stamina, and players

[poland spring]

My play habits in the game are usually join a round in progress, play until it's over, then join the next round and leave a bit after dying.

With hour long rounds I can never devote too much time to the game unless it's one of my days off, and there's usually not much motivation to stick around on the off chance I get cloned or borged, less so when revival is impossible. I've just got too many other things I can be doing than waiting to play a game.

Yeah this, plus there being absolutely zero accounting for how often someone gets traitor roles determining when they get one again. Wraith has been out for months and I haven't been one once, really. I mean it's fun being a general crewmember or basic traitor but I'd like to get a more interesting role more than once a year. I just don't have the time to pop in round after round after round, and the system seems biased in favor of doing that.

[poland spring]

Actual relevant content: I think it's partially been because of the holidays, and partially the playerbase getting older. People graduate from college and suddenly have a lot less free time on their hands (with gainful employment at least), and there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of accounting for that fact. I'm not sure what the solution is, if any, but I'd say that's definitely a factor.

[Roomba]

I agree the shrinking playerbase is itself probably one of the biggest contributors: most people (presumably) play this game because they want to interact with other people, and the less people are on, the less meaningful interaction there is. Couple that with the slowly lengthening rounds and the larger station, and the station starts to feel very empty indeed. Hard for me to jump into a round if 90% of the time, it's going to be spent wandering from empty room to empty room for an hour and a half.

Re: antag roles - take this with a grain of salt, and no doubt it's probably just confirmation bias on my part, but the system definitely seems to be weighted towards those who are more successful in previous antag rounds - which most of the time, equates to the same saber-swinger/fireball-spammer murdering the entire station round after round after round. The potential to respond as a late-joining antag is fun and all, but it's rarely worth the effort of sticking around, especially when there's very little crew left to antagonize by the time you do so.

[TheOnlyRyan]

We need to increase the player base hnm.....

Bring poop back 2015

[TheOnlyRyan]

Oh shit, It's 2016... Well then.

[MaRcuSTheDAWG]

We need to increase the player base hnm.....

Bring poop back 2016

Fixed it for you

[TheTrixRabitt]

We need to increase the player base hnm.....

Never bring poop back 2016

Fixed it for you

I fixed it for both of you.

[Vitatroll]

SA is less traveled than reddit or 4chan. The initial project came from SA, but new people tend to come from reddit and 4chan. This leaves us with an aging playerbase that doesn't really have time for 2d spaceman fartsims.

Goonstation has a bad rep for various reasons, both founded and unfounded.

Bans on bigotry, sexuality and memelords takes out a strong (and dumb) demographic. Probably the most heavily populated playergroup for SS13.

New players tend to choose the most populated server. In any game. Keeping out the aforementioned knocks down the player count, which knocks it down further. On 'late' times you can watch as one bad round can take a population from 20 to 5 for the rest of the 'night'.

It's funny, really. Thanks to the new station and new lighting I'm seeing new people. When talking to them they always seem to mention how much more stuff there is to do here and how fun it is; always sounding as if they are shocked. I came here because of Plump's letsplays, so goonstation has always been SS13 for me. If, however, I wasn't an avid watcher of voltronarmy LPers -- and if I actually managed to find SS13 some other way, probably 4chan -- I would almost certainly not be playing on goonstation. I probably would have hopped on another server, thought SS13 was shit (shittier than I think it is now, anyways) and never looked back. Hell, even with goonstation it took 3 or 5 times to make me stick around.

I think that a concerted effort on some sort of social media will be necessary to pump new blood into goonstation. I just don't that adding things, no matter how amazing (even poo), will bring in the numbers.

[Mageziya]

Bans on bigotry, sexuality and memelords takes out a strong (and dumb) demographic. Probably the most heavily populated playergroup for SS13.

New players tend to choose the most populated server.

This is it. There isn't much more to it.

So, what can we do? Campaign places to draw in new players? That can't end well. It is, however, acceptable on most forums that I've been to to make a post in the games sections promoting a game you like and discussion of it, so I suppose you could do it, but it feels off.

I feel like something we could be focus on instead of player recruitment is player retention. I've said it before (I think.), but there isn't much of a community beyond the direct server. There's an IRC, which has a tendency to cause problems (And is an IRC. Those aren't too popular with people that aren't deeply invested in a community.), the SA thread, which costs money and is just one thread, and then there's this forum.

