What is Campbell expected to be?

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What is Campbell expected to be?

Post by Mothblocks » #619940

Campbell is formally, our EU MRP server (and internally, a way to test TGS4 and Linux, which we eventually want all servers to run on). Its colloquial understanding as a marathon round was something that ended up just being a side effect of how the people who decided to play on Campbell ran things.

However, Campbell now has an asterisk in the form of the #reports-from-campbell-station channel. Its existence as a server where players can expect long rounds is being more systematically acknowledged.

I've been playing a good bit of Campbell recently, and would like to see the head admins decide what they want Campbell to be, formally. Personally, I would like to see them go all the way with making it a server where long rounds can be expected.

This would, in my mind, open up the door for at least the following:
  • Adding "Marathon" or similar to the title on the home page.
  • Disabling random events (which is config), or limiting what can run. Game admins have regularly forcefully turned off random events, because they get in the way of very long rounds with a few amount of players. As an example, on the last Campbell round I played, there was a temporary power outage (from the random event), leading to the SM APC being turned off for too long (because the only engineers were either dead, or me (doing something else)), which led to it exploding, while at the same time a rad storm mutated whoever left to take a break/sleep/whatever.
  • Configuring Dynamic to prefer traitors above all else, as round removal based antagonists or antagonists with a clear end state (such as cultist), while not showing up very often if at all on the current population, would be counter-intuitive to marathon rounds.
  • If not the last two, massively increasing factors like midround injection rates to satisfy for several hour/day long rounds, rather than 90 minute ones.
  • Giving more incentive for contributors or maintainers to accommodate several day long rounds (even if this just means having more eyes to fix bugs that only show up in extreme circumstances)
But really, the sky is the limit, but only if head admins decide that they want Campbell to be a marathon server, as already lightly implied by its special channel.
Last edited by Mothblocks on Sat Nov 20, 2021 6:00 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: What is Campbell expected to be?

Post by oranges » #619941

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Re: What is Campbell expected to be?

Post by Mothblocks » #619943

One big question I'm only now realizing I haven't covered is whether or not there would be changes just accommodating marathon gameplay, or if policy would be introduced encouraging it. For example, being more harsh about shuttle calls having a good reason.

From my point of view, nothing like that is needed, as the community, at least now, seems to be knowledgeable on when the shuttle should be called in that type of setting. Especially so because low pop marathon rounds can't expect to have any admins on, and support pings because someone called the shuttle would be lame.
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Re: What is Campbell expected to be?

Post by Omega_DarkPotato » #619945

As someone who hasn't played on campbell but has adored the reports-from-campbell-station channel, I'd love to see more for making that server into the unique little marathon server that it's become.
Who knows, maybe it'll help introduce people to TG via the unique sort of experience a constant marathon server provides.
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Re: What is Campbell expected to be?

Post by Jonathan Gupta » #619952

can't wait to appeal, tg is going places and I wanna see where it goes.
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Re: What is Campbell expected to be?

Post by Timberpoes » #619953

To give a counter-point:

Campbell is currently what the players make it.

It's being used as an interesting free-form/experimental server. Parts of the admin team (with permission from the headmins) are trying things that they would ordinarily never try. Generating interest, building a population and creating something new and different that the players are invested in.

I think enforcing marathon shifts and configging the server around them will stifle that. I think there's more benfit to just allowing shifts to naturally be long by virtue of the players wanting to make their shifts long, instead of rigidly enforcing it administratively.

As the server's playerbase grows and/or changes, I believe the server will grow and/or change with it too. I don't see much benefit in limiting that potential.
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Re: What is Campbell expected to be?

Post by Riggle » #619956

As one of the two who are responsible for the channel, I think we should either double down and implement these changes (at least some of them), or do a 180 and make Campbell a normal MRP server, as the current limbo isn't the best for either side. Mothblocks is completely right in saying that some round events are VERY detrimental to the longevity of the rounds, for example radiation storms -- those should be removed. Some other minor destructive events like stray pods should most likely also be either removed, configured to not cause as much damage, or scale based on the population. On a shift with few engineers they can do a lot of damage overnight.

