Goonhub
04-04-2022, 08:07 PM
While the complaints about sec have always and will always exist due to them being the ones who will oftentimes be the end of peoples antag rounds, the amount of complaints in the past two weeks has skyrocketed. Some of this is simply people parroting talking points, when people complain about something other people will often begin complaining about it too, however I dont think you can reduce all of it to that. Something must have changed with the security antag dynamic in the past few weeks. The odd thing is, the most recent major mechanical change with security was around a year ago.
Security is now filled with mostly competent and experienced faces, not only decently robust, but more dangerously, talkative. The crew however, has yet to catch up. This isnt the first time its been like this on classic, nor will it be the last, this is a temporary arrangement which makes things really tricky to balance around. Any changes that will be the thing thats good for this server in this current arrangement, could very easily be terrible in another arrangement. Not only that, but this is a short term development for classic, meaning that collecting data for balance is tricky. Fortunately however, we do have a server(servers?) where hyper communicative and competent sec is the norm.
While individual robustness definitely helps a lot as security, take one look at roleplay to show that group cohesion is what really matters. While the robustness of roleplay players is often very underexxagerated by classic only players, there is a truth to roleplay players being less good at combat. Despite this however, security officers are really effective on roleplay against any antag. This is due to a mix of antags causing less damage due to roleplay rules, and lots of communication between sec offs. Normally this is fine enough on roleplay due to be nice to antag rules, meaning even if antags lose the battle, they can still win the war. The thing about classic currently is that due to them being new, antags cause less damage, and security currently has lots of communication between them, and unlike roleplay, loosing the battle is oftentimes losing the war. In an odd twist of fate, I feel as if balancing around this current situation security is in should use roleplay as a guide for the changes.
People who primarily play roleplay's opinion here would be highly appreciated. I feel as if a lot of this stems down to communication. In specific, the most common complaint and the one I feel is the most practical to address is communication leading to security swarming antags. While attacking the wasp should lead to the hive getting angry, having the whole nest float off the branch and go after the attacker is a bit too far (Ill admit this is a bad metaphor, I only kept with it because I think its a funny one.). One of the main causes of this swarming is the alert button, which immediately tells security to be ready for combat, and the location with the click of a button. Personally the nerf I feel like would be best here is something similar to #6979, having the alert button trigger a sound queue and map text. This means that the antag would be warned of the swarm before hand, and be able to react appropriately.
A more ambitious nerf would be a bug fix. When hit, you will automatically say what you were typing, with it cut off by an -URK. The thing is, you'll only get this interaction if you use the say command, which is done through the taskbar. Making this behavior work for the normal way of speaking would mean that trying to speak on comms while getting beat up would lead to it being fragmented. This would reduce the amount of information that you can send out while getting beat up, which means you can delve less into specifics. This would effect a lot besides sec however, and needs lots of deliberate consideration.
Security is now filled with mostly competent and experienced faces, not only decently robust, but more dangerously, talkative. The crew however, has yet to catch up. This isnt the first time its been like this on classic, nor will it be the last, this is a temporary arrangement which makes things really tricky to balance around. Any changes that will be the thing thats good for this server in this current arrangement, could very easily be terrible in another arrangement. Not only that, but this is a short term development for classic, meaning that collecting data for balance is tricky. Fortunately however, we do have a server(servers?) where hyper communicative and competent sec is the norm.
While individual robustness definitely helps a lot as security, take one look at roleplay to show that group cohesion is what really matters. While the robustness of roleplay players is often very underexxagerated by classic only players, there is a truth to roleplay players being less good at combat. Despite this however, security officers are really effective on roleplay against any antag. This is due to a mix of antags causing less damage due to roleplay rules, and lots of communication between sec offs. Normally this is fine enough on roleplay due to be nice to antag rules, meaning even if antags lose the battle, they can still win the war. The thing about classic currently is that due to them being new, antags cause less damage, and security currently has lots of communication between them, and unlike roleplay, loosing the battle is oftentimes losing the war. In an odd twist of fate, I feel as if balancing around this current situation security is in should use roleplay as a guide for the changes.
People who primarily play roleplay's opinion here would be highly appreciated. I feel as if a lot of this stems down to communication. In specific, the most common complaint and the one I feel is the most practical to address is communication leading to security swarming antags. While attacking the wasp should lead to the hive getting angry, having the whole nest float off the branch and go after the attacker is a bit too far (Ill admit this is a bad metaphor, I only kept with it because I think its a funny one.). One of the main causes of this swarming is the alert button, which immediately tells security to be ready for combat, and the location with the click of a button. Personally the nerf I feel like would be best here is something similar to #6979, having the alert button trigger a sound queue and map text. This means that the antag would be warned of the swarm before hand, and be able to react appropriately.
A more ambitious nerf would be a bug fix. When hit, you will automatically say what you were typing, with it cut off by an -URK. The thing is, you'll only get this interaction if you use the say command, which is done through the taskbar. Making this behavior work for the normal way of speaking would mean that trying to speak on comms while getting beat up would lead to it being fragmented. This would reduce the amount of information that you can send out while getting beat up, which means you can delve less into specifics. This would effect a lot besides sec however, and needs lots of deliberate consideration.