Ideas for improving Rev

[Technature]

Loyalty implants immediately working are a little overpowered because you can immediately turn the tides of a fight with two clicks/immediately ID rev heads. It should take a half second like the rev flash does.

Eh, considering that the Sec and the Heads are kinda working with their hands tied behind their back the whole time, I think they can have instant implanting as a bonus

Yeah, the entire "Instant" thing tends to be countered by "Half the station wants to kill you".  If you actually have the foresight to be prepared to the point that you can turn most of a mob into fighting for you, you kind of deserve deconverting an entire mob and winning the fight.

You can't forget that every implant takes time to put into an implanter and that each use takes up a slot that could be reserved for something to save you from imminent death.

[KikiMofo]

Loyalty implants immediately working are a little overpowered because you can immediately turn the tides of a fight with two clicks/immediately ID rev heads. It should take a half second like the rev flash does.

Not everyone is as robust as you OMJ. The less robust need some kinda boost from the HORDES of revs breaking down the doors.

[Lady Birb]

allowing people to join the revolution without being flashed

NO NO NO NO NO

IF YOU ARE WILLINGLY JOINING THE REVS AS A NON-ANTAG YOU ARE PLAYING THE GAME WRONG
[ahem]
The wiki page on grief explicitly states that willingly assisting an antagonist beyond the scope of your job is considered obvious griefing. Intentionally becoming a revolutionary counts as assisting an antagonist. Anything that exists solely to let people become a rev whenever they want is literally encouraging players to grief.

[Frank_Stein]

allowing people to join the revolution without being flashed

NO NO NO NO NO

IF YOU ARE WILLINGLY JOINING THE REVS AS A NON-ANTAG YOU ARE PLAYING THE GAME WRONG
[ahem]
The wiki page on grief explicitly states that willingly assisting an antagonist beyond the scope of your job is considered obvious griefing. Intentionally becoming a revolutionary counts as assisting an antagonist. Anything that exists solely to let people become a rev whenever they want is literally encouraging players to grief.

This is the problem inherent in Rev. It's really easy to allow yourself to be Rev'd or to at least ignore it happening.

[KikiMofo]

Thats the reason Rev was removed in the first place I think? Because people kept wanting to get revved and not fighting the revs

[Frank_Stein]

I feel like Revs should get optional gear, very specifically identity blocking masks. 

I think this could let Revs both hide their identity before an attack, be used to confuse whom is the Rev Head, and give Sec a Marker they could sometimes rely on.

[OMJ]

I feel like Revs should get optional gear, very specifically identity blocking masks. 

I think this could let Revs both hide their identity before an attack, be used to confuse whom is the Rev Head, and give Sec a Marker they could sometimes rely on.

no side should get any game altering items, gas masks do the job well enough imo

[Frank_Stein]

I feel like Revs should get optional gear, very specifically identity blocking masks. 

I think this could let Revs both hide their identity before an attack, be used to confuse whom is the Rev Head, and give Sec a Marker they could sometimes rely on.

no side should get any game altering items, gas masks do the job well enough imo

I mean, the mask should be unique to Rev, but optional to wear. 

Having a mixture of Revs wearing masks and those not wearing them only adds to the confusion abilities.

[Zamujasa]

Having played Rev as a rev head 3 times now, I don't know what can be done to fix it, really. It's just not very fun because the moment you get outed, it's over. Security can get a bunch of loyalty implants and has actual weaponry.

Especially if someone gets outed early on. Three rev heads versus 8+ security officers (not including the heads) is basically game over.

[kyle2143]

First off. Turning revolution into rev gang vs loyalist gang sounds like a bad idea. Revs are bad, loyalists are good, from the crew perspective, adding ambiguity such as allowing loyal crew to purposely become revs is bad.

