DISABLE ASSISTANTS

[TheBibleMelts]

...until a certain population threshold is met on the server.

inspired by this thread: viewtopic.php?f=83&t=36188 - a common argument of why not to play a job with responsibility during lowpop is "why would i play this contributing job when there's 15 assistants looking for something/someone to fuck with?"

a solution to that could be..limiting when the round can have assistants.

lower-population hours on lrp tends to result in a ratio of assistant-to-jobbie that wind up with the entire station being tided by bored people that joined the round afraid of having any kind of responsibility, which results in lower quality shifts, which results in lower population, which loops us back to square one.

i'd like to experiment with requiring a station population/player ready count of 20-30+ before assistant is able to be roundstarted as, or latejoined as. the goal of this is to inspire a little more cohesiveness of shifts in lowpop rounds, and to drive a little more engagement out of people who otherwise join as assistant, get bored, and leave after having no 'team' to work with and no 'goal' to meet.

common point raised against this:

won't people will just join as engineer or paramedic to do their tiding instead?

while this is a valid concern, before vocalizing it, you should understand that people that would do this, are already doing it.

how will making someone pick a job slot force them to do that job?

it won't, and we do not force anybody to accomplish their departmental duties as-is. what would change is the ratio of people who will be joining a lower-pop round and having a team, and a home department. that alone is likely to inspire a large chunk of people that play this game in good-faith to contribute more to the shift than it would for that same player who joined as a grayshirt to goof around before getting bored and logging off.

the psychological effect of a player joining a job that they don't intend to participate heavily in suddenly hearing over the radio "hey i need an engineer over in X" and having a call to action to engage with the shift shouldn't be underestimated.

a short-staffed station full of lone wolves with no ties to anybody or anything just feels completely stagnant and empty. there is nobody to blame when something isn't done, there is nobody to ask to perform tasks, there is nobody to work alongside.

thanks for reading.

[WineAllWine]

definitely worth a try imo

[Vekter]

I really don't see why not. There are jobs (Engineer, Cargo, MD, Janitor) that can pretty easily just vibe during lowpop for a little bit between emergencies and I feel like I'd rather have those people on the hook for getting stuff done when need be and otherwise just hanging out working on whatever.

LRP also doesn't have the "stay in your lane" rules so it's not a big deal for them to do other shit if they need to, as long as they're around for when they're needed.

Off Topic

Because someone might bring it up, I have been vocal in the past about just wholesale replacing Assistant with a more new player centered role to try and get rid of the whole "this job is the one you take if you just want to grief" thing, so while I can see how someone might think I'm doing this just because I don't like the job, I do genuinely think it's a good idea.

[Higgin]

yep. wanna be a no-job ronin or take the day off? visit your head or the hop. otherwise, enjoy your extra access, gear, and the comms.


edit: i'd even go higher than 20-30 to like 40 or 50

[Vekter]

edit: i'd even go higher than 20-30 to like 40 or 50

What's the threshold for Graveyard Shift access?

[ItzRiumz]

Very opposed to this. I don’t want people taking up job slots and then not doing their job because they wanted to be an assistant. People constantly think of assistant as THE tider role when many other people pick it to also hang around and chat with the crew or do cool little projects and gimmicks. Let people have the choice of responsibility, don’t force it on them.

Extra edit: This would also hurt bringing pop up because people wouldn’t play the game in the first place if there isn’t any assistant role to play for them.

[britgrenadier1]

It may be true that people are already paramed tiding, but I dont want to encourage more people to paramed tide and fight for a 2 slot job. I also worry that red blooded assistant mains may just not sign up at all and try to wait for their slot to open, which might make pop worse.

[Higgin]

edit: i'd even go higher than 20-30 to like 40 or 50

What's the threshold for Graveyard Shift access?

MINIMAL_ACCESS_THRESHOLD 23

[Vekter]

Very opposed to this. I don’t want people taking up job slots and then not doing their job because they wanted to be an assistant. People constantly think of assistant as THE tider role when many other people pick it to also hang around and chat with the crew or do cool little projects and gimmicks. Let people have the choice of responsibility, don’t force it on them.

