Make Assassination Objective Not Require Perma-Killing

[Veterankyl]

Permakilling can be one of the most disappointing parts of a round for a person. Not only that, but it's not always enjoyable for the assassin. As it stands, the person given this objective has to essentially remove a person permanently from the round. This often includes decapitating/de-braining the target, cremating them, or hiding them in space. There's not much room for creativity on the assassins part, and it's not fun to remove someone permanently from the round. For the target, it's often disheartening to have yourself abruptly killed and then tossed into space with no chance to retaliate or say anything. 

So I wish to submit a proposal. Essentially, instead of the target needing to be dead by the end of the round, change the objective so that the target just has to die at least once during the round. This makes it so that the target only needs to end up dead at some point, instead of having to stay dead the entire round. This will give the target a much better chance of getting back into a round while still fulfilling the assassins goal.
 

It will make assassination easier, as the person only needs to die and the bodies won't need disposing of. However, this also opens up the avenue for more creativity when it comes to killing. You won't need to just rush someone and poison/decapicate/space them ASAP. Assassins will have a chance of do something creative with their kills since they no longer have to worry about the target being revived. There are a lot of fun traitor items and assassination methods that don't get used because they're not useful for quickly killing and disposing of a body. I think this change would be beneficial to both parties when it comes to assassinations. 

[Cocacolagua]

this won’t really fulfill the 'traitors won’t need to worry about the target being revived' part, since as soon as they’re cloned you know the "ZZQR^* ZQLEE THE SKRELL KILLED ME TWENTY MINUTES AGO IN NORTH ARRIVALS MAINTENANCE, THEY ARE A LIBRARIAN WEARING A RED VICTORIAN SUIT, JACKBOOTS AND A TOP HAT, THEY KILLED ME USING A SILENCED-STECHKIN WITH INCENDIARY AMMUNITION" is coming out, so traitors will opt to perma-kill them instead.

[Spacemanspark]

Remove the assassination objective when 

[AffectedArc07]

46 minutes ago, Spacemanspark said:

Remove the assassination objective when 

When you code it

[Spacemanspark]

Don't tempt me with a good time 

[Gatchapod]

While I agree it's hard to make assassination interesting, your idea makes it pointless. As Spark said, might as well remove the objective.
Antagonists should impact the round. Killing another player permanently is one of the most impactful things you can do without setting the entire station on fire.
Rather than changing the objective, we should change attitude we have towards assassinations. They happen. Not all rounds will go as you planned. Expecting to survive the round is a good way to get disappointed as you accidentally run into electrified grille after someone hotwired TEG. Someone is taking your body? Tough luck, it's a changeling dragging you into maints, not saviour taking you to medbay.

The only problem with assassination is that the meta is basically to silently stun the unaware victim and send them to the shadow realm. That is a problem lying actually in stun-based combat, not how assassination objective is handled.

[Rurik]

Personally, I like the possibility of being ambushed and nearly instantly killed at any point in given time. Adds a bit of paranoia and to the danger. It's only annoying when you are assassination targeted multiple rounds in a row, perhaps even by several traitors (and of course if the traitor is sweaty stealth kill into decap into microwaved brain). 

Then again, it's been ages since I was targeted via assassination objective and actually killed, and most traitors don't do the sweaty tryhard strat, either from not wanting to or not knowing how.

[Lurapa]

Enforced Cloning / Revive memory loss and then make perma-kill methods less desireable as options.

 

The fact people can remember 100% of their stuff is very very unfun. Or slip in some ghost things.

 

Hell I'd love it if Ghost view and chat didn't exist, only opening up when you do a setting similar to antag-hud.

 [Toggle Ghost View/Chat: you agree to not recall how you died etc]

For how anti-locking ppl from rounds, this game is. It sure has a bunch of meta methods to keep your objective green texted and out of the round.

[Carthusia]

1 hour ago, Lurapa said:

Enforced Cloning / Revive memory loss and then make perma-kill methods less desireable as options.

 

The fact people can remember 100% of their stuff is very very unfun. Or slip in some ghost things.

 

Hell I'd love it if Ghost view and chat didn't exist, only opening up when you do a setting similar to antag-hud.

 [Toggle Ghost View/Chat: you agree to not recall how you died etc]

For how anti-locking ppl from rounds, this game is. It sure has a bunch of meta methods to keep your objective green texted and out of the round.