I don't think that revs or rev heads need specific equipment to hide their identities, problems with the revolutionary side usually stem from the rev heads running all round at top speed flashing people with their face uncovered. They can easily find a gas mask and remove their ID, but few do, and they get easily outed. Rev's technically are supposed to take orders from Rev Heads, but I rarely see Rev Heads take any sort of leadership role. Or even stick around anywhere long enough so revs can bring people to them to turn. I think that the "solution" here is just more experience with rev or a change in mindset so that players know that rev heads can be stealthy and revs should be at the beck and call of Rev Heads.

As far as improvements goes. I think that adding a loyalty implant overlay with sec HuDs was a far bigger buff to the loyalists than I originally thought. So here's my pitch for dealing with that:

- Revert the revving to be instant like it used to be years ago. Either on the first flash, or the first flash that knocks em down.

- Use the current revving progress bar for turning loyalty implanted crew. Make it take 15-20 seconds, so you'd have to have someone else with you to keep em still while you use the rev flash to "burn out" the loyalty implant, destroying it. Make it so the Rev Head that is doing the turning can't keep flashing them without interrupting the progress bar.

[The Gorog]

[...]

I don't think that revs or rev heads need specific equipment to hide their identities, problems with the revolutionary side usually stem from the rev heads running all round at top speed flashing people with their face uncovered. They can easily find a gas mask and remove their ID, but few do, and they get easily outed. Rev's technically are supposed to take orders from Rev Heads, but I rarely see Rev Heads take any sort of leadership role. Or even stick around anywhere long enough so revs can bring people to them to turn. [...]

With no limit to the amount Revs they can recruit and no information exclusive to them, the Rev Heads dont really need to do anything than try to keep recruiting as many as they can, while the normal Revs roam the station for the heads hiding in some locker or out on the solars.

Maybe if they had objectives that only they knew about, there would be an incentive for coordination. Could be something like acquiring items/intel and turn them in.
It would give them some information on a heads general location or piece of clothing at the time, so rounds dont end in 55 minutes of hide and seek.

[Frank_Stein]

I'd say territory control is probably the way to go. Have the Revs take control of areas by protesting in the
, with each area allowing more people to be Rev'ed

[OMJ]

I'd say territory control is probably the way to go. Have the Revs take control of areas by protesting in the
, with each area allowing more people to be Rev'ed

rev shouldn't be gang +, strongly dislike the idea of territory control being an actual mechanic in game

[Frank_Stein]

I'd say territory control is probably the way to go. Have the Revs take control of areas by protesting in the
, with each area allowing more people to be Rev'ed

rev shouldn't be gang +, strongly dislike the idea of territory control being an actual mechanic in game

I can't really think of a way to keep the mode focused on killing team leaders that isn't going to turn into a race to find and kill the heads. Protecting an area at least keeps the teams focused to one spot.

I think if we're going to move forward on this we need define what makes gang and Rev different and how those can work mechanically in a team based way

[aft2001]

Personally, I'd like to figure out what needs to be fixed with Rev, but... What is the problem? People have discussed this, but what makes a Rev round not fun? I agree with Frank's suggestion to analyze the core mechanics of Rev.

In analyzing these symptoms, it may be possible to find whether or not the issue is inherent in the fundamental concept of the Rev game mode, or if these issues are a result of the execution of the concept.

If it's an issue with the concept, then scrapping Rev shouldn't be a problem.



However, I did have an interesting (but unrelated idea). Perhaps there could be two Revolutionary groups in competition with one another? Make it so that it can't turn out to be the Entire Crew versus the Heads and Security, but rather Half the Crew versus the Other Half versus the Heads and Security. A three-way conflict, dividing the crew. However, dealing with one of the Revolutions is a double-edged sword for the Loyalists - sure, they've dealt with a bunch of the Revs, but now the other Revolution can focus their efforts against the Loyalists.

Also, territory control doesn't seem like a terrible idea to me if this were the case. Maybe the Rev Heads and the NT Heads could raise flags in key areas? Flagpoles would be present in various areas and you could burn flags to get rid of them.

But this is just spitballing and kind of my stream-of-consciousness as I think about this issue, so, perhaps reconsider this specific idea after analysis of the game mode's mechanics.