You're still able to do these things, you just need to do the bare minimum your job requires of you first. So for engineering, that would be starting the engine (which takes 5-10 minutes).

Extra edit: This would also hurt bringing pop up because people wouldn’t play the game in the first place if there isn’t any assistant role to play for them.

I know some people actively play assistant because they like not having responsibility, but I don't think it's unreasonable to ask them to take up a little responsibility to the station before going off to do their own thing.

[PKPenguin321]

common point raised against this:

won't people will just join as engineer or paramedic to do their tiding instead?

while this is a valid concern, before vocalizing it, you should understand that people that would do this, are already doing it.

...and now those that currently dont will have no choice but to do it too

[GPeckman]

My biggest concern is that people will take the job slots but still play like assistants. Well, that and it might kill pop even more. That said, I do think this is worth a shot.

[dendydoom]

hello,

i have had to sweep contentless posts in this thread already and i would like to get ahead of it.

US lrp is not in a good spot. we can either sit on our hands and leave it as it is, or we can try to address some of what we believe to be the issues that are driving people away to places like manuel or other communities.

a chunk of sybilites moved to manuel, and many more followed them. why did they stay? the anecdotal experiences i got from the people i talked to were that, firstly, they didn't have to play so defensively against what felt like bad faith play, and secondly, the station was more of a coherent and functioning environment where people actually had jobs and tasks to perform.

what would be very helpful is to hear from sybil players how they feel about these things. whether they consider them issues or whether they consider them a good part of the lrp experience. if you're a sybil refugee currently on manuel, would these sorts of changes make you consider coming back, knowing that you still have the freedom of no mrp rules around staying in your lane, dealing with antags proportionately, antag restrictions, etc? or would you stay on manuel?

if you're a sybil player who loves lrp and posts in its defence every time someone tries to give it some love and care, why aren't you playing on the server? would this change push you away even more? perhaps make you give it a try?

these discussions are invaluable to us when we review and try to make the servers a better place to play. i'm not a sybil player, but when i took this role, i accepted that i would represent and try to improve and maintain the entire community. i like lrp, and i would like to see it make a return to form.

so please, keep a lid on the pointless arguing. i would sincerely like to hear your experiences, because that is a huge part of how i make my decisions.

thank you.

[iwishforducks]

snip

i believe you mistook this thread for the "turn bagil into mrp" thread?

regardless, please restore my post and the replies; my post was from a design standpoint. i dont see this as anything other than fighting players for niche purposes. i do not think this is a healthy solution, even if it theoretically might make some folks happy. it only drives more of a wedge. if we're looking for ways to get more players in lowpop count then we shouldn't be fighting players on what roles they want to play.

[dendydoom]

snip

i believe you mistook this thread for the "turn bagil into mrp" thread?

regardless, please restore my post and the replies; my post was from a design standpoint. i dont see this as anything other than fighting players for niche purposes. i do not think this is a healthy solution, even if it theoretically might make some folks happy. it only drives more of a wedge. if we're looking for ways to get more players in lowpop count then we shouldn't be fighting players on what roles they want to play.

this proposal will affect sybil much more than the other servers, and in its initial discussions internally, was to address the root causes of a population decline in sybil and a population increase in manuel.

your post held no content. you need to elaborate on why you don't like this idea, not that you just don't like the idea. or you need to take it to the player's club. the post you made just now is much better, hence why it's staying. thank you for your contribution to the discussion.

[Longestarmlonglaw]

Im all for test-trialing this, see how it turns out. Its not like all the headmins and mso are suddenly going to have a stroke and die after doing this leaving this trial permanently enabled.

Im a sybil player, and i want to see how quickly the station will adapt/ fall apart.

[Imitates-The-Lizards]

Frankly, I've been saying to just disable assistant outright this entire time, but this works too. As a native Sybilian it'd be a welcome change.

[kieth4]

Absolutely against this, I do not believe the game's woes come from assistant players. I do not believe thst forcing people into jobs will suddenly increase quality.

