ItzRiumz wrote: ↑Fri Sep 20, 2024 11:25 pm
Sybil and Bagil before it hold a special place in my heart as it’s where I learned to play and get good at the spessman game. It’s unfortunate seeing both servers at the pop numbers they’re at now, though I suppose their fall was a long time in the making. It was a combination of many things that caused this and I’m sure I’ll probably miss listing many. I do feel these were some of the larger contributing factors though.
-QC bans banning long time players that were active in the community.
-A highly competitive atmosphere that harmed many new players to the game.
-RP quality lowering due to many people leaving for Manuel and other lrp-mrp servers (a result of the competitive nature of Sybil)
-Antags having too much freedom in what they can do (Subjective, but I will die on this hill).
-Lack of admins and those willing to admin for Sybil.
Sybil suffered from a lot of QC bans and regular bans that ejected vocal and long-time members of Sybil’s community. These members were often on and playing on Sybil no matter the population which helped in grabbing pop. Newer players also lost people to look up towards and become if they stayed in the community. I won’t argue the validity of these bans as personally I feel many of them were completely valid. However, I do feel they harmed the pop.
Sybil suffered from a very competitive atmosphere when it came to the crew vs antag dynamic. No one pulled punches or let the other play around and have fun. You had to keep up with every new meta the coders created unless you wanted to fall behind and get dumpstered by whatever antag is murderboning or sec officer that is acting turbo powergamey and valid hungry. To pull off any gimmick you had to be robust, no if ands or buts. This harmed new players who would just give up trying to do anything interesting because you failed mister 2000+ hour greyshits or redshits vibe check.
People who wanted at least a little bit of RP basically all left (Including me). The game was turning into TTT and only TTT. That unfortunately drove off a lot of new people who came in expecting a sandbox roleplaying game with TTT. So now we have a problem, we have no influx of new players and the players who stayed because they believed that there was going to be at least a little RP are leaving because the silent robustos are murderboning and shutting down any form of RP. I can take at least a little bit of blame for this as I did the same shit until I got bored of it.
This is going to be a big point of contention but antags had way too much freedom. Having murderboners and medical bombers running around roundstart every fucking round made playing on Sybil abysmal. As soon as someone rolled traitor they immediately bought a bomb or a desword (Or whatever murderboning weapon of the month it was) and go ham. Vital departments bombed roundstart and a ton of crew dead by the 20 minute mark. These playstyles were extremely unhealthy for the game and admins didn’t step in to tell people to knock it off because every LRP player including admins worshipped rule 4. This forced coders to step in and add the awful fucking timelocks that everyone hates. All because people couldn’t control themselves and not buy a fucking bomb everytime roundstart to end the round.
The last point is really simple. Sybil had no admins and no one wanted to step up to be one. End of story.
I’m tired of seeing posts that blame Manny or whatever other shit for the death of Sybil. Manny was just a symptom of Sybil’s problems. What killed Sybil was neglect by both players and admins unwilling to foster a better environment for new players and be better role models instead of shitting on whatever ideas newer people had and fucking over rounds for everyone constantly. It’s sad, really fucking sad seeing Sybil like this. It was a long time in the making though.
Is there some nuance between your statement about QC bans being maybe justified and the idea of the QC banned people being "people to look up towards and become"? I know I'm paraphrasing a bit but I'm asking in good faith, people are complicated and capable of good and bad. I get the sense that you've got some values/traits in mind that have been lost to QC, aside from the vocal and long-time aspects you've mentioned. If there's more to that I think it could be interesting for further discussion in regards to community culture.
This is one of the best takes I've seen overall on the issue especially in regards to balanced points and thoroughness. The conclusion is a little reactive but that's acknowledged.
I'd like to build a little bit more on it.
Pre-manuel Bagil and Sybil were tidally locked with one another, a reflection of a principle I've noticed in the community: players will go to a different server to get away from someone they don't like. Players seeking not to get murderboned are willing to play on lower pop, players who like to murderbone want a high pop to take out. This balance would eventually lead to situations where so many players flee the high-skill players that the lowpop server becomes high pop and which in turn attracts the very popchasers that people were trying to avoid. The savvy bounce immediately, those with a sense of loyalty to server stick around until the pop drops or they break and leave for the other server.
Manuel removed the need for this balance, it gave the players who were fleeing high kill-count, high-skill players a permanent place where they felt that the rules would prevent the kind of thing they hated. As much as it's fun to be idealistic about the idea of RP being "improved" it's ultimately very very subjective what "better" RP is. Personally I don't consider myself to be very good at it (which is part of why I chose to play SS13 in the first place, as it seemed a touch more immersive than TTRPG) and in time I've found that my "better" RP is high-concept shitposting gimmicks, rather than someone with a full life story, dob, named friends and family, etc. This isn't even mentioning the experience many have reported of LRP and MRP not being very different in the RP of it all.
So with that in mind, stripping away the idea that rulesets actually produce better RP, we're left with this: Players like MRP because it inherently compromises Rule 4. Even people who say they don't like RP or the idea of MRP will still play there because they feel like they can join a round and do job content or projects without having to worry about getting instaganked.
I understand that some people have strong feelings about the way things were and want to see a return to that. That could be a good and great thing, Eronymun ran on it this last election. I was playing on Bagil/Sybil before Manuel came about, I remember what it was like.
In order for a re-unification to occur, a simple but difficult question has to be answered in a sincere and honest way:
How would a single ruleset benefit current MRP players?
I have yet to see a convincing argument answering this.
The easy answer should be "high-skill players can teach high-rp players to be better at the game" but a lot of people who are about the RP used to be about the skill, it's a part of the life-cycle of a player (that or burnout).
Genuinely, if I were assigned to pitch this idea I'd need this to have at least one good point that would interest MRP players.
These are people who left their regular servers with their regular friends, mostly to play under a compromised Rule 4. Manny's population has remained steady (except for the wallening), and has its own problem of being big enough to need another server but lacking in people who are up for separating out to do it, which is kind of interesting its own way given the above.
I'm not saying that LRP is bad or wrong, I'm just saying that the people who were unhappy with it in large part left and never looked back.
Also, since the inception of Manuel, Monkestation has come into being offering a happy medium between our LRP and MRP rulesets. This likely hoovered up an amount of bagil/sybil players who had the guilty pleasure of wanting Manuel's murderbone protections but didn't like all the other rules. It pulled players from Manuel, too, but Manny's had an easier time drawing in new blood.
