Traitors Design Document (Real)

[Princess-Cheeseballs]

Description

Exactly as the title says, this is a design document for the traitors antagonist.
You already know why this exists if you're staff. Traitors is the most common gamemode and is the number one source of a lot of game design pains and everyone has different ideas on what needs to be done.

Collectively though, it's agreed something does need to be done and without a proper design and plan written down, Traitors as an antagonist and gamemode is just going to suffer.

This is a mald PR btw, I made this cause I was tired of constant talk about what traitors need and no action being done (Yes, I know I'm a hypocrite considering I also actively engage in these discussion and am easily top 3 yappers on the topic).

If you have a review for the grammar or w/e leave it here. If you have a different idea for what traitors should be leave it in the discourse thread.

This is also my view on what traitors should strive to be as a gamemode and the design decisions I think should be followed that would lead to that. In terms of features I left it minimal mostly referencing things I like and things I dislike about current traitors. There's not much concrete here on "What should be added" so if you're here for that, sorry to say but that's not what the doc is for.

[Princess-Cheeseballs]

Me when I forget to add it to SUMMARY.md

[Princess-Cheeseballs]

https://forum.spacestation14.com/t/traitors-design-doc/25363
Discussion thread

[Djungelskog2]

I think this is well put! It could go further into specifics of how they could be balanced however. People often talk about how one traitor shouldnt be more or even as powerful as a security officer, or how they should be able to handle about two without mentioning how variable their loadouts and approaches can be. I think clarifications in this area can narrow it down, such as traitors with a couple kill objectives being on about equal grounds with a security officer, someone needing a single kill and to steal things should be typically weaker than, but if they are well prepared to go loud and have the skill to back it up (Combat could probably use a higher skill ceiling but thats irrelevant) they could take down a handfull of people. I am particularly interested in this area of balancing because of rules regarding 2.9 which I know you mention at the end.

[SolventMercury]

I completely agree with the proposal, this is right on the money. I would like to see a bit more put in about what happens after a traitor fails, because they're fairly unique in that regard; currently, most of our antags are either kill on sight threats (e.g. dragons, ninjas, nukies) whose rounds fail very conclusively when they are killed, or else conversion antagonists (e.g. converted revs) whose antag time ends with them losing their antag status and becoming normal crew again. Highlighting what should and shouldn't happen from a game design standpoint when security successfully susses out a traitor and has them detained would be a very good idea.

I'd be happy to look over the grammar stuff tomorrow morning.

[iaada]

Grammar suggestions. There are a few places I reworded things, but tried not to change the content of what was being said.

[Princess-Cheeseballs]

Updated the doc to fix grammar issues and update desired behaviors from items of specific categories.

[deathride58]

Looking over this, we notice there's one area in particular that isn't really touched upon

Right now, a major part of why traitors are generally unmotivated in accomplishing their objectives is that there genuinely isn't much incentive to do them, and many objectives can be reversed before round-end unless actions are taken that have a high probability of outing you as a traitor. This leads to players feeling as though there's genuinely no point in pursuing their objectives until the shuttle's en route.

With the design doc as written, we don't feel like much will effectively change for traitors if this design gets pursued; station sabotage can be reversed before round-end, and crew members can similarly be revived to stop the objective from counting. Under the design doc, traitors still receive all their objectives at roundstart, and there's nothing proposed that may encourage a traitor towards actions that contribute to round flow. More interesting objectives are proposed, yes, but the doc appears to be written under the assumption that interesting objectives combined with a higher quantity of them will be enough for players to pursue them mid-round, without really addressing the lack of incentive to actually do so.

[Princess-Cheeseballs]

Looking over this, we notice there's one area in particular that isn't really touched upon

Right now, a major part of why traitors are generally unmotivated in accomplishing their objectives is that there genuinely isn't much incentive to do them, and many objectives can be reversed before round-end unless actions are taken that have a high probability of outing you as a traitor. This leads to players feeling as though there's genuinely no point in pursuing their objectives until the shuttle's en route.

With the design doc as written, we don't feel like much will effectively change for traitors if this design gets pursued; station sabotage can be reversed before round-end, and crew members can similarly be revived to stop the objective from counting. Under the design doc, traitors still receive all their objectives at roundstart, and there's nothing proposed that may encourage a traitor towards actions that contribute to round flow. More interesting objectives are proposed, yes, but the doc appears to be written under the assumption that interesting objectives combined with a higher quantity of them will be enough for players to pursue them mid-round, without really addressing the lack of incentive to actually do so.

I could expand more on this but ideally objectives would be harder to reverse. The ninja is a good example of this with a lot of their objectives:

• Detonate a bomb in x important location
• Call in a threat
• Steal research

Both of these are quick to do and cannot be reversed. This would do away with most if not all steal objectives since most are exceptionally low impact and very easy to reverse which incentivizes hiding in space.

Kill objectives should be scrutinized since they can easily be done at the end of the round, and are often meaningless in the grand scheme of the round. Who cares if a passenger who just installed the game was gibbed, this affects no one.

I didn't want to mention progressive objectives since I think good objective and uplink design is agnostic to progressive objectives. If we want to do prog traitor that's something which can be attached to an already good design to economically incentivize spreading things out throughout the round.

