Bad actors in sec: a disorganized rant from a disgruntled casual

[Monkeyman476]

I've recently had a pretty generic traitor round, nothing I haven't experienced many times before, where I was an officer and the sec team was.... fucking atrocious. Im not talking about bad at their jobs, I mean bad roleplayers, bad participants in this form of shared story telling we call SS14 (and likely bad people). It was particularly bad because both ward and Hos were doing the kinds of things I am going to talk about, but pretty much every round at least SOME amount of officers are always exhibiting some combination of these characteristics... every single time...

My three big issues with certain sec players (who I think deserve to be banned if they do these things in excess but the current rules don't really outlaw most of this behavior) are:

1. Literally not talking to fucking anyone but other sec officers all goddamn round and even then only talking to report something or give orders.
2. Complain in character and out of character for poor sec performance, give unwarranted advice after every round, use only meta strats for antags they should have no idea about and tell others to use those same strats, and in general just care about sec "winning" a round.
3. Powergame in ways not falling into the other two categories.

I constantly see seccies who cast off any amount of real roleplay to play this game as a pvp sim, as antag these people suck because they can't be negotiated around in any interesting way and they make losing as an antag so fucking boring because the only thing youll hear is the ward telling you your sentence. As a member of sec these people suck because the already limited exposure sec has to any actual conversation is usually talking to other officers so sometimes being Hos is just talking to my fucking self while every officer is busy metagaming their "random searches" and never once taking a break from patrolling. And for everyone else on the server it tends to mean you get two things from sec, absolutely no interaction or put in a jail cell.

I wont name names but as a sec main it is the SAME PEOPLE, AGAIN AND A FUCKING GAIN. Some of which from some people is just kinda inexcusable, like could a person put their brain together and come up with a solution to a certain antag with limited information, sure, should you be shouting the meta way to deal with an antag that you have been given only the most basic detail of 20 seconds ago to every officer and demanding they follow it (not hos)? FUCK NO, you should get banned for that, I don't wanna hear your meta bullshit way to win every round against blood cult or how to deal with x traitor item, I want to organically explore and resolve issues according to how they unfold. While less actively harmful to a round, I dont want to hear your meta shit AFTER THE ROUND EITHER, NOBODY ASKED FOR YOU TO REVIEW SECS PERFORMANCE, nobody asked "how do I be a better officer?", a bunch of people played according to ROLEPLAY and didnt just run to go grab a bomb/grenade they didnt know they needed yet for an antag they weren't 100% certain even existed.

If you read this and have anything to take away, please let it be that you should be the change you want to see in the world, in the same way every issue with CCVIPS can be resolved by a HOS giving a shit, so too can excessive powergaming be regulated incredibly easy by a good HOS. Guy arrested without evidence turns out to be an antag because the seccie powergamed the hell out of it? Let that person go. Someone yelling out meta solutions to antags? Talk over them and say "no, just fucking shoot it". Officers literally jumping to find evidence of an antag they shouldn't know about and reporting only the exact details that would help HOS identify that antag? "I dont know, keep looking". So many HOSes are just utterly complicit not of in-character crimes but in out-of-character crimes, they just let some round get absolute ruined for some people, antags that stand no fucking chance and get powergamed out of their equipment in the first few mins of a round and crew that get no interesting disruption or time to grab a gun and help, no chemists or parameds that get to coordinate a sec rescue, no other command members that have to explain shit to their team. Sec can solve every round in two mins, SS14 is not a pvp game, its not made to be balanced, a competent sec team wins every. single. round. Instead I beg every officer, warden and hos. TALK WITH THE TRAITOR, talk with the thief talk with the cultist talk with the crew, hell get fucking killed because you were too busy talking, both you and EVERYONE ELSE will have SO MUCH MORE fun if you just..... take the game less seriously and ROLEPLAY IN THE FUCKING ROLEPLAYING GAME. Even people who aren't powergaming but just take officer really seriously, you aren't going to find another antag just cause you ignored the guy trying to get your attention, you don't need to either ignore or insult every prisoner, you are allowed to be nice to some of them, and for the love of god when you need something from someone.... just fucking ask them instead of taking it because "sec needs it" (sec entitlement needs to be STUDIED, it is biblical levels of greed how much some of these people think they deserve just for playing the red job instead of another color.)

