Manuel and a higher pop cap.

[Constellado]

I was looking at some cool graphs on statbus, and I noticed...

Manuel is being constrained!!

Almost every single day it hits the pop cap.

Do we raise it? If so, do we want to raise the cap by 10 or do we want to unleash the floodgates as they say? Would it improve the average Manuel experience? No waiting in queues... no sitting and waiting for half an hour in a lobby... Or would it just bring in the tiders?

What do you guys think?

[Bmon]

I want that stupid in-game player queue thing turned off (it doesn't work 90% of the time and generates many ahelps) and the pop cap either completely removed or raised by 20 players

it's so dumb that we even thought we needed a population cap on mrp in the first place

[Plapatin]

if we are constantly hitting the pop cap that is policy working as intended
anyone who has played on 80-man sybil rounds (hell, anyone who's played a max pop manuel round) knows that roleplay becomes exponentially more difficult past a certain critical mass of players as threats pour in & individual narratives override eachother
the cap in it's current state is a compromise - originally i had set both hard & extreme caps significantly lower
it is likely that raising the extreme cap to 90 would not meaningfully affect the bottleneck given that manuel is our most consistently populated server
it's unfortunate that not everyone can play when they want but it absolutely does make a difference in matters of quality control
(this is also why mso has repeatedly tried to seed campbell by shutting manuel down)

[Constellado]

A lot of other HRP and MRP servers have higher pop caps, why not us? Just curious. Code base issue? I know its not a map issue as a lot of them use the same maps. And usually those servers have extra features, not less of them.

Do people actually see a real drop in RP? Is there a way to test it?

[Plapatin]

it's not anything performance or mechanics related, we have a lower pop cap than most because the server was crafted with a specific image in mind. both me & hulk agreed that a strict pop cap was important to maintaining that image
like most of our roleplay policy the threshold for acceptability is largely vibes based and cannot be meaningfully tested, however i think it's understandable why more players competing for the same amount of resources (job content is generally the subject of this but it extends beyond it to even just the literal space on a map) would lead to bad interactions that nobody really wants to go through - dragging the roleplay quality of the round along with it
there's probably a convincing argument to be made to raise the extreme cap yet again but i'd personally oppose it for the sake of enforcement & staving off pop chasers - manuel has significantly more tickets generated in any given round compared to our standard servers (hopefully this makes sense given the extra page of rules we expect players to follow) & we have an established population that does not pledge loyalty to any given server & simply goes wherever the most players are - something we can reasonably expect to generate friction with manuel's environment & spread our volunteer administrative force that much thinner
this is something that has been discussed pretty extensively among admins so forgive me if i seem like i'm brushing this off a little

[dendydoom]

it's something that i recall being tested before (i think rave lead this? i could be mis-remembering, apologies if i am, but i recall rave spearheading a lot of early manuel things) where the pop cap was raised and it was ultimately found to harm the experience more than help it.

personally i would like to see if our potential playercount for manuel has increased since this was last discussed. if it's a case where there's a lot more people trying to play than before, then i would be open to possibly raising it a very small amount. we're talking like 5-10 more crew.

[Vekter]

If we're regularly hitting the population cap on Manuel, it might be time to consider an MRP version of Basil, possibly using the Event Hall server. I know we have Campbell but people aren't playing there mostly due to the lag. I think there's some concerns that this won't do much because of how tight-knit Manuel is, but IMO I think it's worth trialing for a while.

