Upcoming Town Hall (Saturday Dec. 5)

[Flourish]

Hi friends. Our upcoming town hall is scheduled for Saturday Dec. 5 at 3PM Eastern Time (8 PM GMT). 

To preface, there's no big cataclysmic event or announcement around this town hall. It's purely just to give the community a chance to ask whatever questions they have and to voice their thoughts. This can include questions about game direction and development, concerns about the community, clarification about the rules, feedback for the admins, etc. We'll do our best to address everyone's thoughts and feelings. 

It's been a while since our last town hall, so here are the details as a refresher:

On the day + time of the town hall, a new channel will be created in our Discord. People will queue up, and one by one will be given a "talking stick" role to be able to ask questions and talk in that channel. Admins will do their best to answer questions and address concerns. Each person will be given roughly five minutes, to ensure that more people get a chance to talk. We expect the town hall to last around 2-3 hours, but you're free to leave early, show up late, or not attend at all (you can always read the backscroll once the channel is archived).

If you won't be able to make it to the town hall, or would like to ask your questions in advance, you can post in this thread, and we'll be sure to answer your questions to the best of our ability during the town hall. Unless you are an admin, this thread is for questions only. Posts that are offtopic or that contain personal attacks will be deleted. If we see the need to open up a second thread for discussion, we'll do so. 

Logs of past town halls can be viewed in the Archive section of our Discord server.

[DimWhat]

What is the current plan on the Manta vault and the Polaris storyline? Is it on ice for the time being or is it completely abandoned?

[Camryn]

What internal changes have been made with the admin team since our last town hall?

How would you say these changes have improved/worsened working conditions for goon staff members?

Are there any other meaningful or interesting behind the scenes changes, unrelated to staffing, that you would like to share?

[subjectparfait]

What internal changes have been made with the admin team since our last town hall?

How would you say these changes have improved/worsened working conditions for goon staff members?

Are there any other meaningful or interesting behind the scenes changes, unrelated to staffing, that you would like to share?

What is ur favourite colour

[Frank_Stein]

Considering the move to open source and PR's, Is there a unified creative direction that guides what is being accepted and worked on?

What are some long term goals the server is working towards, especially in regards to population and balancing.

[Nihisohel]

Any plans for a new monthly event to replace ass jam after its removal or is that a no show?

Are there any big events and contests or perhaps big changes that are in the works or being planned?

[ThatoneCrusader]

Regarding the ongoing Mime Discussions

are there any plans in expanding the available Jobs?
possibly Mime gets a chance?

[Recusor]

When is unused admin office real estate in centcomm going to be utilized? Can i pay spacebux to rent an office?

[Caro]

Considering a planned hellburn rework (or fix, rather), what are the plans regarding our current atmos system? Should we expect an atmos rework, or perhaps a port of a different atmos system in the future?

[Carbadox]

Moving forward with the coding being open source now, what are the 'policies', for lack of a better word, in regards to ownership of parts of the game?

The reason I ask is because I recall 2 situations, one where there were proposed new sprites for bees which were rejected due to the current ones having sentimental value to some admins. Another being that a suggested rework of Cog1's medbay was rejected by the creator. Obviously I don't know the full story of the incidents and the details I recall are pretty hazy. But from my point of view, it seems to contradict the idea behind open sourcing, since the basis for rejection seemed to come off as more personal rather than measure of quality and what not and I think it'd be good to have some sort of reference for the future.

Edit: If I'm allowed a 2nd semi-related question, are there set prerequisites(?) or general guidelines for accepting community contributed pull requests?

The general public understanding, in my interpretation, is that not alot of people are really know what does and doesn't contribute to whether something is approved and merged or not, EG some assume that community approval is first and foremost while others think that only the Developers final word counts, regardless if the community is for or against it.

[nefarious6th]

Can we expect any more solidification of what kind of behaviors are or aren't expected on the RP servers?

I think something noticable is that a wide range of expectations on what the experience there will be like has led to friction between players and people walking away with, perhaps false, perceptions about not just what the servers are like, but what other people who play on the servers are like. I think ultimately this isn't great for those of us who are there, whether we think people are taking it too seriously or not seriously enough, and perhaps reiterating the "level" of involvement or expanding the RP rules to detail more specifically and explicitly the kinds of behaviors that are not expected (or are, we can have good examples too), would benefit everyone.

We get told a lot by admins to respond to "bad RP" with "good RP" and ahelp problematic things, and that the RP servers are meant with anyone with any level of RP interest, but then I've also heard that the RP side of the servers started with MRP intent, and I've also heard people repeatedly say only "good/serious RP" is on RPO, or that RPO is MRP/HRP and RP1 is LRP, or that RPO/the people who do/did play there are somehow boring and excluding of other folks! I think this all leads to a lot of confusion and grey areas on when to try and seek outside help or properly address issues in-game vs. letting things go at the cost of whatever the round experience is for the player, and results in a lot of negative feelings in- and post-round.

[Mopcat]

was sord really banned from the blockland forums

[Wisecrack34]

What are some major issues with the game right now that you think need to be dealt with? With the new influx of players, what do you think can be done to help decrease the amount of lag in the game?

[ZeWaka]

hello it is town hall time now please come if you have questions thank

[iansdoor]

Is there possible to add few more flavor stuff to Engineering during the downtime for Engineers? as lot of new goongineers can't sit around and usually cryo after first 5 or so minutes of a round. Also can the changling goals be changed away from collect X amount of dnas as this leads to silent mass murderers alot.