall and a non-antag.

[Spacemanspark]

Personally, I think Coro's idea might do wonders. 

Otherwise, we may as well remove the mode. 

[thatdanguy23]

10 hours ago, Corocan said:

Maybe a better solution to this is to prevent the potential for an early game locked in ascension by preventing slings from melting mindshields until they have a certain amount of thralls, or requiring one or two thralls to be present for the melting of a mindshield.

This would do wonders, honestly. I'd prefer this line of thinking over "well it's a playerbase problem, let's not change anything."

[Aza]

You know, whenever I Sling'd. The only reason I couldn't outright murderbone security and other mindshielded people was because the admins always told me "Stop that." Nevermind the amount of light and other tricks the crew can pull. Now that shadowlings can't thrall mindshielded people. I can murder all the mindshielded people I want. Instead of a nerf, this is more like a buff, because now I have a valid reason to kill off security and hide their bodies permanently. Instead of a nerf, this is more of a buff for shadowlings. I don't know which admins thought this was a good decision for nerfing, but it really just means that our current shadowlings don't have to pull any punches. Mixed feelings.

[thatdanguy23]

On 11/21/2020 at 3:59 AM, Aza said:

You know, whenever I Sling'd. The only reason I couldn't outright murderbone security and other mindshielded people was because the admins always told me "Stop that." Nevermind the amount of light and other tricks the crew can pull. Now that shadowlings can't thrall mindshielded people. I can murder all the mindshielded people I want. Instead of a nerf, this is more like a buff, because now I have a valid reason to kill off security and hide their bodies permanently. Instead of a nerf, this is more of a buff for shadowlings. I don't know which admins thought this was a good decision for nerfing, but it really just means that our current shadowlings don't have to pull any punches. Mixed feelings.

That's not a good thing. Generally most of us don't want our antagonists to outright murder everything that remotely gets in their way.

[Aza]

12 hours ago, thatdanguy23 said:

That's not a good thing. Generally most of us don't want our antagonists to outright murder everything that remotely gets in their way.

No worries, I agree with you. My post was a bit sarcastic anyway. Personally, I like mass murder. It's fun for me - it's a type of situation that causes chaos. However, for a lot of people I know it's not all that fun, and frankly it's understandable. Salt Station 13 is a way of life, and people don't like having to be taken permanently out of a round. If possible, I'd like to curb the amount of murderboning and instead focus on the more chaotic elements, because the chaos is the real fun part I like. Shadowling is one of my favorite antags on Paradise, but the amount of bad decisions for reworking shadowlings has been terrible. Shadowlings were a joke before this "mindshield nerf," but now they can be dangerous unless the crew plays smart with their mindshields. However, even stocking up on mindshields won't resolve this issue. The shadowlings have more reason to kill these people now since they can't be thralled; like, are you really going to leave alone that unthrallable engineer that keeps putting down light tiles in maintenance? No, you shouldn't; the guy became a dangerous threat the moment he got a mindshield. There are plenty of ways the crew can retrieve the thralled, but dead people can be permanently taken out of the round, and that's much more dangerous for the crew in my opinion. You might as well just get rid of shadowlings because it's basically shadow revolution at this point.

[Mitchs98]

On 11/20/2020 at 9:59 PM, Aza said:

You know, whenever I Sling'd. The only reason I couldn't outright murderbone security and other mindshielded people was because the admins always told me "Stop that." Nevermind the amount of light and other tricks the crew can pull. Now that shadowlings can't thrall mindshielded people. I can murder all the mindshielded people I want. Instead of a nerf, this is more like a buff, because now I have a valid reason to kill off security and hide their bodies permanently. Instead of a nerf, this is more of a buff for shadowlings. I don't know which admins thought this was a good decision for nerfing, but it really just means that our current shadowlings don't have to pull any punches. Mixed feelings.

This post and many other reasons is why I dislike slings not being able to thrall security. All it does is lead to massive amounts of murderboning, which is something we're very much trying to discourage on the server as it is. Not enable people that like it to do it more and look for more ways to be able to do it.

[Rurik]

A player should never be looking for excuses to kill off sec and permanently hide bodies, but, on a side note, slings are by nature usually short rounds yes? Murderboning isn't nearly as much as a problem if its done in a 30 min round as opposed to a 2 hour slog. I mean, the entire problem with murderboning is that it leads to players twiddling their thumbs till the next round starts, which is commonly an hour or more. As long as the murder has an actual reason and round is short, it could hardly be a huge problem, yes? 

After all, dying isn't inherently bad. It's the innate fact of being forced to wait for a new round/alt-tab and do something else that's a net negative & leaves a sour taste in ones mouth.

On 11/20/2020 at 10:59 PM, Aza said:

because now I have a valid reason to kill off security and hide their bodies permanently.

Unsure if your post is satirical or not, but no antag should be hiding bodies/effectively permakilling unless their objective calls for it (aka assassination objectives). I used to permakill back in the day too until I learned better, but the quicker people know that permakilling/hiding bodies that aren't their objective makes them look like an asshole, the better.

[Aza]

On 11/23/2020 at 4:07 AM, Rurik said:

Unsure if your post is satirical or not, but no antag should be hiding bodies/effectively permakilling unless their objective calls for it (aka assassination objectives). I used to permakill back in the day too until I learned better, but the quicker people know that permakilling/hiding bodies that aren't their objective makes them look like an asshole, the better.

It's mixed. My post is written satirically for some parts, but every point is still valid - shadowlings now have less incentive to leave the corpses behind, because security and other personnel will just get mindshielded again. Shadowlings are encouraged by current mechanics to kill off all mindshielded personnel who pose a threat - security, light tile engineers, random civilians with torches. You can't keep these people prisoner, because prisoners need to be watched. You either kill off the person or create more work by sealing them off in a room they can't get out of, because the third option is letting them go. Other than not being an asshole, there is no other reason you should be letting go of a threat you can't thrall. And it's very easy to be an asshole now - you're taking someone out of the round permanently, which is awful for the player, and hiding someone's body is an even more dick move. Shadowling is a terrible antagonist on the Paradise server, but now it's arguably at its worst state - similar to why we don't have revolution in the round rotation. I have fun with shadowlings, but at this point I believe it's better to remove Shadowling rounds altogether if no reversion or rework is made.

[Norwest]

Honestly, I just prefer anything that ends shadowling rounds sooner. I've yet to really enjoy one, from the mess of trying to pin down a robust shadowling to the inevitable whining from thralls; hell, even getting thralled and told "go kidnap fresh meat" is more of a chore than something enjoyable. If we have to keep the roundtype around then I'd support Corocan's suggestion of locking mindshield-melting behind getting a certain number of thralls (3 for one shadowling, 4 for two, 5 for three, etc.). That being said, given how much I hate the roundtype my first vote is for simply pulling it from regular rotation.