The relevance of Extended rounds on RP

[BotchKing]

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

[Solenoid]

I personally don't see much use in the extended gamemode these days for normal, day-to-day rounds. I'm not an admin or anyone involved in moderation though, so maybe I'm just not able to see the useful parts of it for those who are.

Most RP rounds, to me, already feel like extended. You'll have the occasional bombing, the murder and subsequent cloning of a few members of staff, and then the execution or imprisonment of the criminal. A lot of the time, as a non-security crew member, you don't really even interact with the antags in any serious manner anymore. I don't think I've ever had an antagonist ever disrupt roleplay on 3 in recent memory, and only ever on 4 because of a lack of any security team forcing antagonists to attack non-security crew members.

Extended definitely still has a use during tides to weed out self-antags and to prevent new players from being killed in a confusing manner by some of the more out-there antagonist abilities and weapons, but otherwise it feels a bit redundant and just takes what little action there is in a round for non-security crewmembers out of it. That's just my opinion though, I'm sure others will disagree or bring up different reasons. Excited to see what others have to say on this, it seems like it'll be a good discussion.

[Kotlol]

Considering how these days Antags have to escalate their RP before going into murder mode.

I see barely a reason to use Extended as "those rounds where people can jive and learn"

It's also great to weed out the self antags and meta crowd. But that's it.
I think in my opinion... it should be voted in these days or admin toggled.
As someone who had one day to play SS13 RP, Having your only rounds be extended makes me want to do more stupid stuff that lead into my dumb death then another round of doing my job boringly.

I MOSTLY find ways to entertain myself, but after too much extended, you see people being tired of doing any real RP, any real stuff and any fun stuff. In fact most decide to cryo away when they have the inclanition of extended.

So yea.. in this day and age.. extended needs to be announced so we can take it easier and have a full round training newbies.
For example if I knew a few of my extended rounds were extended, I would roll jobs I am ineffective with then security/funny stuff, so I can learn them at a safe pace!

[BotchKing]

yes, I think I should have mentioned this as a 4th reason to want extended:

4. Having round-long gimmicks, or using the full round to learn something
As mentioned before, without having meta-knowledge that the round is extended (AKA no printout, or similar annoucement) this reason isn't really relevant anymore. Those are both easily doable on normal RP rounds, since they tend to last 90 minutes anyways.

[Azurnite]

These are really fair points to be made. I heavily agree on the second point though, it's one of my favorite points of RP because everyone wants a story to tell. I know I have had my own antag rounds where I may be very active in escalating and engaging people throughout the 96 minutes, though individually with others, and the rest of the station never knew I was a threat.

On the flip-side, if I am sec and I know it is an extended round, I tend to either encourage the team to learn something new, practice something they need to work on (communications, tactics, procedures, etc.), or go to each department and ask how things are going. For the last point, especially the departments who might be also looking for something to do. I know I ask round how things are a lot as captain and sec even on antag rounds, but on extended it gives people an opportunity to talk.

My last point I think I will make is one that definitely drives concern personally. When I knew it was extended, it helped making it clear to ahelp a situation that I felt was deemed it was needed. Without the knowledge of knowing, I feel it has tipped one way or the other where I feel I am either flooding ahelps in or not putting enough in as I want to wait till end round to verify antags and by then have forgotten names and maybe even some context of the situation.

[Silent Majority]

I kinda wish we still got clued in it was extended TO know to ahelp more.

That said in theory you should behave like every round was extended AND an antag round. You should always treat bad behavior like bad behavior..you should also act like its a normal day.

[RubberRats]

I'm not convinced people knowing it's extended will increase the likelihood of things being ahelped, at least not enough to justify more extended rounds. In 2021, 3 was put into extended mode for months on end and was like the wild west basically the entire time. I doubt that was an environment where people felt empowered to ahelp things.

I think people should learn to be comfortable acting on incomplete information, and we should do things to encourage them to not wait until they 100% know someone is breaking the rules to ahelp them. Goonstation has some of the best logs of any server. Admins have the tools to tell what's actually happening, they can figure out if something needs to be followed through on or not.

P.S. if you aren't literally spamming garbage over and over you probably aren't ahelping too much. Multiple admins have, in Discord or through OOC chat, practically begged people to please ahelp more.

[Kotlol]

I kinda wish we still got clued in it was extended TO know to ahelp more.

That said in theory you should behave like every round was extended AND an antag round. You should always treat bad behavior like bad behavior..you should also act like its a normal day.

A lot of the "rules" of RP do get broken and looked away like "You are suppose to act like soneone who wants to stay employed at NT" gets broken quite frequently by non antags as well. Mostly by people who do things to have fun as the Non Clown/Mime.
I see it more often then not that someone is like: "I don't wanna do my job, but have fun." And it is condoned since as long as whatever they are doing ISN'T doing harm to players, like for example the only engineer building a room for themselves and not maintaining the engine or responding to Engineering Alerts.

