I believe Bancrose reassured the community that change will be made and then detectivegoogle summed up one of the most prevalent issues with great finesse.
While a case can be made about how strong synthetics in all aspects differ from the movies, the problem is more ontological and can be fixed with ruling and mindset change, coming from the Whitelist itself. You can’t blame players for Whitelist issues, they exist regardless of Whitelists.
It is a vicious cycle that starts from the Whitelist and then is reproduced by the players, the expectation of Synthetics to be machines outside of roleplay, skill bots. If those are the expectations, the players will reproduce them and expect them and then will feed into the cycle.
Synthetics are trusted to have their skills, they do not have their skills to be trusted. So nerfing is not really a solution if not for balance’s sake.
Like the CLF-3 case, you could always use it, but do you really need to bottle Napalm as it is a flamethrower as a Synthetic and go bucko? Really? Then no action ever taken? Did it never hit anyone the wrong way? How’s that anything but power gaming if not LRP? (Spraying Napalm from a spray cleaner bottle, legacy SS13 feature).
Ultimately, how is a player looking at that and taking the Whitelist seriously? A simple search up on the Discord answers the question.
It has come to such a level that coding intervention was needed which basically breaks the whole concept of having a trust in the form of Whitelists.
It is really telling of the issues when this starts happening and makes a case that if no code limitations exist, something will be abused. Which is what majority of the community is starting to think: “If they can’t behave let’s nerf them”, I for one do not believe this solves things.
As it was exposed by the “Whitelist Sandbox” event, which I believe was a bright idea by its idealizers and showcased how all Whitelists are made of capable people. Great players from other Whitelists excelled as great roleplayers, storytellers and additions to the game as Synthetics while not necessarily having perfect mechanical skills. Ezra has been a great Synthetic like no other in a while even though he didn’t build barricades a second faster by knowing certain arcane trick.
You can lose track of the amount of players that have been denied and lost months of their lives even though they have been in the community for years, have thousand of hours in this community and are trusted by dozens of other players, have great stories, great roleplay.
You can see Mentors, that got the entire application right but were denied over small efficiency tricks. Someone that can be trusted to teach the community and pass all the right spots of the Whitelist but oh dear they don’t do surgeries with 2 seconds of advantage.
That essentially segregates the process to competitiveness. Who even comes with these rules, what the hell is “cade theory” and why are people being denied over it? Why is it being thrown around as something scientific you got to study? And what if someone doesn’t do it perfectly? (It’s not even defined).
Because CM exists for decade now and when did that term ever come up, its just common sense and it is not that deep and I cannot find an instance before 2024 where someone was denied over it because that didn’t even exist. It is not a theory to know you got to cave in your barricades or do 1 tiles back or not make cramped spaces or protect sensible walls or maximize firing positions.
Curiously enough I believe the vouch system of players that existed should hold some weight, not total weight, but certainly some. If you are a great role-player, a recognized invested support player that people can vouch for and you pass all the requirements, why not? That’s who you are playing and interacting at the end of the day, the community. You shouldn’t have to be relegated to the idea of 5 people on what’s the most optimal way of doing medical.
Someone mentioned it, but joining in as a private and trying to seek help from the candidate in the field though may require more work is a much better alternative than observing people like a CCTV.
The community should trust someone and then the council should regulate if they are up to the roleplaying standards and expectations of the Whitelist, not be the judges of mechanical and human input efficiency.
Ultimately I believe the Synthetics will come on top, if due changes are made, the CO Whitelist has been through almost extinction when Triiodine had a different vision of balance, a solution was found by Memesky, Sammy, Dubszor etc as the then Councilors and Senator. A solution for this can also be made.
