Spy Mode: What's Wrong and How to Fix It

[Klayboxx]

Spy mode has the potential to be a pretty fun game mode, and I know this because occasionally the stars align and you get a really rad round where spy-like things happen. But usually it ends up a dumb shit-heap where people are murdering literally everyone who isn't in their tiny group and you'd swear it was just a traitor round. People don't bother spying to figure out who the other spies are since chances are you'll just get murdered if you're right.

People under the same spymaster have no way of knowing who is in their group outside of being told who is who, or seeing the other guy get mindslaved. This becomes a bigger problem when a spymaster mindslaves a spymaster, or when people disguise their appearances. I've heard people saying that it's totally OK if you don't recognize them due to being disguised, but I'd like to point out that nuke operatives are able to identify each other no matter what disguise they have on. The confusion of who or who isn't on your team makes it nearly impossible to organize everyone together, or to coordinate, to work together, etc, etc. This is made multitudes worse when people are bad at names, which I myself am.

To potentially fix this, I propose that each spymaster is spawned with a different color implanter. People implanted by the same color of implanter can see each other, but can not see others who are implanted by another color. The spymaster always has his color S over his head, which can only be seen by people who are implanted by his color implanter. This would make people know definitely at-a-glance who is on their team and would avoid ruining that neat % chance of a mindslave implant failing on a mindslaved target. The only downside to this idea that I can think of is that it would muck up stealing a deceased spy masters injector and using it to increase your army, but IMO that was a bad feature to begin with, and this would instead encourage you to hide the injector from the hands of the rest of the surviving team.

Another change I propose is to make spymasters immune to mindslaving from the get-go. I understand that sometimes getting mindslaved by an opposing spymaster can turn out fun sometimes but generally you just get ordered to kill yourself when the guy finds out. It doesn't really make sense in the first place that a syndicate spy wouldn't have protection from becoming a slave anyway. I understand that some people like this feature but I really think it is against the spirit of the mode, and is one of the things making this round-type not so good.

There should be spy-mode specific traitor items that can be bought with tele-crystals that actually encourage spying. I don't have many ideas on this other than bugs and stuff, all I know for sure is the only existing way to realistically spy on someone is with thermals or the AI, and you shouldn't have to rely on those two things to spy on people in a game-mode called spy.

That's all I got for now. Any other ideas? I really think this game-mode has potential but as it stands it is just traitor where you get a free injector. I know there is a thread open about replacing spy with gang, but I figured that isn't the thread to post this.

[Karakoran]

The problem is that there is no reason NOT to go on a murder rampage. The easiest way to kill other spymasters is to wipe out the whole station. Of course, with a non-existant Security of maybe one guy and half the heads mindslaved it's incredibly easy to do so. Why bother being stealthy when you can order 50 lasers and start opening fire? Most any stealth that occurs is because every blue Moon there's a spymaster in it for the spying and not the chance to murder.

There needs to be more benefits for spying. Maybe the spymaster gets three guesses at finding a spymaster and if they get it right then a CentCom report announces them as spymaster to the Station? That would reveal that it's spy and expose yourself though, and I doubt the crew would even kill the announced spymaster.

[Sundance]

From the other thread:

What you suggested is essentially spy, with the objective of killing heads/security instead.
The problem with spy and rev imho was:
1) Being able to FORCE people to join your team
Flashing was lame as shit because it just became a numbers race, and people didn't resist because becoming a rev was fun. Multi-use implanters are still lame because it's still a numbers race, you're still going to scope out the better players, encroaching on the meta ground.
The fix: No flash, no implanter. Your team-mates are out there, but you gotta find them. There's this thing on other servers that would work perfectly for finding your team-mates, and requires no coding. Word association. You are given the words a random collection of words like: "Toilet, Clown, Beepsky" and so are your team-mates. There's no team leader. Can you imagine the hilarious paranoia of being a spy and trying to find you team-mates by instigating conversation:
Spy team red #1: "Hey, there's a clown in the toilet being stunned by beepsky, I have some of his stuff to sell, if you want it?"
Enemy spy team blue: "What, why would I want a clown's shit?"
Spy team red #2: "Hey man, I'll buy some of the clowns stuff, yeah"
Enemy spy starts to get suspicious and tries to murder spy team red #1 but backfires when #2 reveals his side and kills him.

2: Telecrystals
Compare with the nuke ops: They are armed to the teeth, but there's only 5 of them and the entire station is against them.
Spy/rev: Completely unbalanced, even if the team leader is the only one with telecrystals. It's not the amount of telecrystals, it's the amount of players that use them.
The fix: No telecrystals. You start off with an agent card in your pocket, and that's it. You want some cool gadgets? Make them or go and buy them, your agent card can get you some cool stuff.

[Splatpope]

The problem is that there is no reason NOT to go on a murder rampage. The easiest way to kill other spymasters is to wipe out the whole station.

playing like this is very loathable, I myself would consider this as a form of metagame, the gamemode isn't at fault

[Embolism]

Here's how I play Spy:

Load myself up with microbombs and wait for another Spymaster to rampage in my direction.

[Karakoran]

playing like this is very loathable, I myself would consider this as a form of metagame, the gamemode isn't at fault

Of course it is, and it's not even very fun but a gamemode has to be prepared for people to be the biggest shitheads they can try to be. If it can't then it wont be fun to play, regardless of how good the concept is.

[DrivetimeMozol]

Here's how I play Spy:

Load myself up with microbombs and wait for another Spymaster to rampage in my direction.

Oh god I wish I could see that. The powergamer tears must be delicious.

[atomic1fire]

2: Telecrystals
Compare with the nuke ops: They are armed to the teeth, but there's only 5 of them and the entire station is against them.
Spy/rev: Completely unbalanced, even if the team leader is the only one with telecrystals. It's not the amount of telecrystals, it's the amount of players that use them.
The fix: No telecrystals. You start off with an agent card in your pocket, and that's it. You want some cool gadgets? Make them or go and buy them, your agent card can get you some cool stuff.

It would be cool if spy mode was a test on someone's ability to walk into a random part of the station and get people to either ignore them or let them do what they want. I've done stealth traitoring to steal things, but actually having minions to draw people out and do stuff could be fun. e.g start a fake fight to draw out the only officer in security. That sounds like more of a challenge for traitors if anything though.

It would be ultra cool if more people resorted to macguyvering and burn notice style tactics.

e.g lit cigarette and a bottle of wielding fuel (or some stuff from chemistry) turn into a timed bomb, etc. insert the flamethrower into the gun component from the mechanics lab, turn the station into a variety of booby traps where the crew is catapulted into a stream of fire.

Most people are willing to ignore roller coasters on the station, even crewmen shinanigans. Have spies use that to their advantage.