Goonhub
I think this topic comes up frequently enough to warrant a forum post here.
Extended (no antagonist) rounds used to be permanent on RP a few years ago after big population tides in order to encourage ahelps.
You knew there was no antagonists roundstart, so obviously all griefing was done by self-antagonists and could be reported easily.
Nowadays, the pop has reduced quite a bit, but you used to have an idea when extended rounds were occurring when no printouts appeared (so you could technically ahelp as easily as in the permanent extended days in theory). This has been changed recently, however, and now we have no indication at all on when extended rounds take place, which to me raises the question of why extended rounds are even a thing anymore.
Here are the reasons I can imagine people wanting extended rounds again:
1. Have less chaotic rounds
Rounds without antagonists will obviously be more calm, but I'd argue it makes things less interesting for most people. Rounds with antags are already a gamble on whether the antagonist will actually do antag stuff and antagonists tend to be very timid on RP for a variety of reason (fear of escalation rules, unwillingness to kill, etc). A lot of rounds will already feel like extended for most of the crew while having antags, so having true extended rounds feels extremely redundant to me. Also, when rounds go for 90 minutes without anyone to drive any action, a lot of departments lose their purpose, mainly medical and security. I've noticed this causes a lot of people to just get bored and suicide or leave, and some even start doing crime on their own.
2. Having more time to RP
I think people, especially on low pop, are particularly playing for character drama rather than any mechanics. I of course have nothing against this, but in my experience RP without any kind of action and the chance of being interrupted by a group of armed monkeys isn't really in the ss13 spirit. We all play here knowing the risk of being blown up, toolboxed or shot at any time. If you take all of these away, you might as well RP on any other platform. In my experience, the best kind of RP is when you ask the bartender how his day has been and he tells you all about how the clown kidnapped the chef and ran horrible experiments on him, rather than him telling you how quiet its been for the 15th time. The rounds on RP pretty much always last 90 minutes regardless of antag activity, so at the end of the day, you still have the same amount of time to RP, you'll just have more to talk about if some nefarious deed is occuring on station.
3. More ahelps
I think in order for this to be an actual reason, you need to actually have the meta knowledge of the round type. Of course ahelping more is a great goal, but from what I hear, people are hesitant to ahelp because they think the griefers might actually be antags. Having the knowledge no antags spawn, you're technically more comfortable to ahelp, but that's been removed as per the printout PR, so that's not really relevant anymore.
4. ...?
I'm curious what you guys consider good uses of the extended game mode, especially now that we don't know when they're occurring.
I wanted to voice my concerns for a bit but this is very much meant to be an open conversation, so please tell me what you think and what I got wrong
Extended (no antagonist) rounds used to be permanent on RP a few years ago after big population tides in order to encourage ahelps.
You knew there was no antagonists roundstart, so obviously all griefing was done by self-antagonists and could be reported easily.
Nowadays, the pop has reduced quite a bit, but you used to have an idea when extended rounds were occurring when no printouts appeared (so you could technically ahelp as easily as in the permanent extended days in theory). This has been changed recently, however, and now we have no indication at all on when extended rounds take place, which to me raises the question of why extended rounds are even a thing anymore.
Here are the reasons I can imagine people wanting extended rounds again:
1. Have less chaotic rounds
Rounds without antagonists will obviously be more calm, but I'd argue it makes things less interesting for most people. Rounds with antags are already a gamble on whether the antagonist will actually do antag stuff and antagonists tend to be very timid on RP for a variety of reason (fear of escalation rules, unwillingness to kill, etc). A lot of rounds will already feel like extended for most of the crew while having antags, so having true extended rounds feels extremely redundant to me. Also, when rounds go for 90 minutes without anyone to drive any action, a lot of departments lose their purpose, mainly medical and security. I've noticed this causes a lot of people to just get bored and suicide or leave, and some even start doing crime on their own.
2. Having more time to RP
I think people, especially on low pop, are particularly playing for character drama rather than any mechanics. I of course have nothing against this, but in my experience RP without any kind of action and the chance of being interrupted by a group of armed monkeys isn't really in the ss13 spirit. We all play here knowing the risk of being blown up, toolboxed or shot at any time. If you take all of these away, you might as well RP on any other platform. In my experience, the best kind of RP is when you ask the bartender how his day has been and he tells you all about how the clown kidnapped the chef and ran horrible experiments on him, rather than him telling you how quiet its been for the 15th time. The rounds on RP pretty much always last 90 minutes regardless of antag activity, so at the end of the day, you still have the same amount of time to RP, you'll just have more to talk about if some nefarious deed is occuring on station.
3. More ahelps
I think in order for this to be an actual reason, you need to actually have the meta knowledge of the round type. Of course ahelping more is a great goal, but from what I hear, people are hesitant to ahelp because they think the griefers might actually be antags. Having the knowledge no antags spawn, you're technically more comfortable to ahelp, but that's been removed as per the printout PR, so that's not really relevant anymore.
4. ...?
I'm curious what you guys consider good uses of the extended game mode, especially now that we don't know when they're occurring.
I wanted to voice my concerns for a bit but this is very much meant to be an open conversation, so please tell me what you think and what I got wrong