The slow deterioration of round length

[bandit]

Bottom post of the previous page:

As many people are aware, round lengths have been drifting shorter and shorter and shorter, to the point where it is now commonplace for people to bitch that the round is still ongoing when it hasn't even been 30 minutes. Despite the fact that there is a RIDICULOUS amount of ghost roles, some of which are arguably even more fun than available station roles.

Code changes haven't been sufficient to stop this. So what we need is a policy change. Namely: I think admins should start enforcing the "you must provide a reasonable excuse to call the shuttle." As in, you must actually make an attempt to fix shit before doing so, similar to the rules about early launches. Honestly, it's a shame things have even gotten to this point to begin with, but the idea of people actually trying to do their jobs seems to have totally fallen by the wayside.

[Tornadium]

The cycle of "I'm bored antags aren't doing anything" followed by "antags are killing too many people this isn't fun" continues forever.

I don't think that's it at all.

We've been adding more and more bullshit ways of forcing antagonist action but its just making the problem worse.

Antags in some rounds are boring as fuck and do nothing and we have increasingly shorter rounds when robust players roll antag due to the bullshit gear additions.

Faster murder is not interesting, having antags do nothing is not interesting either however.

[bandit]

Not everyone wants to roll for antag. You have people ITT saying they call the shuttle because the people that did roll for antag aren't providing sufficient pvp enjoyment. This means people are content with not rolling for antag as long as the antags do something fun. On the other side, people who wait for pvp content to happen must do this because they prefer it, which must mean they don't prefer doing pve or job content, which must mean pve and job content is lacking (aside from lavaland it seems). Why on earth you would as someone with a say in enforcing policy, try to force players to go through content they don't want to is beyond me, but that is not how you retain players on a server.

I know this is going to be an unpopular opinion, but if someone's only reason to play spessmens is to get the chance to be antag, then I don't really care that much about retaining them on a server. Playerbases breed playerbases. A round is only as good as people contributing to it. And it's not as if these people are creating interesting situations during PvP, as you put it. Either they're murderboning, begging the admins for the same few TC trades (most of which just allow them to griff in more concentrated fashion without having to worry about constraints like "objectives," god forbid the traitor has an actual purpose besides KILL THEM ALL), or doing nothing.

This leads to you still not specifying what it means to 'play the game' or 'fix things'. Why would engineering and atmos want to fix a standard 3, 9, 17 syndi bomb breach in, say genetics, if fixing the breach, the atmos pipes, the disposal pipes, the doors, the windows, the lights, the apcs, the wires, the machines takes well over a half hour, usually more, only for the round to end in an hour or more? It literally is admin-mandated busywork if players are forced to do something that is entirely inconsequential to them outside of avoiding admin actions if they try to reset the game.

Am I the only person who actually likes fixing shit as engineering? It gives them something to do rather than getting drunk in the bar. Setting up the tesla/singularity is more "busywork" than that, to be honest.

Even if it's not that example, where exactly do you draw the line? Are players meant to check adminwho to see if there are admins on who watch for ""unnecessary"" shuttle calling and then put the minimal amount of effort into fixing a breach they don't want to spend their RL time on? Do you just want to move your ghost over the engineers and see them place down a few floor tiles before you let the players call the shuttle? Do you want to see them placing down wires and pipes?

Only the heads of staff can call the shuttle, so already that cuts down on the amount of people to enforce. Part of the head of staff job is, or is supposed to be, determining what is an actual emergency and what can be fixed. It's similar to early launching the shuttle. If a player can provide even the flimsiest of reasons, admins generally give them the benefit of the doubt. As for people fixing shit, that is also part of the head of staff's job, to make sure their crew is doing their jobs. I don't know what the status of space law is today but at one point dereliction of duty is in there, so arguably it might be security's job as well.

What I'm saying is, the entire existence of SS13 revolves, is designed and is balanced around people actually doing their jobs. Otherwise, it all falls apart and becomes a grief lottery. And round lengths becoming shorter and shorter is a symptom of this.

