/tg/Station 13

As many people are aware, round lengths have been drifting shorter and shorter and shorter, to the point where it is now commonplace for people to bitch that the round is still ongoing when it hasn't even been 30 minutes. Despite the fact that there is a RIDICULOUS amount of ghost roles, some of which are arguably even more fun than available station roles.

Code changes haven't been sufficient to stop this. So what we need is a policy change. Namely: I think admins should start enforcing the "you must provide a reasonable excuse to call the shuttle." As in, you must actually make an attempt to fix shit before doing so, similar to the rules about early launches. Honestly, it's a shame things have even gotten to this point to begin with, but the idea of people actually trying to do their jobs seems to have totally fallen by the wayside.

enforce a non rule?

what is an attempt to fix?

fix what?

this is hilariously case by case and un-enforceable

you can't force players to invest their time to do admin-mandated busy-work for the sole reason of justifying a restart for a new opportunity for investing time in for enjoyment

if it's deadchat whining you can ignore it, this thread shouldn't even exist
if it's some fuck in ooc you can ignore or mute them
if it's a crew arguing over shuttle calls this is ic and not a problem
if it's a player constantly calling asap when nothing has happened it's a player problem

none of this is a policy issue

I believe, I am the problem in this case. I can and will call the shuttle, if the round is fucking boring and nothing is going on, because the next round might be more exciting.

I'm guilty of this when the round is a complete clusterfuck. Example, that stupid waldo gimmick wizard tound that basically amounted to a 45 minute game of hide and seek.

I had to mutiny and detain the captain and hos to force that shit to end.

Long SS13 rounds need to have an interesting player narrative, that doesn't happen anymore. Most rounds consist of either complete boredom or everyone is dead within 20 minutes.

Playerbase problem;
Admins that actively reduce round times by spawning events/antags when the round is fully able to continue without them.
Players that demand fun all the time and the minute the round isn't revolving around them, they attempt to reset the round.
Players that attempt to munchkin round duration if round isn't in their favour.

Code problem;
Excessive amount of round ending content.
Ridiculous amount of side antag content whose sole purpose is to reduce round length.

It's become a reoccurring factor for me to say it's mostly a playerbase and content problem because no other server has nearly this problem.

Do you think more exclusively endgame content might help? Cool events that only happen late in the round to give people a reason to stay that can be a balance to wanting to leave early

imblyings wrote:you can't force players to invest their time to do admin-mandated busy-work for the sole reason of justifying a restart for a new opportunity for investing time in for enjoyment

"investing time in for enjoyment" could be replaced in this quote by "rolling antag" and be much more honest, let's not kid ourselves. for that matter "admin-mandated busy work" could be replaced with "playing the fucking game"

if it's deadchat whining you can ignore it, this thread shouldn't even exist
if it's some fuck in ooc you can ignore or mute them
if it's a crew arguing over shuttle calls this is ic and not a problem
if it's a player constantly calling asap when nothing has happened it's a player problem

none of this is a policy issue

Round length growing shorter over time is none of the above, it's a fact. I don't have the URL of the statistics page because it's erro shit but people used to get worried when rounds would be dropping below the 1-hour mark. Now you're lucky if you get 30 minutes before people nope out for no reason. It's not one player, it's everyone. It extends to admins as well -- and in this I include myself -- in that I remember when the threshold for "button pressing" was 2 hours. Now? Uh, more like 15?

@Wyzack

On coderbus IRC we were discussing some topics and one area we looked was round length.

One thing I mentioned was something akin to Stellaris and its 'end game crisis' for SS13. The idea being of a catastrophic end game event that would occur anywhere past the 45+ minute marker that only the most well prepared crews could survive.

But to give context the father topic of this was datum antags the trying to remove the concept of a 'game mode' that is static.

Wyzack wrote:Do you think more exclusively endgame content might help?

Nah.
People are quitting round length based jobs because the round simply doesn't last long enough to make it worth playing.
Not to mention how assistants treat the players that play their job roles. It's just not worth doing the job when the round ends before you do anything and you've gained nothing from your hard work.

Most rounds are around 40/50 minutes, which is a good lenght, more than that means that nothing is happening at all(and don't come with "events" on me, i don't like them)

Even in a lot of 40 minute rounds fucking nothing happened.

It also doesn't help that the first 10 minutes of each round tends to be the same clusterfuck of assistants fucking with everything.

