[PR] Adds rare antag token drops for low population servers

[github_bot]

PULL REQUEST DETAILS





About the PR
At the end of a round, all players who have participated will have a small chance to be awarded a free antag token, provided they don't already have one.
The chance maxes out at 10% and scales down with a couple of factors
- The population imbalance between this server and the highest population Goonstation server. For example, if the highest pop server has 60 people and the one you're on only has 10 you'll have a (relatively) high roll chance.
- The amount of time you've been connected to the round, your chance will be reduced proportionally based on how much of the round you weren't connected for, so logging in for 10 minutes at the end will yield a lower chance than playing the entire round.
- If the ratio between the highest population server and this one is > 0.6 (ie 36/60) there will be no drop chance at all.

TODO: Handle Nightshade separately?
Why's this needed?
There's a lot of reasons why people end up flocking to the highest population server and this doesn't pretend to fix any/all of them, buuut it might help a bit! It's a small incentive to try out a lower population server, especially as your antag token can then be spent on any server you like.
Will this lead to 16 bajillion antags every round? Idk! Hopefully not, since inherently the people rolling a high chance to get a token will be a very small number due to being on the lower population server.
Will this abused? I'm sure some people will try to, but it's quite hard to abuse as written and we can as usual take admin action against people obviously fishing (ie joining a round just to go AFK the whole time) in the same way we do against regular antag fishing behaviour.
Testing
Due to its nature this pretty much has to be tested on live. Testmerge!

Changelog

Code:

changelog
(u)LeahTheTech
(*)Playing on one of the less populated servers will now give you a small chance to earn an antag token at the end of each round.

PULL REQUEST DETAILS

[kyle2143]

No, we're not doing this.

Edit: Ok actually let me read this instead of just the title.

Edit 2: Ok I sort of get your reasoning, now that I decided to read it. But I'm still not sold on it Leah, you monster. Fight me in the Ring to decide the fate of this PR!

[LeahTheTech]

Not everything can be decided with wrestling kyle!!!

[Asterion0]

I will say that my biggest concern is that because it maxes out at 1, people will be inclined to use the token immediately, potentially on another lowpop round. This would lead to potentially double the usual antags on lowpop, or even more if people are lucky!
And as for the abusing it, the easiest way I can see would be to just, play until token -> use token and do a stinky rampage (and I do mean a stinky one) -> cause pop to leave because of it -> boom higher antag token chance (On classic at least).
While I would like to support it (because I don't have an antag token and am a chronic collector) it uh, definitely seems like it could very much backfire (or weed out stinkers who need to be banned). However that's a lot more admin work considering you'd need to make a study of "are they rampaging and causing people to be salty because theyre just robust and like rampaging, or to cause an intentional pop drop for better antag token chances?"
Overall the big issue is that the reward being an antag token will give people the tools to rampage and cause pop drops easier, potentially creating a self feeding loop since the people who just want one for the novelty will stop once they have the singular token, while the repeat offendors won't
Also this is a kinda hastily written reply from mobile I'll probably give this a second look later on after other people yap on it too

[LeahTheTech]

I really don't see people deliberately trying to reduce the population of the server they're playing on just to get very slightly higher chance of a token next round. No-one likes low pop, everyone wants more people around (sometimes to kill!)

[Snoid]

filed under ideas that are maybe dumb enough to work

my main argument tho is that i hear that a lot of rp players just dont ever have antags enabled and its easy to get antag on those servers? i dont play them so i cant confirm, but if thats the case then a lot of players might just not care enough about that incentive for this to make a meaningful difference.

a better solution would probably involve inventing a whole new reward mechanic but idk what the rewards would be.

[kyle2143]

I really don't see people deliberately trying to reduce the population of the server they're playing on just to get very slightly higher chance of a token next round. No-one likes low pop, everyone wants more people around (sometimes to kill!)

You only think that because you think it's unfair!!!!

[RSOD]

I'd rather it be able to give more than one max, or not have it be antag tokens but rather a different reward. also, what if it greentexting heavily influenced chances?

[KikiMofo]

I get the idea and I kinda like it though maxing the token at 1 is kinda rough as someone who has had like 3 tokens saved for a decade.