Pick up coding and create interesting pve or job content for players to engage themselves with and want to keep the round lasting for longer. Pick up coding and join the balance meme and make antags want to risk their antag roll to do something fun for the crew more. You can't bandaid fix it with a policy change.

Cheridan and Kor have covered this, so

>pick up coding

[imblyings]

Not everyone enjoys fixing things, some do, some don't. The social and cost/reward aspect of it has already been explained ITT, it's hard to pull it off without the shuttle being called since it takes too long, and what exactly is the reason for fixing something in a multiplayer game if everyone else just wants to move on instead of deriving value from what you've fixed. What you get is the 'nah fuck it' response.

So we've finally pinpointed some sort of enforceable threshold, and the one you provide is 'the flimsiest of reasons'. In other words, you want players to check adminwho to see what they have to do to get the shuttle called, and if you're on, they have to hope their life decisions and circumstances through vital childhood developmental periods left them with enough social skills to make up a convincing excuse to not be headbanned. Do you see how this sort of policy enforcement might be construed as poor adminning.

>designed and balanced around people going through the same content they have done a million times
>in a game where older players would rather go assistant, a purely reactionary job with no set content, and wait for pvp/round events/rp to happen rather than work through actual jobs
>I want players to open up byond, log into sybil, and do something they derive no fun from

It's frustrating, you're dimly aware of a problem, that's the extent of your understanding, and you have admin powers so you can enforce things you don't understand

>i dont' want to code
I never told you to code because I know you won't, and I'm not going to pick up coding either, so it's an unreasonable demand of me to make. What I am telling you to do is to go away with bad policy changes.

Maybe it's as if ss13 as a game can only provide so many fulfilling experiences outside of reactionary/pvp/round events/rp. I can even explain bagil's longer rounds, bagil might have different players who consist of hub players who haven't worked through existing job content, or long-time players who have worked through the content but rely on an implicit understanding with each other to cooperate in taking part in slower-paced """rp""" to derive some sort of enjoyment or value from the time they invest in a round. They have these longer rounds because the playerbase is different.

You're left with two avenues of approach to fix a symptom, one being new content and the other being a change to how the sybil playerbase derives value from a round/the mentality behind each player. None are easy to fix and cannot be fixed with a simple 'o-oh you have to make up a-an excuse t-to call the s-shuttle' policy change.

[Steelpoint]

How long has SS13 existed, and how long have many players been playing the game?

You can only get so much out of one game for so long. The new PvE content on Lavaland has reignited some people's passion since its a new area of the game that, until now, has had little exploration, since in the past the extent of PvE content are homing Clowns that can smash through R-Walls and space Carp that range from ggnore to annoying.

-----------

Assistants are a go to classic since you have no responsibilities, and are highly mobile, thus giving the player the ability to go anywhere and do whatever, plus the skill ceiling of the role (you start with nothing) helps make the role exciting. But ultimately its the easiest role to fuck around in and contend with what the round offers you.

Security can also be a good alternative, since their job is entirely reactionary to what the round presents, and you get access to a lot of tools to help. But Security has a lot of responsibilities and a lot of frustration, aside from the constant coding wars over security content and their access to the station, and administration (which is better now) but you also have to contend with half the server cursing your very exsistance because you had the audacity to do your job. All this means veteran players may well avoid security and make it a poor role.

Almost everything else is just a case of doing the motions and waiting to see what is thrown at you. There's no end game goal to what you do, there's no reason to strive to make a Durand except for the sake of making one, and most extreme end game content takes so long to get that in any game mode that would best see it used (like Ops or Wizard) would've ended long before you got access to this content, leaving you with extended and shitty traitor rounds for when you get that Phazon or other.

Perhaps if you want to reignite interest in keeping the station alive you would need to look at the end game, such as making SS13 into Space Ship 13 with a end destination, or by moving the station to Lavaland and more heavily intertwining the PvE content with the game.

You can't just slap a rule and ban anyone for not following your highly subjective view of how the game should be played.