Just because nothing is happening for you, doesn't meant nothing is happening for others.

Something is happening and it's more likely something will build up to it.

Just because "lol nothing happening" doesn't mean you should immediately fuck with the round, or make something happen. That shit is the reason why I hate playing miner when it was my favourite job.

Captains job now is to call the shuttle, rounds don't last long enough for any coordination

J_Madison wrote:Just because nothing is happening for you, doesn't meant nothing is happening for others.

Something is happening and it's more likely something will build up to it.

Just because "lol nothing happening" doesn't mean you should immediately fuck with the round, or make something happen. That shit is the reason why I hate playing miner when it was my favourite job.

I'm sorry but 40 minutes of some shitty wizard hide and seek gimmick with half the crew asking for the shuttle to be called is not reasonable.

Yeah something is happening for the 10 people taking part in the gimmick, maybe some weird shit is happening for a few others but if a significant portion of the players are sitting around twiddling their thumbs then the round just needs to go.

Wyzack wrote:Do you think more exclusively endgame content might help? Cool events that only happen late in the round to give people a reason to stay that can be a balance to wanting to leave early

Exclusive round end content is impossible because

A) Admins would just spawn it anyway

B) Nobody is gonna want to work towards long term goals when the round might suddenly end because the singulo got out or the wizard died

C) Nobody is gonna want to work towards long term goals when all it takes is one bored admin to kick over your sand castle with button spam

The structure of the game is not built towards long rounds, nor do most jobs have enough to do to justify long rounds, and it wouldnt make sense to tell players they cant call the shuttle when bored when at least half the admin team acts the same way on a larger scale.

If it's that wizard round, fair enough if really nothing happened. But it's not your decision whether or not anything happened if you do not participate and are not willing to make something to do.

Not every round is team death match action simulator. If you're unwilling to sit 15 minutes out, you're playing with the wrong idea in my opinion.

A) and C) can be fixed by enforcing rules against admins doing that shit, much like "banned for pooping"

bandit wrote:A) and C) can be fixed by enforcing rules against admins doing that shit, much like "banned for pooping"

That's more than half the admin team. Not to mention the overall unwillingness of admins to inform on eachother. It'll split the admin base if you have event admins, general admins to handle stuff then have internal affair admins breathing down their necks.

Tornadium wrote:It also doesn't help that the first 10 minutes of each round tends to be the same clusterfuck of assistants fucking with everything.

The line-toeing greytide every round is getting excessive. Nearly every round I play sec 1 of the same 3 players smashes the brigs windows and exposes the grilles. Then tries to form a mob when they get arrested for it.

cmspano wrote: The line-toeing greytide every round is getting excessive. Nearly every round I play sec 1 of the same 3 players smashes the brigs windows and exposes the grilles. Then tries to form a mob when they get arrested for it.

ding ding ding this is a problem, not just at round start. I've been dunking greytide where possible without being shitty about it but it's becoming increasingly more difficult.

Yeah, you know who you are but greytiding really makes me not want to do any long term jobs except for virology (dungeon fortress) because it'll get ransacked.

If greytiders starts acting like full blown antags (break into the brig), I flat out execute them. I know those shitters from round to round, they're not worth the trouble of brigging.

Just gulag them or cut off their arms. Both of those scenarios make it very difficult for them to keep being annoying.

>"investing time in for enjoyment" could be replaced in this quote by "rolling antag" and be much more honest, let's not kid ourselves. for that matter "admin-mandated busy work" could be replaced with "playing the fucking game"

no

Not everyone wants to roll for antag. You have people ITT saying they call the shuttle because the people that did roll for antag aren't providing sufficient pvp enjoyment. This means people are content with not rolling for antag as long as the antags do something fun. On the other side, people who wait for pvp content to happen must do this because they prefer it, which must mean they don't prefer doing pve or job content, which must mean pve and job content is lacking (aside from lavaland it seems). Why on earth you would as someone with a say in enforcing policy, try to force players to go through content they don't want to is beyond me, but that is not how you retain players on a server.

This leads to you still not specifying what it means to 'play the game' or 'fix things'. Why would engineering and atmos want to fix a standard 3, 9, 17 syndi bomb breach in, say genetics, if fixing the breach, the atmos pipes, the disposal pipes, the doors, the windows, the lights, the apcs, the wires, the machines takes well over a half hour, usually more, only for the round to end in an hour or more? It literally is admin-mandated busywork if players are forced to do something that is entirely inconsequential to them outside of avoiding admin actions if they try to reset the game.

