Feedback: changeling body transfer testmerge

[Chasu]

SO #21572 is now in its testmerge phase, but nobody's bothered to make a feedback thread thus far, so here it is.
Firstly, my opinion:

I like the concept! Making people to improvise (and also not play the same recognizable character all the time) is a good thing. So far, there have been issues with some traits not carrying over when switching back into the previous body (the hairy trait, for example), but that's probably just bugs that'll be ironed out down the road. 
Once switching appearances includes traits & is more consistent, the effort to turn back into oneself (ID, clothes, etc.) would be the same as turning into ones victim pre-change. I feel like this addition can help in time-sensitive scenarios where the ling needs to change identity quickly. Changing identity is the whole point of the changeling after all, otherwise it'd just be a vampire.

Note: The PR is marked as experimental, the odds of this getting added aren't awfully high and probably dependant on player feedback.

[GARGATHUGANOKSREVENG]

Have they fixed the bug that I encountered last time they introduced the body swap mechanic?

I got the identity of someone by strangling them, dna transformed into them because I had an annoying gene that was stopping me from absorbing them, went on my way with absorbing them, and it gave them control of my body and turned me into a ghost saying I had died. Then they got rid of the changeling bodyswapping mechanic like a day later.

I guess I'll test it myself in a few hours.

I like the bodyswapping mechanic but it doesn't make sense with the way it currently works. If changelings are meant to be aliens that suck the fluid out of people with a proboscis, turning them into human husks, then somehow transferring their brain into the new body after it doesn't make any sense to me.

[True_Blue_Flare]

Should be on a toggle AT MINIMUM, last ling round I had I was just having to waste a lot of time stripping my old body for my things, which (among other things) led to me getting killed

[GARGATHUGANOKSREVENG]

Should be on a toggle AT MINIMUM, last ling round I had I was just having to waste a lot of time stripping my old body for my things, which (among other things) led to me getting killed

Wish stripping corpses was just faster in general

[Angel]

I agree with past points, it really should be a toggle, it's not always that you want to take on the new identity, specially if your old hasn't been compromised yet. Also, when you're going loud generally changing identities does not help much, but losing all your gear everytime you absorb someone, because when going loud you really won't have time to loot the past body, is really rough, or if you do decide to loot the past body, it is a massive risk. So I would rather it be a toggle, so you can chose to swap or not depending on necessity.

[Snowy :D]

I don’t hate it. It makes swapping identities much more streamlined. Even if my previous identity hasn’t been compromised I can just swap back to it later. I have noticed that changelings don’t swap identities very often so it’s nice for there to be a feature that encourages this.

That being said, I do agree with the fact that it is annoying to have to go out of your way to get back your old stuff. It often leads to me loosing things. I imagine that this is even more of an issue when you are going loud, although I personally don’t think that changeling is the type of antag where you should go loud, its toolkit just isn’t built on that.

[GARGATHUGANOKSREVENG]

 although I personally don’t think that changeling is the type of antag where you should go loud, its toolkit just isn’t built on that.

hemotox+armclaw and realize you can shred people to death within like 20 seconds

[Angel]

Ah also another point why it definitely needs to be toggleable, if someone has a bunch of negative traits and you eat them, you are forced to have those negative traits now, it becomes a bit annoying and meta that someone could purposely have  abuncha negative traits and bait the ling into eating them to sabotage the changeling, feels kinda lame to be punished because you ate somehow that happened to be running every negative trait ever and you couldn't even know.
Reminds me when skeletons were basically uneat-able

[Snowy :D]

I just watched a changeling who previously ate and swapped with someone who had like 5 microbombs try eating me. Their old body died and exploded gibbing both of us in the process.

[Cleaverwolf]

This change ruined my recent ling round, so I have a bit of a bias. I do not like this change, it punishes playing more aggressive as ling. This kind of body swapping leaves you quite vulnerable, and I feel like it'll ruin those "Oh shit" moments where you narrowly absorb someone mere seconds being caught or tased. I think at the bare minimum, as others have mentioned, this should be a toggleable thing.

[Vulwin_Gilran]

I think if it does become toggleable, there should be some kind of evidence left that helps determine if the husk was a drained body, or a body the ling hopped out of. My initial thoughts are leaving like reagents in the body, denatured enzymes or something just to give security a bit more to work with.

[Snoid]

brain damage carries over so thats a bit annoying. aside from that, it kinda makes some gimmicks a bit more annoying. i do like how it actually forces the ling to play into lings strengths instead of playing it like a rampager with a sleepypen.

the other day on classic there were 2 lings just kinda eating everyone (one of the first rampages ive seen in i think weeks) and both of them simutaneously ended up eating and turning into secoffs. when that happened, they didnt know the other was also a secoff, so they went on comms like "hey bro how u doing" "yeah im doing fine i was just hiding from the ling" "oh great man we should meet up" and it was extremely cute. sadly instead of one of them accidentally eating each other, they figured out what was going on the moment one of them started drooling and said IM LING. so i like those kinds of scenarios the merge creates.