[bandit]

Not everyone enjoys fixing things, some do, some don't. The social and cost/reward aspect of it has already been explained ITT, it's hard to pull it off without the shuttle being called since it takes too long, and what exactly is the reason for fixing something in a multiplayer game if everyone else just wants to move on instead of deriving value from what you've fixed. What you get is the 'nah fuck it' response.

>hard to pull it off without the shuttle being called
>the shuttle being called
>shuttle

Yes, you've identified the problem here, which is... the slow deterioration of round length.

So we've finally pinpointed some sort of enforceable threshold, and the one you provide is 'the flimsiest of reasons'. In other words, you want players to check adminwho to see what they have to do to get the shuttle called, and if you're on, they have to hope their life decisions and circumstances through vital childhood developmental periods left them with enough social skills to make up a convincing excuse to not be headbanned. Do you see how this sort of policy enforcement might be construed as poor adminning.

As much as this really deserves an "ayy lmao what" or a "nah fam I construe it as poor social skills" I guess I have to take it seriously, so: I don't think "have enough social skills not to be headbanned" is an unreasonable expectation of a player. It's already pretty much how most admins handle adminhelps. If you're a salty, combative fuck, or a rules-lawyering weasel, the admins will be less likely to be lenient on you.

I never told you to code because I know you won't, and I'm not going to pick up coding either, so it's an unreasonable demand of me to make. What I am telling you to do is to go away with bad policy changes.

ayy lmao what I already code, I've coded for like coming up on a year now, you've even commented on my code, so I literally have no idea what you're talking about here.

Maybe it's as if ss13 as a game can only provide so many fulfilling experiences outside of reactionary/pvp/round events/rp. I can even explain bagil's longer rounds, bagil might have different players who consist of hub players who haven't worked through existing job content, or long-time players who have worked through the content but rely on an implicit understanding with each other to cooperate in taking part in slower-paced """rp""" to derive some sort of enjoyment or value from the time they invest in a round. They have these longer rounds because the playerbase is different.

You're left with two avenues of approach to fix a symptom, one being new content and the other being a change to how the sybil playerbase derives value from a round/the mentality behind each player. None are easy to fix and cannot be fixed with a simple 'o-oh you have to make up a-an excuse t-to call the s-shuttle' policy change.

None are easy to fix, but the playerbase evolves based on habits. A few months ago Basil was full of green hub players and things were far more of a shitshow than they were now. The thing about habits is that sometimes they have to start out forced or prescribed before they take for real. And this works both ways. If your server is 30 minutes of graytiding and murderbone followed by a shuttle call, then it will breed a playerbase who wants exactly that, or that but even more so, like 25 minutes. This has been the trajectory over the past couple years.

You can't just slap a rule and ban anyone for not following your highly subjective view of how the game should be played.

Sweet, I'm headmin now! I get to slap down rules and my word is god! Oh wait, I'm not, and I am posting this in the public policy forum to start a discussion about a trend I've noticed that I think is bad for the game.

[imblyings]

>doesn't know the game
read the thread
play the game
generic bomb breach fix situation takes enough time that a shuttle call you can't complain about will happen, rendering all effort moot
shorter rounds, are not only natural fluctuations, they are a symptom of two things you don't address

>missing the point
>players complain all the time about inconsistent admin rulings
>hey guys let's enforce the most subjective thing ever
>w-wait just make the requirement be a flimsy excuse
>going into literal admin busywork, player busywork wasn't enough for u

new job content with enough room for experimentation and interaction =/= every other pull request

>beat a horse that doesn't have to pull your cart into pulling your cart
>this will make it pull your cart
>could instead work towards buying a carrot to make it pull your cart but nah
>beat online strangers over the internet into playing the game in a way they don't want to
>this will keep them here instead of driving them to find fun elsewhere
how exactly are you going to convince players to fix breaches, or emagged airlocks, or do the same old content? by all rights you might stockholm syndrome some players into redoing job content but none of them will do that because they love redoing things, they'll only do it if they adapt like pre-hub bagil did. But players can go to bagil if they want all the little implicit agreements for fun that bagil oldfags enjoy.

you don't revitalize an interest in the game by beating players on the head to play the game your way, it should be that simple but apparently it's not

[J_Madison]

No point keeping those players then.