Even if it's not that example, where exactly do you draw the line? Are players meant to check adminwho to see if there are admins on who watch for ""unnecessary"" shuttle calling and then put the minimal amount of effort into fixing a breach they don't want to spend their RL time on? Do you just want to move your ghost over the engineers and see them place down a few floor tiles before you let the players call the shuttle? Do you want to see them placing down wires and pipes?

What about other forms of damage. Is bomb damage enough? What bomb size? Location? Say it's some antag breaking all the windows or emagging all the doors. It's valid, it's legit, admins can't interfere. The other players get fucking tired of it and just want to call the shuttle and get over with it. Do you have a specific number of windows or doors they have to fix before you let them call the shuttle? Do specific windows and doors have specific weightings that count for more windows and doors fixed? Are you volunteering to come up with thresholds for all these possible situations? Are you volunteering to convince all admins to enforce your thresholds.

This is fucking subjective as fuck, it's not enforceable. Pick up coding and create interesting pve or job content for players to engage themselves with and want to keep the round lasting for longer. Pick up coding and join the balance meme and make antags want to risk their antag roll to do something fun for the crew more. You can't bandaid fix it with a policy change.

re: greytiding

Admins let sec and non-sec get away with all sorts of shit when it comes to dealing with greytiders. I know I've seen one ahelp where someone ahelped their arms being cut off by sec after they tried stealing from the brig. The admins let it slide, because sec were entirely in the right. Sec never knew they were even ahelped.

I give grey tiding 2 strikes usually unless they're in the armory or killing someone.

My all time favorite thing with grey tiders is when you dunk them and they're obviously so salty that they're going to AHelp it, and then you don't get bwoinked. I permad a guy for breaking windows one time who was saltier than almost anything I've ever seen. "it's just a prank bro" "All I did was break windows, SHITCURITY" I think an admin had been watching him break every electrified window into sec 3 times after engineers kept fixing it.


This is just an anecdote about antags providing paranoia and interaction because someone mentioned it. Paranoia and PVP can come from non antags too. The other day I was a doctor patching people up and this scientist wearing the RD's hardsuit kept coming in with minor injuries. Early in the round he came in with like 4 brute damage across 4 limbs. I patched him up and he left. Then later in the round everything was fucked, there were like 3 bodies I was trying to speedclone before the shuttle left, and Zoey Webb had no arms and needed patching up. He followed me around the medbay for like 5 minutes with 3 burn damage asking for medical attention, while I was busy putting bandaids on Zoey's stumps. I thought he was a traitor waiting for a chance to shoot me without witnesses. Turns out he was just some weird dude who thought his 3 burn damaged should be triaged higher priority than an armless woman with like 60% blood.

I don't wanna be that guy but can we please have a tl;dr?

to imblyings post? basically that pointless early shuttle calls do suck but how are you going to enforce a policy against it. That you can't, the terms would be vague and would require a lot of naziesque admin policing. The kind of policing that we play on LRP servers to avoid.

>#notallroll
>#zzzzzzzzztags
>#themakeeveryonegoafkstrat
>when dat boi tell u u been playing the same game for too many years
>oh shit waddup
>ywn never ever tenderly play with a qt314 pure and virgin game content that makes you want to play in a room with the lights turned off, in the sitting position, in your basement, for the purposes of denying yourself ever procreating only
>enforce this
>8============================================================================================================D
>that's right you can't enforce this
>can't enforce "playing the game" either bitch
>you can griff greytiders
>admins can get away with ignoring their ahelps or meming at them

thats a tldr 4 u

ausops this concept that rounds are getting shorter because there's not enough content kind of falls on its face because rounds used to be longer in the past but in the past there was less content
soooooo....

Actually, rounds on basil have been becoming longer and longer. We've been having rounds upwards around two and even three hours more commonly throughout the day.

Well I'm gonna move to basil if this is true

you're the head coder cheridan I shouldn't be explaining this to you, you shouldn't be needing this explanation

Game content is centered around 2 hours max. Anything you want to do, outside of the most intricate autism projects, can be done in 2 hours. Far less, if you are robust and memorize the most efficient pathways. Of the jobs we have, only a few have content to be worked through. Science, botany, mining, genetics. The rest are support/reactionary jobs with content and interactions that happen only when antags/round events/rp/content jobs prompt them to.