The problem with Memory loss of any kind, at least to me, is how do you even begin to enforce a policy like that on the scale paradise has? Its one thing if you have that policy on a small population server, its very personal, and easy to monitor, but ive seen paradise creep past 150 people at times, and its a safe bet 30-50% of the people in those rounds in some way ends up dead in some form.

How much time do you dedicate into investigating each perceived offence?

How would you deal with offenders?

Do you begin punishing them? 

Do you start restricting them?

Do you simply verbally warn them?

Then you multiply however many of the above you did by upwards to 12x every day, then for a week, then the full year and you start to see the insane snowballing enforcing such a policy would have. Within a year, you would have an absolute mountain of: bans, restrictions and verbal warnings, a mountain for each.

That's not even counting the admin to player ratio is on average 1 per 20-30 people, so their ability to dedicate large portions of time for something like that is very limited compared to the time they would need to dedicate to incidents that affect large numbers of players negatively 

 

Overall personally, im fine with how things are now. Is it perfect? No, there are improvements that could be made, but its a far cry better than the alternative

Edited January 22, 2021 by BlackDog

[procdrone]

Have players report issues. Especially security officers. ANYONE hearing someone saying "X killed me" could report to admins someone is breaking CMD.

Also, while you have 150 people, death can only happen in a very limited situation (I.E. a valid death), which would limit to max 2 people per antag... possibly more due to circumstance.

As for actual punishments, it would be best for admins to decide what would they be, if they be interested in implementing that.

But after so many community meetings and talks with admins its crystal clear they wont ever, so i dont think this discussion will go anywhere. 


As for assasination objectives. keeping all people in the round would have adverse effects. namely ghost roles, ERTs, midrounds, summons (like holoparas or cult ghosts), golems, borgs, etc would have a much harder time finding players to man these roles. 

Having your round ended early is a bummer, but that is by no definition, end of the game. Can always play the game, just on different terms. (can always go drone)

[Fraility]

If the syndicate are hiring you to kill someone. They are hiring you to kill someone.

Why would they be like "oh just go kill this guy but it doesn't matter if they get back up."

 

Syndicate only kill people who could potentially pose them a threat. Granted it can assign civvies but i like to think that an someone externally is funding them to kill that no mark. "kill this guy he ran over my doggo. here's some fat dollar"

[Carthusia]

2 hours ago, Fraility said:

If the syndicate are hiring you to kill someone. They are hiring you to kill someone.

Why would they be like "oh just go kill this guy but it doesn't matter if they get back up."

 

Syndicate only kill people who could potentially pose them a threat. Granted it can assign civvies but i like to think that an someone externally is funding them to kill that no mark. "kill this guy he ran over my doggo. here's some fat dollar"

Heh, i mean who knows why they hired them to kill you? It could absolutely be that!

"Kar-Ski took the last plate of meatloaf...he must pay..."

[MarsMond]

It would always depend on why the syndicate would want to hurt/kill someone whether someone can be revived or not (on station). If it's just to send a message, getting revived should be okay. The people involved wouldn't need to know about the contents of the message, it could be revealed later to the victim, or it's meant for another person who would want to keep the victim healthy.
To make someone forget something, or keep someone out of commission for a while, that would need to have the person not to be revived (on station). It can always be that NT has some sort of backup of everyone, but that would mean it's not the most up to date (so forgetting something), and backups may take a while to get activated.

It could also be made to depend on the player setting up their character, on what the interest of the syndicate is with that character. Should still make them get permakilled, but that way, a "simple" death could have some side objectives that need to be completed, depending on the settings of the victim. This would still need some goals that can be detected automatically, but that way it won't be an easier objective or way to get back in the round.
There may also be the possibility to make it rather freeform, and make the players write up and confirm completion of possible objectives, but that could make it a headache if there is some disagreement between the players involved, be it whether it's completed, or if the custom objective that leads to their death is unreasonable. Not sure if that can be implemented in a way that can't/won't be easily abused.

[Viz]

No, no this is not something I'd like to see. Suspension of disbelief is shattered utterly when the terrorist organization that recruited someone as an assassin doesn't actually want their target to stay dead. I understand the concern but I disagree, if anything attention should be focused on providing ghosts with ways to get back into the round so that getting permakilled does not ruin your round.

Now, if someone defines their round being ruined as "I don't get to have everything go as planned" then all I have to say is man up and deal with it. Dying has always been part of ss13 and paranoia about someone wanting to ACTUALLY kill you is an integral part of the game. Besides, what do you do with terrors for example? Do they cuddle people for a while then return them from the nest? Let's not feed the entitlement of certain players who will not only be upset but actively mad at an antag for doing their kill objective.

