i think it's time to try player caps.

[ZeWaka]

If a cap was implemented in any way shape or form, it should include automatic redirection to the buddy server with a notification that would pop up saying you got redirected and why.
Sure, it's not ideal, but its infinitely better than the absolute garbage QoL of just getting a 'disconnected due to cap' screen.

[UrsulaMejor]

I don't think ghosts/observers/afterlifejoiners should count towards the cap. We'd end up with deceptively high counts as 1/4th of the server "fills up" with people just joining to watch.

Which isn't to say I support a hard-cap at all, but if one does get put in, then it needs to account for this very common experience of the game. I spent over a year "observer maining" before I became admin.

[Kotlol]

Good responses, but I feel like just doing a cap is rude. (@Zamu)

I am just trying to make ideas here to allow indirect methodes to be part of a bigger round.
To be fair making a good idea from this is next to impossible. But booting them to the next server also causes issues.
This is just a hard problem to fix since whatever we chose it's gonna cause problems.

100+ RP server? You can't get RP going for 30ish players wich is 25%. It's doable but hard and a lot of maps you wil start stepping on eachother's toes easily.

Introduce a cap and sending players to the other servers? Pisses off people who want to roleplay on high pop and might just cause a 3rd RP server to appear eventually if these predictable peaks are coming. Problems will arrise for this one regardless since people are like: "Well I am not playing then" or "my friends and I will shuffle around."

Doing half meassures like I would suggest would just annoy players too and can cause other issues.

The main issue to focus on is dead players and observers. Do we allow observers? if so.. when is a dead player considered an observer and there for.. Out of the game for their slot to open up? NEVER? 10 mins? When they can't be cloned anymore (DNR)? This is also hard to answer to a degree and will be hard to code in.
Let alone dead players becoming antag critters for spawn events, NTSO events or spawns of the wraiths.

I think this is the biggest discussion point we need to answer right now before the flood gates open:
"What do we do with dead players/observers/afk/cryoers?"

Once we can answer this one, putting in the cap can annoy players all they like, but atleast we won't get people trying to sidestep the issue in anyway.

Cause any answer will give a problem from people hogging slots and then afking/cryoing/dieing to hold a slot THEY AINT USING.
Or ..People afking/cryoing/dieing and then undoing that to get over the cap limit.

So what say we people? Do we say 1st come 1st serve and if the player goes away, the slot cannot be refilled?
Or can the slot get refilled but what systems prevent it from being abused to get over the cap?
Or do we say: "no observers/ghosts"?

[Wander]

Personally, I believe a cap would be worth trying at this point considering the difficulties with alternatives. If it does not work it can of course be reversed just as easily as it was introduced. The one thing that I would propose is that “ghosts” count towards the cap while “observers” do not. Additionally, observers can be prevented from joining ongoing games through the standard methods while ghosts can work as normal. This would allow for observing to become a choice to commit to watching a round that does not affect the cap, meanwhile active players can flow back and forth between life and death within the cap. This should help with some of the concerns regarding how non-active players affect the cap.

[Arlian]

I support this idea. Honestly, I wish it was a thing back when Goon 2 existed so some of the G1 players filtered into G2.

Not sure if this has been brought up in the thread at all, but player caps would also have the side effect of improving the general latency performance and experience for players that don't live in America. Goon is obviously America-centric and hosted on US servers so I doubt it's a priority point in the grand scheme of things but it'd a nice bonus for people like me who live outside the states.

[Zamujasa]

I don't think ghosts/observers/afterlifejoiners should count towards the cap. We'd end up with deceptively high counts as 1/4th of the server "fills up" with people just joining to watch.

Which isn't to say I support a hard-cap at all, but if one does get put in, then it needs to account for this very common experience of the game. I spent over a year "observer maining" before I became admin.

again, the proposed cap accounts for "observer slush", and is loosely based on actual experience.

a huge amount of players suddenly deciding to en-mass observe instead of playing would be unusual.


the stats on 3, right now:
90+ minutes

81 online
56 alive (-4, who are in in afterlife bar)
10 dead
4 observers
11 players on the title screen


boot the people idling on the title screen and you get 70. nuke 5 more and at worst you lose 5 living people, dropping you to about 45, which is where i'd consider the ideal range lies.


additional stipualtions:

- as zewaka said, some sort of redirection would be given, even if it's just "here are two links you can use to join different servers". this is trivial to implement so i'm not really worried (literally just "cap hit? client << link(byond://....")