Besides, there was reasons to do a job. There was reasons like make a Durand.
Playerbase problem when away missions got removed.

Bluntly speaking, cut the head off the snake and the body will die; stomp out bad players and cut admin intervention to 0 and you'll see rounds end longer. Disable side antags too; they're not needed, there are plenty of ways to get back in.

People no longer mine to mine technically speaking; few people play RND science now because it's just 15 minutes of a cookbook and wait for miners.
Miners mine to explore and fight rather than mine. The job has become a looting simulator rather than one that actually serves a purpose.

Aside from the god awful lag, miners never get the sweet endgame because rounds end before they even get a satchel of holding in most rounds.

My solution is the following recipe for a longer round;
Delay side antags until 45+ minutes.
Cut any and all admin intervention until 1 hour has passed.
Remove the round ending stuff from traitors like bombs and supermurder mode kit.
Begin culling players that play just for antag and munchkin others work.
Stop doing shitty TC trades.

Of course all of the above suggestions will drive Sybil players insane because they want 30 minute rounds where nobody wants to play jobs with a goal anymore.

[Wyzack]

Of course all of the above suggestions will drive Sybil players insane because they want 30 minute rounds where nobody wants to play jobs with a goal anymore.

Here is the crux of the issue. You are essentially saying to change the game to be the way you want it in spite of what the sybil players want, despite Sybil players composing of probably close to 200 people, maybe more. This is clearly the type of game they want to be playing, and this is exactly why i can not stomach playing on Sybil. It sucks and it is not what the game used to be, but if the people playing it are enjoying it then who are we to make them stop. This is why Longbow getting creative control on Basil is a good thing, as he has been fostering the type of gameplay it seems you would enjoy more. Give it a try

[J_Madison]

Of course all of the above suggestions will drive Sybil players insane because they want 30 minute rounds where nobody wants to play jobs with a goal anymore.

Here is the crux of the issue. You are essentially saying to change the game to be the way you want it in spite of what the sybil players want, despite Sybil players composing of probably close to 200 people, maybe more. This is clearly the type of game they want to be playing, and this is exactly why i can not stomach playing on Sybil. It sucks and it is not what the game used to be, but if the people playing it are enjoying it then who are we to make them stop. This is why Longbow getting creative control on Basil is a good thing, as he has been fostering the type of gameplay it seems you would enjoy more. Give it a try

I'm that tempted to create a server for those that want the roundlength of basil, with the gameplay of sybil, and a different flavour all together. As much and it'd suck to have three servers, the playerbase is seperated into medium RP basil and sub-30 minute sybil due to both player and admin action.

[Wyzack]

I guess the middleground is kind of lost. If history is anything to go by tg alone cannot support three servers. You might be able to supplement with hub players, but you will need a good team of admins to whip them in to shape like basil has done

[Sidon]

Ausops is 100% correct. Everyone else just loves to impose their views on dozens of other players. Using this "problem" as a platform to try and get things they don't enjoy removed. Maybe it's time to realize that sitting and doing a badly designed job for 50 minutes every round is just not fun? Maybe realize why the popular jobs sway to being reactionary? No no, I hate everyone else, though clearly they're the problem not me. Ruin their enjoyment with impossible rules and boring game design. Comical.

[FranzKrake]

The games just been tailored towards 1 hr to max 2 hr rounds, theres not enough end game content, not enough "quests" (for the lack of better term) and activities that engage you to make it entertaining. However, there is plenty of ways and opportunities (Random Events/Antags) etc to end a round.

The game has been coded for 60 min to 2 hr shifts, ez as that. People, and by people I mean coders and the playerbase, do not wish to play long shifts. You do? Well, youre the oddball out then.

If you wanna play longer shifts, I suggest switching to a RP heavier server. TG is a 3 A Server: Action, Autism, Assholes.

[Wyzack]

I think that 1-2 hour rounds is what bgo is aiming for, where as on sybil they come out closer to half an hour most of the time

[bandit]

Yeah, that's the sweet spot IMO, although longer would be fine with me personally. There's a good "design document" (oh god) in Ideas that sort of gets at the ideal progression for me.

