damn it's dead

[massa]

years

the numbers were high. you could join sybil or terry, at any time, any moment. there would be life, vitality

now, only mannymins haunt these creaking halls.................................

[Itseasytosee2me]

Yeah, its really not looking great

[Capsandi]

I'm going to posit that the relatively sharp decline in sybil's population is due to the ruleset and has less to do with any codebase or administrative action occurring in the lead up to said spike, or that under a certain population threshold the game is constantly rolling ICEBOX when I want to play SPACE station 13 like what the fuck its not even a bad map(obs cuz box rules) but I am not joining the server when what would be a thrilling rush through a depressurized corridor to escape SPACE station 13 is replaced by walking AROUND the station and boarding the shuttle. I'd salt more but I don't really care and primarily use the tg station project to analyse the limits of abstract volunteer collaboration for some philosophical musings I discuss with stoners under a bridge sometimes also who is this massa person do they play the metal deathtrap simulation game space station 13? I think I recognize their admittedly tasteful profile picture. While i dont recognize any trends which make a good profile picture, I find this massa profile picture to add to their forum presence as the silly doll figurine portrayed is not only amusing as a doll is designed to be in its own right, but is additionally through the gif or skippy pronunciation technology animated to show a gesture of shock or embarrassment which coupled with the usually abstract qualms of a space station 13 sociological hellscape denizen lends itself to a tasteful juxtaposition. If more forums users would strive for profile pictures such as this instead of some AI generated portrait like we're on facebook or some shit the forums would be a more vibrant and inviting place, not that I give a shit if the forums are inviting or anything. Also I'd like to say that my objection to AI generated media in profile pictures stems not from the whitenoise of the moral debate about image generation which is oh so easy for midwits to chime in on once they digest a 21st century picture book on how to look all sorts of respectable with regurgitated arguments ect. but due to their common origin. You see, as the recent pfp thread proves, one of the concepts present in the profile picture is that of the origin of the profile picture. The trouble with the AI generated profile picture is that this concept of the profile picture's origin is too easily comprehended, which robs other forums users the joy of contemplating the origins of the profile picture.

[Roadto3k]

I'm going to posit that the relatively sharp decline in sybil's population is due to the ruleset and has less to do with any codebase or administrative action occurring in the lead up to said spike, or that under a certain population threshold the game is constantly rolling ICEBOX when I want to play SPACE station 13 like what the fuck its not even a bad map(obs cuz box rules) but I am not joining the server when what would be a thrilling rush through a depressurized corridor to escape SPACE station 13 is replaced by walking AROUND the station and boarding the shuttle. I'd salt more but I don't really care and primarily use the tg station project to analyse the limits of abstract volunteer collaboration for some philosophical musings I discuss with stoners under a bridge sometimes also who is this massa person do they play the metal deathtrap simulation game space station 13? I think I recognize their admittedly tasteful profile picture. While i dont recognize any trends which make a good profile picture, I find this massa profile picture to add to their forum presence as the silly doll figurine portrayed is not only amusing as a doll is designed to be in its own right, but is additionally through the gif or skippy pronunciation technology animated to show a gesture of shock or embarrassment which coupled with the usually abstract qualms of a space station 13 sociological hellscape denizen lends itself to a tasteful juxtaposition. If more forums users would strive for profile pictures such as this instead of some AI generated portrait like we're on facebook or some shit the forums would be a more vibrant and inviting place, not that I give a shit if the forums are inviting or anything. Also I'd like to say that my objection to AI generated media in profile pictures stems not from the whitenoise of the moral debate about image generation which is oh so easy for midwits to chime in on once they digest a 21st century picture book on how to look all sorts of respectable with regurgitated arguments ect. but due to their common origin. You see, as the recent pfp thread proves, one of the concepts present in the profile picture is that of the origin of the profile picture. The trouble with the AI generated profile picture is that this concept of the profile picture's origin is too easily comprehended, which robs other forums users the joy of contemplating the origins of the profile picture.

icebox killed sybil?

