Who is the server made for now?

[SRQ]

I'm going to write a little introduction before I spill my thoughts out onto this page. I used to come to this server very frequently, and was getting close and involved with the community until I applied for HOS years ago. The extremely toxic, negative, and disgustingly aggressive response that came out of this made it clear that there is a rotten portion of this community so I walked away for about a year. Then I came back, and just played on the server on and off while I kept that part at arms length. Since then I've grown increasingly frustrated with the present direction.

Part of why I'm so blunt and harsh about these things is I want to just lay out honestly where I am in relation to things around here. I expect my thoughts to be rejected entirely, or a repeat of the last time I tried to reach out here and was told in no uncertain terms I wasn't welcome. Regardless, given the fun I've had, friends I've made, and stellar admins I've known I feel it' worth the effort to lay this all out and let the community decide if it's worth the words to read.

So to get into my thoughts proper, I'm increasingly wondering just who the server is actually for. It seems like every time I join, there's a new change or removed feature that used to be fun. 

The first time I started questioning things is when I heard Ass Daye was removed. Now this I can understand when it was explained to me that admins had to deal with a lot of complaints, but this is also where my original question started to crop up. Who complained? Why do they matter? Why is one day of wacky chaos somehow too much? Obviously I'm not able to actually know what behind the scenes stuff happened, and I'd never want to oblige the admins to run something they didn't enjoy running, but I feel like the obvious response to any complaints would have been simply "shut up and come back tomorrow." 

Following on from that, I've noticed plenty of changes that made things more painful as a player. Tasers got nerfed, making me abandon putting in any effort as security at all as a matter of fact- there's really no point. Icons got changed without any attempt (that I know of) to ask the players if they wanted any change, or to offer choosing between the classic icons and the new ones.

Obviously I don't want to be be at all negative towards whoever put in the time, effort, and clear care for the new icons- but to have the change thrust on me without any input came off as needlessly top-down. 

The final straw was a mild, trivial, one. The Borg sound synth is now extremely limited in how it can be used and practically useless. I cannot possibly imagine this was such a big problem that yanking that from peoples hands was the right approach.

So in conclusion, I'm just not sure who the server is for anymore, and it's a little tragic for me. I adore Goonstation, I adore the administration and their ability to turn the game into the truest form of a sandbox ever imaginable. Yet 2021 Goonstation sure isn't 2019 goon station, and while I'd certainly never want a return to the poop covered hellscape of 2012 Goonstation I think the balance is shifting far too much towards a sort of "polished" game instead of the open ended fun it used to be.

I realize a lot of these thoughts are possibly explained by "well you aren't on the discord so how the hell are we supposed to get your input," but given the games changelog and plenty of ways to field-test changes I don't think this is a valid argument. Field-testing and taking input for the new icons, the taser nerf, etc would have gone a long ways to make me feel more like this was a consensus based approach vs blizzard changing the Overwatch balancing again over everyones heads. If that's what you want, then I can't argue against that- ultimately it's not my server.

So there's my effort post. I expect it to be rejected out of hand, yet I still feel like it was worth doing. My name is Angela Ziegler, fart fuck hell, I'll see you in another server.

As another note, due to my own awful f5 f5 f5 anxiety I'm only gonna check this once a day if that, this is a limitation I'm putting on myself just because of my anxious personality.

E: If anyone does want to talk Gladi#0451 on Discord is the best way to get to me, that's a lot less anxiety inducing than trying to F5 the thread all day.

[zjdtmkhzt]

From what I can remember, ass day was removed because the player numbers usually went down significantly, because people just didn't really enjoy ass day. As far as I know it didn't really have anything to do with issues of moderation?
We tried to replace it with ass jam for a while to just make things a bit wackier for a day instead of making it "you will be randomly murdered" day (because people did not enjoy that), but in the end that wasn't really very popular anyway, so the whole thing was just done away with altogether.

As for the human resprite, personally I like the new sprites, but I can understand that this is subjective. I do think we had a thread up for several months were one could give feedback on it, even if one was not on the discord?

I can't really weigh in on tasers and stuff, since I do not really play security or taser-bearing-antags much, but my impression of the overall shift towards more "well-balanced" stuff was that it should give players agency in fighting back. Personally, I do not really enjoy stuff like being instantly stunned by csabers and the like - I like my rounds being more peaceful, just doing my job and rarely being murdered, but that's just me.

I haven't checked the values on the cooldown nerf of the soundmaker, but generally there has been an effort to reduce the amount of stuff that is just kind of an affront to the auditory senses. (stuff like equalizing volume on sounds, making sure all sounds respect sound settings, etc)
I feel very strongly that this is good, because I like having my sound turned on while playing without having something blow my ears off, and I generally think that things in the game should attack a players *character*, not the player themself. As someone who is often bothered by loud noises, I really appreciate changes like this.
(Instrument artifacts sounds for instance, could also use some pruning.)