In the round that sparked this rant we caught like some of the traitors, a number of others got away with full greentext. In nukies and cult and other team antags its pretty cut and dry win or lose, but powergaming in traitors or thief is so fucking stupid cause like, cool, we ruined that one dudes experience by metagaming the hell outta them and like two others got arrested once or twice cause you powergamed them, meanwhile the only piece of satisfaction you get is someone else's green went red and I assume you get some sadistic fucking assholic joy in this too. I, on the other hand, was laughing my ass off at my own dialogue as Timmy Tuesday, I was on spitting some PEAK Timmy Tuesday bullshit and the crew were eating it up lol. Even dealing with metagaming asshole one and complicit, refuses to talk to anyone unless barking orders and never takes a single moment of break all shift two I had a blast. :p

(ps. powergaming is a spectrum, I think to play sec is to "powergame" at least somewhat, especially on Funky where the metashield exists and constantly generates conflict from people mishandling IC knowledge, from both sec and nonsec alike. My complaints are for people who 1. Do these behaviors frequently (like I said, its the same people, when I see some names I just know im in for some bullshit ) 2. do the most extreme of these behaviors 3. Actually and meaningfully affect the gameplay experiences of others)

[catshark]

roleplay is when talking

[BrickKent]

the problem is that it's sort of a snowball effect:

powergaming sec ignores rp -> antag ignores rp
antag ignores rp -> new sec dies for trying to rp
"antag ignored rp so why bother" -> new sec turns into powergaming sec
repeat

for example, i was playing HOS and i ran into coscult one time, i tried to simply arrest them for being in maints on red even though i knew it was coscult but while i was trying to verbally get them to comply i got out of body stunned and then killed for the rest of the round.
if i hadn't done more speaking than tell them "comply" and opened fire i would have lived and it kind of sucks it's that way...

[AAAAAAAAAAANGELA]

thing to note for me with this post is the blame on the player which is of course the actual easiest target to see any problem, I dont like arguing for some sort of "good sportmanship" because that relation or main way of playing the game is extremely toxic and is what ended up driving me away from other severs culture.
Meta shields and that good "sportmanship" culture at the end of the day what it does is not turn the game any intresting on my eyes, it leads to directly contradictory choises made by players or having to "dumb down" for artificial reasons which is incredibly frustraing the longer ive played, not because of using the "meta", but simply because punishing general game knowlege instead of desigining things around the idea that no matter what there will be people who know what to do, and can do things automatically,
You think as an example it is a bad thing that a competent sec team can really stop the current antag pool, yea its true but i dont see a problem if sec is competent, comunicates and takes good mechanical choises, that is just rewarded with the fact they keep order
And i dont fully get what kind of cases you mean with "screams the meta to kill x"
Which tends to arrive from just a logical train of taught, as an example shuttle BC bases, you can
A fuck around try to do an impossible shuttle chase
B have a team with jetpacks just bomb it
The second is the best way to go about it rather than let them just dock and fight and its something just completely logical "oh they use a shuttle FTL/movemeant to evade everyone, then use jetpacks and sabotage their ability to do so" sure and that conclusion can just be reached the second you hear about it, and bloodcult is punished for making a single base far away from station where their advantages are incredibly limited and the antag is made specifically to not work with spaced areas and you decide to actively be in spaced areas with a shuttle.
sure I could decide to do anything else it jusr wouldnt make sense as its a waste of manpower and will likely get half the officers converted.
But the point is that i want you to understand
Theres little to no point on blaming players for acting in a way that would help their respetive side win, or play in a way that prevents them from being easily caught, and how antagonists should expect and have better tools to deal with these csses, because if anything it just reads as a round design issue or an antagonist issue rather than sec playing and dealing with threats correctly