I maybe a supporter of the marathon camp, as it provides a unique experience that can't really be seen outside of it, but I would not like to force what I perceive to be a good change onto an unwilling population. The final vote should be on the community to decide if they'd want to keep it.
Timberpoes wrote: Sat Nov 20, 2021 6:52 am To give a counter-point:
--snip--
You make a good point, but leaving Campbell as it is, as I said earlier, would be a detriment. We should either try implementing all of the changes, or at least some minor ones to improve round quality. If Campbell culture shifts in any point in the future we can always revert the changes. People seem to be enjoying themselves, why not make their life a bit easier?
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Re: What is Campbell expected to be?

Post by Mothblocks » #619957

Timberpoes, I think you would have a stronger case if we weren't already accommodating to the current playstyle of Campbell. The reports from Campbell station channel has a pinned rule about only being able to post every 2 hours, for instance, which doesn't make as much sense outside the context of formally acknowledging Campbell as a marathon server when Manuel rounds (MRP being the only thing that Campbell actually formally is) aren't usually much longer than that.

There's "rigidly enforcing it administratively", and accommodating what people already enjoy.
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Re: What is Campbell expected to be?

Post by Cobby » #619982

Formerly calling it a marathon server would naturally mean that the server will have the requirement to uphold that standard. You wouldnt call Manuel a MRP server and not add the additional rules/configurations to support that claim if you could per the rules just 1:1 what you do on LRP.

If for instance a group of people collectively joined Campbell and decided to reflect all the mannerisms of Manuel including round length would they get banned? I guess the answer right now is an admin would probably cite like rule 1 for ruining the "marathon round" or "I dont think that was a good reason to call the shuttle (for a round I want to last for hours if not days)", so In that sense you would want rules catered around that.

Quite frankly if you ran some sort of event to pull people into campbell for normal MRP shenanigans routinely I imagine it could retain that pop and you can have basically EU Manuel, given terry's nature im sure there are people who dont want the even more hyper-gamer style terry has compared to syb/bas which what brought upon manuel for a good chunk of people.
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Re: What is Campbell expected to be?

Post by Riggle » #620030

Cobby wrote: Sat Nov 20, 2021 7:34 pm If for instance a group of people collectively joined Campbell and decided to reflect all the mannerisms of Manuel including round length would they get banned? I guess the answer right now is an admin would probably cite like rule 1 for ruining the "marathon round" or "I dont think that was a good reason to call the shuttle (for a round I want to last for hours if not days)", so In that sense you would want rules catered around that.
I agree with this. Currently Campbell is officially not a marathon server, this is purely a culture that has formed. Shuttle callers can only be punished to the same extent as on other servers, so stupid reasons are out of the door already. Causing a shuttle call as an antagonist to complete objectives could be a rule 1 issue, but I don't think it would be right to punish such people, as there no actual precedents set. At most we could politely ask them not to. If an antagonist would cause a shuttle call just because would be a completely different issue. That would at least in my opinion be a clear rule 1 violation (situational nuances apply) and should be punished.
Cobby wrote: Sat Nov 20, 2021 7:34 pm Quite frankly if you ran some sort of event to pull people into campbell for normal MRP shenanigans routinely I imagine it could retain that pop and you can have basically EU Manuel, given terry's nature im sure there are people who dont want the even more hyper-gamer style terry has compared to syb/bas which what brought upon manuel for a good chunk of people.
Running events and overseeing Campbell routinely has been an exhausting task, especially because I mostly did it alone. I could unfortunately only keep it up for a little less than two weeks. While it did attract a bit of extra population the pull was short lived, and not worth it if you take my resulting burnout into account. Having a larger team would make this task feasible.

I believe that Campbell's main distinguishing feature from normal MRP lies in the extremely low population. If the population were to increase, I don't believe we could keep the marathon thing going for too long. One solution would be to spin another server up and let that one be the normal EU MRP server, so we could keep the unique Discord channel Sticky and I have pioneered. I might of course be wrong, only time will show.
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Re: What is Campbell expected to be?

Post by Stickymayhem » #620037

I think it's clear that Campbell as a populated EU MRP server is quite unlikely.

We should embrace this new innovative way of playing and reinforce it with code and config solutions. I'm sure lesser populated downstreams would also benefit from things like safe state or blocking shuttle calls
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Re: What is Campbell expected to be?