Most other games last for a year or so. Some last longer due to expansions, mods, or very strong online communities. But after a while, even these professional games are no longer entertaining.

A good portion of players in this community have done it all. They've finished all the 2 hour max content jobs in every way possible, done the gamut of autism projects they'd like to attempt. Brave and valuable attempts at adding new content, e.g. botany updates, stock exchange, xenobio, only add several more hours of content to be worked through. This leaves pvp content. If the pvp content isn't satisfying, and players think resetting the round means a new chance at entertaining pvp content, then of course rounds might get shorter.

You've got a point, after thinking about it I realized I rarely play jobs that aren't reactionary in nature. Like Sec or Doctor. Other jobs feel like a generic, isolated rush to the end content and then you're done. I like jobs where what I'm doing is based on what's going on around the station. Even chef is more like that, trying to find bodies, trying to get sec to give a cake with a welder in it to a prisoner, trying to escape security when they find the welder, etc. Maybe we could think of new content that would allow jobs to interact more. Not necessarily on a dependency basis, but where what you need to do varies based on the situation.

imblyings wrote:what is an attempt to fix?

Remove holo, syndie channel, remove all bombs but toxin ones, nerf emag, increase prices on pure-killing traitor items, remove revenants, remove morphs, put a delay on ashlizards, buff defib, shorten cloning.

Lumbermancer wrote:

imblyings wrote:what is an attempt to fix?

Remove holo, syndie channel, remove all bombs but toxin ones, nerf emag, increase prices on pure-killing traitor items, remove revenants, remove morphs, put a delay on ashlizards, buff defib, shorten cloning.

Augh, less death, it'd work but at what cost.

Also, why are revenants and morphs a problem?

Because they contribute in a significant way to the situation FUBAR and early shuttle calls. I forgot about swarmers as well.

This is no different from Enforce RP topics we've been having, since, I suspect, that disk got stolen back in the day.

In which May 2016 is when HBL finally realizes the irony of 'get that fukken disk' being one of our most cherished gameplay modes and popular memes when this game only exists literally because of an act of disk-based theft IRL

Why should this situation be changed if it's what most people, admins and players, apparently want?
If it should, then how could we accomplish this goal without suffering?
If people have to suffer at every level for it, why would this be worth it?
Would the game be better if we went through all that? Enough to justify it?

The actual rules we have can all be justified by this IMO, ("If people are allowed to IC in OOC at all they will very quickly slide all the way down the retard slope and start giving out GPS data on their dead bodies and changeling murderers, thus we need to be jerks about this", etc) so maybe it should be standard for new ones people want to make.

Lumbermancer wrote:Because they contribute in a significant way to the situation FUBAR and early shuttle calls. I forgot about swarmers as well.

They're all 'free griff' tokens. Remove them and the rounds suck less.

Quite. They trigger "nah, fuck this" response during situations that normally could be resolved, after Ghost zaps you with a lighttube and starts sucking your life away, or baby-blob eats the cloner.

Lumbermancer wrote:

imblyings wrote:what is an attempt to fix?

Remove holo, syndie channel, remove all bombs but toxin ones, nerf emag, increase prices on pure-killing traitor items, remove revenants, remove morphs, put a delay on ashlizards, buff defib, shorten cloning.

Not sure how you failed to mention the singularity engine.

Also nobody has said why they want longer (how long?) rounds yet unless I missed something.

There is nothing wrong with the singulo engine unless it's released early game. In which case the round being a joke/over is pretty obvious.

Revenants, morphs, ashlizards, swarmers.
This shit needs to go.

Why even play a job anymore when rounds last less than 30 minutes? You have literally around 10-15 minutes to savour your round. Even less in many cases.