- i don't think making the cap distinguish between who's alive / dead is a good idea:

the benefits of a simple hard cap are that it's simple. if there are 65 people online, no more can join. if there are 64 people, then another person can join.

if you try to tie this to "alive", then you now have to adjust all of the other game systems to compensate. one suggestion was limiting job slots, removing the "infinite" assistant slot. this would require:

- changing cyborgs to limit construction, since new latejoin borgs = new slots = bypass pop count
- respawns are now limited, first-come-first-serve; if you die and there are no more job slots, you are simply stuck as an observer
- population now depends on job slots and can vary by map, or in the case of stuff like security, weird dynamic caps. if a HoS joins, does that mean another player is allowed to join when the NTSO slot opens? that sort of stuff


one of the other arguments that comes up is "but people want to play with their friends": yes, that's part of the problem. letting them in to observe and watch doesn't let them play the game; it just means they're now sitting in the the afterlife bar or as a ghost, unable to interact or play. it also means that they're still not going to be able to even if they stay connected.



the jobs thing also has another really big, glaring problem that i realized: how do you handle round start? if you have 100 people on, and a soft cap of (say) 60 jobs, what happens if enough players are ready that all slots are full? does someone on the server get a "sorry, all the job slots were filled! you aren't allowed to play this game and must observe" message? for a hard cap, that's solved by just not letting them get to that step.


--------------------

edit: the round on 3 just started, and here are the numbers:
73 online
17 title

52 alive
0 dead
4 observers

players on the title screen for longer than, say, 5 minutes, could get an afk warning and then booted, which would open slots for others. or alternatively, only do this if the cap is near if you wanna do that.

[Keiiro]

As a player that prefers to join higher populations, I have mixed feelings about implementing a player cap. RP still happens, even now, but round actions and reactions are shorter and more direct than before to accommodate. In other words, the pacing has been faster than usual.
For me, the issue is more in the lines of: "More people = More problems/distractions = Less time allocated to individual RP". RPing is still possible, just generally shorter, and I enjoy the slight chaos that can happen in the latest shifts. The game's core is a ‘what if everything went wrong’ during a work shift in a space station.

I do not believe a population capacity is the solution to the aforementioned issue. But, if we are expecting the population to get to 70+ active players on both RP servers, and more newbees arriving, a player cap may be for the best.
A maximum player amount would be a band-aid to accommodate and ensure the best experience for new players in the RP servers. Otherwise, new players may be given a false impression of the standard RP experience and pacing, in contrast to classic.

Ultimately, if one is implemented, it should be temporary until we find a better, permanent solution.

[Kotlol]

Quick snippy snipp snipp

So we got everything we need in this post. I am for this.

[WhatMG]

All of the points that I could say in support of this have already been said. It's worth a test, at the least.

[meaow589]

I do not believe a population capacity is the solution to the aforementioned issue. But, if we are expecting the population to get to 70+ active players on both RP servers, and more newbees arriving, a player cap may be for the best.
A maximum player amount would be a band-aid to accommodate and ensure the best experience for new players in the RP servers. Otherwise, new players may be given a false impression of the standard RP experience and pacing, in contrast to classic.

Ultimately, if one is implemented, it should be temporary until we find a better, permanent solution.

fair enough right now in classic in low-moderate pop i have to mentor new player and many crisis happen all the round and make tutoring was interupt so often.for example yesterday i teaching new genetic at 10 min of the round and end up 12 microbomb medbey that new player die from not know how to use internal and no one teach them and got cloning and die again because not know how to use internal and walk around near breach.and got clone again and got eat by blob.Basically just life die repeat and ruined experince of new player so much and i really dont want to see that happen often(  this week is often )
but in RP server tend people to be high and some RP rule make the crisis is not much as it should be Including Extended round that was the good round for teaching new player and have quality time with them.

[cheekybrdy]

Classic player but there is some things I'd like to add here on this particular topic.

This would also help deal with the limited but existing problem of "I'm only here because Classic is quiet" people.

From my experiences with moving players, it correlates greatly with another issue with classic mentioned later, namely.

unfortunately people are going to do that regardless, and many have (citing classic's antag rampages and culture problems).

Whenever I see a new RP regular come back to classic for a round or two their reason for converting from whenever I've personally asked isn't among the lines of "I just wanted to RP" and more along the lines of "I was sick of the validhunting and powergaming". If goon3's overpopulation is a issue, then maybe trying to address the issues for the large migration of classic players there (its more pop based these days but the reason it got to that being a thing stands) instead of moving them to a lower pop RP server may be something also worth looking into. I've never felt like these mentioned rules have had any strict correlation with RP and could help with culture issues, then again not a admeme, this may be shit for ahelp quantities, although I do remember at least a year back in the discord them asking for more ahelps in this category so idk, whole thread here probably is overstepping.

