Escalation

[grinkdaboy]

i've played ss13 for quite a long time since about maybe 2009 and i've played on many different servers. many different servers with different cultures and attitudes. i think paradise is really strange in how it presents its focus on roleplay yet this is not entirely reflected in gameplay. for a long while i've mostly played on goonrp which is pretty light on procedure (space law is more of a suggestion than a list of procedures to be followed and executed.) the big thing though is the presence of escalation. 

What is escalation?

the idea of escalation is to properly build up towards harming people. on goon, the idea of escalation is such that antagonists are able to create more roleplay opportunities for other players. give security and other roles something to react to, because thus far my experience has been either getting wordlessly stunned and killed in a maint corridor or drag someone kicking and screaming and fighting every step of the way to the brig because the only thing left to do is either find something else to do for the next hour and a half or so. the only standout experience when i was lured by a mindslaved blueshield officer and was asked to go through a mock hostage situation which lead to me getting garroted as their master ordered my death. now i was not mad or upset that i was killed, but more invested because i was roleplaying with other people.

What isn't escalation?

a quota or benchmark or some obligatory thing. it should be a natural buildup and creating a scenario for people to react to. if you're thinking "wtf i dont want to do this" then why play on an rp server?

where's the roleplay in that? all it leads to is increasing player frustration. i spoke with an admin regarding this and he agreed this sort of thing was a problem. i mostly play security so how it goes is: person gets outed as an antag, security swarms on them and the antag is dragged kicking and screaming into the brig and thrown into perma. any future visits to the perma cells will result in at least one attempted assault by the prisoner because they are being forced into a cube where they are not allowed to interact with anyone else (besides other perma prisoners, if there happen to be any) for maybe an hour or hour and a half. that just isn't fun for anybody. there isn't much to relish about "oh sorry chud you have to go in the hole now for the next hour. good luck on your next antag round though!!!"

it isn't fun for me as a security officer trying to act in good faith towards prisoners and it sure as hell isn't fun for the people on the other end who got caught and brigged. overall i am left feeling annoyed because my efforts to try and respect other people's time is being rewarded with being left dead in a maint corridor. that makes me want to not do those things or try to actually roleplay out a conflict with an antag and instead makes me want to shoot first and ask questions later and just huck them into perma because fuck you. i don't imagine the concept of escalation being an instant quick fix, but, i think it would lead to more fun for both antag players and non-antag players. i understand the necessity antag players might feel towards this kind of behavior but all it does is embitter people when it comes time to interact with other antags in the future.

[TravisAngels]

gonna be honest i'm not really sure what you're suggesting here?

[Rufus]

I do see where you are coming from on this issue, however escalation wouldn't necessarily be the proper term for this, I would say this is mainly related to rp standards. That being said there is a pretty large disconnect from the combat systems in game and attempts to rp. Most of the time in sec vs antag, there is a feed back loop that just leads to both sides not wanting to be cheated out of their round, so they move to handle things quickly/not rp situations out.

 

A good example of this was just the other day for me, where I had an office come up to me asking for a search after I had just grabbed one of my objectives. Given I had tools from a surplus crate include a dsword, rather than murder the officer I had chose to try and rp the situation out, trying to talk and holding a grenade with the intentions of rping out a one time walk away bomb threat. Needless to say my talking was interrupted by two silent baton hits and a wordless walk to the brig. When questioned about why a solo officer would charge a bomb threat, the responses were in line with "I'm not afraid of death", and "I've been hit with worse", which truly is peak rp.

 

Case in point, the current system is in a feed back loop of sec wanting to red text at all costs with no sense of self preservation, and antags going hard and often cutting down sec when possible. I do think that there should be something set in place to fix this system, which I am curious to hear ideas for.

Edited Monday at 04:55 PM by Rufus