Rounds should be 50+ minutes to be enjoyable.

alot of it's because fixing anything is a huge pain in the dick.

a single bomb which takes someone a minute or two to make (or buy, if syndibomb) takes the entire engineering team+ 1+ engineering cyborgs a half hour plus if you want to do a good job.

i mean you have to replace minimum

half a department's floors

half a departments lights

half a department's walls

several APCs

in several places, extremely complicated machines you don't really have the materials and boards for and can't make yourself

half a department's complicated disposal/air/scrubber pipes you barely know the layout of if you are an exceptional engineer (and you're fugged if you're on a station you're not familiar with)

half a department's atmosphere that's probably .00000001 KPA by the time you're done patching the floor.

and then what do you get at the end? usually if you're lucky a shuttle call 5 minutes after you're starting to finish.

really people complain about security pop but engineering is dead as a fucking doornail. no experienced players play engineering because it's a thankless fucking job that's entirely purposeless because shuttle calls will always happen before you're done fixing anything.

i play engineering cyborg all the time, because i genuinely enjoy autismgineering stuff but honestly it's a huge chore to repair stuff and most of the time i do it mostly alone because engineering departments are pointless on one hand (because the station runs without maintenance when there's no bombs going off) or pointless on the other hand (because if there's 1+ bomb the station is either fucked or the shuttle's going to get called anyway)

engineering needs help tbh

maybe this is a little offtopic but it kind of deals with shuttle calls

i just wish there was a reason to stick around once the station gets damaged a little teeny bit. the whole thing is a feedback loop

engineering never gets the chance to do anything
engineering gets no players / experience engineering
command doesn't trust engineering to fix anything
command shuttle calls at the drop of a hat
4 goto 1

I have to agree, Traitors have been literally shoved full of muderbone as fast as possible gear that is for the most part overpowered as fuck.

This is going to lead to incredibly quick rounds where traitors do a lot of damage in a very short space of time, killing enough of the crew or causing enough damage that the shuttle call is practically required.

Lumbermancer wrote:nerf emag.

shpeak of the devil.



Antags that don't give a fuck and run around emagging everything are part of the problem.

Kor wrote:Not sure how you failed to mention the singularity engine.

I don't think it matters whether singulo or tesla is released. We evacuate anyway. It's just that singulo is more fun.

lmao ausops blew eeryone right outta the water in the first post.

Good shit

A part of why people do that as antag is because the rounds are so short they have a pretty good chance of rolling again pretty quick.

If I recall correctly like way back in 2012 (maybe even earlier) traitors tended to be extremely fucking cautious outside of stealth murderboning, usually because rounds tended to be on the hour length average. If you died you were out for a long time, now there simply is too many ways to get back into the round and the round times tend to be super duper short.

When you can just roll again in 20 minutes who the fuck really cares?

i'm okay with traitor scale-of-destruction (besides maybe toxins holy shit cuban pete 3/4 of the fucking station after like 5min)

but engineering is a knowledge-based department. in order to repair a single bomb you need at least a basic understanding of

metal
glass
grilles
how atmos piping work, preferably with a good mental map of how the station's atmos pipes work
how all your tools work and what they do
how to repair machines, incl. where to get the boards from and what to ask for
R&D components for machine repair
how airlock electronics / APC electronics work
the steps for APC/air alarm whatever repair
a good mental map of the department you're fixing

ETC ETC

so experience, probably more than any department is exceptionally important. the only way you can learn to repair a bomb crater is by repairing the bomb crater, and in order to do that you need to be given time to attempt it and the department has to be fun enough for people to stick around and learn.

neither of these things currently exist and as a result engineering is functionally worthless on 90% of rounds.

The cycle of "I'm bored antags aren't doing anything" followed by "antags are killing too many people this isn't fun" continues forever.

I am just going to say I agree with the OP and that I am glad that finally an admin recognizes the problem is with the administration, not with the code, not with the playerbase. Well the playerbase is the subject here, but the players only go as far as the administration (rules and their enforcement) let them.

What, you want someone to code a miraculous solution to the problem? Not going to happen when there is no incentive to. When rounds are short and everybody likes them short, who is going to spend time of their lives working a long round feature? Nobody, that's who, you dumb cunts. Pray harder, maybe someone bored enough will come along and do it.

Kor wrote:The cycle of "I'm bored antags aren't doing anything" followed by "antags are killing too many people this isn't fun" continues forever.

I don't think that's it at all.

We've been adding more and more bullshit ways of forcing antagonist action but its just making the problem worse.

Antags in some rounds are boring as fuck and do nothing and we have increasingly shorter rounds when robust players roll antag due to the bullshit gear additions.

Faster murder is not interesting, having antags do nothing is not interesting either however.