Who is the server made for now?

[AmazingDragons]

We have lots of content, but it's tough to expect to play for literally hundreds if not thousands of hours and not get bored of something.

PvE content is tough. For the number of hours people seem to expect to play, we'd basically need the variety of something like a roguelike. And it's counter productive to make good PvE content when this game, even on classic, is a roleplaying game and is at its strongest when people are interacting and weakest when people are hiding in their departments.

As for departments not working together, that's more a cultural issue. On RP, departments do work together and supply one another but somebody has to get that other department's attention and getting folks working together. I doubt it'd be too hard to make a research system, but I also think people would hate anything in any department being locked behind the efforts of another. Culture, again. People already favor maps with lots and lots of tools and equipment available to the general public, even though reducing those would be one of the easiest ways to make departments work together.

I think you hit the nail on the head, so to speak. Every time someone suggests making a change that would require departments to work together, it gets shot down because absolutely no one in that department wants to rely on another department for things. So instead, we add the content, but make it so that departments can get it for themselves or we modify things to make the departments get easier access to it themselves. One example is the fact that medbay is equipped with pretty much a fully functioning chemistry lab, so they never need to do anything with science.

Whether or not this is good is entirely debatable, since it can both hinder and help rp. I can say from experience that it is really fucking frustrating to try and do something but be limited because you can't find someone else who is interested in helping you and you want to stay in your lane. On the other hand, when cooperation is forced and works well, it is so damn satisfying. It also aids rp when people aren't just staring at their own screens and avoiding all interaction! 

Phyrox


I think a lot of good points are being made in this thread. I guess I will also weigh in.
I think players these days have a much lower tolerance for damage to the station. Surviving to the point where you can get onto the shuttle is actually much easier than it used to be even if you spend the whole round wandering around hoping to bump into something murderous. Medical used to blow up all the time, now it does not. The nerfs to powergaming and abuse have made the rounds less interesting overall on Classic because nothing has been added that really fills that vacuum.
Midround antags really suck. That is why, aside from fire elementals and the occasional flexing timberdoodle, they all act friendly. Their players want to play the game, being a ghost is boring, and they've learned from getting bashed in all the time that they can't actually do anything fun. I guess the gunbots tend to actually shoot people too but then they tend to instantly die to flashes.
Most changes in the changelog are pretty darn small. The only major gameplay feature or system added to the game while I was on my haitus was the Rancher, which is literally 1 job position a round and is very insular. Since then Arcfiend was added but it's still a work in progress... and I haven't seen arcfiends accomplish all that much, yet.
Flock mode was mentioned in the changelog last spring but now it's on the shelf again and Flock remains admin-only. Makes me very very sad. I just want weird teal birds to run around stunning people and turning them and their chairs into gnesis.
Minor opinions:
Flamer rework was very ehh and has its own kind of weird jank with the way it makes floor containers. You can set the temperature high and spraying people won't burn them from the temperature, so you have to pre-heat your chems to do that damage. It is also just flat out bugged. Why can I shoot through windows and glass walls? Because the code does a simple check for opacity and nothing else.
I have come back around to my original opinion that secret chems are not good for the simple reason that the way you discover them is just not fun. Recipe hints are an improvement but get worse and worse the more you already know.
Adventures are too hard to get into.
Blobs need more hotkeys and some streamlining, also an easy accessible viewport button. They're just a very complicated antag with a very high skill floor that very few people get to practice.
I used to like helping the medical department from chemistry. Now medical can do everything themselves, sometimes better.

In short, the net effect of all the changes in the past-year plus has been a game where rounds are less chaotic, but not many actually new features have been added. I wish I had more time and energy so that I could contribute more to development, unfortunately I have my own problems right now. v_v

As per this, I think you're expecting a whole lot from coders. I've bolded your last paragraph to make the point that just about everyone who codes for goonstation has the exact same dilemma where they have a life and responsibilities outside of coding for us, which means they aren't going to be able to roll out updates the same way massive game studios can. They work like fucking crazy, so to expect that the game is basically fully overturned every update is really a bit much. A new role and a new antag is a lot, plus they've accomplished a lot more! Pod wars was added, the human resprite project, huge balance tweaks, lots of new sprites, and more! I'm not sure how long your hiatus was, but they've done a whole lot in that time. Be nice to coders, they do a lot for us! :)