Gangs on RP? What's your thoughts on it?

[CatzCatzCatz]

I've been seeing a lot of people being divided on whether or not Gangs is good on RP.

Discuss below.

[Emrsnn]

I liked gangs a while ago while we could still recruit people ourselves but now that members are pulled from ghosts, gangs on lowpop aren't really gangs anymore. It's just some loser in a suit with no friends. I play one of those every round already.

[Kateaclysm]

Really dislike playing Security on it. I dislike the mode in general so I've had it disabled for ages and thus I can't really comment on how it feels to play as a ganger... but... To be completely honest, I feel an audible groan coming on whenever I see gang tags being sprayed in the halls. I've had maybe... two gang rounds that aren't mildly irritating or downright miserable.

Security is in an awkward spot during it, being that they are either teamed up on and wiped out by two bored gangs that don't want to fight eachother, or get complaints that they were too hard on a gang, etc. The best gang rounds are the ones where security works to keep any gang violence out of the halls, and punishes visible crimes, but in my experience 90% of gang rounds end in frustration because the gang members are either too timid and want to lay low to avoid sec, or just ignore their (intended) blood-feud with the other gang and just wipe sec and rule the station as an 8-16 man gun-toting ultra gang.

I really wish it wasn't on RP, but as I understand it, it's not very popular on classic, either.

[Emimiyu]

I don't think gangs are bad for RP in general, but how some players tend to dislike it or not wanting to be cooperative while being in a coop antag game mode, can lead to a bad round. For example, I have had seen people who have said they hate gang rounds so what they do is rushing to sabotage all gangs to the point they took the gang headsets early and report everything they heard from "The Boss" announcement. People can get more hunty only from the idea "I have never had good gang round" which also lead to gangs believing crews dislike them anyway, why would play around and just rampage if they didn't get to do their gimmick with crew and get hostile reaction that seems part of their OOC when they tried to roleplay with crew.

The other side is that, people who play gangs have tendecy to just not cooperating even if the leader role is there. Leader tries to lead, members want to do things on their own and ditch it, or leader is unresponsive and doing things alone then ditch the members. Leader is also an important role that can make deaths trivial with respawn and revival methode, but if leader stay and avoid things that make them don't die, it can be less fun. On the other hand, leader being alive make gang not permanently removed from fighting security or being in fights with other gang. Though in my experience, of course the leader will take more fun action because it's a video game after all.

My summary of this, I don't think gang mode is bad, but OOC dislike can get into IC with some people who just outright hates a game mode. And then how COOP gameplay is just very hard to achieve the ideal because people tend to have different vision when grouped together.

[Chasu]

I‘ve played a decent amount of gang rounds (never as sec, luckily), and to me, gangs are in a weird spot.
Unlike traitors or many other antags, they rely on very open and obvious means to earn their tools. At first (~25mins) of the round, this isn‘t much of an issue, but, sooner or later, one gang gets into a confrontation with sec. Up until that point, security kind of has to tolerate gangs, to give them some space for their shenanigan(g)s. What I‘ve seen happen quite often is, after the first confrontation, security goes after anything remotely gang-related. I‘ve seen sec actively hunting for loot crates and stopping people with duffel bags to confiscate them. It quickly sucks the fun out of the gang activities, and leaves gangs with no choice but to try to team up against security, often underpowered.

Secondly, there‘s another factor distinguishing them from other RP antags: Objectives. Arcfiends, traitors, vampires, all have a fair amount of wiggle room in terms of how they go about fulfilling their objectives. Hell, I‘ve even seen Salvs with all sorts of hilarious gimmicks. But it‘s much more difficult for gangs. You have, firstly, a very direct objective (win) and, secondly, rivals. If one gang wants to do a gimmick, odds are that they‘ll lose to the more strategic second gang. With how objective-based the gang mode is, it simply doesn‘t allow for a lot of breaks. Of course, this makes it harder for sec-gang interactions to be fun and engaging, since they interrupt the flow of gang gameplay. There‘s always something happening, some person to interrogate, an area to tag, and if the gangs aren‘t incredibly-well organized, talking to those officers could be the difference between getting those good guns or being shot with them. There are quite a lot of objectives in a relatively short amount of time, making it easy to lose focus.

