is lljk dead

[Ed Venture]

Solarium was a mistake.

[Vitatroll]

Did something new get added recently? You guys are talking like it hasn't been dead for ages. The most recent thing added (to my knowledge) was that AI derelict and the tapes, but the most work done on that was the mapping for the derelict site.

[misto]

we're not talking like it hasnt been dead for ages. we're talking like its been around for years spinning its tires in the mud for the entertainment of a handful of dedicated sleuths while mining has been cut back to an anemic mining magnet, engineering has been doing or failing to do the same engine setup over and over, most chef foods, barman drinks and botany plants lack any use or special effect, and research is still nothing but a poison-and-bomb factory

[Mageziya]

I'll be honest, I've been here for years and I've literally never touched Solarium on my own will. I've been dragged along a few times, but only for like, 4 expeditions total.

[misto]

look... maybe im coming off a little more venomous than is healthy. the idea of away mission stuff is fine, its a cute star trek type trope to tap into

but at least stop locking it behind telesci math bullshit so that players who dont visit the forums and download the spreadsheets and calculators can visit the places youve spent time and effort creating

you could put the portals to each in different bits of the debris field area or something. then people will go visit the debris field more too

telesci itself can remain in as a transport/rescue/abduction/terrorism option with whatever level of operation complexity you feel is necessary

but following all that, i think it would be most beneficial to see efforts refocused on enriching main station. action on the main station is what got us all hooked and brought us all together. action on the main station is what new people see and experience, and its what keeps people coming back or not. the game is space station 13, not away mission 13

[Vitatroll]

It's not like coders would have coded something else if they didn't make the sol stuff. That's just silly. They probably just wouldn't have coded anything at all.

That being said, it's not like I disagree. Sol has never been my thing. A department getting their own z level is dumb. I felt the same way about old mining.

Anyways, the main reason goon is dying is because it went open source, which gave rise to goonclones, which had more lax rulesets and stronger feeder sites like 4chan. Short of miraculously getting rid of all lag, there's nothing coders could have coded to prevent the slow bleeding death. It's a miracle that it's lasted as long as it has.

[NateTheSquid]

What a discussion sparked by OMJ. What does lljk even stand for?

[Mageziya]

"Leet Like Jeff K" apparently. It's a Something Awful term.

[Sundance]

Im going to quote something I said in reddit a while back:

Honestly?

All the old flock are dying off. I've been playing on Goon since 2011 and while it hasn't lost it's appeal nor has the administration changed in how it operates it's suffering a slow but steady dropout for a while now.

Now you'll get people who'd argue the opposite but on peak hours a few years ago we'd have 50-60 on the main server and 20-30 on the secondary server.

Now we get 40 on the main and 10 on the RP server during peak

The problem barring the old flock dying off is a colorful list of problems that while shouldn't really effect the population separately but as a whole it's more understandable.

The large cogmap2 introduction, while it brought a ton of new graphical updates and the map itself is brilliantly designed, alot felt it was just too massive, and during non-peak hours it can feel quite ghost town-y. That can be frustrating for players who want to interact with others. Fortunately the fix for this is pretty much in the works, a map rotation which would allow smaller maps to appease lower peak hours.

The other issue is the code, but more the codeleak. Now while I can't speak for the administration themselves, the gist of it that it's seemed to have killed alot of ambition, and I haven't seen any codermin do anything for a while, unless it's all hush hush at the moment but one can only speculate. As a result any features being implemented go through the patch forum (which isn't working out so bad at all should I add).

But the problem in my opinion lied before codeleak, the codeleak has only really highlighted the problem. Alot of the massive features that are taken up by an admin become his/her property and when this code breaks, or becomes redundant, or is unfinished or whatever, it's often up to another admin to yell at the coder to fix the problem..or the problem eventually fixes itself.. somehow. This also meant that small features would go unnoticed, the suggestion forum became a dumping grounds where 5% of the suggestions would even be considered. So as a result goon became feature laden in some aspects, but feature barren in others. The patch forum funnily enough, seems to be resolving this issue.

So you see, these issues kind of compounded each other: When something isn't being implemented, when the community doesn't feel like it's progressing, that can stifle the population.

Another issue is simply just mentality towards goon. We've got alot of things to tinker around with and as another poster said before, that can be effort when coming from another codebase. You get these posts "ugh goon why would I join just to be killed as I leave the shuttle", alot of information on goon is dated or biased, alot of stuff is echo chambered when the reality of the situation is quite different. We're a very chill community. We're just going through a phase right now, and I do hope that we can introduce new blood into the game soon.

This post was made nearly a year ago, and unfortunately no new things have been brought to the table. Its just simple: we simply lack dedicated coders and spriters.

[Frank_Stein]

I'll be honest, I've been here for years and I've literally never touched Solarium on my own will. I've been dragged along a few times, but only for like, 4 expeditions total.

That's been my experience with it too.

It all seems very neat, but I'm not the kinda guy to try and master systems like telescience, then spend multiple rounds trying to learn the ins and outs of the off station stuff, especially when it seemd like it requires multiple competent people to pull off.

I'm not charismatic enough to convince someone to do something like that with me, and I'm not competent enough to try and tag along with others without feeling like I'm dragging them down.

That's generally been my experience with the more complicated systems like chemistry, pathology, and packet hacking. I've dabbled, but I don't have the time to dedicate myself to it, especially when I can only typically play 1 or 2 odd rounds a week.

I'm fine with this. I have a lot of fun playing as security instead, as it let's me focus on the immediate round and the station as a whole

[amaranthineApocalypse]

I've been trying to drum up a few people to help solve the code dearth recently, but i'm hamstrung by the fact that i don't know much about byond coding myself

I get the feeling that one of the reasons that these big projects never get properly finished is because they tend to be single person efforts and coding can be hard and tedious. Not very hard to lose motivation with something like that, which is why i keep positing the idea of a group that works together to get stuff done. Many hands make light work and all.

[Roomba]

Honestly I think the impact of Sol, good or bad, is a little overstated here. Unless rogue telescientists have hijacked the station for a two-hour round to fail at Solling it up, it just doesn't really have a major impact on 90% of rounds or on anyone other than the sol nerd crew. Claiming the Sol is tying up development time for other features is a bit of a stretch given that no new Sol stuff has been added for ages, and even if it had, the hypothetical coder wouldn't have used it to improve the station instead because that's not what they're interested in. It's always just been a weird puzzle for scientists to bugger around in when bored, not the final boss of Goon.

The other points are valid though, especially given that right now both the admin/coder team and the playerbase seem to be slowly getting bored and leaving.

[Dr Zoidcrab]

Also the allowing of ingame cross-species discrimination for RP flavor

We already have that, just without the meme slurs. I assume you were absent during the 24/7 lizard rev mode we experienced when it was added as a trait.

[Sov]

New players still arrive.

I haven't even been here for 6 months! And I play like almost every day at least a few rounds

[Wire]

Ya'll are massively over-estimating the amount of work we put into the solarium stuff.