Goonhub
06-30-2017, 09:45 AM
There are several problems with antagonist roles that produce the "kill everyone, destroy everything" mentality, and it has little to do with objectives. Incentivizing objectives is not enough; there needs to be an active disincentive to mass murder.
1. Security is not a threat.
Sufficiently powerful (read: most all) antagonists have no trouble at all killing the one or two mall cops active on the station in a given round. Because of this...
2. Stealth is not a requirement.
When no-one can oppose you, there's no reason to be stealthy or silent. You can be as loud as you want and do whatever you want with no repercussions, unless there's a super robust player in the crew. The inevitable rampage causes...
3. Apathy among players.
I'm a Botanist, I just want to play the game, but the station will devolve into a deathmatch no matter what I do every round. It's exhausting. I'd rather just stay in my department and hope I get killed last than wave a chainsaw/toolbox at the space armor traitor for ten minutes and get removed from the round for the next hour.
It doesn't matter how attractive objectives are to complete because they're not mutually exclusive with mass murder. Players will just do both, and depending on what the reward is, one will just make the other easier.
1. Security is not a threat.
Sufficiently powerful (read: most all) antagonists have no trouble at all killing the one or two mall cops active on the station in a given round. Because of this...
2. Stealth is not a requirement.
When no-one can oppose you, there's no reason to be stealthy or silent. You can be as loud as you want and do whatever you want with no repercussions, unless there's a super robust player in the crew. The inevitable rampage causes...
3. Apathy among players.
I'm a Botanist, I just want to play the game, but the station will devolve into a deathmatch no matter what I do every round. It's exhausting. I'd rather just stay in my department and hope I get killed last than wave a chainsaw/toolbox at the space armor traitor for ten minutes and get removed from the round for the next hour.
It doesn't matter how attractive objectives are to complete because they're not mutually exclusive with mass murder. Players will just do both, and depending on what the reward is, one will just make the other easier.