[Armhulen]

honestly the thirty mins is gonna make me move to bagil, because fuck I hate making a cool virus aaaaaand the shuttle left how F U N

[bandit]

Also, re: "what sibyl wants," all I have is anecdata but I just ran a poll.

Are round lengths...
Way too short: 7
Too short: 12
OK: 5
Too long: 0
Way too long: 0
Did not vote: 33

(I ran a similar poll during lowpop in the morning, it was way more heavily skewed toward OK, but still weighted toward 'too short.')

[Zilenan91]

A lot of people love to shit on paprik, but he's totally fucking 100% right with what the game is and was. I'm just gonna preface this with saying that /tg/ as a codebase is like Minecraft in terms of focus. It's utterly disjointed and unfocused to the point that it feels really unenjoyable to do much of anything despite having way more content than other codebases due to its open source nature.

What I'm also saying is that because of our open source nature, we've been able to spam out content for years, with some of it agreeing and disagreeing with the focus of the game to create a big disjointed mess. Back when we didn't have the sheer amount of content we did now, rounds were long because people actually rp'd.

This is a bad thing.
Yes, I'm saying rp is a very fucking bad thing because people were forced to do it to enjoy the game in any form.

This meant that you'd have people doing what is essentially a workplace simulator at some point after they've run out of things to do, making it boring and stagnating the playerbase to the point where we have people who have wasted 6+ years playing it near constantly due to the ties they've created in character. This is also why team antagonist rounds have multiplied in the last few years, they help to ensure that there's constantly something to engage players and keep things happening in a round and ensure that players cycle in and out more rapidly due to more of them leaving from a lack of rp and persistent relationships. This creates a significantly healthier environment for a game and is a large reason why we're the 2nd most popular server that SS13 has.

tl;dr RP is the rot of the game due to how it stagnates the round and playerbase, and the only reason people did it was because there was nothing else in the game that was even remotely enjoyable.

[Cik]

[Zilenan91]

Making this a second comment to break up my thoughts here, but if we truly want to make rounds longer through PvE content (which is a bad thing imo since it means that we'll get less of a player income due to the game being significantly less accessible due to the time requirement), we'll need a new map. The current station will not suffice without fundamentally changing how the entire game works. I'll post a design doc to the feedback forums in a bit.

[Incomptinence]

Just make the shuttle refuel timer length a config option so it can be tweaked to make the round longer or shorter without a big coder fight.

[Zilenan91]

That's awful because that just makes it so people sit around doing nothing until they can call the shuttle rather than just call it.

[Incomptinence]

The people who itch for the shuttle are do-nothings anyway.

You could also make it shorter so 10 minute rounds because a head didn't get antag can happen if that is what people want.

[Incoming]

Has been a problem F O R E V E R.

Lots of really good but HARD to implement solutions. There is however a really easy one that just isn't done because people would bitch: Just raise the ship refueling timer like 10 minutes.

[onleavedontatme]

>The people who itch for the shuttle are do-nothings anyway

On the contrary, the people who control the shuttle (security) are in the highest stress positions.

Has been a problem F O R E V E R.

Lots of really good but HARD to implement solutions. There is however a really easy one that just isn't done because people would bitch: Just raise the ship refueling timer like 10 minutes.

I dont know if it would make the rounds shorter or longer, but I think the length of the evacuation process is definitely what pushes me to call the shuttle early in some cases. Better to preemptively call while you still have the chance.

It takes 15+ minutes for the round to end once you start the process, which is forever once an emergency starts.

[Tornadium]

>The people who itch for the shuttle are do-nothings anyway

On the contrary, the people who control the shuttle (security) are in the highest stress positions.

Has been a problem F O R E V E R.

Lots of really good but HARD to implement solutions. There is however a really easy one that just isn't done because people would bitch: Just raise the ship refueling timer like 10 minutes.

I dont know if it would make the rounds shorter or longer, but I think the length of the evacuation process is definitely what pushes me to call the shuttle early in some cases. Better to preemptively call while you still have the chance.

