The Ability to specifically Random character as antag

[Telareti]

Heya! So I've been thinking about this for a bit and wanted to hear views from others so I decided to post this, I'm no coder! and sorry if this has come up before and I missed it but I was wondering if it'd be nice for the ability to tick a box in the character set up window so if you roll antag, you random name and appearance.

I thought it might be nice for a few reasons, It'd remove any pressure to have to RP a certain way or be associated with a certain character, I've seen some people say in the past they wish they could pick a certain character to get antag as because they don't want their main character as antag, while having characters tied to antag would be a problem because it'd lead to meta info and metagaming of knowing who is antag based on the character they roll, random character rolls would fix this imo! I also believe it might have the added bonus of people treating names they don't recognise, the same way they treat people they do, which of course people should be doing already, and I feel like that kind of metafriend stuff has died down a lot these days so this is just a bit of a bonus!

So imo the positives overall would just allow people to not stress or feel pressured to have to rp a certain way, more range to improvise and come up with things on the spot, it'd reduce metagaming of people being treated a certain way for whatever the reason and for people who just don't feel like having their character roll antag, they can just tick the box, if they get antag their random, if not they just have a normal round as their regular character!

I was trying to think of any negatives,  and I couldn't really think of any besides it being difficult to code? it's partly why I wanted to make this post, maybe there's some massive negatives i'm missing or overlooking and this is a terrible idea, so it'd be good to hear what other people think! Salvager already has it so when you spawn in, you have a random name and appearance, so in my code clueless brain, you'd just add a box in the character setup, maybe next to where you pick antags, and just have a label like "Have Random character for antag" something like that, then for those who want that, they can tick it and it applies that salvager random character condition but to all antags!

That's about everything though! I'd love to know if this is a bad idea or not, and if it'd be possible to code, Thank you!  

[Taylorstar]

I think this is a great idea, I thought about how it would be nice a while back because I know we all get treated differently and whether its intentional or not. Some players get a reputation for being robust so when you think that a well known player is an antag they may come down too heavy handed or not hard enough, it also gives the antags the option of experiencing each round as a new face where they have to prove themself and see who would treat them differently based on reputation.

I'm not saying the server has a severe issue metaknowledge/grudge/friendship but having that option there will allow players antag or not to have a more open mind about those who are generating content for them.

When I first started playing on RP I will admit I was hesitant to compromise the long standing reputation of my character not being an antag, as time went on I got more comfortable with the idea of what happened last round stays last round and while I enjoy building a particular brand of antaggery and getting a reputation to be able to be used for antag shenanigans etc having the option to be nameless faceless blend in and be one of the crowd is an option I think would offer more benefits than negatives and may encourage more people to tick the antag boxes without fear of compromising their characters and stories if they have them.

[LeahTheTech]

I've thought about this a bit and I understand the desire for it, but I think in practice it wouldn't be good for the game.
The effect would likely be a lot of known characters who are guaranteed to never be antags and so have inherent meta-trust, and lesser known characters or random names being treated with even more suspicion.
Yes, you can do that currently by just playing a certain character with all antags turned off but most people don't want to lose all antag rolls and so the number of known "trustworthy" characters is limited.

[jan.antilles]

Absolutely agreed with Leah. No matter how well-intentioned this might be, in practice it would result in randomname characters being distrusted and static names being a "known good."

[Telareti]

I was wondering if i was overlooking anything and that would be exactly what I missed! On Paper I thought it'd be difficult to meta-trust because anyone can be that unknown antag but I forgot to consider the other side where now those people who always roll random antag, will never be antag on their non random characters, so I see the large issue it'd cause of someone who everyone knows has random antags on, becoming that known good and then people begin trusting them like they would a captain or member of security even if the person is just a staffie, would be really unhealthy for the round really fast, thaanks for giving all your views and pointing out the problems I forgot to consider!

[Kotlol]

This might not work on classic but on roleplay with escalation rules this might have effect.
Good roleplayers knowing who antags are and engage with.... on the other hand I believe Leah is right. It might build more meta trust.

Eitherway I see no problem with the concept for roleplaying where obivious antags are more prefered.

[Lord_earthfire]

This might not work on classic but on roleplay with escalation rules this might have effect.
Good roleplayers knowing who antags are and engage with....

To be very clear, this is a bigger problem for RP than classic. We had major problems with metatrust and cliques on RP in the past.