[Indie-ana Jones]

Reasons I believe tanked Sybil:

- QC bans also taking the friends of the QC banned with them, reducing population far more than intended
- Weighted random and pop requirements for specific maps leading to death spirals of unpopular maps, which for the most part also have not changed
- Sybil admins are gone, current candidate system makes it hard to get new ones / Sybil's population doesn't want be admins for the most part or have been rejected
- Wallening
- Lack of interesting shake-ups to gameplay in quite a while, widespread public perception that coders don't care what LRP players want and will actively change the game to please MRP / spite LRP (gas mask fov was a big one)
- Low pop begets low pop
- No Manuel discord server equivalent to organize voices in order to get behind one banner to push for changes (I don't want a Sybilcord, but Manuelcord certainly does have its leverages)

Its also not like these people are gone either, because in the short duration Wallstation was up a lot of Sybil players were present. Its pretty clear to me Sybil players are actively waiting in the wings waiting for something to go their way for once, I don't think anything will. Ideally, server leadership opens up discussions with the Sybil playerbase and specifically the Sybil playerbase to air grievances and maybe we can find some compromise of sorts. Problem is, half of these issues are code-related, which is separated from the server and thus it would be a matter of convincing head-coders/maintainers to agree to make changes as well.

[Itseasytosee2me]

aw yep. We really had something quite nice. Things are different, but its hard to quantify what exactly caused the ship to sink. Its not like the sybalites of yore were just reactionary and hated change. There were plenty of well received shakeups. There were a series of large code changes that were implemented, some of which with great optimism, but when problems emerged, nothing changed. It feels like for the past three years I've been picking up little grievances like cuts. Nothing that makes the game unplayable, but things that just make it worse. After seeing it ride, and hearing a million justifications and unfulfilled promises, its like I'm too scarred to be enthusiastic, or to think there might be a brighter future.

[Capsandi]

Maptick improvements are the cancer killing /tg/station, if they never happened we would still have population limits on terry and manuel. why would I ever play the small number server when i can always join large number server?

[TheSmallBlue]

Eh. It's easy to point at things and go "THATS what killed everything but manny" but im not exactly sure if there is a culprit here.
The fact is, there are other, better places to get the experience you would've previously gotten on Sybil. I'm not only speaking of other servers but also just, other games. SS14 exists now, with its playercount exceeding SS13's, if people wanted a piece of that Sybil pie who's to say they wont go to the remake with the sick ass subpixel shuttles you can manually pilot?

[Timonk]

YOU killed all the servers.

[Capsandi]

If your reason that torrent technology station 13 is LITERALY DYING HOMYGAD11!!! is inactionable I will in good faith(forums form of an antag token I have rule 4 protection for vomiting on your shoes linguistically) assume that your doing so as to remain complicit with the death of /t/g/station(for all of you who didn't get that first jest) OH MY GAAD. If it is some outside factor then inaction is your mentor including that of speaking. Now lets

[Itseasytosee2me]

Good god I wish I could look that cool while I schizo post.

[FantasticFwoosh]

The generational pop-change myth is dead, I as the SS13 baby boomer will live on forever as younger players endure hardship of scarcity.

[TheRex9001]

Terry still reaches 80+ daily, I think that server is fine at least. Sybil isnt fine, but it was bouncing back, hopefully that can start rollin again.

[warbluke]

Oh it's been so long since we've had visitors! Get the fine china out!
It might be a little bit of a culture shock for visiting players to realize we cover the spectrum from NRP to MRP on a per player basis.

[kayozz]

Trying to word this in a way that doesn't make me sound insane. But defeatism begets defeatism.
The more people who stare at the low numbers and don't join cannot truly complain about low numbers.
Every single person who could join can change that number to a positive.

[iwishforducks]

Trying to word this in a way that doesn't make me sound insane. But defeatism begets defeatism.
The more people who stare at the low numbers and don't join cannot truly complain about low numbers.
Every single person who could join can change that number to a positive.

i agree in a sense but this is just a very narrow view of the situation. there’s issues that run deeper that need to be addressed to stop the bleeding. you’ll only burn yourself out if you try to play for the sake of “trying to keep population up”- you should be playing the game because it’s fun, not to try to seed the servers.

[warbluke]

I do wish there was more support for extremely lowpop play. Dynamic and midrounds make it borderline unberable since the majority of the crew is guaranteed to be traitors, and every round is tots and only tots.

[datorangebottle]

- QC bans also taking the friends of the QC banned with them, reducing population far more than intended
- Low pop begets low pop

These are the ones that got me.