Now, my third point is rather short, and probably subjective, but, often, leadership and coordination (and RP) skills of gang leaders vary wildly depending on the gang. If you have a rather new player leading your gang, who might not be experienced with RP and just joined for the pop, you know you‘re in for a tough experience. I don‘t know what the requirements for gang leaders are, but I think having a separate requirement of RP gangster rounds to be able to play RP gang leader could help making the way gangs interact more RP-oriented.

TL;DR: Gangs often have to choose between (very rewarding) objectives, and RP, which can negatively impact the experience.

[Kotlol]

They fall in the same group as conspirators back in the day.

This game has a problem with people rolling antagonist and working as groups as much as I see.
I been in gangs several times as a non leader with the leader being clueless.
I been gang leaders where my gang members just didn't listen, want to coordinate and did whatever, putting their fellow members at risk!

They are fine but in RP need a bit of tweaking and freedom.

[klushy225]

I don't know what the solution is, but I agree with essentially everything Kate said when it comes to security and gangs. It's not fun to play security during gang rounds, and it seems no matter what you do there is somebody mad at you for going too hard or too soft.

[Durand]

This is a topic that I have been on both sides of so let me be as clear as i can be here.

Gangs should exist on RP, an almost whole infinite world of scenarios getting locked away would hurt variety.
The main problem with gangs is it's competitive nature and saturation, having 3 different groups all doing moves at once, mainly detrimental might i add to others, is just way too many people for a security team to handle, you can't get every print, get onto a situation and correctly assess it immediately when there is so many moving parts involved, and god forbid they overlap, which they often do, due to shared interests of all groups.

Competitiveness is another issue, most people even on the RP servers will just zoom about the place, not really letting any deeper scenario unfold naturally (some do but mostly within their inner circle) but often you will find that it's just a series of spray->duffel->spray->crate->spray and you feel the pressure that you will be outpaced by rival gangs if you slow down to RP because our brains are wired to want to avoid losing.

The resolution of this issue is twofold, we have to both change the way we look at gangs, how we play them, represent them on RP servers and how hard we're pushing the most often strained Security team and also how far the Security team pushes their Meta knowledge about gangs.
The second part of the solution is removing multiple gangs and instead put in a 3 man gang into a mixed round with other antags. This would solve the issues with tracking cases and overlapping, letting security piece together over the course of the round who the members of "the gang" are and eventually get enough dirt on them to make an arrest.
Of course this involves different objectives, say assassinations on particular members, ranging from botanists to heads of staff at later in the round for a boost in lockerpoints™ or taking over cargo for a 10 minute holdout, or bridge, or whatever might be appropriate for a gang to do, the other gameplay mechanics should honestly stay absolutely the same, just maybe give the graffiti a different use, maybe a territorial buff?
This would solve many issues, slow down the breakneck pace of turfing, let the baddies really chill and make scenarios and occasionally split someone's head open like a watermelon for lookin' at them wrong.
Case is, i just want to see what would happen if gangers could chill out for a bit, how many possible scenarios, of kidnappings, bribery and "protection services" are we missing, because of gangs being just way too fast of a gamemode.

[Kotlol]

Case is, i just want to see what would happen if gangers could chill out for a bit, how many possible scenarios, of kidnappings, bribery and "protection services" are we missing, because of gangs being just way too fast of a gamemode.

I do agree. With timers and clocks on the line... you might miss out on items to do something funny or interresting.

Not playing the gang wars? Well the other gang will get a heavy lead and weapons so your gang might be RPing, but soon Security might show up and blame you for something or the other gang decides to end you in the game.

I do not mind the turf and tag system.
I do not mind items most items and ways of doing.

But in my opinion? What it needs tweaking wise is insted of "GIVEN" a mission to get points.
Gangs can CHOSE their missions/objectives for points. With some global missions sprinkled in every 10 minutes. (like get the weapon crate)

For example:
- Produce <X> Amount of <items marked as contraband>
- Kill <<Staffy>>
- Kidnap and deliver <<STAFFY>>
- Steal <<ITEM>> from <<STAFFY>> and deliver it (I know kinda SPIEF)
- Get <X> amount of fresh organs.

You chose what you want to do. And can't get another mission till cleared.
The turf system gives passive income and buffs gangs in their turfs.

