Longer RP Shift Times

[SalmonidJester]

I think the shift time should be longer on the RP servers




From my time playing the RP server the last two years, I have constantly had roleplay building up to only be shut down by the automatic shift shuttle call. My personal insane opinion is that it should be around 4 hours into the shift, and for the crew to moreso decide when they want to leave rather than a timer, but for most scenarios I felt that got cut off for me, just a 30-60 minute addition to the current shift time would've allow those scenarios to be rounded off in a better manner.




The hour-thirty time just kinda feels like the perfect amount for classic and classic only, since the shift times are already low due to the lack of antagonist restrictions and antags that can force a round end (nukies, revs, blob).




Curious to see if anyone agrees with me on this, because I feel like it's been a common issue the past couple of years for me.

[Leeanei]

The shift times were reduced from 120 minutes to 90 minutes because 120 was too much for some players and they could only manage one round a day but at 90 minutes they were more comfortable trying a second shift. A lot of people don't like to start rounds without feasibly being able to see them through.

[Kateaclysm]

Plenty of other servers have shift times that extend into the 2 - 3 hour mark, and Goon's gameplay loops typically don't support rounds of that length. I find what we have now to be a pretty good medium. However, shorter shift times do compromise some things. Mainly things like the brig in security. Brigging rarely feels like anything close to a "punishment" when the maximum brig time is five minutes. I understand that the brig isn't exactly engaging for a player, but having such short sentences and such barebones brig cells as a result does kind of make it hard to suspend my disbelief.

I doubt anything would convince me to be in favor of the round timer without some larger changes to the game itself.

[Kotlol]

I am one of the few people who liked 2 hour shifts. And while I support it.

The majority is against it since RP has what I call the "SINGLE PEAK MOMENT"
Once the antagonists do their thing... we hit peak for like 5 minutes and then it ends.
And the shift bogs down to doing nothing.

There is rarely a second peak unless there is a wraith benefitting from it.

In my opinion to make 2 hours make sense.. we need mid round antagonists. But then being an antagonist feels like you gotta rush it and thus the "SINGLE PEAK MOMENT" becomes smaller peaks or will devolve into rampages faster.

What is especially annoying is when antags are just building up all shift to only go crazy on the shuttle. To me this is the MOST ANNOYING TRADITION!
I don't like doing before the shuttle arrives either.... But atleast it's on the station.

But on the shuttle? Everyone is in the way, too much friendly fire, just ruins the "winding down" that is the shuttle ride. Also it's 0 escalation. The shuttle gets packed and 20 seconds before leaving THE CHAOS JUST UNFOLDS!

So why say this in shift time? Well some players just have trouble escalating correctly and being scared of security busting them and murdering them. OR... some random staffy going "SELF DEFENSE" on them. (I had this happen as a security officer where a staffy decided to join into our arresting of an antagonist trying to kill them, saying: "SELF DEFENSE" and I am like: "they weren't attacking you, you ran in the moment I opened the door.")

The problem is antags (acording to what I see) in RP 7/10 feel very "Sorry" and "Unwilling to antag till the end when there is no time left" 2/10 they are not smart or get busted and think it's the end of the world and 1/10 they cool. (And 0.1 times of 10 they rampage but it's very rare and gets ahelped)

And why I tie all this to shift time is simple. 2 hours may give a lot of antags more time to setup stuff.. but the only thing it will do is give the 2/10 more time to escalate propperly. As for the players feeling sorry... Eh I don't think that's something we can change.

In my opinion we just need to have better ways to train our antagonists to feel more comfortable escalating propperly. But also I think the heads of department who aren't antagonists need to feel more comfortable to invite antagonists to "stop their shift goals"

If anything.. my problem with the shift time is that "I don't feel I have enough time to pay off on the goal I met and only have 5 mins to enjoy it" But.. overal.. I think we need more spread out antags and ways for antags to be more engaging.

Example of one shift: "I was captain once and banned weed, meth and narcotic (yes even smoking) uses from the shift so people will focus on more proftiable gains. Security was onboard with it. Botany decided to disobey my order (non antags) and security and botany OOCLY planned to have security raid botany and destroy their weed crops they have hidden. To only have the traitors start a secret bar where they are selling meth then starting a revolution against me."

