Goonhub
10-02-2022, 10:59 AM
I've been meaning to comment on this thread for a while as I think it has helped me to connect a few dots. If you know me, you know that I used to play on roleplay a lot several months ago, and nowadays I play practically exclusively classic. I've tried several times to get back into playing roleplay, and each time it just felt quiet. I chalked this up to just me being used to the very high pop that classic has experienced for the past few months, but I dont think thats entirely the case. While I rarely play roleplay nowadays and haven't played recently, Ive noticed that generally comms and the station is way less lively then previously despite the fact that roleplay now gets ~20% more players compared to months ago. Channels like command and medical now oftentimes get forgotten compared to previously when they used to be pretty active channels. While this can likely be contributed to many things, I think one thing is one of the main contributing factors here.
While hanging out basically exclusively with your friends wasnt unheard of, I think its been regularized to a harmful extent. Previously while it wasn't unusual to hang out with your buds, it also wasn't common, it was a big exception that was something people did a minority of rounds instead of a rule. Now from when I've played its hard to not run into a group that constantly sticks to themselves. Its a self reinforcing cycle, people are stuck in groups, so people have trouble socializing outside of groups, so they stick to groups in order to roleplay. Its no longer an uncommon thing, its a regular thing.
As much as Id love to say just have just have people act nicer, expecting people to just improve there behavior rarely works. While admin intervention can definitely help here, admins have to be fairly liberal with punishing as they dont have infinite knowledge, and ultimately does nothing to break the cycle. New players always tend to shake things up and another tide would probably help here. I also think things that focus on getting players to interact with other players would be good, mechanically stuff like encouraging cooperation would encourage communication. I do think it may also be neat if there was enforced random characters occasionally just to get people used to talking to people they dont know, I know that it can be dysphoric for some to play as a character that doesn't conform to there gender so this'll probably be best accomplished by having some menu that allows you to randomize your character an infinite amount of times till you get one you're comfortable with.
While hanging out basically exclusively with your friends wasnt unheard of, I think its been regularized to a harmful extent. Previously while it wasn't unusual to hang out with your buds, it also wasn't common, it was a big exception that was something people did a minority of rounds instead of a rule. Now from when I've played its hard to not run into a group that constantly sticks to themselves. Its a self reinforcing cycle, people are stuck in groups, so people have trouble socializing outside of groups, so they stick to groups in order to roleplay. Its no longer an uncommon thing, its a regular thing.
As much as Id love to say just have just have people act nicer, expecting people to just improve there behavior rarely works. While admin intervention can definitely help here, admins have to be fairly liberal with punishing as they dont have infinite knowledge, and ultimately does nothing to break the cycle. New players always tend to shake things up and another tide would probably help here. I also think things that focus on getting players to interact with other players would be good, mechanically stuff like encouraging cooperation would encourage communication. I do think it may also be neat if there was enforced random characters occasionally just to get people used to talking to people they dont know, I know that it can be dysphoric for some to play as a character that doesn't conform to there gender so this'll probably be best accomplished by having some menu that allows you to randomize your character an infinite amount of times till you get one you're comfortable with.