[LeahTheTech]

Spend your goddamn tokens omg (hopefully people will be more likely to if they're less Unique and Magical anyway)

[Asterion0]

After mildly thinking more on it, I do think the chances of someone specifically trying to lower pop as antag is unlikely (albeit it still not wholly impossible imo), but some of the other issues kinda do still stand.
As Snoid said, this won't matter to people who don't really play antag anyways, since antag tokens aren't something they'll use even if they have one. For people who don't really care outside of just having the singular token, it also doesn't really matter since you just get the one and you're done. Same deal for people who already have one or especially multiple, unless they use them up it won't matter to them all too much.
Still an issue is the opposite of hoarding, which is that it might cause people to instantly use them on another lowpop round to maximize their odds of getting a new one faster, increasing antag count on some lowpop rounds (mostly because of how few antags there are). In a similar vein would be people being really eager to call a shuttle at the most minor inconvenience on lowpop (especially less than one), since you'd cycle through the rounds quicker for more antag token chances (could be solved by making your personal chance for rolling a token only happen once an hour? since tying it to round time might have the inverse effect).
Final issue would be that it might bring a kinda 'forced' atmosphere to lowpop rounds, where some of the people there don't reeeeally want to play, but are instead just there anyways in the hopes of getting an antag token (Although I imagine this would be far less common than either of the other two issues)
However!!! (three exclamation points so you know this is where the second half begins), The first two issues are in retrospect solved by the chance just. Being abysmally low lol. Worst case scenario the system *should* have the intended effect, at least for a while before any of the previously stated issues start popping up (maybe solved by getting admins to occasionally set special modes pre-round to get people to pop the antag tokens on those every once in a while?) but yeah. By that point I'd imagine that it'd snowball enough for the pop disparity to not be as actually abysmal as it currently can get, since even 5 people who consistently use their tokens would practically double classic pop :sob: (please play classic please please)
Of course a lot of these issues can also be solved by admins just taking players doing icky things out back (banning them (or just setting their antag tokens to negative 1 morbillion so they will never get one)). Does run into the eternal issue that will be admins begging people to A-Help rule breaks, even if it's only potentially rule breaking-ish behaviour they see because even the people saying they have probably haven't (something I've heard admins(plural) complain about). But that's a separate issue that is even harder to solve than this already difficult one.
Another (potentially alternate or potentially as an addendum) thing that could be added is a 'graveyard shift' spacebux bonus at round end, that works in a semi-similar way but is just a more consistent reward (would only really matter for spooktober but still!!! I want to be able to afford pixel pass every round.,..(I am very biased))
Honestly even if it does have it's issues, a 1 or 2 week testmerge could still help resolve the pop issues, hell, you could even ONLY ever testmerge it in times of dire pop disparity as a sort of temporary event telling people "PLEASE fix one server having triple the pop of the other two combined". Honestly may be the best approach since you avoid the first issue and can stop it when the admins get too busy with other things in their life to comb through the details of everyone who might be trying to farm antag tokens overnight.

[Lord_earthfire]

I feel most non-abuse-case issues raised mostly come from an RP-server view.

Ans honestly, i don't think that PR is targeted at that. Low pop RP is fine.

I feel low pop classic needs something like this. The question is only if we can keep the abuse at bay.

A positive point is that high to mid-pop RP could get a few more antags. The antag count in RP is too low for ages due to masive amounts of latejoins. Although thats more a bandsid than a proper fix (latejoin-antag rework when?)

[freedo5]

Couldn't someone game this by joining into a low pop server to just jump in a closet and then stay logged whilr they do something else irl? You'd get the benefit of joining the round, without participating effectively

[Torchwick]

I am excited to see this tried out. Abuses of this system can easily be ahelped and patterns could be recognized to lead to antag bans, etc. One concern that RubberRats mentioned in discord (that I agree is a worry of mine too) is that this may lead to people creating an ‘antag-only’ character on RP. I think that if this PR goes well, it would probably be beneficial to add a rule against this. The pattern of people that do this would be recognized quickly and a rule would just settle everything in stone.

[Emimiyu]

Neutral on this, but maybe it should also have limit on server where there are 0-2 people?