Is the term Predator really that immersion-ruining? It is, after all, a colloquial term, right? “Humanoid predator”. Like cmon it’s even accurate.
I get some people may feel it’s weird, but ANY name is gonna feel out of place when you got people who don’t give a fuck about roleplay, having to name them. At least predator isnt goofy. I don’t really care about the Jamaican conversation at all though, ban it or don’t I really dgaf
Also, mechanical fix idea: 5% of marines every round are graced with some knowledge re: Yautja at roundstart
The USCM and general public are aware of the existence of Predators, however, none of the Marines or attached personnel of the USS Almayer have encountered one before. The only knowledge that is known about Predators is that they possess highly advance technology, including cloaking technology and plasma weaponry, and that they have only ever appeared in dangerous areas or warzones. The USCM officially refer to Predators as [[XXX]], however realistic nicknames such as “Jamaicans” “Dreadlock Lizards” “Spooks” “Phantoms or Ghosts” are acceptable. Avoid meme/gaming terminology such as “maicers”
Essentially, you shift the situation to where the humans know of the existence of the Predators, but there is still a huge amount of secrecy to give both sides plenty of room to roleplay around a lack of knowledge, but the Marines are now no longer constrained to have to act stupid and pretend to not know what they are dealing with, even when they clearly do.
I would highly suggest that the community (or at least the Yautja Council) work on a proper, officially sanctioned, term that would be used by the USCM/Corporation as how they refer to Predators. There would still be room for nicknames, but with a proper and official term, you will significantly assist in moving away from more controversial nicknames as now members of CIC, CO’s and admins can now use actual proper terms that are not considered by half the community to be LRP/meme tier.
The RP doesn’t disappear because of the specific name that was used, that’s a separate issue. It disappears because you’re using a gamey name or term to identify a character that you’d know nothing about. Using the term “Jamaican” isn’t you being HRP or even RPing at all, you use it because other players know what it means in the exact same way that people would know what you mean when you say “T3 around the corner.” It’s gamey, it’s cringe, and it’s (from what I’ve seen) near universally disliked by Pred players.
And no, nicknames like “Jamaican,” “Dreadlock Lizards,” and “Spooks” (the last one being actually flat out banned last I heard) aren’t acceptable, they’re LRP and gamey. Your character isn’t going to see a 9 foot tall, heavily armored alien that just ripped a marine’s head off and go “Command we’ve got Jamaicans down here!” It’s baffling how ridiculous of a take that is. What you’d be most likely to do is open fire and scream about massive aliens murdering people. When you call a pred one of these terms you’re doing it purely because that’s what people have called them in the past on an OOC level.
Predators aren’t xenomorphs either, and drawing a parallel between the hyper advanced alien civilization based in a level of secrecy that kidnaps human beings to hunt for fun and the hyper-malicious alien hivemind that exists only to grow and consume is dishonest at best. Part of the mystique of Preds is that they’re a secondary antagonist that exists to augment the roleplay of a round, by proposing that the general public and entire USCM is aware of their existence you’re just turning them into Xenos 2.0 and removing a large aspect of what makes them unique to interact with in a round. You remove the opportunity given to players to actually RP out the fear of finding a 9 foot tall invisible demon in the jungle and make the only option a simple “Hey Command we got preds, should we worry about their plasma guns and invisibility cloaks?”
My opinion, keep first contact rules and clamp down on the LRP and gamey terms used to describe preds to make it more achievable.
What? It was stated countless times that “Jamaican” isn’t a “gamey” term. A tall humanoid with dreadlocks, in a hypotetical scenario of a player who has 0 knowledge about any pred media, if he hears about “Jamaicans” and sees a pred with dreadlocks, 9 out of 10 times they will recognise that it is the fabled “Jamaican”. Do a test, ask your sister, girlfriend, or whoever, get few pictures of different aliens, from Mass Effect, Halo and preds themself, then ask them to point a “Jamaican”.
“Maicer” is a gamey name, not “Jamaican”. Saying basically just “I see not a xeno”, or “I see a humanoid” already gives everyone tip that it is about preds, like come on.
T3 might be a bit gamey, but it is informative about a particular extraordinary danger and you don’t need much hoops of logic to justify it IC. All the xeno names and their caste structure is described trough human input. There is no such thing as T3 for xenos, it is simply an evolution of previous xeno that is more powerfull. But for the sake of keeping everything organised, both xenos and marines use technical/“scientific”/nickname terms to describe xenomorphs.