It takes 15+ minutes for the round to end once you start the process, which is forever once an emergency starts.

Gonna be honest, there are times as sec where I'm facing Abductors, Revenants and Wizards with traitors thrown in. I just call the fucking shuttle to get a new round that isn't quite so annoying to deal with. I know other security players do this too sometimes, I feel like the abundance of active antags can be a big factor in making sec go "fuck no" and just try to end it.

[Shaps-cloud]

If admins are spamming dumb shit everywhere it's probably safe to call the shuttle

[onleavedontatme]

What I'm saying is, the entire existence of SS13 revolves, is designed and is balanced around people actually doing their jobs. Otherwise, it all falls apart and becomes a grief lottery

You have it backwards. The game is very much designed and balanced around the antags. The jobs were an awkward attempt at covering that up, and they came later.

For example, to paraphrase muskets in adminbus recently "I added RnD to distract scientists so theyd stop blowing up the station every round"

Our rules are very much antag oriented as well.

[Tornadium]

If admins are spamming dumb shit everywhere it's probably safe to call the shuttle

Pretty sure that was just a tc trade + mulligan.

[Durkel]

As someone who spends way too much time mining I feel the burn of short rounds the most, It's more often then not that by the time I come to deliver my first batch of goods that someone will already be screaming for a shuttle call. We have to look at the issues of why the shuttles called to really address anything.

1. Bomb,atmos leaks,and repairs. We upped the bomb cap causing bombs to be more devastating. This,combined with the fact atmos drains very quickly makes the station a unlivable hell quickly. Couple that with the fact that repairing (actually fixing shit,not just patching a hole) And having to restore atmos to area is slow and tedious as fuck.

2. Dealing with difficult antags. A off station cult base, wizard,xenos and more. These are all notoriously difficult to deal with, And now that cults don't even need to research words you can expect a shit storm of ghosts to ravage your anus while the cult sits back and enjoys it valids. There's little incentive to fight antags that can royally fuck the station instead of just fleeing. This isn't even going to mention how incredibly easy it is to fuck the round by releasing the singularity or tesla or the massive fuck you that is kudzu.

3.Most roles don't benefit from longer rounds. Security,engineering,atmos,medical,the 3533 fucking assistants and command have little reason to want to stay on the station. Why fix a hole in medical if the shuttle is just going to get called anyway? Why work on making a new atmos set up if it will never be used? You can chalk this up to a player problem in that can't entertain themselves, and it's mostly right. Might as well call it try and roll antag then sit around doing dick for a hour.

There's more reasons but I'm too lazy and I'm just going to half ass this. This problem is very little code related and very much a player issue. Shorter rounds make people disinterested in starting a potential long project which then makes players wish for shorter rounds. Hell, I remember we used to try drag rounds out as long as possible for two hour button mash bonanza. I personally hate the 30 minutes mad dash every round where all my work is useless. I really don't see how you can fix this problem without carving out half our players.

[Takeguru]

without having to worry about constraints like "objectives," god forbid the traitor has an actual purpose besides KILL THEM ALL

Responding because I was triggered

So, that leaves traitors quietly grabbing their assigned macguffin/killing a random assistant, and then fading into the background causing no more conflict for the round outside of maybe getting attacked themselves?

As it stands, there's not much else for them to do

They can sabotage something that'll take 15 seconds to repair(Hull breach, consoles, etc) or ends the round(Singulos)

I was never a fan of being the victim of a murderbone but they're providing sustained conflict by doing so, everything else they could possibly do is either just boring busy work to deal with or will force a shuttle call

[paprika]

Let's face it. Short rounds are fun every once in a while. Miners might get pissed when their work is shit on by a rev or a wizard but it's shortly reset anyway.

Wizard is fun. We can keep wizard (trim the fucking fat of lich and shit, it is a horrible addition) and just make shorter gamemodes more rare.

Everyone wants the 'sweet spot' of content to be at like 40 minutes but it's hard to aim for that when you have this abundance of these shotgun conversion gamemodes that can be an hour long or 10 minutes.

