[MERGED PR] Joining round as observer prevents the RP Respawn Timer from applying

[Emimiyu]

I’ve thought on this one for a bit. My only main concern, setting aside the risks of metagaming and all that, is of how it will affect population. It’s no surprise that the lowpop server has a large amount of people that observe and join when they are ready or able to. While their reasons vary and may or may not be pure, that is where a lot of the population comes from. My worry is that this will discourage people from playing lowpop due to the player count being even lower or the amount of people in round being worse. It was already an issue, but now the observers won’t be able to join after, which might amplify the problem.

I have an annecdote for this. If I recall, lowpop rp had waves of deadpop at certain point. One of the reasoning, outside a bunch of people were banned for metaclique issue, was that when people logged into lowpop and see 20 players, majority of the players are observers that there are less than 15 people on the pop. This ended up with the server being less favourable for people who want medium low, but not too low.

Though, I am not sure either that is why the PR should be a bad idea. I don't think most observers are going to log into the game because they are comfy watching their favorite space blorbos soap opera. I think if people wants to play the game, they should join in for the game. And if they really need to join in because of their blorbos are in there what if they can't interaxt with them!!. There is something called still joining the game or I unno,.made friends with the through discord/byond messenger.

And even with the observers issue that almot send lowpop rp to near deadpop like few months or a year ago, the server still gets a come back.