[MERGED PR] Joining round as observer prevents the RP Respawn Timer from applying

[Kotlol]

If I join as an observer, I will never respawn to join the round. If I do it's only for the shuttle as a person whos on a connecting shuttle. (so no RP input) as a joke... like the last 2 mins before a shuttle arrives.

I have no objection against this PR at all. if you observe, you can be a critter and such but not a player.

[Torchwick]

I’ve thought on this one for a bit. My only main concern, setting aside the risks of metagaming and all that, is of how it will affect population. It’s no surprise that the lowpop server has a large amount of people that observe and join when they are ready or able to. While their reasons vary and may or may not be pure, that is where a lot of the population comes from. My worry is that this will discourage people from playing lowpop due to the player count being even lower or the amount of people in round being worse. It was already an issue, but now the observers won’t be able to join after, which might amplify the problem.

I do however hope I am proven wrong! It might encourage people to just join the round and play instead of avoiding joining all together. I will remain neutral and if this gets test merged I’ll be happy to be proven wrong. I figured I’d just outline that concern speaking purely from a population balance perspective rather than a metagaming one.

As an edit I will note that this might become an amplified issue in October when observing is encouraged mechanically with the ghost stuff. Just a thought.

[Silent Majority]

I have some concerns this will dramatically to the point of near unusability reduce midround and event trigger spawns or antagonist ghoust pools brcause the majority of ghosts are observers.

[Shiiba]

I think I would be interested in a test merge to see how it affects population but I think this could be good for RP.

[Cropsey]

I don't like the idea of this. I explained it on the git, and without my huge explanation of blah blah changeling sucks and I'd like to avoid it- but to me there's no real reason to remove a nice thing for a large group of people when a very small amount of people meta with it. There are other suggestions like locking out sec and command or a very long respawn timer that aren't so nuclear and could be tried first.

[A_Real_Cat1]

I haven't played for around a month but assuming things haven't changed much since then, personally i think the PR is a very good idea. It does sound like some of people defending it are just admitting to metagaming in order to decide if they want to join the round or not. As a frequent observer i can recall a couple of times where I've seen ghosts openly saying they'll respawn to RP with a specific person that's already in the round. I think it's better for the game if people join with the smallest amount of meta knowledge possible. It's true you can still get a fair amount of meta knowledge just from the main menu (pre-join role list or "Who" command) but i think the knowledge gained from observing is a much bigger issue.

Nothing wrong with cryo'ing early if you need (even though in my bad-faith read, at times when some people say they "aren't feeling the round" it means their friends don't happen to be on and they don't want to interact with "randoms"), if you're doing it often enough to be accused of antag-hunting i'd say you need to roll with the round more or not join so often when you're not feeling it.

This part is a bit of a hyperbole, but personally if i had to choose between people joining only because they have meta info of the round (their friends playing, favored antag in the round etc.) or not joining at all, i'd rather they not join at all. In a perfect world this PR would make people more likely to join rounds and play with minimal knowledge and expectations, i hope that's how it'll turn out if it does go through.

[Emimiyu]

I’ve thought on this one for a bit. My only main concern, setting aside the risks of metagaming and all that, is of how it will affect population. It’s no surprise that the lowpop server has a large amount of people that observe and join when they are ready or able to. While their reasons vary and may or may not be pure, that is where a lot of the population comes from. My worry is that this will discourage people from playing lowpop due to the player count being even lower or the amount of people in round being worse. It was already an issue, but now the observers won’t be able to join after, which might amplify the problem.

I have an annecdote for this. If I recall, lowpop rp had waves of deadpop at certain point. One of the reasoning, outside a bunch of people were banned for metaclique issue, was that when people logged into lowpop and see 20 players, majority of the players are observers that there are less than 15 people on the pop. This ended up with the server being less favourable for people who want medium low, but not too low.

Though, I am not sure either that is why the PR should be a bad idea. I don't think most observers are going to log into the game because they are comfy watching their favorite space blorbos soap opera. I think if people wants to play the game, they should join in for the game. And if they really need to join in because of their blorbos are in there what if they can't interaxt with them!!. There is something called still joining the game or I unno,.made friends with the through discord/byond messenger.

And even with the observers issue that almot send lowpop rp to near deadpop like few months or a year ago, the server still gets a come back.

[Munien]

I still have my reservations about this change as a whole, but the clearer explanations have helped me come around to it a lot more. I think it'd be worth a testmerge to see how it goes. I do have concern about how this might effect how many people actually end up joining especially on lowpop, like Torchwick has said previously, but I'd be happy to see this testmerged and be proved wrong.

[Oremir]

I was aprehensive at first aswell, mostly because i often used Observe as an oppertunity to eat dinner and have "TV" so to say. But, after reading up on some of the responses both in this thread and the Discord i think it's for the best.

Aside from all the points that were already brought up by other people (pop concerns/mid-round concerns) i'm curious if Observers should be allowed to see Antags by default or if we preffer to keep that disabled for the off-chance random event/admin/antag respawns?