Post by Mothblocks » #620057

Formally acknowledging Campbell as just a low-pop server is also a completely valid option should head admins wish, since you can configure it to be lower max capacity.

Could even maybe run Shuttle Station 👀
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Re: What is Campbell expected to be?

Post by oranges » #620060

we have plenty of spare servers having a marathon focused server is not an issue, the problem will simply be getting the operations team to get off our lazy asses and config it.
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Re: What is Campbell expected to be?

Post by Hulkamania » #620449

My only issue with making Campbell a "marathon server" is enforcing it as such. A new set of rules would have to be created specifically to cater to the idea that ruining the round before its natural end point would get you ejected. Log diving on such a thing would also be kind of annoying, as one could intentionally sabotage the thing and the results not really be discovered until far later (and perhaps not even reported to begin with)

Having it live in this space where it's treated differently just because it has a small population operates under the assumption that it will always and forever have a small population. In theory it is supposed to be the EU equivalent to Manuel, to provide an additional MRP focused server to the masses.

In practice it is currently operating outside that, but that is almost exclusively because it is low population, not because the people claim to WANT a marathon server, its just because when it's operating on zero-to-single-digit pop at any given time there isn't much going on to force a shuttle call.

The channel on the discord that is IC is a novelty and one that may encourage people to mess around in Campbell, but I personally would rather see it thrive as an actual MRP environment than something that people check out once or twice and a very small subset of the player pop play with any regularity. This is not to say those people are PLAYING MUH SPESSMAN GAME WRONG but rather a generality that more growth is always better in my opinion, and restricted a server to exclusively operate as a marathon environment would severely restrict growth.

All in all campbell was and is a testbed for the linux environment and has little to do with player engagement anyway. I would say let it operate in its current state as long as it naturally does, but forcing it into a marathon style gameplay environment without any additional goodies to incentivize people to PLAY in that environment is only going to ensure it NEVER has a regular population.
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Re: What is Campbell expected to be?

Post by Stickymayhem » #620475

Hulkamania wrote: Thu Nov 25, 2021 4:25 am My only issue with making Campbell a "marathon server" is enforcing it as such. A new set of rules would have to be created specifically to cater to the idea that ruining the round before its natural end point would get you ejected. Log diving on such a thing would also be kind of annoying, as one could intentionally sabotage the thing and the results not really be discovered until far later (and perhaps not even reported to begin with)

Having it live in this space where it's treated differently just because it has a small population operates under the assumption that it will always and forever have a small population. In theory it is supposed to be the EU equivalent to Manuel, to provide an additional MRP focused server to the masses.

In practice it is currently operating outside that, but that is almost exclusively because it is low population, not because the people claim to WANT a marathon server, its just because when it's operating on zero-to-single-digit pop at any given time there isn't much going on to force a shuttle call.

The channel on the discord that is IC is a novelty and one that may encourage people to mess around in Campbell, but I personally would rather see it thrive as an actual MRP environment than something that people check out once or twice and a very small subset of the player pop play with any regularity. This is not to say those people are PLAYING MUH SPESSMAN GAME WRONG but rather a generality that more growth is always better in my opinion, and restricted a server to exclusively operate as a marathon environment would severely restrict growth.

All in all campbell was and is a testbed for the linux environment and has little to do with player engagement anyway. I would say let it operate in its current state as long as it naturally does, but forcing it into a marathon style gameplay environment without any additional goodies to incentivize people to PLAY in that environment is only going to ensure it NEVER has a regular population.
you're making the assumption that the marathon has to stop when there's more people

I DISAGREE

TEN THOUSAND PLAYERS 7 YEAR ROUNDS

THE FINAL STAGE OF MY MARATHON DREAM

YOU WILL NOT STAND IN MY WAY
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Re: What is Campbell expected to be?

Post by NecromancerAnne » #620476

Just let it be whatever it is for now. Re-evaluate that later once it really just dies off on play whatsoever.
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Re: What is Campbell expected to be?