That is why first contact rule with xenos failed. Some dumbass thought that “Runner” is some strictly classified term that marines are not allowed to know, when in fact it is a nickname given by humans who encountered it in “the wild”. Both xenos and marines call “runner” a “runner”, there is no HRP in that, but there is no LRP in that either.
Then what fucking term is acceptable? “GIANT MURDERING HUMANOID HEAD-RIPPING HEAVILY ARMORED ALIENS”?
We NEED a fairly short, easy and simple term to describe preds.
By your stupid logic EVERY term is “gamey”. Demons?
Your character isn’t going to see a 9 foot tall, heavily armored alien that just ripped a marine’s head off and go “Command we’ve got Demons down here!” It’s baffling how ridiculous of a take that is. What you’d be most likely to do is open fire and scream about massive aliens murdering people.
Cloakers?
Your character isn’t going to see a 9 foot tall, heavily armored alien that just ripped a marine’s head off and go “Command we’ve got Cloakers down here!” It’s baffling how ridiculous of a take that is. What you’d be most likely to do is open fire and scream about massive aliens murdering people.
I feel that no term would be satisfying for you. Not predators, not demons, not cloakers, not jamaicans, nothing. What title do we have to bestow upon preds each time we dare to mention them?
Is “humanoid alien” a “gamey” term for you too?
That is just insane. Just because it is written somewhere that some shmuck as a marine has rudimentary knowledge that preds exist does not remove any opportunity give to players to actually RP out the fear of finding a 9 foot tall invisible demon (gamey term) in the jungle.
No matter what you do, people played and observed countless pred rounds and that is simply not possible. You can’t enforce that. Everyone is sick and tired of pretending that preds are the big mistery, they fucking aren’t. This shit works during events, when it is actually rare and a mystery.
Oh no, it is operation penis-guacamole, the 2137th pred round this year. What’s that I can see written in rules page? As a marine I KNOW that preds exist and even there is an “official” term to describe them? I guess I WON’T RP fearing them now. You know, thanks to that knowledge from rumors about them murdering entire squads, skinning them and doing all of that scary shit, there is simply nothing to RP fear about. But if that wasn’t written in rule page and we still had to pretend that preds are a big mystery, now I can properly PR fearing them, because if I know something is deadly, I do not fear it, but If I don’t know what it is and never heard of it ICly, then I do fear it.
People who are here to play and not RP will always do that. No matter how hard you will enforce that, if they are not interested in RP, they won’t. No matter how hard you will want to crack down on marine to pred LRP, you won’t be able to ban somebody for seeing a pred, stating on comms they see “weird humanoid” and then fucking off to front.
Delussional. Propose your non-gamey term and make it official. Everyone will use it. Will it become gamey then? Come on, speak up, present us with “non-gamey” term, I beg of you.
Yeah, it’s pretty much said already. The problem is LRP. Preds are a WL made around RP and lore. Of course it will not bode well with the LRP ungas that just want to shoot shit dead. The ungas are here just for that and they couldn’t care less about RP so long they get to shoot shit dead. I’ve said it before, but I think preds do not fit this game in its current state. Not just mechanically but as a core idea as well. Imo it would work a lot better if there was a separate space with less players. That way RP rules would be enforced easier. In such space the RP rules will need to be far more strict and at the standard of the WL itself. The hunting grounds are a step to the right direction. If they are expanded upon, and with proper directions I think you will get what you want.
Edit: I say there needs to be a different space for preds because practically enforcing stricter RP rules is really hard when there’s 150-200 players ig with say 10 staff in best cases online. I am not saying it can’t be done. But it’ll more than likely anger people who don’t give a fuck about preds anymore than they would for a xeno.
The fact that Preds are treated as a first contact species means you don’t and shouldn’t have a short, easy, and simple term used to identify them. You do not know they exist, they are something you have just stumbled upon in your fight against the Xenomorphs. You’re correct in saying that no term would be satisfying for me, I don’t think there should be a single term used to describe them.
The much better way to go about is describing them in the context that you encountered them. If you saw one decloak and run by you into the vines then you should describe it as “some half-invisible creature.” If you walked up to see it ripping out a marine’s spine then you should describe it as a “spine-ripping monster.” Basically the entire point of what I wrote out is that using a single common term to describe a species you do not know exists is gamey, it would purely be an OOC term so that other players can recognize what it is you’re talking about. In character they should not recognize what you’re talking about because you don’t know they exist.