[Djungelskog2]

Looking over this, we notice there's one area in particular that isn't really touched upon

Right now, a major part of why traitors are generally unmotivated in accomplishing their objectives is that there genuinely isn't much incentive to do them, and many objectives can be reversed before round-end unless actions are taken that have a high probability of outing you as a traitor. This leads to players feeling as though there's genuinely no point in pursuing their objectives until the shuttle's en route.

With the design doc as written, we don't feel like much will effectively change for traitors if this design gets pursued; station sabotage can be reversed before round-end, and crew members can similarly be revived to stop the objective from counting. Under the design doc, traitors still receive all their objectives at roundstart, and there's nothing proposed that may encourage a traitor towards actions that contribute to round flow. More interesting objectives are proposed, yes, but the doc appears to be written under the assumption that interesting objectives combined with a higher quantity of them will be enough for players to pursue them mid-round, without really addressing the lack of incentive to actually do so.

I think most motivating factors for traitors should be behind the round progressing and crew progressing positively through science, security, and crew objectives.

[aaro1996]

Looking over this, we notice there's one area in particular that isn't really touched upon
Right now, a major part of why traitors are generally unmotivated in accomplishing their objectives is that there genuinely isn't much incentive to do them, and many objectives can be reversed before round-end unless actions are taken that have a high probability of outing you as a traitor. This leads to players feeling as though there's genuinely no point in pursuing their objectives until the shuttle's en route.
With the design doc as written, we don't feel like much will effectively change for traitors if this design gets pursued; station sabotage can be reversed before round-end, and crew members can similarly be revived to stop the objective from counting. Under the design doc, traitors still receive all their objectives at roundstart, and there's nothing proposed that may encourage a traitor towards actions that contribute to round flow. More interesting objectives are proposed, yes, but the doc appears to be written under the assumption that interesting objectives combined with a higher quantity of them will be enough for players to pursue them mid-round, without really addressing the lack of incentive to actually do so.

I could expand more on this but ideally objectives would be harder to reverse. The ninja is a good example of this with a lot of their objectives:

* Detonate a bomb in x important location

* Call in a threat

* Steal research

Both of these are quick to do and cannot be reversed. This would do away with most if not all steal objectives since most are exceptionally low impact and very easy to reverse which incentivizes hiding in space.

Kill objectives should be scrutinized since they can easily be done at the end of the round, and are often meaningless in the grand scheme of the round. Who cares if a passenger who just installed the game was gibbed, this affects no one.

I didn't want to mention progressive objectives since I think good objective and uplink design is agnostic to progressive objectives. If we want to do prog traitor that's something which can be attached to an already good design to economically incentivize spreading things out throughout the round.

Also - with kill objectives there's often a metagame reason to delay them till end of shift too. I know personally I tend to push my kills back since I don't want to just end someone's shift super early in.

Related to this, kill objectives as they're implemented probably shouldn't target interns. Interns already can't roll antags - I think it might be worthwhile extending this to kill targets as well.

It feels bad for all involved. Traitors don't feel good killing someone who often doesn't even know what's being done to them. The interns often get killed and don't know why, what happened, or what to do about it.

[Djungelskog2]

Reminder we should keep this in the discussion thread

[Princess-Cheeseballs]

Looking over this, we notice there's one area in particular that isn't really touched upon

Right now, a major part of why traitors are generally unmotivated in accomplishing their objectives is that there genuinely isn't much incentive to do them, and many objectives can be reversed before round-end unless actions are taken that have a high probability of outing you as a traitor. This leads to players feeling as though there's genuinely no point in pursuing their objectives until the shuttle's en route.

With the design doc as written, we don't feel like much will effectively change for traitors if this design gets pursued; station sabotage can be reversed before round-end, and crew members can similarly be revived to stop the objective from counting. Under the design doc, traitors still receive all their objectives at roundstart, and there's nothing proposed that may encourage a traitor towards actions that contribute to round flow. More interesting objectives are proposed, yes, but the doc appears to be written under the assumption that interesting objectives combined with a higher quantity of them will be enough for players to pursue them mid-round, without really addressing the lack of incentive to actually do so.

Updated the doc to be a bit clearer when it comes to what good objectives should look like.

[RemFexxel]

I've left comments that are about spelling mistakes or grammar improvements. Some of these comments, however, are just for improving the wording.

[Princess-Cheeseballs]

Added job specific items category as well as discussed how items should ideally be priced. I think this doc is done pending more review.

[Princess-Cheeseballs]

Fixed grammar mistakes should be gtg. I'll put a poll up tomorrow if I don't get more reviews.

[K-Dynamic]

Please let me know if I should continue with my suggestions, as my style of writing is drastic.

[EthanQix]

Spelling nitpick : several instances of "sabotage"/"sabotaging" spelled as "sabatoge"/"sabatoging".

[K-Dynamic]

Sleep-deprived review, still got another third of the document to go after I sleep.

[RemFexxel]

Another review for grammar and parts you may want to edit.

[Princess-Cheeseballs]

Grammar, updated "Solo Antag" section and added a vibe to the overview. Unfortunately "This is Shadowrun" does not count for a vibe so it's not mentioned anywhere in the document.