Finally you can also steal points from other gangs if you find their locker and use a special item to "Tap into it"
Just so you can be sneaky sometimes.

"But what about the other gangs knowing your mission and trying to stop you like it used to be?"
Nope. We are removing that. As long as gangs do not know what the other gangs objective is.. it becomes what it is.. SOCIAL DEDUCTION.
Gangs have to be in eachothers turf's to spy or steal from them. Now the loud gangs have "silent members" to gain info too.

The slower and more secretive nature between gangs means non of them will be rushing constantly and turf's won't expand insanely.

It probably won't stop gangs allying against security as much, but it incentivices deceit more. Cause now if one gang is ahead in points. You as other gangs have ways of stealing them if they are caught unaware. Like for example.. a security raid.

And sure gangs might rush their missions still or opt for easier missions (I mean harder missions get more points unlike the SPIEF system where you can get duct tape for stealing the HoS's hat vs.. "Picture of Monkey gives you katana") 
But atleast the competitiveness has lessened to an extend.

Atleast that's what I been brain storming for roleplay. But I do not think this is the perfect way and I just think the mission system and turf system need to be way less competitive.
As I once said with Conspirators. If you can vote or chose together for an objective and follow it through with rewards. They would be fun to play.
Gangs have that methode.

Another suggestion is that gangs mode will temporarely be with only 1 gang and be tweaked for roleplay to be a "Gangs lite/Conspirators heavy" methode.
Since now it is Security vs 1 gang. 
Naturlly the single gang can put down different lockers on their turf so that security cannot camp 1 locker.
I think this is the best suggestion "for the time being" as a single gang will be terrorizing/criming up the station.

[Retrino]

gangs on rp can be fun.... sometimes. theyre fun when you're in a gang that communicates and works together, but that (in my experience) is a small portion of gang rounds. also echoing some of the sentiment here, playing security against gangs is a headache at best and a round that makes you question why you're even playing security in general at worst. it is one of the few things that can drive me to cryo from a round. and that's being said from a perspective of someone who only plays low to mid pop, i cannot imagine how high pop sec players are dealing with 12 or 16 goobers running around with uzis. theres a lot you can do to organize during a gang round, such as setting hud flags or having someone actively on the console to keep people well recorded, but its just. a lot. thats the best way i can describe it. its A Lot and often too much. many people enjoy that playstyle though, all power to them. you just run into the problem of an abundance of people getting caught up in a punishment for something they might not've done but their other gang member did, or having the awkward period in the round where gangs are just openly tagging shit and youre sitting there thinking "yeah these are very obviously gang members, but i cant do shit about it until they inevitably show up with a bag full of guns and grenades in twenty minutes"

[Robbarthala]

i feel as if most of the time, gangers are pretty aggressive over the smallest of things, and playing as a ganger, the gangs usually broken up around the midpoint of the round

[TDHooligan]

There's a good set of valid issues with gang ATM, that I've not managed to get time to fix, but the pacing can definitely be way too fast for RP.
I'll look into the numbers, which should be fairly easy.

As for gang/sec interaction; I've been mulling over gang/sec interactions for a long time. I think the pacing might be a big part of it. I plan to disable firearms from the first duffle drops, so that gangs might want to go for better melee options earlier, and not escalate everything to unload all their guns ASAP.

The objective picking is also a good way to go about it. I'd be down for a global objective pool. It's just a lot of code and balancing.

While Gangs hasn't changed much due to a lot of business, I read every post about it in the discord/forums, and plan to implement/action a lot of the suggested changes in one way or another. Keep em comin.

[Lefinch]

I have an extremely probably hot take view that gangs might be at their very best if they were executed in more specialized round. A true "Time for crime" round.

-Security isn't there, they're on holiday. Or they're essentially operating like another gang.
-Crew are told this is the case and the expectation is that we're truly doing a frontier-style thing. Laws are at the barrel of a gang gun.
-Gang interaction with crew is far more about getting them to cooperate with them in-territory.

Obviously, this is a terrible idea, but I swear if someone bashes at it enough we could get something really great out of it. Super promise.

[NanoDano]

What if gangs got a limited amount of recruitment forms that were consumed on use and replenished over time?