RP Town Hall Round Up - 29 SEP 2019

[UrsulaMejor]

Howdy, crew!

Today at 12pm PST the Discord server had a roleplayer town-hall where we aired out our various issues, criticisms, and suggestions for the RP server.

The purpose of the town hall was to be "an open forum for discussion about issues you think the rp server is facing and what could be done to fix it."

Slacker Magician wrote up the following summary as the conversation took place, although some stuff may have been missed as the town hall took place over the course of two and a half hours and was rather fast.

///BIG WARNING NOTE: THIS ONLY LIGHTLY SUMMARIZES IT, AND DOES NOT FULLY REPRESENT ALL SIDES OF THE COMMUNITY AS IT IS MAINLY OBSERVATIONS, THANK YOU//

RPer setting summary:
-Other (Possibly) players arent taking the RP seriously enough and, at the most extreme, are treating the RP server as a test server.
-Admin response time seems to be slow, so problem players tend to still cause problems for longer
-Problem players are causing severe burnout for the dedicated RPers, which leads to declining player numbers
-Complaints/etc seem to be going nowhere.
-Low population is making it difficult to progress, or having to do jobs you never signed up for.
- A large lack of game-assisted direction/drive leads to round stagnation and placing a large emphasis on players to attempt to involve everyone

Administrator Summary:
-Problem players are being dealt with, as all ahelps go are logged, however it is impossible to be in multiple places at once
-Largely, it is boring to administrate the RP server over the Normal server, due to less happening overall, mostly due to the nature of the increased rules and extended round durations can make it unappealing to administrate, plus requiring a much much larger commitment timewise than popping on for a few 30-50 minute rounds.
-Constant barrages of complaints can prove taxing, and coming up with a solution can be an extremely duanting task, especially with this taxation.

"Less-Dedicated player" side summary:
-Players are taking RP *far too* seriously to the point where it becomes dreadful and boring despite it being advertised LRP server. Such examples include trivial things such as paperwork/etc.
-Often times (i've overhead this a few times) players who arent in the dedicated group can be left out or ignored, and then can get villified by the more dedicated players for not being as involved, causing further friction.
-Problem players are just as bad to the other players aswell, however decreased interaction can lead to them being jumbled up with the problem players.
-Increased rulings and overal reading of the rules leads to just "doing your job" creating a dead-zone of overly being careful not to break them.

POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS:
Dedicated "RP admins", Largely this would be a kind of band-aid solution, but it could possibly lead to quicker decisive action towards problem players.

Increasing the Server-style to MRP:
It'll lead to a overall decrese in playercount, but the more extensive rules listing would allow a bit more of what it seems the more dedicated RP players are expecting.

Possibly a Dedicated "Roleplay" gamemode?
Something to focus on for the crew, possibly a "Scenario mode" or something that would provide a crew-wide goal to work towards.
This would require a large amount of time to produce, but, ultimately it would serve a good purpose to fix it

Heavy interest was shown into the concept of the Artemis/More focus on a co-operative experience

Overall, it seems that there were four major complaints:

1. Low Player Count
   
2. Low Quality of Interactions
   
3. Lack of Direction
   
4. Seeming Lack of Admin Presence
   

Obviously, we are not going to be able to fix all of these issues with a town hall, but hopefully an extended discussion of issues will help.

I would very much like it if the town hall continued onto the forums and if we continued to discuss these issues, and potential solutions, in this thread.

It is okay if the thread strays a bit from the original topic, but be respectful. Towards each other, towards the administration, and towards the server. Do not shitpost in this thread.

Thank You,

Urs <3

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Some ancillary topics that came up (in no particular order, as I remember them):

1. Good RP vs. Bad RP; is this bad language? There was a general consensus that these could be better clarified, and less intimidating, if we used the words "Good faith RP and Bad faith RP, as actual level of RP skill isn't as important as intent.
   
2. Should respawn be enabled on the RP server?
   
3. Would Crew/Department/Station objectives being expanded help?
   
4. There is a large amount of pressure on players to create the entire story of the round whole-cloth, by themselves, which puts a lot of pressure on the players to take initiative and make things happen. This is what is meant by "lack of direction". How/can we give players more direction to allow those less comfortable with "driving" the round still have good experiences?
   
5. People using our server as a test server feel like a constant issue.