[Gaty]

I also don't like this either, dying is part of the game and permakilling someone is an extra challenge cuz you now have to figure out some way to eliminate their brain without anyone noticing.

It's also cool as heck lorewise.

[Vargh]

On 1/23/2021 at 3:38 PM, MarsMond said:

If it's just to send a message, getting revived should be okay. The people involved wouldn't need to know about the contents of the message, it could be revealed later to the victim

For some reason the idea of having an auto injector like epi pens that you need to use against your dead target to give them "the message" (some random generated crap like we have for contractors) sounds kinda cool. Once the player gets cloned-revived a objective announce appears about why you where killed and throw some memory loss shit there too.

Just brain storming. 

[Viz]

6 hours ago, Vargh said:

For some reason the idea of having an auto injector like epi pens that you need to use against your dead target to give them "the message" (some random generated crap like we have for contractors) sounds kinda cool. Once the player gets cloned-revived a objective announce appears about why you where killed and throw some memory loss shit there too.

Just brain storming. 

You guys refuse to enforce CMD which is already a solution to this so I don't see that working out either.

[Vargh]

2 hours ago, Woje said:

You guys refuse to enforce CMD

Bold of you to believe we all want the same things 

Edited January 26, 2021 by Vargh

[Spacemanspark]

2 hours ago, Woje said:

You guys refuse to enforce CMD which is already a solution to this so I don't see that working out either.

Bit aggressive there. Let's take it down a bit.

As for the topic of CMD, it's simply not feasible to enforce. I want CMD very much so, but good lord good luck trying to enforce it. It would be near impossible across 150 players (peak hours) to manage.

There is also the matter that staff is very divided on wanting it as a thing to begin with, for various (and I must admit, some legitimate) reasons. Yes, we take player and staff opinion into matters, not just one sole arbiter that doesn't even understand what they're talking about. Please consider what you're saying--as a mentor, no less--before plastering it willy nilly on the forums.

Edited January 26, 2021 by Spacemanspark

[Gaty]

CMD works on other servers because they usually have less than 50 pop (which isn't bad that's nice) so is way easier to control.

Don't blame the staff team for being unable/not wanting to enforce it on 150 people.

[Viz]

1 hour ago, Spacemanspark said:

Bit aggressive there. Let's take it down a bit.

Yeah I see how you could interpret it that way, I just said "you guys" because I'm directly talking to an administrator, and it's the official policy :P I'm just saying that if CMD can't be enforced then it's likely other similar "you remember X" things can't either, look no further than abductor objectives.

[Veterankyl]

Quick question, when it comes to the server lore, is it assumed that everyone has their DNA backed up to the CC servers for emergency cloning? I've seen CC messages saying that they're just gonna clone someone after their body has been lost/destroyed. This does make me wonder what this means for assassinations if they're meant to permanently kill someone.

[Lurapa]

I am a bit of an optimist in thinking it is enforceable.

Why? Because while there is 150 players, right? There are vastly fewer antagonists, and those antagonists only have 1-2 targets at best.

So ballparking a guestimate:

Staff watch out for 10 people or so.
 Staff don't have to watch out for persons targeted by Security, and thus killing Security in droves via self defense. At that point CMD is irrelevant, identity revealed.

CMD can exist for the minor amount of targets pre-reveal. 

I am optimistic on this because metagame is snuffed out, when 150 players are applicable to be hawk-eyed on Peak Times. CMD enforcement can be narrowed down to targets of objectives who die, and revive.

(additionally, that 10 can be narrowed down even further, via small code tweaks that flag when a target is killed AND revived.)

Alternatively,

Delete game-logs client-side, triggered via death. So ghost-chat is hidden, and game-chat prior to death is hidden. Personally, the amount of times I SCROLL for information (IC info, mind you. Not ghost-chat. E.g 'hey whats the passphrase you told me as blueshield'. And other stuff, like names of who I talked to. Im sure a lot of people scroll, so deleting chat on revive would be one way to not only psuedo CMD, but force people to try and recollect without RPing einstei)

- quick edit:
 It could alert when a person kills X. So, when an objective is killed & revived. Have strings from the Traitor's character be highlighted (higlight strings already exist). e.g [Name], [Species], the word [Killed me]. Minor indicators towards a person who was killed by their traitor, and then revived. Such things wont happen if their traitor is unrelated to their death and revival.