[zxaber]

It'd be neat if we could somehow not affect interns, since new players generally aren't the problem this is looking to solve. But I'd rather see this change tried out either way, and there are newbie-friendly roles like Jani and Cargo Tech.

The main issue I see is that assistants clump together and form a pack mentality. Even if people use their jobs to tide, the hope would be that the pack mentality falls apart when it's an engineer watching a bartender be arrested.

[Not-Dorsidarf]

If you want to avoid the "theres a zillion assistants and nobody wants to deal with that", isnt there a config setting which controls the ratio of "open assistant slots" vs "sec officers in round" or something?

[Vekter]

It'd be neat if we could somehow not affect interns, since new players generally aren't the problem this is looking to solve. But I'd rather see this change tried out either way, and there are newbie-friendly roles like Jani and Cargo Tech.

The main issue I see is that assistants clump together and form a pack mentality. Even if people use their jobs to tide, the hope would be that the pack mentality falls apart when it's an engineer watching a bartender be arrested.

I've been saying for a while that we should trial the idea of making Assistant inverse time locked, where if you've played over (x) hours you can no longer choose it.

[xzero314]

Mixed feelings on this. I moved off Sybil to Manuel for exactly the reasons described. I wouldn't describe myself as a big assistant fan at all. My hours as an assistant make up 0.01 of my total hours. That said I have seen lots of examples of good faith assistant play. I have seen people have a lot of fun with the role without being at others expense. Creating memorable moments for quite a few people. I think this is a good idea to test, but I also think we should take into consideration that there are good faith assistants somewhere way way out there in the grey sea.

[Cheshify]

Frankly, I've been saying to just disable assistant outright this entire time, but this works too. As a native Sybilian it'd be a welcome change.

Out of curiosity, what kind of play was making you believe they should be removed? Is this possibly a rules issue / enforcement issue and not a job one?

[Vekter]

Frankly, I've been saying to just disable assistant outright this entire time, but this works too. As a native Sybilian it'd be a welcome change.

Out of curiosity, what kind of play was making you believe they should be removed? Is this possibly a rules issue / enforcement issue and not a job one?

I'm not Imitates but my insight on it is this: Assistant has an image issue in that it's typically considered the "griefing is kind of allowed" job outside of Clown. People tend to pick it because they don't want to be tied down to any responsibility and want to just fuck around all shift. I don't necessarily hate that, but it breeds that kind of boredom that revolves back around to "That security officer is arresting this random person I don't know. I should interfere, as I have nothing better to do".

Replacing assistant with something that's directly tied into learning how to play (like job interns) would help with that, in theory.

[Imitates-The-Lizards]

Frankly, I've been saying to just disable assistant outright this entire time, but this works too. As a native Sybilian it'd be a welcome change.

Out of curiosity, what kind of play was making you believe they should be removed? Is this possibly a rules issue / enforcement issue and not a job one?

I don't think anything positive comes from the Assistant job at all, unless it's being used in it's presumed capacity as the overflow job, or it's an ACTUAL new player.

For every one assistant who does something positive like setting up shop in the commissary, or working a construction project, or spending their shift as a musician, in my own personal subjective experience, there are at LEAST another twenty who spend the shift graytiding, harassing security, validhunting, brawling, or just flat out going SSD once they realize they don't have any task in particular to perform. Due to the very nature of their job, they end up locked out of most positive and contributory game content (or at least the content that has enough replay value to be worth doing more than once or twice like atmos or xenobio or whatever), and so can only fill their time by being menaces.

In my again personal subjective experience, where they fall afoul of the rules side is still their well-known and frequently re-occurring interruption of arrests, ESPECIALLY on LRP. So, I would say it's both things you asked about, but the "graytide culture" oft referenced in this thread is the only natural result for this job with no responsibilities - it could not have turned out any other way, because the conditions of the job would have always only led to this one conclusion of assistants being nothing but shit-heads because they can only ever be negative in the first place, because the few positive things they can do have little replay value.

