/tg/Station 13

Purlek disease is the slow decay of a server, or niche thing that lives on only via a tight knit community.

This post is mainly caused via what I've revalued myelf to see through a few months of play.

If you don't know this, Purlek was the admin of BestRP, a shitty hub server that served as a gateway tumor for bad players and bad people.
One of the reasons why I believe we are going straight to the shitter is the following:
Remember the custom job trend from darkRP?

Remember the donator jobs, SWAT, VIP Thief, etcetera?
Remember how horrible, visible and shitty the trickle and flood of trolls, bad RPers, bad players, and generally shitty people even in Clockwork?
This is delightfully paralleled with Purlek's BestRP server..

In order to catalog this, I do prefer I should make a scale for this kind of shit.

Enter, the Purlek Scale.

0 Purleks
Means that the game is too niche, too unseen and rarely reaches more than a tight knit group. AKA: Ancient goon, exadv1 ss13.
0.5 Purleks
The small groups have received recognition from curious nerds within their circle or near it. they now become more known, but still the same of a niche and small thing
that only they know. Crusty grandpa goon.
One Full Purlek
The thing has become known, but not mainstream in its genre or platform. At this point there is a split of popularity and there are more servers, more populated. The old can now pick their poison./tg/, bay and others sprout in era.

Two Full Purleks
The old ones recently from the first start splitting due to ideological differences, demographic collapse, etcetera and the public genre, platform etcetera starts learning of it, but usually either dismisses it. The people who dug deep enough or are intimate with the platform and found that make their server. BestRP sprout era.

Three Purleks
The original splitted servers finally get a demographic shift via hub, or other full problem and become fully infested. Most of the originals huddle in a unseen server.
The original tumor evolves, becomes stronger or splits up.
BestRP collapses into paradise, a benign tumor, d20 gets its small population, etcetera.

(Theoretical, based on study of Gmod's DarkRP cycle)Four Purleks
The game has now become mainstream for the platform, highly visible for those who view it and a possible hobby for normal people who stumble upon it. Most of the originals die off due to unrelated causes, are watered down, or fail to live any longer due to the original group leaving the game and due to a lack of others joining in, their subculture dying off.

Five Full Purleks
At this point, the hobby is now completely fucked over and has succumbed. It is now visible to the platform, news articles sprung up about said subculture frequently, and the lowest common denominator is now 99% of the servers.
It now becomes a cash cow for server owners and generally has been thrown away long ago. Some may still cling to nostalgia in small bunkers with hidden IPs and secretiveness, but it is now fully dead and squeakers are the majority.

Yeah you're right this server is exclusively shit and a cash cow and nothing in history has ever had more than a handful of people participate in it without it being shit good point

thanks for reminding me to code darkRP

PKPenguin321 wrote:Yeah you're right this server is exclusively shit and a cash cow and nothing in history has ever had more than a handful of people participate in it without it being shit good point

At about three or two purleks, the cancer is manageable and curtailable, actually. The whole problem happens with greytide-floods usually resulting in panic bunker usage and other not-likable crap. If a greytide-flood is big enough, that's what can lead to four or five, which usually results in the collapse of a hobby.

also, fuck you for thinking new players are bad things

go to lifeweb with the rest of the "ree get out normie" autists

The issue isn't players coming in, it's said players being too inexperienced, malinformed, etcetera to be able to work well in the community, and by GOD it will be on insane levels.

The admin team has worked very hard to reform bad players and filter the tide, but levels of tide from a celebrity mentioning it, a news post from a popular thing, etcetera will break the filter. Even I'm, a regular from the hub, pretty unhappy about the idea of that happening.


The admin team was designed for a semi-reasonable trickle of people from other places: MUDs, byond, newspaper articles or just people who stumbled upon it by luck and felt this was their game, and to hold back the low amount of griffons.

Not a flood of toolboxing faceless masked men who don't even know how to apply ointment to the left leg but still manage to know how to grab something, click on something else's face with it and move toward said thing.

I code a video game for people to play. I want people to know about the video game I work on. I want new players.

Having players actively attempt to stop new players and stop people from knowing about the game is absolutely atrocious

That was a lot of words about something I know nothing about and given the follow-up am now less motivated to know more about. Why does this thread exist in less than 30 words?

iamgoofball wrote:I code a video game for people to play. I want people to know about the video game I work on. I want new players.

Having players actively attempt to stop new players and stop people from knowing about the game is absolutely atrocious

There's an easy way for a compromise. Keep the mods under close sight when a tideflood exists and avoid using panic bunker unless the grief is ginormous, make it a slow trickle or give it a splash or two for reinvigoration, not just turn on the firehose and aim it directly at every single visible server's admins. Nobody here likes burnout, really.