[Higgin]

network effects are powerful - pop attracts pop

the "rule of cogs" is also powerful - it becomes increasingly difficult to get any one input to do the kind of work you want the more things it's coupled up to, and the character of that one "working component" becomes a lot more critical and prone to catastrophic failure if it does fail.

it's very difficult to have any level of personal engagement with a gimmick or activity if one person can fuck it up and it requires a lot of personal leadership and investment to work.

the more people you introduce to the scene, the less likely at any moment you are to get the level of engagement the people in it want to be able to give to get towards their goals in a satisfying fashion. the more scenes and action overall, the more likely something totally unrelated is going to flip the table of your plans or dramatic moment, and it can also just be one guy throwing a chair because there's no time to talk, and tracking conversations and drama in a room of 10+ people is a very practically and cognitively taxing thing that, if you really put the time in with the people involved, can grind towards a halt too.

i don't have a good answer as to the perfect number, but there are problems and pulls of increasing size and complexity. increasing size enables more complexity on the one hand (you can actually fill departments, have people interacting and doing shit everywhere, getting seen and caught out,) but it also becomes much harder to give more than the most basic of interactions their due the more people are involved at any one point.

in many cases (speaking as a person with a lot of hours on Skyrat-pop command, 120+ folks for 2-3hrs.,) you must be able to more effectively delegate around less happening, and people often also have to self-regulate significantly about getting involved in scenes or situations that are already packed (I can recall an incident of a contractor voguing in front of the bridge with no less than ten security gathered around them for one funny example.)

it's something worth experimenting with to taste

[TheLoLSwat]

If we're regularly hitting the population cap on Manuel, it might be time to consider an MRP version of Basil, possibly using the Event Hall server. I know we have Campbell but people aren't playing there mostly due to the lag. I think there's some concerns that this won't do much because of how tight-knit Manuel is, but IMO I think it's worth trialing for a while.

or basil can just be swapped to MRP since thats the way the NA playerbase is swaying, it doesnt make sense having 2 lrp servers when manuel usually has more players at any given moment than both combined

[warbluke]

or basil can just be swapped to MRP since thats the way the NA playerbase is swaying, it doesnt make sense having 2 lrp servers when manuel usually has more players at any given moment than both combined

I would be okay with trialing this, it's a well known fact Bagil has higher RP than Manuel anyways.
Just don't import the antagonist restrictions please we can police ourselves.

[Higgin]

you'll tend to get diminishing returns off of more servers - people want to be where the people are, and the people that they know. SR ran both a separate 'action' and 'HRP' server, neither ever got more than a handful of people after their initial bump of interest, neither ever resurged.

the most likely thing to smooth some sort of server transfusion would be* either raising Manny pop caps at peak uptime or, to get radical, splitting manny down the middle into two ~50-60 pop servers to force more people out across both with overall extra room to catch people from one or the other at any given moment. I don't think this second solution would be bloodless or desirable, but it's roughly what was done back in the day when the old single tg server was struggling to keep up with peak pops - we split out into two that were a bit smaller, tg-1 and tg-2, and people sorted themselves over time towards preferring one or the other.

[Vekter]

If we're regularly hitting the population cap on Manuel, it might be time to consider an MRP version of Basil, possibly using the Event Hall server. I know we have Campbell but people aren't playing there mostly due to the lag. I think there's some concerns that this won't do much because of how tight-knit Manuel is, but IMO I think it's worth trialing for a while.

or basil can just be swapped to MRP since thats the way the NA playerbase is swaying, it doesnt make sense having 2 lrp servers when manuel usually has more players at any given moment than both combined

Basil kind of exists as a low population version of Sybil and I think a lot of people value that, I don't want to take that away from LRP players. It also won't solve the problem, it'll just defer it to Sybil.

[TheSmallBlue]

Very good points were made already as to why not to do this, but like, what if we do it for one day just to see what happens? For shits and giggles, maybe even for gits and shiggles?

[Vekter]

Very good points were made already as to why not to do this, but like, what if we do it for one day just to see what happens? For shits and giggles, maybe even for gits and shiggles?

I think using one of the servers we're not using right now is a better move than completely uprooting Basil for like a week. Maybe Wall Hall, or the Toolbox server if we still have access to it?

[RedBaronFlyer]

I'm kind of torn on this for multiple reasons. It does suck when people can't play manuel, but depending on the day manuel can rapidly become NRP really quickly during highpop. I don't think making another server will directly fix this because a majority of players want to be where the people are. If you have the option of waiting a few minutes to play on the 60-80 pop server, or you could instantly join the 30 pop server, I imagine most will simply choose to wait.