A bunch of my friends stopped playing regularly right after the Sinfulbliss ban (i know it wasn't a QC ban but i don't want to get into it here). It's really disheartening to have to make a whole new set of friends while playing the same mechanics you've tirelessly ground through in the past.

That, and even when I do feel like struggling through it and playing a round or two of ss13, the server doesn't get anyone else on it. Which, yes, there's a level of "GET ON THERE BUD YOU'RE PART OF THE PROBLEM" but... the point of playing a game is to have fun, and I don't have much fun when there's nobody else to do jobs or interact with. There's no guarantee that the population being 1 person higher is going to bring in more people, and I don't want to burn thirty minutes to an hour waiting for other people to show up.

There's also external contributing factors- between tabletop games(lancer, pf2e) and my own streaming, I'm usually really busy right around what used to be prime time for sybil.

I still frequent the forums, because you guys are neat to interact with outside of the game, even if we don't play on the same servers.

[CoffeeDragon16]

yeah im really sad about this, tg pop is in such a sorry state. id love to play more but i just cannot keep convincing myself a 35 pop round is highpop. even on friday or saturday evenings it doesn't even get to 40. it's sad. i'm really curious to the reasons why, i highly doubt it's code changes as there haven't been many major feature changes in the past couple years but it's been a steady consistent decline for the past ~2 years. my best guess is how the way dynamic is tuned it feels like pretty much every round goes the same (and has far too many heretics) and (atleast on sybil) there are far fewer long-term 'role model' community figure players for interns to aspire to to stick to the game for.

i had convinced myself that was just a temporary lull in pop, as happens every so often, but it just never went back up. i remember hearing pre-ssethtide players mentioning that the pop was dwindling and things were looking a bit dire and ssethtide breathed fresh life the game needed and saved it, are we at the next turn of that cycle?

are there any other good servers out right now? i was looking at the hub earlier and it seemed pretty sparse for anything but "tg clone for tg perma'd 15 year olds" and stuffy hrp servers.

[datorangebottle]

Honestly, 35-40 is a good spot for me, I just never find Sybil in that state when I want to play on it. I thrive on medium pop.

[Indie-ana Jones]

I prefer when there's enough pop for the full cast of antagonists to be at play, and Sybil for the most part is under the threshold for any of that to happen.

[bastardblaster]

even before wallening put sybil into the grave, the biggest thing that made me not want to log in was that there was no one on the crew manifest that i can recognize and think "i bet they're up to some shenanigans, lets see what they're up to". everyone's just busy jobbing around until they get merc'd by some ling or traitor in maint. maybe i've got rose-tinted goggles, but back in my intern days, i think that the thing that propelled rounds were certain members of the community who singlehandedly would push the round into an interesting direction, antag or not, oft generating more interesting stories than any possible dynamic config in the process of their conflict with other such Main Characters and the rest of the crew. most of people i would consider in that group are gone, and nobody seems to be stepping to the plate.

[Archie700]

even before wallening put sybil into the grave, the biggest thing that made me not want to log in was that there was no one on the crew manifest that i can recognize and think "i bet they're up to some shenanigans, lets see what they're up to". everyone's just busy jobbing around until they get merc'd by some ling or traitor in maint. maybe i've got rose-tinted goggles, but back in my intern days, i think that the thing that propelled rounds were certain members of the community who singlehandedly would push the round into an interesting direction, antag or not, oft generating more interesting stories than any possible dynamic config in the process of their conflict with other such Main Characters and the rest of the crew. most of people i would consider in that group are gone, and nobody seems to be stepping to the plate.

Many of those either moved to Manuel, became admins and thus played less, got banned, or left the community.

