Do we really need the suicide verb?

[Coldflame]

 

To be completely honest, I'm not sure what purpose the suicide verb actually serves. The only ones I can see are:

-Killing yourself slightly more effectively than via 'natural' methods

-Killing yourself whilst prevented from doing so 'naturally', (i.e. by cuffs or by being near other players who will step in and prevent it)

-Killing yourself in a manner that prevents being revived

-Using suicide 'tactics' as an antag (i.e. wizard bodyswap shenanigans, suiciding just before dock for death traitor objective, etc)

 

I've not played recently, but I seem to recall a somewhat prevalent amount of players typing suicide as soon as they were detained by sec, captured by an antag, or faced any other form of adversity or loss of agency. I personally feel like the suicide verb goes against the spirit of the game given the complete lack of ways to prevent another player using it. Around 95% of the time players will be perfectly free to beat themselves to death, space themselves, OD, or kill themselves however they see fit; The times that actually call for use of the suicide verb are those it probably shouldn't actually be used.

 

From a balance standpoint the verb also has some issues. As stated above, it has various uses as an antag; a somewhat common wizard tactic is to suicide and then bodyswap, which is neither an intended use of the bodyswap spell nor the suicide verb (for a single spellpoint the wizard gains a significantly more powerful version of disintegrate, in effect.) Traitors with die a glorious death can not possibly fail this objective unintentionally- Unless they're unconscious, they can type in the suicide verb (on a side note, this also removes tension from the otherwise interesting dynamic of a traitor protecting another traitor with the die objective). Antags with complete control other other players (shadowling, mindslavers, vampires), can also force a detained inferior to use the verb, taking them out of the round and instantly closing off a lead to themselves.

 

All of that said, the suicide verb certainly isn't a huge issue. I'm curious as to what others think of the suicide verb (perhaps I could be somewhat bias against it, though I've tried to be fairly objective with this).

 

[NTSAM]

 

I feel like we should keep the Suicide verb, but make a rule stating that if you're a non-antag that suicides when taken in by Security, you can be punished.

If people still use it to be dicks, we should just restrict it to Traitors/nukies/lings only or make some kind of option that allows it, but I hope we never do.

 

[Dumbdumn5]

 

There's unwritten rules that go with suiciding, and to be entirely honest, I don't think we should take it away. Yes, you can use it in a lot of situations, but we do have a number of repercussions for it. Caught by cultists and converted or thralled by a ling? Suicide and earn yourself a warning, followed by a permanent or week long antag ban if you repeat it.. Suicide when caught by sec? Get notes and warnings, then eventually a ban if they do it too much. Suicide tactics as an antag are acceptable and a fairly efficient way to use your powers, especially since things like mindswap knock out both targets and could actually lead to anybody with sense to axe the antag before he wakes up.

 

(Note, we've gone under discussion about reworking the way antag-banned players actually react when an antag tries to convert them so as to benefit the antag for their time while still preventing the banned player from reaching an antag position.)

 

[davidchan]

 

Suicide verb is pretty damn stupid and quite often abused.

 

For one, its so damn fast and almost unpreventable, unless you have an instant stun they are going to kill themself.

 

Making it possible to suicide while cuffed was also a mistake. A cuffed person can't even shoulder slam an agressor, let along wrist slam or grab people, yet able to gouge their eyes out or bite their hand off? Both of these things are immursion breaking to me, personally, and we already have suicide in the game through other means, be it shooting yourself in the mouth to beating your own head in, I seem to recall stamps also give a humorous death if you use them.

 

Ultimately the worst part about the suicide verb is how nonchalantly a player can kill themselves, completey overcoming natural survival insticts that id personally consider an rp violation/rule violation. Be it the CE who suicided after I culted him to the various antags who will self terminate upon being caught, the only antags that should be allowed to suicide are those with explosive implants or extreme brainwashing, and suciding as a team antag only hurts your team regardless of the chances of your escape.

 

[improvedname]

 

H e y what about

Ya know when ye suicide in die glorious! And still be succesfull?

WHAT about you fail if you suicide!

 

[MarvinMartian34]

Wait...suicide verb counts as a glorious death? WHY? That doesn't sound very glorious. Things like jumping into singulo, farting on a bible in front of bridge, lighting yourself on fire, etc. is more glorious.

[AzyWng]

 

As a player with security experience, I can tell you that there have been several instances where individuals have self-terminated when being caught.

 

It goes against basic human instinct, it makes no sense when they're cuffed...

 

Yeah.

 

I'm not entirely sure what the point of the suicide verb is, exactly, since (as others have said) there are many more means of ending ones own life than simply typing 'suicide', and the times when those are not available are usually the times when the act of suicide is a Bad Idea IC and OOC.