Also jesus christ man, I don’t get why you’re so angry about this. Stalkerino asked for feedback and opinions, I gave my feedback and addressed some of the opinions I saw in this thread. You don’t need to start throwing out personal attacks because you disagree, fucking hell.
This is a fundamental issue with the game. It’s a med-RP game where the RP barely gets enforced anymore, so functionally a LRP/no RP game, with one of several roles that are meant to be higher RP.
The marines and xenos are basically rewarded for never RPing because the crux of the gameplay is a PvP match. Just taking the time to type out even a short statement or RP action could end in you getting attacked and unable to react in time, so it’s better to do it as little as possible.
Marines literally borderline murder each other, trash the briefing hall, scream nonsense over the CO’s brief so it’s hard to read what’s being said, and get away with it all because who cares? They’re just there to shoot stuff and damn any “RP” consequences, cuz the RP will just interrupt their game.
Xenos meanwhile aren’t allowed to RP, because from the word go they need to hunt down survivors and prepare for the landing. And they can’t do RP with the survivors, because none will willingly be caught alone, and will shoot the xenos on sight just as the xenos will jump them for the cap on sight.
The inherent gameplay loop is pretty anti-RP and thus the majority of players are the same. The few who can try to RP in spite of that and can make a name for themselves can get the whitelist…only to then see the horrible state the game’s RP standards are in.
I do still want the Pred WL myself, and I try to RP when I can which is very difficult cuz I hate non-xeno roles, but the insistence on fast rounds with PvP oriented goals will always be anathema to encouraging RP.
You know, re: Harrysno’s post, I agree. IMO just shooting the fuck out of the predator wordlessly is NOT LRP. But Jamaican is, it’s silly. Spooks sounds cool though like CIA dudes
Also I think what a lot of people are missing in this thread is that THE GAMEPLAY LOOP IS THE ROLEPLAY
The best action towards RP is gameplay changes that are steered towards immersion. Look at IS12.
And you know what I think the idea about humanity having some vague knowledge re: preds is the most immersive route to go. Ban the term Jamaican for command staff, it seems like a realistic enough nickname for PFCs to use though
My source is a thousand threads about calling pred “jamaican”.
Man, this is MRP server, not HRP. We should have a short, easy and simple term to identify them, because there is a need. They are too common to not give them one. If you won’t, somebody will. And marines did, with “Jamaincan” and “Maicer”.
I disagree. There should be, it is a basic human trait to give stuff a single term to describe it.
What if I saw one standing around talking to Synth? Should I call them a “stand”? Should I call them “statues”? Should I call them “big-mouths”?
That is the most common pred encounter for average marine. A pred standing somewhere, either talking to someone, or laughing, or just observing.
What you are demanding is something that HRP server would have troubles to achieve. This is MRP server. I know this magical spell of “this is MRP server” gets used against folks alot, but this time it is you who get hit by it.
It is not gamey when I learn that they exist and I learn that they exist when I see one standing next to me.
And they IC’ly do not recognise what anybody is talking about. They recognise it OOCly, but as I said before, they can recognise it OOCly as soon as you say that something is groundside and it is not a xeno. On a regular round, anything that isn’t a xeno groundside can be either a survivor, or pred. Everyone knows that. And if that was survivor, people would call it “survivor”, or “human”. But if they are not using terms describing xenos, or survivors, they have to OOCly talk about preds.
Even in your example of “some half-invisible creature” it is a term that will convey almost the same information as saying “jamaican”. Assuming the guy is not talking about a lurker, then it has to be a pred. “Spine-ripping monster” too. If it is not a ravager, preatorian, queen, or any other xeno, then this “spine-ripping monster” has to be pred, because if it was a xeno, they would be called out by their nickname.
This is such a non-issue that does nothing. You have a problem with people using single, short and easy term to describe preds, because its only purpose is to convey message that it is predator groundside and your perfect solution is a few words that their only purpose isto convey message that it is a predator groundside.
It doesn’t change shit other than making marine who wants to warn everyone on comms to type a second longer.
How is multiple random variations of “invisible/spine-ripping/creature/monster” different from “jamaican”? If player has his mind set on hunting preds, he will see this and will know it is about preds.
Also, nobody will enforce that. The whole thread is about stalkerino being tired of dealing with this stuff and wants this to become non-issue (smaller issue), so you propose even harder enforcement.