[Higgin]

the very first greytide round when a bug made everyone assistants turned into an orgy of violence and a spontaneous rush on the brig for basically no inround reason except for the absence of anyone else

the history of the role has included rushes on the spare being such a key part of roundstart that people, often assistant mains, would try to speedrun it roundstart - so it got put in a safe and behind an advertised, delayed calldown

there are times it's valid to tide arrests or depts., but a lot of the time it's antisocial behavior towards the people in those depts. (edit: or just self-antagging) that would not cause the pain it does if more people had access to them by virtue of actually having a job, and for which people often tide for their own purposes separate from any expectations or ready place to slot themselves into the action of a round

even just fictionally, it makes no fucking sense to have a layabout reserve army of greys that has maints and no expectations on the space station. fully-staffed depts. are better and increase the permeability of the station's depts. for everyone - there are more people to move around and open doors, do shit for each other, and use dept. mechanics without friction.

even if those people want to go off and do something else - even not do the jobs at all - it's also helpful to have more people who might actually fill the roles if you, as let's say a paramedic, decide to go build a maints bar with friends, write a book, or get into trouble.

and if you do that and decide you wanna jump back in - being an actual job role instead of assistant gives you an easy place to slot back into and the opportunities to know when you might be needed.

to kieth's point:

Absolutely against this, I do not believe the game's woes come from assistant players. I do not believe thst forcing people into jobs will suddenly increase quality.

the "game's woes" can be connected back to much deeper things imo - namely the limits we bump up against with our format (short, resetting rounds) and antag dynamics.

it's not necessarily a problem of the players themselves, either, but assistant as a role does not encourage players or give them a ready opportunity, or even the slightest expectation, to do much more than behave in ways that make these limits squeeze a lot more.

everybody on the station should be responsible for something or at least have the opportunity to be. if you don't want to even entertain that, and to be responsible to your dept. by saying you're not going to, the easy in-round solution is to ask the head or HoP to demote you and send you on your way. on your way to the line, you might just hear about somebody who needs help learning the dept., or run into a problem you can solve, or get antag and now have a much better toolbox (heh) of specific stuff to do with your access/mechanics.

honestly, getting rid of assistant overall would be a better starting point for play, but a poplock might achieve that effect for lowpop (and be salutory on both LRP and MRP imo)

[dragomagol]

Absolutely against this, I do not believe the game's woes come from assistant players. I do not believe thst forcing people into jobs will suddenly increase quality.

I'm similarly not about this. Forcing someone into a role will just mean they won't join and the pop will shrink further. I don't think having assistants as a selectable role is contributing to any kind of problem we have now.

[ABearInTheWoods]

whats up with the thread link?

[TheBibleMelts]

whats up with the thread link?

how did it take this long for someone to notice

oh wait, people don't read OPs in policy threads.

[dendydoom]

i noticed but i thought you were making some kind of joke and it's lame to explain the joke

also pleaSE KEEP ON TOPIC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Timonk]

hello,

i have had to sweep contentless posts in this thread already and i would like to get ahead of it.

US lrp is not in a good spot. we can either sit on our hands and leave it as it is, or we can try to address some of what we believe to be the issues that are driving people away to places like manuel or other communities.

a chunk of sybilites moved to manuel, and many more followed them. why did they stay? the anecdotal experiences i got from the people i talked to were that, firstly, they didn't have to play so defensively against what felt like bad faith play, and secondly, the station was more of a coherent and functioning environment where people actually had jobs and tasks to perform.

what would be very helpful is to hear from sybil players how they feel about these things. whether they consider them issues or whether they consider them a good part of the lrp experience. if you're a sybil refugee currently on manuel, would these sorts of changes make you consider coming back, knowing that you still have the freedom of no mrp rules around staying in your lane, dealing with antags proportionately, antag restrictions, etc? or would you stay on manuel?

if you're a sybil player who loves lrp and posts in its defence every time someone tries to give it some love and care, why aren't you playing on the server? would this change push you away even more? perhaps make you give it a try?

these discussions are invaluable to us when we review and try to make the servers a better place to play. i'm not a sybil player, but when i took this role, i accepted that i would represent and try to improve and maintain the entire community. i like lrp, and i would like to see it make a return to form.

so please, keep a lid on the pointless arguing. i would sincerely like to hear your experiences, because that is a huge part of how i make my decisions.

thank you.