 

For IC, holding one's own breath or gouging your own eyes out... It doesn't show any blood. I haven't seen anyone's eyes gouged out, ever, but I'm pretty sure that pushing your thumbs into your eyes will result in at least a little blood. When this is done when the individual is BOTH HANDCUFFED AND BUCKLED, it just makes no sense.

 

As far as 'meta' goes, the suicide verb seems to just be a way to simply escape consequences when you get caught by security or those who are justice-minded.

 

I've never seen an instance of a time where the suicide verb was really roleplayed. People who were detained would just use it to escape their mortal coil, and thus escape punishment.

 

TL:DR;

 

I see no point to the suicide verb.

 

[NTSAM]

 

As I've said before, restrict it to Nukies, traitors, and lings, so then they'll have an actual reason to when caught.

Also, yes, it shouldn't count as a glorious death.

 

[Tauka Usanake]

Why not just make it that you can only suicide with a tool? You can't hold things while cuffed and syndicates and traitors can be considered as having a cyanide pill in their mouth that can let them suicide whenever they are conscious. Maybe like a false tooth

[NTSAM]

 

Why not just make it that you can only suicide with a tool? You can't hold things while cuffed and syndicates and traitors can be considered as having a cyanide pill in their mouth that can let them suicide whenever they are conscious. Maybe like a false tooth

 

Coughcough explosive implants coughcough

 

[davidchan]

 

At this point I feel the maintainers/staff should have a discussion of it and if it really adds anything to the game, or if it should be put a to a community vote.

 

Given that Suicide and Ghost verb function identically (remove you from the round, make you uncloneable but make you elligible for other roles such as drone, posibrain or ERT) I don't know that it will really fix anything, but it still is something that doesn't need to exist given we have other mechanics that do the same thing in a better context.

 

[Spacemanspark]

It's annoying to deal with.

[BadApple797]

Anyone who wants to die badly enough to use it isn't gunna be fun to deal with when they are forced to log-out instead or keep playing instead. It'll be worse without suicide

[Citinited]

 

Keep suicide.

 

Suicide allows players to get out of the round and observe if they have no other option in a non-messy way that shouldn't waste sec's time if they crowbar themselves to death i.e. it doesn't leave a stupid crime scene. (I know ghosting is an option but you might want to respawn as an NPC or something)

 

Player suicided in their cell? No problem, just transport them to the morgue or incinerator. People shouldn't be cloning suicides anyway, and it's impossible without upgraded cloners.

 

It's not really a problem that players suicide as soon as they get caught. It just means that you can move on to different things instead of having to waste your time with a non-cooperative player. You could make the RP argument, but I doubt that anyone willing to take their own life after being brigged would care much for RP anyway.

 

Players overcoming their survival instincts to suicide isn't much of an argument, considering that on your average shift your average crewmember will be willing to put themselves into stupid amounts of danger (fighting nukeops, fighting blob, going to the AI satellite to possibly die to the stupidly powerful AI that is about to explode the station instead of getting the hell off-station, etc.)

 

Is it distasteful to suicide at the slightest hint of trouble? Yes, but you should always have the option to.

 

Edited September 28, 2015 by Guest

[Tauka Usanake]

 

Keep suicide.

 

Suicide allows players to get out of the round and observe if they have no other option in a non-messy way that shouldn't waste sec's time if they crowbar themselves to death i.e. it doesn't leave a stupid crime scene. (I know ghosting is an option but you might want to respawn as an NPC or something)

 

Player suicided in their cell? No problem, just transport them to the morgue or incinerator. People shouldn't be cloning suicides anyway, and it's impossible without upgraded cloners.

 

It's not really a problem that players suicide as soon as they get caught. It just means that you can move on to different things instead of having to waste your time with a non-cooperative player. You could make the RP argument, but I doubt that anyone willing to take their own life after being brigged wouldn't care much for RP anyway.

 

Players overcoming their survival instincts to suicide isn't much of an argument, considering that on your average shift your average crewmember will be willing to put themselves into stupid amounts of danger (fighting nukeops, fighting blob, going to the AI satellite to possibly die to the stupidly powerful AI that is about to explode the station instead of getting the hell off-station, etc.)

 

Is it distasteful to suicide at the slightest hint of trouble? Yes, but you should always have the option to.

Well this sums up everything I will ever have to say about keeping suicide. Also it's one of the assistants' pastimes, "Steal things to see what funny message pops up when you commit suicide with them" that /tg/ has posted.

 

[SpaceTimeNow]

 

The suicide verb does not serve any real function and frankly it undermines the whole mechanic we added with the cryosleepers. You can't cryo sleep a dead body and thus you can't open that job slot again. Everytime you suicide you waste that job slot.