[massa]

Trying to word this in a way that doesn't make me sound insane. But defeatism begets defeatism.
The more people who stare at the low numbers and don't join cannot truly complain about low numbers.
Every single person who could join can change that number to a positive.

i'm not interested and my ban notes go back to 2011 because it's not fun

the antags are all fucking cringe. there's no spice or edge. coders deliberately spited players over and over, shit mentioned here like gas mask fov, prog tots, heretic defanging, romerol, and banning everyone who wasn't a pacifist moth player

terry retained its culture and people thank god

[Itseasytosee2me]

I still think gasmask FOV could have been sick

[8bot]

that's what happens when you change rules, enforcement, and general community culture so drastically. people stop playing (or they/their friends get banned) because they no longer feel at home. the ongoing spite war between coders and the playerbase is another contributor, as well.
the writing was on the wall when bagil died a few years ago. given, sybil took its place as the popular LRP server, but look how that turned out.

the above post that talks about how there aren't really any names on the manifest that you can look forward to causing shenanigans is true, and sad. bagil died when they started handing out bans for people playing according to bagil's culture. yes, bagil had a different culture, even if the rules said otherwise, and it worked. it was a popular server with tons of regulars. the camaraderie was so palpable that we made a fucking minecraft server to play on, man.

i think literally every single person on that minecraft server is banned or quit for the reasons i outlined previously. like 10 people. and that was just a small part of bagil's overall 'cast'. it really did feel like a cast of characters. you combine the strongarming of the community's culture with actual mechanical changes people aren't a fan of, and of course it's fucking dead. the shenanigans people tend to get up to nowadays, with rare exceptions, are just autism projects relevant to their jobs. i love a good singuloose speedrun, but it doesn't capture the cozy familiarity of bindy smashing all the windows, or being lynched as cumbrain for the 65th time that day.

i understand it's probably just nostalgia, but those are the reasons i rarely play, and the reasons why lots of my old friends don't play at all.

peepee poopoo

[Indie-ana Jones]

Maybe if you believe these people still want to play SS13, you should make the LRP equivalent of Wallstation and see if you can recapture the magic under oversight you find more agreeable.

[Capsandi]

dude no fucking way sybil is still on icebox it was on icebox all day on saturday and its on icebox all day on tuesday how can you people wonder why this server is 6 feet under when its locked out of any maps players like? I don't even dislike birdshot or the station part of icebox but planetary gameplay is ASS give me birdshot any day of the week.

Maybe if you believe these people still want to play SS13, you should make the LRP equivalent of Wallstation and see if you can recapture the magic under oversight you find more agreeable.

Wouldn't that be monkey station or any of our other downstreams? I keep to the // stations but I'd assume most went to those.

[8bot]

Maybe if you believe these people still want to play SS13, you should make the LRP equivalent of Wallstation and see if you can recapture the magic under oversight you find more agreeable.

the snarky push to make me leave is the reason that they're out of /tg/ and one of the big reasons sybil's dead
but it's better to be smug with a dead server than not smug with a populated one i guess
it is what it is

[massa]

Maybe if you believe these people still want to play SS13, you should make the LRP equivalent of Wallstation and see if you can recapture the magic under oversight you find more agreeable.

WOAH DUDE JUST REVIVE A DECADE+ OLD PROJECT AND COMMUNITY WITH THOUSANDS OF HANDS

IT'S THAT SHRIMPLE!

/tg/ was the headwaters of ss13, it set the tone with all of its downstreams. you cannot replicate that. it was entrenched by those efforts

the same kind of people who run for HOA boards or manage burger kings seized control or started producing "content". removing and sanitizing things, there were so many PRs that were just to shit all over how things were done. you need to uproot that, that stupid attitude that kicks sandcastles. no one wants your sandcastle and we said it for years.

too many control freaks for too long, when you have coders and headmins talking about changing server cultures and trying to step on behaviors or expression in certain ways, you're fucked, and they routinely talked about their (rather tame but quite noisy) community like some kind of disease or children to be controlled. it was a control, behavioral, or cultural issue in which one ilk of people couldn't stomach the idea of a different cut of cloth. literal classic revenge of the nerds. even policy and appeals became the same 3 out of touch codemins bleating at eachother like it was a real court of law.

"you WILL eat what we cook you boy!!!!" stop cooking 3 years ago. they literally removed all the fucking guns. that's the attitude problem. that's the control problem. someone, or a group of people, thought it was their place and charged duty to remove guns from most ss13 servers. like are you joking?

[WineAllWine]

Can we all calm down? Terry is perfectly fine, it hits 80+ pop most days and has fantastic admin coverage.

Chill the fuck out.