[RaveRadbury]

We did this in the past, it didn't go well. The admin overhead increase is exponential and quality suffers. If there are those who don't have the experience and need to see for themselves how it feels we can always trial it.

[DrAmazing343]

I really do believe we don’t have to repeat history here, no matter how much we believe this time will be different; highpop manny is already a handful, both administratively and player experience wise. Like other said before me, too many stories created a Gordian Knot of plot lines rather than meaningful intersections between them.

Keep pop cap.

[NikNakFlak]

I'll be honest. I am not privy to the last time the population cap was increased but I babysit manuel rarely usually late in the night in the pretty dead times. I don't see how 10 more active players (75) would be any more chaotic than 65. Any kind of chaos/MRP suffering I would feel would still occur at 65 than 75. The decrease in quality to me would seem more like an admin coverage issue and a community/culture issue. Yes, bigger population breeds more chaos but I also want /tg/ to be more popular and have as much players as possible at all times. Let's just onboard more admins at the same time. Take my boomer opinions with a grain of salt but I wanted to share anyway.

[Constellado]

Other non tg RP servers don't seem to have the same issues with pop.

Is it really just because of LRP players following pop?
When I was new I would do that but I made sure I would follow the new rules of the server and try to fit in.
Is the LRP and MRP culture that different?

[Vekter]

Other non tg RP servers don't seem to have the same issues with pop.

Is it really just because of LRP players following pop?
When I was new I would do that but I made sure I would follow the new rules of the server and try to fit in.
Is the LRP and MRP culture that different?

Other non-/tg/ RP servers tend to have stricter rules if I understand correctly.

[Timberpoes]

Yup. It's a mix of stricter RP rules and stricter enforcement of those RP rules.

Manuel has very few rules actually mandating or forcing roleplay. The current rules as I envisioned them were to restrict player freedom to avoid IC interactions. The admin team can't use them to micromanage roleplay, but they can use them to make sure players aren't avoiding opportunities to interact with each other.

Our rules don't force roleplay. They force interactions. We try and tune all the other variables to make sure players have the space and opportunity to make roleplay out of those interactions.

At the sweet spot, there's enough fun available in the shift for everyone to get their fair share without negatively impacting the potential for other players. But at high enough pop levels, fun starts to become a zero sum game - for someone to gain fun, someone else has to lose it.

The way I explain this is by examples like the lane rules. They stop mattering as much since you end up competing against members of your own lane for limited job content. There's only one supermatter, so a fully staffed engineering department may end up fighting over who gets to autism it. Of course some of the engineers can go off and get shards from cargo and make their own setups with blackjack and hookers, but they're competing against others for cargo's budget and competing for space to create a setup.

Antag proportionality rules fit the same bill. Even with a highly staffed sec department, it can still be untenable to process each crim in an RP-friendly manner. RP sacrifices get made for the sake of convenience. A tale we sometimes hear is "I didn't have the time to process them, so I executed them as we were getting swarmed with antags".

Between too few players and the sweet spot of players, everyone has the time to put 100% into every interaction. Past that sweet spot of players and you can't put as much effort into each interaction else some people don't get interacted with at all. Too many antags has the same impact - roleplay becomes difficult because there's just too much shit going on. Interactions become more terse and people can become too busy just trying to survive, sacrificing roleplay.

What I don't want is an MRP server with HRP admins that have the entire Amazon rainforest lodged squarely up their asses telling players they're roleplaying wrong. I want that sweet spot where roleplay doesn't need to be policed because we've got all the other variables just right that it happens naturally.

[Not-Dorsidarf]

Essentially, Manuel rules are mostly fences to herd players away from the common sorts of anti-rp behaviour and lone wolf wordless optimized gamer play.

[kieth4]

We are going to raise it by 5 now, if there is any success we will raise it by a further 5.