It was silly, but the botany raid never happened since the antags were causing too much issues. (Ran out of time). But it shows that antags became more comfortable to engage and that evne non antags and security were gonna have fun with a scenerio.

Anyway I sidetracked this enough. There are enough reasons for 2 hour shifts and against at the moment. I am fine with 2 hours, but I don't think it will solve the inherit issue with why we went to 90 mins to begin with. Wich is: "Antags don't do anything till shuttle arrives"

[Lefinch]

I get it, and I wrote a big thing before deciding a small thing covered what I personally feel better: RP in some places really shines from length and depth, and I played a lot of MUDs where 2-3 hour sessions could be amazing. They were also in games built around the idea of a constant universe with multiple methods to both let people do different things while RPing, or just plain duck out and come back as their schedule permits. Goonstation rounds generally (of course life comes first) begin to narrow in job flow and project scope as time goes on. and generally expect you to stick around for the entire round (again, assuming you've not got something else to do, don't get stuck here, but what I mean is that the game is less prepared than say, a MMORPG where outside of an instanced dungeon you can shoot off at any time without any station burden, note that instances themselves tend to be time-limited too)

So aside from "people are old, people have kids, people do the things that makes extending things too far questionable" just bear in mind I think extending things much further might also merit considering how we make the flow better. Kotlol raises a good example of how you improve antagonism flow. Not saying we can't, just something to keep in mind.

[SalmonidJester]

The issues with antagonist being very passive on RP, to me, have to do more with certain common RP rules not being in the server like NVL or a definitive new life rule, it's basically entirely on the victim to roleplay, and 80% of the time it never happens, so that's a 80% chance to ruin your antag round for no reason. I think if those were definitively in the server, people would be more comfortable and active in antagonistic stuff rather than just having a huge singular moment.

Another thing that I know already had a thread on it a while ago, player count being too high can also lead to antagonists being afraid to do anything because there is literally always a player around a corner, no matter where you are, alongside the rather loud dying sounds that penetrate walls and doors. Makes it hard to do anything related to killing on-station unless you plan to do it in 10 seconds, instantly run away, and barely talk or allow the other person to do anything.

But all of this is pretty null to my original complaint, because all those times I felt I got screwed over by the shift timer, I was never a antagonist, and I remember only one time I was interacting with a antagonist. I don't think you should NEED a literal antagonist to roleplay, because you can do it on any job, with any crew, and without any mechanical antagonist or, hell, any mechanics present in the first place.

I do agree on the points of latejoining and leaving rounds early feeling weird for some people though, but I think the approach should maybe be adding more incentive for both, like maybe going perma-cryo would get you spacebux still, I don't know. Maybe more persistent stuff would also help, but that's just opening a huge can of worms code-wise and rule wise. The game would probably also need to be balanced a bit more around this which is another good point I understand, I don't think 30 minutes is too big a difference, but it opens up a larger focus on midround antagonist to fill in, which in turn brings up a discussion on if more than sleeper agents should be common.

Also, I didn't actually know this was already something discussed about and PR'd, but I feel like the fact it's been three years since that original PR went through, it warrants a potential reconsideration. I don't know, this is just something that's been bugging me since I started replaying goon as my main ss13 server two years ago.

[Cal]

Two hours is like a quarter of an average work shift. That's a huge amount of time and there are other more heavily rp focused servers that cater to this

[Outie]

90 seems just right imo

[JORJ949]

90 is not good for classic IMO, most shifts last 40-60m long and those that go longer are because nobody can call shuttle when it really needs to be or because nothings happening.

[Meggal Bozale]

I mean, there's two roleplay servers. Could always keep one of them 90 minutes and the other one be super extended. I personally like the idea of longer rounds, lets more shenanigans ensue.

[jan.antilles]

I mean, there's two roleplay servers. Could always keep one of them 90 minutes and the other one be super extended. I personally like the idea of longer rounds, lets more shenanigans ensue.

I'm not interested in adding any mechanical differences between the two RP servers.

[Chasu]

I think the time is good as-is. Not everyone has 1,5h of spare time at the end of the day, and while I do understand the feeling of not having enough time to wrap up your story/gimmick, longer rounds run the risk of having less overall variety (120 minute shifts = 12 rounds per day).