This post made it's way to reddit
It's from a guy who is constantly rallying against TG

[Vekter]

hello,

i have had to sweep contentless posts in this thread already and i would like to get ahead of it.

US lrp is not in a good spot. we can either sit on our hands and leave it as it is, or we can try to address some of what we believe to be the issues that are driving people away to places like manuel or other communities.

a chunk of sybilites moved to manuel, and many more followed them. why did they stay? the anecdotal experiences i got from the people i talked to were that, firstly, they didn't have to play so defensively against what felt like bad faith play, and secondly, the station was more of a coherent and functioning environment where people actually had jobs and tasks to perform.

what would be very helpful is to hear from sybil players how they feel about these things. whether they consider them issues or whether they consider them a good part of the lrp experience. if you're a sybil refugee currently on manuel, would these sorts of changes make you consider coming back, knowing that you still have the freedom of no mrp rules around staying in your lane, dealing with antags proportionately, antag restrictions, etc? or would you stay on manuel?

if you're a sybil player who loves lrp and posts in its defence every time someone tries to give it some love and care, why aren't you playing on the server? would this change push you away even more? perhaps make you give it a try?

these discussions are invaluable to us when we review and try to make the servers a better place to play. i'm not a sybil player, but when i took this role, i accepted that i would represent and try to improve and maintain the entire community. i like lrp, and i would like to see it make a return to form.

so please, keep a lid on the pointless arguing. i would sincerely like to hear your experiences, because that is a huge part of how i make my decisions.

thank you.

This post made it's way to digg
It's from a guy who is constantly rallying against TG

/r/SS13 is mostly just people we banned ages ago, don't worry about them

[dendydoom]

This post made it's way to digg
It's from a guy who is constantly rallying against TG

thanks for letting me know but i absolutely 100% do not give a shit about reddit

please stay on topic :)

[Shadowflame909]

hello,

if you're a sybil player who loves lrp and posts in its defence every time someone tries to give it some love and care, why aren't you playing on the server? would this change push you away even more? perhaps make you give it a try?

Because I miss Polymorph Magicarps in xenobio.

The games just not the same when you can't start a match as an average Joe and end it as a Dragon...

[TheFinalPotato]

not a config change I don't think

[warbluke]

On Bagil people who roll assistant are often the ones who keep the lights on and the crew alive.

[MooCow12]

Assistants may not have responsibilities but they also have no specific locations they are attached to, atleast until later, ya a geneticist might try setting up sm if power fails and they cant do their job anymore but productive tiding where you are already going to bust into places that have useful gear and then do high impact responsibilities is a standard among alot of long term players like me.

Push the culture of productive tiding if anything, maybe even put it in space law as a mitigator for breaking & entering & theft

Having like 2 lines of text in space law and on wiki can do numbers for server culture

[Higgin]

Prosocial tiding is absolutely a thing, but everyone can do it - it need not necessarily be assistants.

I wager part of the observation of assistants keeping the lights on is exactly due to there being nobody else in those roles to begin with. This proposal would try to address that by foreclosing people from the role where they might not be expected to do things by other players - even if they don't.

Thinking about this a bit has moderated my position. Antisocial tiding and people taking the assistant role to asshat around in ways that worsen the experience for others* are their own problems; people wanting low-responsibility flexible roles to play is not a problem.

[bastardblaster]

if all the jobs besides assistant that i'm interested in are maxed out because of increased demand for those jobs by displaced assistant players then i'm just not going to play. i imagine that that's the stance that a lot of other players are going to have as well.

[TheSmallBlue]

I like this idea, I'd like to see it tested somewhere

[8bot]

might be the worst idea i've ever heard
assistants are fundamental in the station ecosystem, you'd just get service gang or scientists ownzoning you instead if they were banned.
or people wouldn't play because their preferred role is being arbitrarily restricted.
bad, bad, bad idea.
also holy shit linked thread in OP has somebody asking for non-human heads of staff lmao
just go play paradise or something

[Vekter]

assistants are fundamental in the station ecosystem, you'd just get service gang or scientists ownzoning you instead if they were banned.

