TLDR Rat King serves almost no purpose in the round besides killing anyone unarmed and then dying to security in less than 10 minutes OR doing nothing and trying to be friendly and then dying to security in two minutes. Alongside this, people are constantly malding both IC and OOC about how rat king is supposed to work and it leads to a lot of toxicity.
I think that rat king is in a weird spot where people still treat them as free agents and a lot of them still play rat kings as free agents- rat king is itself designed around being a free agent but defining them as a solo antagonist really gives security even more incentive to immediately gun them down.
Because of their definition as a solo antagonist security has begun immediately declaring red alerts for rat kings and gunning them down regardless of intention or action- this is the same response as other midround dedicated antags like ninjas or dragons despite the clear differences and objectives that each have from rat king.
You have inherent conflict (both IC and OOC) between players that are ok and cool with rat king and players that just KOS rat king (which is generally encouraged by their new solo antagonist definition) This results in high levels of toxicity and salt for the rat king which is generally either complete murderbone or constant malding over being killed as an antag.
I just think it's not a good role, not balanced in the slightest around being a solo antag, and should just be removed pending a rework that should be put in place to give them a purpose and or actual midround balancing around it to give them something to do besides either getting gunned down by sec immediately or going on a murder rampage for a short amount of time on unarmed crew.
Thanks for listening and reading please let me know any thoughts and comments below.
