Theory: Paranoia = Among Us?

[Daneasaur 412]

So as we all know, the Paranoia mode was teased but not ever released as the programmers couldn't find a proper way to make it 100% "fun".

I feel that, as a few more reverse-horror games have come out and a particularly notably game is currently popular, I think I know what the mode was going to be like.

Now from what we know, the idea was that there would be 8 counselors, but ONE of them would really be "Part 5 Jason" and could kill the others and a large part of the game would be determining "Who is 5" while 5 slowly picked everyone off.

Now a trending game right now is Among Us, a game where you have a group of people and one to two "impostors". The goal of the normal players is to finish the tasks on the stage. When you're an impostor, you're supposed to fake doing the tasks, Sabotage the efforts of the others to finish their jobs, and kill them off.

Now one could EASILY see a similar function inParanoia, but as the devs said, they had a hard time figuring out how to make it "fun". I Think i know what these problems consisted of and how Among Us avoids the issue.

1: The Killer has a cooldown. After a successful kill in Among Us, it's anywhere from 10 to 30 seconds before they can even try to kill again. In Paranoia, they likely didn't have a cooldown and so there was little to stop the killer from just playing as Jason.

2: Meetings and reports. There is a Meeting zone on every map in Among Us. On this spot is an emergency gathering button. As a bonus, when someone finds a dead body, they have the ability to Report it, which instantly pauses everyone and forces them into a meeting to discuss who the killer is. This was likely miles away from what Paranoia would have had and may even have required specific map variants to be built JUST for the game mode.

3: Voting. A key component in the meetings is not just discussing "who is the killer', but also making everyone gang up on a single person to remove them. Said removed person is disposed of with no risk. Paranoia likely had no sure-fire way to remove the killer in this way beyond shooting them or melee killing them, yet that requires friendly fire to be turned on and then we'd have Day 1 F13 problems of counselors murdering other counselors just for the hell of it.

4: Tasks. The innocent players in Among Us are preoccupied with things that need to be done, and only when EVERYONE has done EVERYTHING will the innocent players win. This extends to even when the innocent players are dead as they, as ghosts, still need to finish their tasks. Now, F13 has "tasks", but only one person needs to do them (IE: fixing phone). I imagine that they couldn't come up with a large enough laundry list of "things to do" for everyone and many players twiddled thumbs or didn't need to do anything, and as we know the only post-death thing they have is Tommy Jarvis.

5: Sabotaging. Sabotaging in Among Us is a multi layered function. Namely one function is to lock all doors of an area. The other is to start a countdown where something will fail and then ALL the innocent players die if they do not assess it. This also functions as a way for the Intruder to force people into a kill zone. There is no possible way that such a function could be done in F13.

6: Kill Animations. F13 is prided on it's kill animations, however many can attests that most take a few seconds to perform, so it'd be very easy for someone to stumble upon a 3-4 second kill animation in progress. Among Us fixed this by only having the kill animation play for the victim, whereas for the killer and everyone else, it just looks like someone bisects them, allowing the killer to run their ass off and hide. This sort of alteration was likely not considered for Paranoia.

7: Task Animations. Among Us tasks have the function of being visible ONLY to the person performing them, whereas everyone else just sees them standing near whatever is to be interacted with. Paranoia could likely have a typical "fixing fuse box" animation, but then that's only something a counselor is doing and not the killer, meaning that we have no sure-fire way to ensure a counselor can't tell who the killer is.

In summary, I think THIS is all why Paranoia was canned (before the lawsuit). The devs likely could play by honorable rules, but the problems came when trying to make it so that randoms playing with other randoms wouldn't just all kill each other.

[HuDawg 1,218]

Among Us..

Its like going to the best Restaurant in the world and eating Toilet Paper.  

Horrible visuals, horrible audio, horrible game play...literally nothing good about the game.    But hey, its Trending!

2020...Needs to die already/

[Carlso 114]

@HuDawg IDK why that game out of nothing became so popular, but in early February, me and my friends organized a night party at my friend's house. We drank and had fun because we were about to be Seniors and that would be our last vacation. One of my friends came with that game Among Us. We all downloaded it and played on private matches, and it was a hell of fun. Again, IDK why tf this game became so popular and people are playing it for serious, but if you just want a quick light game to spend some time with your friends, this game is not bad considering how simple it is.

 

@Daneasaur Good analogy.

[Laotian Lam 169]

I've actually seen quite a few Private Match postings for "Paranoia" matches for F13.   I didn't really know what that meant until now.

Is this Paranoia thing based on the old RPG Board Game, Paranoia (similar to Dungeons and Dragons) from back in the late 80s? 

[RaidCasto 30]

We play our own paranoia when we have 8 on.  Private match.  Whoever volunteers to be Jason PMs a helper, who is basically a teamer.  Get the sweater, hold on to parts, set traps, etc.  Private match allows for team killing too.  And you have to play in game chat so you never know who to trust coming in that window.

 

Counselors win if they kill or more than 2 escape.  Any less Jason wins.

 

Its fun.

[Fair Play 4,417]

@Daneasaur, nice analysis of how Paranoia could have worked. Too bad it never got finished.

@RaidCasto, that sounds like an intriguing way to play.

[SteveChristy 252]

13 hours ago, Laotian Lam said:

Is this Paranoia thing based on the old RPG Board Game, Paranoia (similar to Dungeons and Dragons) from back in the late 80s? 

Personally, I think the whole idea comes from the old Friday the 13th game on the Commodore 64 where you play as one of several counselors who are stalked by Jason, who often times masquerades as a counselor himself, leading you to suspect everyone you see as the possible culprit. That was the first thing that came to mind back when I read what Paranoia was purported to be.

[VoorheesAJollyGoodFellow 2,102]

Among Us escapes me because it only makes sense when people aren't streaming. But it's a popular streaming game, so you could just "stream snipe" the other players to find out who the killer is.

I suppose a similar train of thought occurred to the F13 devs where they realized it was too easy to figure out who the killer was. Like maybe if everyone just stayed in one group in one room and wait for the time to run out then that would be a game over for the killer because they would be forced to kill in front of the others and then they all gang up on the killer at once.

[Daneasaur 412]

20 hours ago, VoorheesAJollyGoodFellow said:

Among Us escapes me because it only makes sense when people aren't streaming. But it's a popular streaming game, so you could just "stream snipe" the other players to find out who the killer is.

I suppose a similar train of thought occurred to the F13 devs where they realized it was too easy to figure out who the killer was. Like maybe if everyone just stayed in one group in one room and wait for the time to run out then that would be a game over for the killer because they would be forced to kill in front of the others and then they all gang up on the killer at once.

This is also another possibility.

I would therefore shift it that instead of time running out and the counselors winning, have it be that "Five" wins if time runs out. This then forces the counselors to take an active role to finish their objectives. That said, that again works akin to teamers in the current game, such as running people over or otherwise helping jason.

[Jason Todd Voorhees 689]

Yes thats what it was my friend.

Paranoia Mode