Ah, yes, because I am famous for being stoic about every single topic. I find something dumb, I start to argue with it. Just because you saw some “fucks” doesn’t mean I’m as angry as a predator when marine called him “Jamaican”.
Show me a personal attack, mainly me atacking you and not your opinions.
Tell me then when round ends. When everyone is happy with their RP action, or when the last player of opposing team dies, or one of the teams reaches win/loss condition?
it’s not about being able to recognise it OOCly, it’s about putting minimal effort into immersion building but it seems like people dont give a single fuck about it, which is pretty sad
This is like 50-60% of our playerbase. They do not give a fuck about RP. Enforcing more RP standards are just gonna make more people either completely ignore the RP that is already there, or just make them leave. And lets not talk about the headache it will be to moderate this.
You expect immersion on a combat server. The most popular public SS13 is bound to not be purerly RP, the entire premise is gameplay combat.
Preds aren’t some kind of HRP either. All that lore they have, they don’t talk with anyone about it but themselfs, maybe occasional Synth. They aren’t even allowed to talk much about anything, remember the stuff about their mask that it is supposed to record and then play some clips and not translate pred speech actually?
You want to put that “minimal effort into immersion building” on a every random John “Bald” McBaldo and XX runner. This won’t work, this doesn’t work ever.
The best you can get is them not ruin that immersion by shouting netspeak, memes, or generally OOC stuff. And that what we should aim for as this goal can be reached, because we are pretty much right there with rules and such.
In the past I came up with the concept of “Zero RP” where you act like a NPC put into the game, nothing RP/immersion ruining like LRP does, but not HRP either. And that is fine to expect out of every player at the very least, to shut up and do what their role is supposed to, in terms of marines it is to shoot xenos, in therms of xenos it is to slash marines. Nothing more, nothing less.
It is not strictly sad, CM is constantly on the top of the server list not because of RP potential, but because of it being combat-oriented.
You can’t reasonably expect even “MRP” out of 100+ complete strangers in a text-based communication, top down, 7 squares sight game with a PvP combat focus.
RP has to be fun and even the hardest RP’er will get bored RPing a 1000th first contact with preds.
I also find it funny that this “minimal effort into immersion building” is not calling preds any nickname, instead just using few words describing them and this suddently helps to build immersion.
PFC calls out preds on comms and calls them “cloakers” = immersion ruined.
PFC calls out preds on comms and calls them “half-invisible spine-ripping jungle monsters” = immersion constructed.
I want to mention it again that even HRP servers don’t require this kind of exercise.
From Aurora Station rules page (HRP server). You are not allowed to use slang terms for antagonists IC and no OOC slang in IC at all. Traitor, rev, syndie, wizard, changeling not allowed, those are OOC terms. But EOC is an IC term that is kosher. Nothing about being forced to came up with multiple word description to reffer to new IC danger. Passengers might not know about cult previous to meeting one, but they are allowed to call cultists some kind of single word term and not a “weird book club enthusiasts”, or the like, however they can if they like.
Literall HRP server has lower RP standards than preds imagine as “minimal effort into immersion building”.
In that specific case of when Preds stop being first contact, boots are bound to have some kind of nickname for them, as it is with all rumors. If somebody sees big hairy humanoid in mountains, he is bound to call it “Yeti/Bigfoot/Sasquach” even it is his first time seeing one and he only heard rumors about. Any dog-like creature killing goats is bound to be called “Chupacabra” instead of “dog-like, night-stalking, black-eyed, goat-sucker”.
first of all im sick of people giving levels to roleplay aka HRP or MRP, because you either roleplay or you dont
second of all i never said that predators are some kind of high noble roleplay bullshit
im tired of people thinking that talking or emoting in the only roleplay there is. when you join into the round you roleplay as the role you chose to join as
predators don’t talk to marines about their lore because it wouldn’t make any fucking sense, they are there to hunt, not showcase their personality like synths
your average john bald marine or XX runner is more likely to roleplay than a “i-know-my-way-around” player with 100 hours
yes its crazy that saying “there is a humanoid alien” instead of “guys there are jamaicans groundside” is way better
literall hrp server doesnt have a whitelist system like we do, i dont understand the attempts to compare aurora to cm
you said it best pitir, you’re right, we have a whitelist on Predator - we should be asking players to adjust their behavior and gameplay for the sake of a role 90% of them will never ever be allowed to play