[TDHooligan]

i'd still rather allow players to join high pop at some cost. like a player every 5-10 minutes or something. maybe with a polite "you're in the queue to join in X minutes. Click here to join another server"

[Dr. Puggers]

Well, I'm relatively new to goon and ss13 in general, but I thought I could chip in since some players and I talked about it in afterlife.

I main detective. On highpop, detective's role turns into one of security. Minimal det rp and in depth forensics. There's just too much happening and too little time. Bigger pop = more sec is also a bit rough because sec comms turn into dissarray. People are responding to calls while others interrogating have no clue what the culprit did. 

It makes keeping track of everything happening impossible without writing it down somewhere like a clipboard which distracts me from chat and feeds into the comms trouble like a bad feedback loop.

[Spyritdragon]

I'm open to the idea of population caps but I think:
- 65 is too low
- It should only count players in game otherwise people are going to idle on the title screen to "save their spot" and we're going to have 50% idlers/observers taking up the cap
- Classic should either remain uncapped or have a much higher cap as it works a lot better at high (even 100+) populations

I'm sort of also with Leah on this one.

I think it's not a bad idea to testmerge. If anything, what a testmerge couold achieve is that it sort of jumpstarts 4 again to an existing playerbase or 1 during the off-times, and even if the testmerge is then reversed hopefully some of these re-established communities would balance things out more. I'm a little bit opposed to it in the long run seeing as, while I'm always happy to RP with new people, I'd like to know I at least have a chance to continue all the fun stories and interactions I've got going on my character, perfectly open to others joining in the process, rather than having to look at eachother from across a server border.


One big thing, however, that I think is worth mentioning is that while I definitely won't deny that high playercounts make RP hard, I have to say that I've had high-pop 3 before, and it felt less problematic.
I'm 100% cool with classic, I've played it myself, and I don't think 'classic mentality' is in and of itself bad, but I do feel that it makes RP a lot harder when it comes over to 3 and 4, and the amount of 'classic-style' players we've gotten on 3 has made RP feel a lot more difficult to me. Not necessarily people who don't escalate or break the rules, but I've definitely noticed a marked uptick in players who mostly care about playing the game, and dont really seem to bother with immersion much or really getting much RP going.
As a practical example, when playing roboticist it's lately gotten up to maybe half of my rounds where I have to Ahelp a self-surgery, something that if you stood still for even a brief second is a ludicrous idea in RP. Even during previous bouts of high-pop, it was never this bad. And I think it's worth acknowledging that even if the population becomes more spread out, things like this that are making RP harder wont necessarily be addressed, and I'm worried that the people who do like in-depth RP might even find themselves forced to spread out over more servers.

[Nerkson]

I figure I should share my experience here. I am making no jabs at specific individuals here, of course.

For the longest time I could remember, 3 and 4 had split populations that would sometimes result in 3 being high pop, or 4 being high pop, but it was close. I'm not sure what changed exactly, but classic players began migrating heavily to 3, and then things just changed. 3 felt like it was less about RP. People didn't want to talk to me, or engage with me. When the population is over 50, things start feeling crazy. I can't really handle the information overload that comes my way and I end up feeling frustrated, when I should be feeling positive things from playing my favorite video game. Go ahead and say its a skill issue or whatever, others have.

Right now, on 4? It is miserable. The people who play alongside me on 4 are fantastic, but it has very quickly become a quiet place. Events and incidents that occur every round on 3, happen every four or five rounds on 4 - Mass medical issues, singulooses, things like that. I spend so much time trying to find stuff to do. It's boring. The miserable part of 4 is significantly better than the overwhelming stuff that I feel on 3, though, which is why I keep playing. The two days during and after April Fools? They were fantastic. (I feel bad for saying that, a very talented person made an extremely unique and wacky take on how we play Goon by making it isometric). The population being 30-40 on both felt alive. I could swap between servers based on whatever games were running! I was seeing people that I hadn't seen in a really long time! And then it died out again.

I know I can't be alone here. Others like me who play on 4 but would like just some more people. We just need something to encourage people to hop on. I actually got to coach a new miner yesterday, and that was a lot of fun! I had to stop myself and let them have their own fun and let them explore mining, and I got to repair science after it exploded and killed the only scientist.

I'm not sure if a server cap would fix that. I would really like to see something, anything though. I'm not sure what everyone thinks 4 is. I hope its not something like "Meta-cliques who custom emote you to death" or "the hardest corest role players". But I think the people who play on 4 have a lot they can share with people, if there was just a few more people regularly.