Replace dead drop loot with a reduced uplink.

[CatzCatzCatz]

A lot of people don't like how dead drops are working as they tend to be often risky for too little reward.

So, I suggested that we should replace the loot in a dead drop with an uplink with reduced TC instead as it offers more flexibility and people do like the idea enough that it's worth putting on the forums.

So, what are y'all opinions on this suggestion?

[kyle2143]

After seeing this discussed in adminchat, the general vibe seems like this idea goes against the "work with what you have" sort of design philosophy of sleepers.

It sounds to me like a better solution to the problem would be an update to dead drops either in terms of rewards or some other mechanic. But I think the point is to not give them very powerful stuff, since there are presumably other antags around already.

[GARGATHUGANOKSREVENG]

Who are the "lot of people" who think dead drops are too risky, and why do they think that? They're rare and I've hardly had them but from the times I did get dead drops they gave me pretty decent loot. I agree with kyle and I've never seen anyone complain about them nor want it to be replaced.

[Whele]

Being a sleepy agent is all about IMPROV! If the syndicate wanted you to have an uplink they would have GIVEN it to ya!

[Torchwick]

To be fair I’ve seen a lot of people complain about dead drops. I’ve had them pop up in horribly inconvenient locations and give me nothing but insuls, agent card, and a flash assembly. Could you call it a skill issue to be unable to do much with that? Sure. Do I think dead drops are fine as is? No.

I’d like to see the loot pool made to be more worth it, and I’d love to see them a guarantee each round. It’s rough to finally get a dead drop at minute 85 and to only gain some fancy insulated gloves for the trouble. I understand that it’s about improv, but I think we’d see less scenarios of people rolling sleeper and doing nothing with it if dead drops gave more tools for crime regardless of skill level.

[Skotcher]

A reduced uplink seems pretty powerful, but I agree that some better rewards would be great. Some more single use, uncraftable tools would be fun. A breaching charge, a single EMP (or any) grenade, a firearm without extra ammo, a special tool (ex: omnitool/quickhack), etc.

I think knowing that a dead drop will give you access to tools you can not get anywhere else would be great and would encourage people to grab dead drops more often. It could be bad luck on my end, but in my experience and from people that I've talked to, dead drops often end up very underwhelming.

Alternatively, when a dead drop is highlighted for you, just have it list what's in the dead drop so you can make the choice then and there if it's worth it to grab it.

[SalmonidJester]

For the roleplay server specifically, a guarantee of at least a voice changer would be all I personally want changed for dead drops. It's good for RP, allowing you to directly interact with crew antagonistically without the automatic risk that comes with that, while also not being too powerful and removing sleeper agents status as a more "makeshift" antag.