Edited January 27, 2021 by Lurapa

[Machofish]

This post is a bit older, but CMD is a discussion point that comes up on a regular basis so I'll weigh in.

Riddle me this: if we do implement Clone Memory Disorder, exactly how much is the cloned character meant to forget? Everything about their killer in specific? Everything from the moment they started the shift? (A little too broad for my tastes, but at least it's something that can be consistent). If security (as I often do) sits down and asks, "What's the last thing you remember before waking up in the cloner?" exactly how far back is the cloned victim's memory supposed to be blank? We need a consistent line to be drawn where a cloned character's memory is lost, and what they're allowed to remember. If the rule ends up saying "cloned murder victims aren't allowed to say anything that would give security a hint as to the killer" that will open a whole new can of worms.

The closest thing I can relate to as a 'successful' implementation of dividing IC/OOC knowledge is regarding the cult, as ex-cultists are supposed to forget anything relating to the cult's plans or activities if they're deconverted successfully. That said, cult rounds are still subject to a bizarre and blurred line if you ask an ex-cultist "What's the last thing you remember before ending up here?"

On the topic of reworking assassination into assassination-but-not-really: I do not support this. Roles like 'traitor', 'changeling', and 'vampire' are called 'Antagonists' because they're supposed to cause trouble for the crew. Players are meant to be opposed to antagonists. We already have a strange phenomena where certain parts of the community have a sort of apathy or even sympathy towards antags, and I personally don't think it's going to help if that apathy is further encouraged by removing the risk of death from assassination objectives.

This is particularly noteworthy with vampires already: certain players who I won't name here have developed an unofficial etiquette where it's apparently polite to not scream or draw attention when a vampire is sucking your character's blood, and the vampire in turn is expected to reciprocate by either leaving their victims at medbay or letting their victims go after taking a non-fatal quantity of blood.

It's an attitude that has persisted for some time: looking up various keywords like 'give vampires free blood',  or just 'give blood', in the server discord will turn up a significant number of conversations on the matter. Most of the debates I've found about vampires and free blood are fairly recent—2020 and 2021, but I'll give my assurances that this 'etiquette' has been entrenched for much longer than that.

If we enforced CMD, I believe this would further encourage a sort of indifference and apathy that parts of the community have towards antags. I think this particular issue is quite important to me, because I had an IC argument with a regular over whether the "vampire victim etiquette" made sense, and that player chose to drag the argument into OOC. Who knows, maybe I'm the one who's wrong.

I don't want to be entirely critical without offering something constructive, so here's my thought: nobody likes being removed from the round. However, I think antags should still have objectives that involve seriously, significantly inconveniencing other players or else that'll remove any actual conflict between antags and non-antags. I'd like to see more use of objectives like 'maroon' ("Ensure <XYZ> crewmember does not leave on the escape shuttle or escape pod") or other objectives that can be considered "harmful" without necessarily involving the removal of other players—I seem to recall seeing an admin test a "Sabotage" objective that went along the lines of "Disrupt <XYZ> department and prevent them from getting anything done" but I'm not sure if that was just a custom goal or if there was ever any plan to implement it on a larger scale. BYOND always seems to surprise me with what it can or can't do, so I don't know how feasible it would be to implement an objective like that.

TL;DR: Present a plausible method to address the unofficial "correct and polite etiquette for being murdered" that already ruins the vampire gamemode—assure me that CMD will not generalize this attitude through the traitor and changeling gamemodes, and in return I'll support re-introducing CMD.

Edited February 8, 2021 by Machofish

[maxfromsweden]

I don't like perma killing. I don't think it's a big issue and it happens quite rarely to me but nevertheless, I still dislike it.

Reasons:

• Taking a player permanently out of, what a lot of the times are 1-2 hours of a round is not fun. For me, who has limited playtime, this is the biggest reason.
• Being killed is mostly in the hands of your attacker. As long as they don't mess something up, you will have no chance to defend yourself.
• Playing as a beach bum/planting diona/cyborg/other ghostrole is no replacement for my custom made character. It can still be fun, but it's not what I wanted out of the round.

I don't know how you guys play, but I rarely go around being "afraid" of being permakilled. As mentioned above, I think it's a bother to be permakilled, but I don't see how it adds "spice" or "fear" or "excitement" anymore than non perma killing. Even if permanent killing was not an objective anymore, there is no guarantee of being resurrected due to regular staion life with incompetence, lost information and missed messages.