So maybe the problem isn't that it's assistants, it's that we haven't actively banned greytiding wholesale yet? Should we do that instead? Sounds good to me.

[bingusdingus]

I used to be against the idea, but now I would be all for trying at least some kind of limit. Sometimes I join Manuel with around 60-70 pop and see there are 14 assistants, 0 Chef, 2 Sec, 2 Engineers, cargo run by a lone QM and a HoP is the only acting head, I immediately know what kind of round its going to be and don't bother. Assistant is all well and good if you aren't just dead weight on the station. It's not just the tiding, it's people using resources on a station that has nobody to get the resources in the first place, like power, materials, and tools, and ends up hurting the station as a whole. I think the overabundance of assistants have genuinely led to people being lazy and not wanting to do the jobs that matter. Also I believe there are people that play Assistant because they can try to get antagonist, in the case they don't get antag, they have no repercussions if they waste time or die to get to the next potential antag roll, be that next round, or mid-round.

There has been a general culture shift from collaboration to just doing whatever project you feel like without regard for the overarching collaborative gameplay of SS13. This isn't everyone, mind you, nor am I calling out anyone in particular, just something I notice in general lately. I have been trying to limit my Assistant playing for these exact reasons, and the less I play Assistant the more I understand this sentiment. Removal entirely may be too harsh, Assistant has it's uses for learning or non-traditional goals, and it is one of the most Iconic jobs from the game. Again, I think there should at least be some kind of limit if you aren't a new player, or give incentives to actually playing a real job over being an Assistant.

[8bot]

!	Message from: Riggle
	User was warned for this post. Be nice, policy discussion is for discussing policy not insulting others with no thought put into your post.

vekter this is such a horrible take that we don't yet have the technology to conceive of it
literally go work in a fucking office man holy shit that's what you want outta the game
i was so baffled that i actually quoted you wrong in my utter confusion
so now you just gotta deal with a freefloat post
enjoy piecing together the flow of this conversation for this is what you have earned

[TheLoLSwat]

maybe it can be tested when bagil is rebranded as mrp or MRP+ and manuels cap goes back to like 50 or 60

[Vekter]

vekter this is such a horrible take that we don't yet have the technology to conceive of it
literally go work in a fucking office man holy shit that's what you want outta the game
i was so baffled that i actually quoted you wrong in my utter confusion
so now you just gotta deal with a freefloat post
enjoy piecing together the flow of this conversation for this is what you have earned

SS13 is a role-playing game, not a "run around being a cunt to everyone because you're bored" game. You're not "creating conflict", you're just being an asshole.

[GamerAndYeahMick]

Yeah forcing people into jobs isn't going to lead to them suddenly doing it or interacting with the round differently not buying it

[Itseasytosee2me]

Assistants certainly CAN be entertaining sec content. Perhaps we can gimp them in the code to become frail and stupid so that other crew members can easily boss around the shrimpy cretins.

[8bot]

vekter this is such a horrible take that we don't yet have the technology to conceive of it
literally go work in a fucking office man holy shit that's what you want outta the game
i was so baffled that i actually quoted you wrong in my utter confusion
so now you just gotta deal with a freefloat post
enjoy piecing together the flow of this conversation for this is what you have earned

SS13 is a role-playing game, not a "run around being a cunt to everyone because you're bored" game. You're not "creating conflict", you're just being an asshole.

!	Message from: dendydoom
	policy discussion is for constructive, reasonable discussion about policy. it is not for whatever this outburst is. if you dislike an idea, then you are welcome to explain why you don't want that change to the game. you are not welcome to start insulting others for sharing their own thoughts.

i quite literally could not care less about some cretin having a meltdown because grey man set foot in their apartment and stole a donk pocket
boo hoo

[dendydoom]

after internal discussions on this topic, 2 headmins don't want it and 1 isn't all that interested in pushing that hard to try it. so we will be turning down this proposal currently.

thank you to everyone for your participation in the discussion.