Also, WHY THE FUCK DON'T ADMINS CALL THE SHUTTLE IF THEY WANT THE SHUTTLE CALLED? it's not hard at all to force a shuttle call and remove recalls. I'd love a hardcoded feature for admins to be able to prevent all recalls, unless we have that already.

[Pilgrim]

I've noticed a few things responsible for shorter rounds, as compared to the last time I played frequently (right before antag sec was removed)

1) Dummy AIs or Heads calling the shuttle with messages like "HUMAN HARM" or "station's fucked". Back in the day "AI, recall! We can fix it!" was for all intents and purposes a meme-response to every single shuttle call, to the point it got annoying -- now it's much rarer for that mentality, and for some reason AIs are a lot less subservient than they used to be and won't autistically follow Law 2 on the old endless cycle of call-recall. I do think AIs are doing too much about Law 1 and too little about Law 2 compared to years past.

2) Admins pushing buttons. Seems like every other round there's some admin fuckery that endangers or fucks over the entire station so that 2-3 people can fulfill a snowflake event. One infuriating case was a Sybil round lately in which Centcomm sent a message that there was power loss on the station (no reason of course) and they were sending a guy you had to punch in order to generate electricity for the station. As an atmos tech I said fuck that and tried to generate electricity using the turbine, but due to admin fuckery it didn't work. T-comms went out so most of the station didn't even know the whereabouts of this punching man-bag and once a couple engineers found him they locked him up in engineering, so it's not like anyone was having fun. Why the fuck was this event put into place? This wasn't after 30 minutes of absolute nothing; this was the start of the round.

Admins need to stop fucking around so much. Their job is to keep assholes in line and it seems to me that /tg/ admin culture is about patting each other's backs, shooting the shit, and bombing the escape shuttle. Any time I log on there's at least 3 or 4 of them online... that's a sign it's time for a culling.

3) Conversion game modes are naturally shorter, especially on rounds with few heads and empty sec.

[Saegrimr]

Silicons can't recall anyway.

[paprika]

Honestly you don't need to 'cull' admins, the more I've played this game on this server the more I've realized that the player ---> admin ----> burnout cycle will shed us of excess admins eventually anyway. I don't have any problem with the tons of hires the adminbus has had recently with the rate at which people get bored as shit of this game/administrating it.

[oranges]

Admins need to stop fucking around so much. Their job is to keep assholes in line and it seems to me that /tg/ admin culture is about patting each other's backs, shooting the shit, and bombing the escape shuttle. Any time I log on there's at least 3 or 4 of them online... that's a sign it's time for a culling.

People with this opinion are usually still new enough the the standard game has spice to them.

Spare a thought for those of us who have played so long that only admin events seem interesting anymore.

[onleavedontatme]

Admins need to stop fucking around so much. Their job is to keep assholes in line and it seems to me that /tg/ admin culture is about patting each other's backs, shooting the shit, and bombing the escape shuttle. Any time I log on there's at least 3 or 4 of them online... that's a sign it's time for a culling.

People with this opinion are usually still new enough the the standard game has spice to them.

Spare a thought for those of us who have played so long that only admin events seem interesting anymore.

And the people who are burned out on the game need to remember that some people still enjoy it and want to actually play it.

[Cik]

my advice is just take a break. if necessary a long one.

i come back to the game every now and then and enough things changed that it's new and interesting. even just fixing minor things as an engineering cyborg is a good time.

[Reece]

To add my worthless opinion as a newb I think that some endgame content would actually help, take science for example. I've just stopped playing a nerd entirely because after I max out R&D in ten minutes there's nothing to do, I build the standard durand with hella guns, toss it to sec along with some crossbows and lasers and then sit on my arse for the rest of the round unless I am the single person in the science department. Ideally I'd like something that needs co-operation between departments and is worth the effort needed for it.

