Well, in terms of vouches/positive community feedback, I’d have to say pred is heavily reliant on it, since you’re basically asking the community if you’re trustworthy with grief tools and the ability to round-end 'rines
While CO has almost the same rights, in forms of BEs and Discretionary Detainment (which some people can basically qualify as round ending if CO doesn’t handle it), it is still gameplay-reliant as you need to have more than average knowledge on CIC than CO, and better cohesion than a mute SO and rarely, a XO
While I think the newer synthetic WL might be the easiest on some conditions, as it’s now leaning to RP instead of being mechanical-demigods who can remove a late-stage larva and revive a heartbreak marine at the same time
I wish to see what the playerbase has to say about this out of peak curiosity. Your thoughts?
You control the life and death of 100 + players. One bad plan can ruin up to a hundred (if not more) players round(s).
You can do bad surgery and ruin a couple players rounds, you can SD briefing and kill 30-40 players but the game can still go on. But if you make a bad decision as a CO the round can end sub 0:40 and ruin not only the entire marine teams enjoyment of the game, but also xenos (since most good xenos do not enjoy winning in 10 minutes after marines land).
From my 250+ hours as Synthetic, and serving on the Council and briefly as Senator, I still have to say that CO is one of the hardest.
That’s not to say Synth isn’t hard, but as a synth if you know your guidelines and golden rules, and can roleplay you’re pretty good. All you need then is to be good/competent at Command, Engi, Req, and Medical. (Maybe a bit of Intel too.) The only other hard part is your quirk; you gotta make sure that it’s something you enjoy expressing and RPing as.
The reason I think CO is hardest is you need to have a lot of Charisma to lead marines. You need to really stand out or you’re just going to be nameless CO PFC+++
It’s easy for Marines to like you as a Synth; you can talk about your quirk/gimmick/personality and most of the time they’ll just nod along. They also see you as a free surgery/engineer bot so it’s hard to hate something that helps out so much.
CO is different. Following orders is sometimes a given by marines, and sometimes it has to be earned; and often times some people just outright ignore you. If you can’t prove yourself good at XO or CO, marines will treat your plan like babblings of some village idiot. Then you need to be a leader not only in CIC, but on the ground too. Many COs are popular because they can lead by example, and that kind of leadership is what can ultimately get marines to push the fucking hive and stop cadehugging. That kind of prowess and skill is a lot harder to master and utilize than me as a synth doing surgery or setting up barricades.
I’d like to apply for CO one day, but being XO is a big reality check. Sometimes you do well without lifting a finger. Some days you do everything you can and get wiped anyway. But regardless, the buck stops with you.
They’re all just popularity contests at the end of the day, and people can spin that however they want to but it’s true. Makes it hard to say one is harder than the other.
That said if I had to pick, I’d say CO. You have to either no life the game enough in a short period to get your name out there as a decent XO/SO, or you have to have played long enough to be known throughout the playerbase. So you have to develop a name for yourself, prove your competence in a highly contested XO role, and then pass the application process. This is on top of the fact that CO requires more IC and OOC knowledge than the other 2 whitelists as well due to the command and marine law aspects, as well as combat exposure.
I mean you can already to this as XO or Queen
suffice to say though, pred is by far the hardest to get into by a far margin
god forbid you aren’t a microcelebrity or have metabuddies to updoot your app, you are fucked and have to reply to your own app to bump it or rely on others to bump it
community support is not a good way to measure people on their quality and I will die on this hill, but ofc I will never change anything
I think the points people voting CO gave are good; i respect the concern for how youll impact the vast majority of the server’s round and didnt think of that
I’d say pred, just based on what things i prioritize in a round. CO and synth i think offer you straightforward directives for a round: help your marines the best you can. But pred is so freeform; im appreciative whenever people do something creative with their role because they’re not really moved to act in any direction save for the rare abom. Ive definitely had bad pred encounters and still am not 100% about limitless interaction with whoever, but the people who pull it off really well are people who i appreciate so much
I think synth (hopefully) got more approachable to apply for and play with reprioritizations; i would imagine the anxiety of performing perfectly was no fun at all, so, you know, honorable mention to them
I’m inclined to say pred. CO is tough but it’s a lot easier to make an argument for since you can point at past experience as XO or SO. Pred, you’re almost entirely going off of name recognition and your writing abilities. It’s not really as if you can practice being a pred, at least not reliably compared to SO/XO which are often available.
But we all know that really the fax responder whitelist is the real exclusive whitelist. We recruit only the best paperwork writers. You might as well not even try, we’re only looking for New York Times bestsellers here.
I don’t think pred requires that much community support, just enough for the council to know “hey this person can be trusted to do rp and stuff”. If you have what it takes I don’t think you’ll get denied. The minimum standard for pred is to be recognized as a good enough RPer, which is just one part of the minimum standard for CO and Synth.
So like, just have a recognizable character and make some in-game friends who will back you up. That can be both difficult or easy depending on how people perceive you - I’d argue for most people, that shouldn’t be too difficult since you just have to play the game enough and interact with people - you don’t have to do anything specific except be around in the community for a while and get recognized (And most long-term players start to recognize new names pretty quickly, if they see it enough and interact enough with the new name).
Really, it’s pretty difficult to gague how much community support you might have without asking (or putting the app up!) tho
CO and Synth is much much more difficult by comparison, because you may be denied based on minutiae, command style, lack of experience, lack of +1s (or, in some cases, notable -1s!) etc. Plus you will probably need to put in a lot more hrs into this game for either - if you’d get denied to pred you’d most likely also get denied for CO or Synth.
Synth might be easier because it’s not that hard to get recognized if your doing well on the roles synth plays, same thing with CO. As yautja there is value in playing these recognizable roles to just show off rp ability or w/e and become memorized
They’re just roles that are whitelisted due to the possible impact they can have on the round, so they make sure you’re screened if you can be trusted not to abuse the freedoms that come with them.
The people that play them are not special. They are just people too.
So they are not really that hard at all to get into. Just get some experience first so you know what you’re doing, let people get to know you, be a decent person and don’t be neurotic.
Birb i’ve tried to get into the pred whitelist for like 5 or 6 times every time it was denied due to either community support or a note due to a incident. I have seen a guy with more support and a clear record get denied because of “no community support” its harder than CO,Synth due to as said by Efza you NEED to be in a group to even get known and for some of us that aint possible
I wish I was able to play to help you out. I can tell you have the passion and have even advised you in the past. I have full faith you will make it. Keep at it. Feel free to message me on the Forums. I am not on the Discord.
Yeah I’ve seen tons of people who get in without being super well known, you just gotta play enough so that the council has a good idea of who you are. They’ve grown increasingly distant overall from community support being a significant factor iirc