Post by Armhulen » #620481

Stickymayhem wrote: Thu Nov 25, 2021 2:30 pm
Hulkamania wrote: Thu Nov 25, 2021 4:25 am My only issue with making Campbell a "marathon server" is enforcing it as such. A new set of rules would have to be created specifically to cater to the idea that ruining the round before its natural end point would get you ejected. Log diving on such a thing would also be kind of annoying, as one could intentionally sabotage the thing and the results not really be discovered until far later (and perhaps not even reported to begin with)

Having it live in this space where it's treated differently just because it has a small population operates under the assumption that it will always and forever have a small population. In theory it is supposed to be the EU equivalent to Manuel, to provide an additional MRP focused server to the masses.

In practice it is currently operating outside that, but that is almost exclusively because it is low population, not because the people claim to WANT a marathon server, its just because when it's operating on zero-to-single-digit pop at any given time there isn't much going on to force a shuttle call.

The channel on the discord that is IC is a novelty and one that may encourage people to mess around in Campbell, but I personally would rather see it thrive as an actual MRP environment than something that people check out once or twice and a very small subset of the player pop play with any regularity. This is not to say those people are PLAYING MUH SPESSMAN GAME WRONG but rather a generality that more growth is always better in my opinion, and restricted a server to exclusively operate as a marathon environment would severely restrict growth.

All in all campbell was and is a testbed for the linux environment and has little to do with player engagement anyway. I would say let it operate in its current state as long as it naturally does, but forcing it into a marathon style gameplay environment without any additional goodies to incentivize people to PLAY in that environment is only going to ensure it NEVER has a regular population.
you're making the assumption that the marathon has to stop when there's more people

I DISAGREE

TEN THOUSAND PLAYERS 7 YEAR ROUNDS

THE FINAL STAGE OF MY MARATHON DREAM

YOU WILL NOT STAND IN MY WAY
I mean with more players comes more lag, so really you're not going to get those marathon rounds
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Re: What is Campbell expected to be?

Post by Mothblocks » #620482

Like I said before, if the current existence of Campbell is something head admins want to keep, that can be done by limiting the player count on Campbell, and like oranges said, spinning up other servers is easy enough.
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Re: What is Campbell expected to be?

Post by PotatoOfChaos » #621455

From the few rounds i've played so far, the idea of having a dedicated marathon server where people build fancy bases and do giant projects is really cool, no other place has something like this!
I'd love to see the whole project side of it get encouraged some more, code and policy wise, having more options for said projects would be great, and personally i'd rather see stuff like traitors being disabled. ( maybe an account age/activity limit at some point too )
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Re: What is Campbell expected to be?

Post by cacogen » #621696

the oldest anarchy server in ss13
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Re: What is Campbell expected to be?

Post by Capsandi » #621796

A map like shuttle station, where there are all those smaller stations in disrepair could be really fitting as a way to remove the upkeep of a station meant for more than 8 people at a time.
Taking care of an entire station meant to fit 50 or so people can be annoying when your trying to make metalgen/ a different station
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Re: What is Campbell expected to be?

Post by MrStonedOne » #630548

Mothblocks wrote: Sat Nov 20, 2021 5:59 am But really, the sky is the limit, but only if head admins decide that they want Campbell to be a marathon server, as already lightly implied by its special channel.
If every new server became a marathon server because it started out with near-no-pop, basil, and terry would be marathon servers and would have never grown byond that.

Server behaviors, feels, atmospheres, or themes, that revolve around their avg population, is super hard to actually plan around. They are emergent and changing. This same question came up for terry and basil, with people getting mad that I actually expected them to gain population and took steps towards that direction. It didn't stop me then, and its not gonna stop me now.

At the moment, your own timegraph shows that manuel is unique in having its peak population during both the same time as terry, and sybil.

It has a lot of EU players.

In fact that graph shows we have 2 suboptimal arraignments, both manuel and terry are overcrowded. Both are fixed by adding an EU MRP server and getting it seeded and bootstrapped.
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Re: What is Campbell expected to be?

Post by Mothblocks » #630551

Actually, MSO, you reminded me, I actually am fine closing this thread now that the announcement to close #reports-from-campbell-station has gone up. That was my grounding concern--that this server is already being treated differently, and I was wondering if that was a direction head admins were interested in moving forward.

Now that Campbell is not treated differently by the rules, I am satisfied with the outcome. Closing the thread now, though were a marathon server ever to happen, this would not be a bad place to look at for inspiration.
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