massa wrote: ↑Thu Sep 26, 2024 4:33 pm
i definitely didn't leave because a few people poopsocked i left because everyone i knew got beaned and the new antags were getting very cringe and the game was getting on rails
rails in a sandbox. imagine. we're the people who were here telling you why we aren't and we keep saying the same few things.
Why does it have to be all one thing? What I mentioned was an underlying natural waning of interest that every single game ever made has to fight back against. Every server in the community as well. Some do it better and some do it worse.
You have hit upon something that I do agree is another culprit. I think the heavily prescribed nature of specifically progtot, our most common antagonist, might be resulting in extremely same-y rounds. The game actively pushing you to chase the same side objectives over and over is not terribly interactive or unique. It will burn players out pretty quick if they happen to get a lot of antagonist and are convinced they have to look for these side objectives before they can really start to play traitor. What that usually boils down to is just rushing to the final objective, because at a certain point, you may as well since the round has dragged on long enough to get to it. It's very mechanically focused above all else, and encourages to remain mechanically minded. There isn't any time or opportunity for roleplay if the game keeps ringing a bell at you to hurry up and get more TC/Reputation. I long since stopped doing side objectives because of this problem.
What it seems most folk are unaware of is that I did actually push and tried to test this theory rather than blindly speculating as to whether that was true, and what could be done to resolve it.
This PR here was one I wanted to see pushed for a really long time, and I was finally getting some headmin support to see it happen. We may have had a chance at making some changes because I
assumed this was something that was open to debate. In no uncertain terms, this is what happened;
A) It was completely dismissed outright by Waltermelon, who was totally uninterested in even testing whether or not our observations were true or not.
B) Even with headmin support to want to see change, there was not even an entertained notion to consider changing it in response to admin discussion, who had to adjudicate these rounds and try and play GM to inject some unique experiences again. That burns out admins just as quick. I was thinking of my fellow admins as much as the players.
C) I got fucking told to punish people who rushed side objectives too much? Like, what the fuck? It's the fucking antagonist's main gameplay loop, we can't fucking punish people for playing antag too closely to the designed intent. This fucker is an admin for crying out loud. This I especially took offense too. Completely unreasonable suggestion.
C) Even the actual testmerge got completely undermined by the biggest code fuckup in the last decade. The Wallening, where all the issues I've brought up were magnified tenfold. And even if we did do the testmerge, it wouldn't matter. Nothing that could be demonstrated from the testmerge would pursued Waltermelon. Doing it was pointless because this wasn't up for discussion in the first place.
This not only got completely stonewalled,I can confidently tell you that even if it IS causing these problems, there wouldn't be any active attempt to change it, because the person who makes that decision has made it very much known that he is quite happy to let the server die so long as major projects continue to be introduce regardless of player feedback. I wish I was fucking joking, but I already said this back during the initial fallout from the Wallening that this is what Walter told me. He told me, literally, that if the server died from the Wallening and a fork happened, that is fine, because they'll somehow magically create a new server for the wallening, as though there would even be a playerbase to come play on that server in the first place. I could not have fathomed a worse outcome at the time than a fork, and that dickhead was going to
planing for it. You aren't wrong that these are ongoing problems, but I don't think you can even fathom how incapable any of us have been at trying to affect change.
All these incidental minor code changes people bringing up do not matter. It is the big, fundamental ones like progtot and Wallening that matter. There has to be re-evaluation or things will not have a remote chance at improvement. I'll keep saying this now as I have for years. I very much would prefer to see the game thrive than die off for our LRP crowd. I really would. I've been trying for years at this point to amicably start dialogue to address the major problems that we have with the game that could be contributing to player burnout and the decay of gameplay quality, and every single turn I kept getting blocked from the group that I feel have the power to help enable those corrective changes.
As for bans, I don't know what to tell you. I mean, certainly, a ban has resulted in depopulation before. Jackrip's group effectively depopulated Bagil when he got banned, but he at least was constructive in how he handled it and made his own server to keep playing. That eventually lead to him coming back. I can't really say the same of what Sinfuls been up to. But If you're still convinced Sinful didn't earn his ban, and his presence was the only thing keeping the server afloat, then what you're suggesting is that Sinful should have had some kind of administrative immunity for the sake of the server's continued existence. You know that isn't a reasonable ask. He was given quite a lot of opportunities to not let things go the way they did. Nobody here is immune to administrative action. Even people who were popular.