I generally dedicate my time to one forum at a time. I don't know why, it's something I do. I generally hop forums after a few years. This forum is one of the more desolate that I have ever seen that's still consistently active. It's just missing half the features of a standard forum. Most forums have things besides the main subject that people can talk about or do, like other discussion boards that people can talk on and stuff. Sure, this may lead to people who only focus on the forum and not on the game, but why is that a bad thing? It'll ultimately draw in more people, which is good. Other small details, like the inability to edit posts and change avatars (Though I do admit that the avatar shenanigans are hilarious.) all lead to a very strange, almost cult-like sense of humor here that's very difficult to draw new people in with.

Probably the best forums I have ever seen are the Bay12 forums. To clarify: Not the BayStation 12 forums, though Baystation did emerge from here over many years ago, but the Dwarf Fortress forums. Urist McStation also arose out of these forums, because Baystation ultimately differed too drastically with the originally Bay12 community. (Though I think it's dead?) There is a separation of communities within Bay12, which is expected, but they give places for people to go if they tire of one board. For example, when I tired of Dwarf Fortress, I left those boards and spent a fair amount of time in the General Discussion board before finally just being bored with the place in general, though I'll probably go back if I get back into Dwarf Fortress.

This turned out to be an unexpectedly long post. Why do I always do this.

[Wire]

This doesn't address most of the issues brought up, but a new forum is in the works (myself and Somepotato are migrating this forum to a new software package on my server). At the same time, I hope to add some features we've been missing (editing of posts, more forum sections etc).

[Ed Venture]

At the same time, I hope to add some features we've been missing (editing of posts, more forum sections etc).

HOLY SHIT POST EDITING IS FINALLY COMING

[Sundance]

I agree that while features may bring players into the game, it doesn't necessarily keep them playing, a good community and general knowledge of who's who and what's what. It would be cool if perhaps, the goonhub was integrated with the forums, although I could imagine that might be a bit of a headache to do.

A new players forum would be neat. Just to pop in and say hello/what's your IC name, but it could also be for queries about rules and questions about the game.

This one might be a bit controversial, but perhaps a more prominent and dedicated Spriting/Coding forum (rather than a subforum)? I was thinking that spriting and coding could be for certain projects one is doing, and the community could have an active part in.
So for example with sprites, you could have request threads (this exists already, but hopefully would be more active), general sprite threads, but also help threads where sprites may be a bit lacking or one is spriting a large number of objects, could get some help by other spriters. Also help with .DMI's as they can be tricky.
Same goes for coding. It doesn't have to be all out in the open (as i'm aware it's closed source), general talk about how to do A or B. Code could be PM'd (if pm's are active), or just shared via IRC.
Coders could request sprites, and spriters could request coders to help on what they're working on.
I think this would be cool because it's a way of getting peeps working together to create assets, rather than working individually (which can mind numbing at times)

[Cirrial]

This doesn't address most of the issues brought up, but a new forum is in the works (myself and Somepotato are migrating this forum to a new software package on my server). At the same time, I hope to add some features we've been missing (editing of posts, more forum sections etc).

I still don't quite understand how post editing isn't a feature of PHPBB already? It has been on other PHPBB-based boards to my experience, but oh well, I have no idea what's been done to this board.

[Erev]

This doesn't address most of the issues brought up, but a new forum is in the works (myself and Somepotato are migrating this forum to a new software package on my server). At the same time, I hope to add some features we've been missing (editing of posts, more forum sections etc).

I still don't quite understand how post editing isn't a feature of PHPBB already? It has been on other PHPBB-based boards to my experience, but oh well, I have no idea what's been done to this board.

If I remember correctly there is no editing on this forum so that ban appeals and admin complaints remain in their original form. The new forum software may be able to allow editing in certain areas while not allowimg it in others. As-is admins ARE capable of editing posts with the current software but the rest of us cannot.

At least that's my take. I could be totally wrong.

[OMJ]

okay basically my main gripe is stamina just straight up makes the game less fun. if I was a brand new player and i saw the stamina feature here and another server not having it I'd go to the other server off first impression