Engineering is something I've been playing more and more because unlike science the work never really ends, as autistic as it sounds I enjoy trying to get the derelict running, as infuriating as it is to see the shuttle called two minutes after I've loaded all the solar crates, wire, metal and other gear for repairing and re-powering the old station it's generally for a good reason (I play mainly basil, sybil's infestation of validhunters irritates me) so I'm normally not too pissed of. Maybe admins could stand to add a bit more kookiness to the round, for example the last one I played there was a massive spider tide, but I convinced 3 of them to integrate as station crewmembers rather than evil spiders. Perhaps if admins added long term objectives on a round by round basis it might make the longer rounds a more appealing option to the players.

To take the example of lavaland, the crew might be tasked with setting up a colony, which would need boards from R&D, materials from mining, the engineers to build it, security to help police it, medical to keep the colonists alive, etc. Admins who sit there and push random buttons are irritating yes, I've had more than one fairly chaotic round turned into an absolute clusteruck because a boredmin tossed a ninja, two ERT and a nuke ops team at the station during a shadowling round (utterly ruining the poor lings round in the process, the worst case of this was when an admin kept spawning in supermatter shards at random locations and deleted the engine until the station was just gone)

[J_Madison]

The duration is so low, I and many others have asked themselves;
why even do a job anymore?


That's a scary thought that content is being butchered into non-progressive static jobs because it just isn't worth it anymore to waste time doing a job and never seeing any reward.

[Takeguru]

That's a large part of why I started playing assistant almost exclusively

I find no fun in loading up a job that doesn't pay off until late game and 9/10 times the round goes to utter shit before I get the shiny thing I signed up to that job for
Like viro, finally perfect the disease, walk outside and medbay is a crater, shuttle just docked, and there's a guy spinning a double e-sword as he sprints at you

[Oldman Robustin]

The OP begins with a fallacy, people have always bitched about round length in boring rounds. 30 minutes of nothing happening will always feel like the round is going on for "too long". Entertaining rounds make an hour fly by, boring rounds make you feel like its been 2 hours when its only been 30 minutes.

Rounds length is in a fine place right now.

Only change id make it is make recalling not require a head ID but have all recalls automatically announce the location of the recall console and the name on the ID used to recall.

[tedward1337]

What I'm saying is, the entire existence of SS13 revolves, is designed and is balanced around people actually doing their jobs. Otherwise, it all falls apart and becomes a grief lottery

You have it backwards. The game is very much designed and balanced around the antags. The jobs were an awkward attempt at covering that up, and they came later.

For example, to paraphrase muskets in adminbus recently "I added RnD to distract scientists so theyd stop blowing up the station every round"

Our rules are very much antag oriented as well.

/thread

Also, when button happy admins start spawning shit it's always ggnore call the shuttle.
Short rounds are what Sybil is made of, it's the constant cycling of antags and players with a hint of RP and chaos. Enough to warrant a shuttle.
Long rounds have always been a basil exclusive, partly because of pop, but also because that's what the players on basil want.

[onleavedontatme]

http://www.ss13.eu/tgdb/tg/ingamepolls.php#p139

Players have pretty clearly stated in this poll that they love the chaos and spam anyway.

[tedward1337]

>not enough of it
I can change that :^)

[Drynwyn]

If it's boring; the shuttle gets called because nothing is happening.

If it's exciting, the shuttle gets called because OMG STUBBED TOE CALL SHUTTLE NO GREENTEXT.

[cocothegogo]

i think that centcom should be able to deny an escape shuttle

[Atlanta-Ned]

i think that centcom should be able to deny an escape shuttle

This would be a lovely, if slightly meta-y hint that there's still stuff to do in the round.

[PKPenguin321]

i think that centcom should be able to deny an escape shuttle

they can already do this it's just that they don't wanna deal with negative backlash from players

[Xhagi]

i think that centcom should be able to deny an escape shuttle

they can already do this it's just that they don't wanna deal with negative backlash from players

Basically this.

[paprika]

i think that centcom should be able to deny an escape shuttle

they can already do this it's just that they don't wanna deal with negative backlash from players

BUT WE'RE BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORED

[Cheridan]

i think that centcom should be able to deny an escape shuttle

they can already do this it's just that they don't wanna deal with negative backlash from players

That's not the case. Admins constantly disable Mulligan from firing, almost 100% of the time. They want minirounds as much as anyone.