We could Ahelp those or make it a fun RP situation where someone gets a write-up.

I have been lubed as a clown before by a scientist and staff assistant combo who were bored so I know some people are just... bored.

That said.. I think extended rounds being meta knowledgable is still fine in any case, but I think we tolerate some rule breaking since we think it's an antag round every time.
That guy not wanting to do their job? Could be an antagonist... do I report an obivious antagonist?

I do like how most of us go: "It's an antagonist, better not harras the admins over it." And the admins go: "Please ahelp regardless."
But then... I fear an uprising of Ahelp metaing, where if the person who self antagging doesn't get exploded. Means some players will now know they are antags.
And if the admins keep doing nothing or remain silent to go against this, it might end up with "Why ahelp if they don't respond or do anything."

So I think the mindset of "Treat it as both." is very conflicting, but I think sometimes saying: "Hey we got a round of extended, have fun." in advance will be MORE healthy then keeping it hidden to weed out self antaggers.

And before you say: "Well people will leave if they know it's extended."
Yes. There is no straight answer. I just know if I get a round of extended, I would love to try more things at my own pace with someone mentoring.

[444explorer]

I do like how most of us go: "It's an antagonist, better not harras the admins over it." And the admins go: "Please ahelp regardless."
But then... I fear an uprising of Ahelp metaing, where if the person who self antagging doesn't get exploded. Means some players will now know they are antags.
And if the admins keep doing nothing or remain silent to go against this, it might end up with "Why ahelp if they don't respond or do anything."

Not every case of self-antags leads to a ban - the admin team can and will give out stuff like warnings etc.
And, in the case of knowing if someone is an antag, isn't that a natural result of the game in general? Security and that will find you out etc.

[Silent Majority]

generally I report things that seem 'wrong', as in 'not obviously antagonist' on any round, regardless of type. I've ahelped plenty of antags that I couldn't tell. I've executed non antags for breaking rules so much they drive sec nuts.

What I mean by 'both' is:

On any round I play, I try to act like, if theres no hint that something is wrong, that nothing is wrong. I am always vigilant and I always respond to calls or questions as where it important, and the same goes for non sec roles.

So I don't treat an antag round 'differently' then an extended round. LIkewise, the same is true in reverse.

During antag round play, disasters, dangers, threats, or other problems can arise, and if they do, then I respond in a manner appropriate to my role, the situation, and the general vibe.

I liked KNOWING it was a non antag round because generally, I allow myself to get more absorbed in things that would require more long term rp. But that doesn't mean I'd 'act' differently. But when threats, or problems, occur, I typically make my character respond by doing what they 'feel' like they should do during a troubled situation.

Medical will never get TOO distracted because I need to take care of medical duties.
Security won't get 'too' distracted because I need to attend my job, etc.

To the point that, if I don't 'know' its extended, I will usually quietly interrupt and relocate or stop an rp because I don't want to be neglecting the responsibility of the role I signed up to do.

I don't think everyone needs to do this! Its just how I LIKE to play.

[Kotlol]

At this point I am curious what admins think of our little discussion and concern.

Might give some insight.

[BotchKing]

Also, it might not have been fully clear in the initial post, but what I really want to discuss here is how Extended does not seem relevant anymore.
In my opinion (and I know several people think this as well) the Extended game mode should be removed.
It does not serve much purpose anymore.
The fact that we don't KNOW it's extended anymore makes this even more obvious, as it completely negates a few of the reasons to even have it to begin with.

So I'd like to ask everyone, would you remove the Extended game mode from RP and if not, why?

[Kotlol]

Also, it might not have been fully clear in the initial post, but what I really want to discuss here is how Extended does not seem relevant anymore.
In my opinion (and I know several people think this as well) the Extended game mode should be removed.
It does not serve much purpose anymore.
The fact that we don't KNOW it's extended anymore makes this even more obvious, as it completely negates a few of the reasons to even have it to begin with.

So I'd like to ask everyone, would you remove the Extended game mode from RP and if not, why?

I already spoke my mind: I am fine with em if we know.

But in it's current state.. REMOVE. Or make it RARE.

Nothing kills a SS13 mood like 3 extended's in a row.

[Petey]

From my perspective, extended shifts serve no purpose (outside of allowing admins to curate shifts or events). I'd rather see it cut from the rotation on RP.

Game modes with antagonists shouldn't detract or deter people from ahelping, teaching new players, or quality and time of roleplay.

Pertaining to the measurement of chaos, that has less to do with game modes and antagonist types and more about the individuals playing said antagonists. That already varies shift to shift.

[TDHooligan]

yeah griefing seems to have slowed enough that we might just need the occasional griefing sting rather than regular (albeit infrequent) 100 minute shifts with no antagonists