[Indie-ana Jones]

I think you guys are reading what I said with way more hostility than I intended. I am a Sybil player myself. I'm not happy with where we sit currently, and my suggestion to make a temp downstream server modified to your liking wasn't made in jest or snark, I'm serious. Wallstation was recently made to protest the Wallening and its concentrated effort was capable of bringing people in charge to the bargaining table which they refused to do prior. Perhaps if someone did the same thing for "LRP" (get rid of gas mask fov, weighted random etc...) and it got good player numbers, you might be able to bring certain people to the bargaining table to get changes you want made to base /tg/.

And if that doesn't happen but you could still get players, at least you could continue to play the game more in line with what you and others want for LRP.

[massa]

Can we all calm down? Terry is perfectly fine, it hits 80+ pop most days and has fantastic admin coverage.

Chill the fuck out.

because they let the terryites let out 300,000 years of tribal instinct on themselves

[8bot]

Can we all calm down? Terry is perfectly fine, it hits 80+ pop most days and has fantastic admin coverage.

Chill the fuck out.

i don't live in europe and want to play LRP
both servers for that are now dead
of course i am unhappy

UPDATE: while it is quite literally noon on a wednesday, so expected to be lowpop, Campbell has more players (1) than both Sybil and Bagil combined (0)

this isn't a big deal because like i said, NA are all working and shit, but it's still funny

[oranges]

i know i often go to a dead games forum to post seething rants about how it's dead because nobody will read them.

[massa]

i know i often go to a dead games forum to post seething rants about how it's dead because nobody will read them.

i care and you care and i know you hate the sound the vuvuzela of caring makes but i won't stop honking

[8bot]

8:27 PM CST on a Wednesday



grim

manuel, in the meantime:



i welcome any explanations from those who are delusional enough to believe there isn't something horribly wrong here
HARD MODE: don't blame the LRP players themselves
it seems to me that this is the end result of years of wanting to be rid of LRP completely: notable players being banned, rules being implemented, admins not recognizing (or worse, recognizing but intentionally trying to destroy) server cultures, and so on. all the above posts that talk about how MRP is catered to and LRP is either ignored or spited are on the money.

whether the claims, years ago when manuel became a thing, of "MRP won't affect LRP you're being dramatic" were ignorance or actual gaslighting remain to be seen, but at any rate, it's sad.

[Lacran]

8:27 PM CST on a Wednesday



grim

manuel, in the meantime:



i welcome any explanations from those who are delusional enough to believe there isn't something horribly wrong here
HARD MODE: don't blame the LRP players themselves
it seems to me that this is the end result of years of wanting to be rid of LRP completely: notable players being banned, rules being implemented, admins not recognizing (or worse, recognizing but intentionally trying to destroy) server cultures, and so on. all the above posts that talk about how MRP is catered to and LRP is either ignored or spited are on the money.

whether the claims, years ago when manuel became a thing, of "MRP won't affect LRP you're being dramatic" were ignorance or actual gaslighting remain to be seen, but at any rate, it's sad.

I don't understand how MRP existing led to any of those things though? You aren't actually making any tangible connection.

[TheRex9001]

Can we all calm down? Terry is perfectly fine, it hits 80+ pop most days and has fantastic admin coverage.

Chill the fuck out.

I think this thread is mainly for ex sybil/bagil players, but yes LRP isnt dead as a whole, its just that the american TG LRP servers are.

[massa]

I don't understand how MRP existing led to any of those things though? You aren't actually making any tangible connection.

MRP was never a problem, it was a valuable addition that grew /tg/, the problem was a combination of factors laid out here.

Mannymins/MRPmins fucking with shit elsewhere, making antags MRP friendly (functionally or literally deleting or neutering the game's core experience) and codemins who don't and haven't touched the game in a decade were a major problem - people with control issues. See: all of goof's dogshit balance and opinion PRs. That one is a profound exploration into human nature.