 

If you want to leave the round then use the friggin cryo sleepers and don't be that useless person that just falls over dead in the hallway, just so that others have to deal with your stupid body. If you for some reason can't reach the cryo sleepers (restrained, trapped or whatever) then just ghost and your body can still be put in cryosleep.

 

Also you should never just suicide because you don't like the mess you brought upon yourself, if you are being a dickhead all round then at least have the decency to wait your time in the birg when you get caught.

 

[Plotron]

 

Given that Suicide and Ghost verb function identically (remove you from the round, make you uncloneable but make you elligible for other roles such as drone, posibrain or ERT)

Whose idea was it to make those who commit suicide harder to clone?

What's the reasoning behind that? Sorry, I digress, I just think it should be pointed out while we're discussing the rationale behind the suicide verb.

 

If the reasoning is that it'd be possible to use suicide as an inefficent scrying orb (ghost realm knowledge), then I think it's quite invalid as you're not supposed to use this kind of meta knowledge anyway.

Sometimes you make a mistake or want to tease somebody. Why would you penalize this particular method?

 

I can also definitely agree with NTSAM that this kind of death is not glorious and should not fullfil the glorious death objective.

 

[Spacemanspark]

 

Given that Suicide and Ghost verb function identically (remove you from the round, make you uncloneable but make you elligible for other roles such as drone, posibrain or ERT)

Whose idea was it to make those who commit suicide harder to clone?

What's the reasoning behind that? Sorry, I digress, I just think it should be pointed out while we're discussing the rationale behind the suicide verb.

 

If you suicide via that verb, you evidently don't want to partake in the round any longer.

I think it should also prevent one from being ERT/ Posibrain/ pAI/ drone, because most of those allow (And have resulted in) metagrudges against people within the same round.

 

[Plotron]

 

If you suicide via that verb, you evidently don't want to partake in the round any longer.

 

The "this person has commited suicide" examine description should be enough to tell the doctors that the body should go straight to morgue.

And when it goes to morgue and the lights lit up green, you should clone it. Sounds simple enough, huh?

 

You shouldn't be deliberately making cloning harder. If people don't know any better, then it's their fault for wasting their own time at the cloner.

 

[SpaceTimeNow]

 

Suicide verb is another redundant ooc tool like going SSD, i don't understand why we need two. And the SSD route via ghosting (possibly inside a cryo sleeper) is just flat out better implemented and is a much more sane method to leave the game.

 

Suicide corpses are literally just in the way and don't serve any purpose, also you don't have the handy list of the SSDs at the Cryosleeper console to see if someone you are searching, just flat out left the game.

 

Just remove the suicide verb already and be done with it.

 

[MrFinnT]

 

i think only atagonist should be able to suicide, and it should not count as glorius death.

 

as agent of a criminal organisatino oyu know you fuck up if you get cought, so you might as well end it. but if you are technicly inocent or just a minor criminal you would not go so far.

 

suicide would be the "yes i am an antag and you got me" verb.

 

[NTSAM]

 

i think only atagonist should be able to suicide, and it should not count as glorius death.

 

as agent of a criminal organisatino oyu know you fuck up if you get cought, so you might as well end it. but if you are technicly inocent or just a minor criminal you would not go so far.

 

suicide would be the "yes i am an antag and you got me" verb.

 

Yes.

Thank you. This is basically what I thought we'll have to go to.

However, shooting yourself should be a thing anyone can do, as if you have a gun on you and you can still hold it, you're most likely not brigged or incapacitated. Also because dem russian revolvers.

 

[Mrs Dobbins]

 

I like the suicide verb- ghosting won't let you play as a drone, and frankly some rounds when I'm too pissed off with dealing with everything, I will suicide, go make a cup of tea and come back and drone for the rest of the round.

Ghosting won't let me do that.

Also 500 shitposts yay!

 

[Coldflame]

 

I like the suicide verb- ghosting won't let you play as a drone, and frankly some rounds when I'm too pissed off with dealing with everything, I will suicide, go make a cup of tea and come back and drone for the rest of the round.

Ghosting won't let me do that.

Also 500 shitposts yay!

Doesn't using the verb forfeit your respawn right as well? I forget.

 

Regardless, you're still free to kill yourself without using the verb, so I don't see how this is a compelling argument in favor of keeping it.

 

[Plotron]

 

Regardless, you're still free to kill yourself without using the verb, so I don't see how this is a compelling argument in favor of keeping it.

It's messy. It takes longer. It makes you look like a psycho. It can be easily stopped by your local security patrol or the occassional doctor. Janitor has to clean up the mess. You make noises that distract other people.

 

If only we all had a plastic bag we could easily commit suicide with...