If there's a tideflood, we want to make grief rules pretty strict, not just allow chaos and cause pussywhipping every third second.

AKA: Quadruple Saegrimr when a tideflood exists to prevent too much damage.
Also,

to cedarbridge wrote:Mitigating damage about the next ONEY PLAYS or stream about this game and ensuring that this game's playerbase is at least okay for the playstyle, and removing the possibility of a tide ruining everyone's day.

You can talk about tide all you want, but my understanding is that the admin team already has a plan of action that involves panic bunkering both servers. One of them is already bunkered 24/7 so it's not hard for them to do on demand.

which one

Every year someone makes a thread about how the whole community is supposedly going to shit, you aint on anything new

iamgoofball wrote:I code a video game for people to play. I want people to know about the video game I work on. I want new players.

Having players actively attempt to stop new players and stop people from knowing about the game is absolutely atrocious

Everyone was a newfag at some point, especially in a game as archaic as SS13.

It's fine to not want to teach newbies or to not like someone new to the game, but don't be a douche.

ITT: fucking normies get out of my space game

I mean I can see where you're going with this post but really, what does this accomplish? Everyone knows the quality of a community usually decreases a bit with numbers because the sheer amount of shitty people increases, but what does that matter? There isn't a sudden point where it just collapses in on itself

BACK IN MY DAY IT WAS BETTER, NGYEUGH

But seriously, I understand your point. As new players have come in and old players have left, the servers' attitude toward things such as roleplay, validhunting, powergaming etc. have softened and become weak - it's quite disappointing to see. We need to educate our players, including new ones, about what we want to see out of them. I'm seeing mononyms, OOC in IC, griff for the sake of griff etc. all get ignored by the new generations, and there are now people who will unironically mock you from bringing up the idea of roleplay (we were a medium roleplay server, guys. Then you got too scared of becoming Bay. And now we're Goon).

I'm hardly an originalfag, even if I have been playing for... what? Six years now? But I much preferred it as it was before, and we can still have that style of gameplay whilst inducting new players.

I remember when we touted the fact we were a middle ground between Goon and Bay role play wise.

Even if the reality was further from the truth we at least tried to hold that ideal.

Do times change indeed.

just ban people who are to shit and ban people who aren't shit enough

every once in a while you'll get that perfect player that is a equal balance of not shit and shit.

the shed beckons

Deitus wrote:NOOOOOOO

STOP DISCUSSING THIIIIIIINGS

The reason why issues like those in this thread never get addressed, everybody.

How do we go about fixing our condition? New guidelines? New adminrules? New adminprocess?

AnonymousNow wrote:I'm hardly an originalfag, even if I have been playing for... what? Six years now? But I much preferred it as it was before, and we can still have that style of gameplay whilst inducting new players.

I completely agree with this. Just yesterday, I was literally seeing people typing shit like ":DD", "OwO", and "We dont want to meta Xd" in IC chat. I may not be a super veteran player, but I do remember that there was definitely some sort of RP standard that people were held up to back then. We don't need to go full Bay mode, but at least try to encourage a baseline level for people to follow.

EasX wrote:

AnonymousNow wrote:I'm hardly an originalfag, even if I have been playing for... what? Six years now? But I much preferred it as it was before, and we can still have that style of gameplay whilst inducting new players.

I completely agree with this. Just yesterday, I was literally seeing people typing shit like ":DD", "OwO", and "We dont want to meta Xd" in IC chat. I may not be a super veteran player, but I do remember that there was definitely some sort of RP standard that people were held up to back then. We don't need to go full Bay mode, but at least try to encourage a baseline level for people to follow.

I've started seeing non-lizards without last names and an annoying amount of simile faces. This shit needs to stop.

Are there just no admins on when you see these? I dont think I've seen a single emote or recieved an ahelp in months

even from the title i can tell that this is a shitpost.

EasX wrote:

AnonymousNow wrote:I'm hardly an originalfag, even if I have been playing for... what? Six years now? But I much preferred it as it was before, and we can still have that style of gameplay whilst inducting new players.

I completely agree with this. Just yesterday, I was literally seeing people typing shit like ":DD", "OwO", and "We dont want to meta Xd" in IC chat. I may not be a super veteran player, but I do remember that there was definitely some sort of RP standard that people were held up to back then. We don't need to go full Bay mode, but at least try to encourage a baseline level for people to follow.

110% please ahelp that shit, I don't know a single admin that wouldn't bwoink someone for that

Not-Dorsidarf wrote:Are there just no admins on when you see these? I dont think I've seen a single emote or recieved an ahelp in months

Its mostly just minor cases where I'm too busy doing other things to notice. Its mostly a peeve and less of a "I should ahelp this immediately" thing.