[Kendrickorium]

>piles upon piles of fucking admins that don't even play
>piles upon piles of manuelly admins that don't play that actively go out of their way to shit on TG LRP culture servers and players
>literally more admins than players posting in the players club patting each others rear ends i'm guessing players went to post someplace else
>banned a bunch of well known energetic friendly players that were literally the centers of giant friend circles because they are "problematic" call players that defend them problematic tell them to play someplace else
>force map rotations that no one wants to play on call playerbase entitled for complaining about it tell them to play someplace else
>force code changes no one wants call playerbase entitled for complaining about it tell them to play someplace else
>force antaggies to wait an hour for their syndicate bombs when they dont feel like doing shit busy work call players entitled for complaining about it tell them to play someplace else

where did a bunch of players go??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

[Kendrickorium]

dude no fucking way sybil is still on icebox it was on icebox all day on saturday and its on icebox all day on tuesday how can you people wonder why this server is 6 feet under when its locked out of any maps players like? I don't even dislike birdshot or the station part of icebox but planetary gameplay is ASS give me birdshot any day of the week.

Maybe if you believe these people still want to play SS13, you should make the LRP equivalent of Wallstation and see if you can recapture the magic under oversight you find more agreeable.

Wouldn't that be monkey station or any of our other downstreams? I keep to the // stations but I'd assume most went to those.

dont you shit on icebox son

[8bot]

kendrick's right on everything, but especially the "tell them to go play somewhere else" thing
the smug "we don't need you" and passive aggressive "feel free to go play somewhere more to your liking :^)" is one of the big contributors to it
in fact, kendrick's laid it out better than i ever possibly could have. i kneel in awe and respect

[bastardblaster]

Clearly the solution to all of this is a coderbus and adminbus cultural revolution

[datorangebottle]

>force antaggies to wait an hour for their syndicate bombs when they dont feel like doing shit busy work call players entitled for complaining about it tell them to play someplace else

I think this is the only part of your post I really disagree with, timelocking the easy chaos buttons wasn't a mistake. Nothing like finally getting the role+antag combo you wanted and then some other jackass puts a brutally short time limit on the gimmick you wanted to run because they blew up medbay to guarantee a shuttle speedrun.
edit:

I don't understand how MRP existing led to any of those things though? You aren't actually making any tangible connection.

MRP was never a problem, it was a valuable addition that grew /tg/, the problem was a combination of factors laid out here.

I entirely disagree. The MRP/LRP split was a disaster for /tg/station; average player quality on the LRP servers tanked as a result, then these players got sidelined by the codebase. Most of the positive stories I have either come from before the split, or involve the same few people(brick, denholm, johnson, axle, sunshine) over and over and over again.

[Indie-ana Jones]

The split made space for two types of players unified Sybil didn't, the wordless NRP guy and the stereotyped "Nothing should be able to kill me unless I consent" player. They both suck

[bastardblaster]

I wasn't around for it but I truly wonder how they didn't see this polarization coming when they made Manuel and marketed it as The RP server

[massa]

!	Message from: Riggle
	Server tribalism is not something we should be doing, please tone it down

I don't understand how MRP existing led to any of those things though? You aren't actually making any tangible connection.

MRP was never a problem, it was a valuable addition that grew /tg/, the problem was a combination of factors laid out here.

I entirely disagree. The MRP/LRP split was a disaster for /tg/station; average player quality on the LRP servers tanked as a result, then these players got sidelined by the codebase. Most of the positive stories I have either come from before the split, or involve the same few people(brick, denholm, johnson, axle, sunshine) over and over and over again.

i was trying not to be combative but ahem fuck mrp lmao

[massa]

>force antaggies to wait an hour for their content[/img]

like this is it

this is the issue. who thought it was, like, okay to do that? who thought it was just chill to delete traitor. perhaps don't merge whatever just cuz. upheavals and shake ups can be good but lmao get real

i still remember the confounding change of making it so tick sacrifices fucking come back ALIVE, SAFE after you have to kidnap and murder them. the fuck??

Clearly the solution to all of this is a coderbus and adminbus cultural revolution

honestly yes. r/tg return to /tg/ pls. all it takes is a laissez faire attitude

[Capsandi]

snip

I think this is the only part of your post I really disagree with, timelocking the easy chaos buttons wasn't a mistake. Nothing like finally getting the role+antag combo you wanted and then some other jackass puts a brutally short time limit on the gimmick you wanted to run because they blew up medbay to guarantee a shuttle speedrun.

good thing I can instead have a war declaration, cult or revs to put a brutally short time limit on my traitor round every time I roll. 2 years after biddle traitors and the go to argument for why an ebow should need 30 minutes of sitting on your ass is cause bombs were overused in 2021. Bombs got the nerf they needed last year with #72986.