All in all, what I think I am trying to say is, there *are* people who these changes are for, I like most of them. Some of the past changes, like the removal of pathology, went against systems I was quite fond off, but I do think that it made the game better for the average player. Of course, not everyone will like the changes, but I think most of the people like most of our changes.

Overall, I think there are plenty of ways to bring input? Like, I don't wanna literally say "you aren't on the discord, so how are we supposed to get your input?", but it's not completely out there, is it?
The discord and forums are the way we interact with each other, because doing balance polls ingame during rounds is just not efficiently possible.
Lots of people who are not admins have given input on the sprites or have made sprites themselves, so that they end up in a way that they like. I am not sure what other kinds of giving input you would like apart from the discord or forums?

[Cal]

I'm reading your HoS app and I don't see any disgusting negative responses. Just people unhappy that you targeted players who specifically wanted to learn.

No idea why you brought that up.

Ass day was removed because player count dropped significantly on those days because experienced players just mudered newer ones.

Tasers being nerfed is pretty whatever. It's okay to be upset about this, but you're an officer - you have a team. You can't call for backup if you think your single taser won't be enough?

I have no comment on the sound synthesiser, except that it's extremely annoying when broborgs spam the gunshot noise to make me look around the area for no reason.

All in all, the community is very kind. If you feel like main might not be your jam, rp is full of very kind people willing to pull you into gimmicks on a whim.

To be clear - I WANT you to feel welcome. I don't feel like anyone should feel like they don't belong. You'd be welcome back anytime.

[cyberTripping]

Yet 2021 Goonstation sure isn't 2019 goon station, and while I'd certainly never want a return to the poop covered hellscape of 2012 Goonstation I think the balance is shifting far too much towards a sort of "polished" game instead of the open ended fun it used to be.

For better or worse I think you hit the nail on the head with this, although I'd maybe use different words. It generally feels like, across the time I've been playing (about 6 years now) that the game has been toned down. You are generally less likely to be instantly gibbed or put into low crit or whatever than you used to be, RP servers take a much harsher stance on silent bombings than they once did, that sort of thing. As someone who has always played on rp (I think the rp server was relatively new when I first joined) I like these changes, but I can definitely understand how someone could be disappointed with it.

I would like to point out, however, that Goonstation is really at it's peak as far as community input goes. Due to events beyond the scope of this thread, Goonstation essentially went totally open source as of last year. A huge portion of the balance changes, sprite changes, etc that have happened since then were made by community members contributing to the community they are a part of, rather than dictated by developers in an opaque room like it used to be. These patches are open to community feedback on the github, and if you feel unheard, I can't encourage you enough to leave your thoughts on changes there.

[KikiMofo]

I still wish Ass Day was around. I don't get the whole player count dropped on Ass Day argument. Like okay? They don't want to play, that's their choice. More fun for those that DID want to play on those days. Once a month. Player count going down for one day a month is a big enough deal to remove the entire thing? Was Goonstation losing money or something because of bad player count for a day?

[Ikea]

Player dropping meant that like, the majority of people didnt find it fun, and like, we kinda aim to be the most fun for everyone overall. If theres something so unfun that it prevents most of the playerbase from playing an entire day, maybe if we want to maximize fun then itd be the best to remove it. Also yeah human resprite got plenty of input, there was even stuff about it from the forums. The reason why we cant have a toggle and shit has been explained many times, youd be forcing spriters to do twice the spriting work for clothing, which is a lot of work and unfair to give to people who already spend a lot of time making sprites.

So uhh anyways, onto answer your question, who is the server for now? Well, at the very least, who is the server trying to appeal too, and Id simply say the majority of players. Look at the assjam change, there was some people who did geniunely enjoy it, but the majority didnt, so it was removed. Or resprite, or chem, etc etc. Its understandable that some people may not enjoy these changes, different cups of tea and all that jazz, however most changes have been made with the intent of the majority of players in mind.

[Cal]

 I don't get the whole player count dropped on Ass Day argument. 

The player count dropped so significantly that for a large majority it was "Oh, I can't play today then."

[SRQ]

Well this appears to be going well so far. To be clear I'm not trying to DUNK on things or pull a "I am announcing my departure from the airport." These feelings have just been bugging me.

"From what I can remember, ass day was removed because the player numbers usually went down significantly, because people just didn't really enjoy ass day. As far as I know it didn't really have anything to do with issues of moderation?
We tried to replace it with ass jam for a while to just make things a bit wackier for a day instead of making it "you will be randomly murdered" day (because people did not enjoy that), but in the end that wasn't really very popular anyway, so the whole thing was just done away with altogether."

I fail to see why player count being low for 1/30th of the server uptime is in any way a problem. There's other days, and a once-monthly "go nuts" day was a fun way to be able to do things you wouldn't normally in a consequence free way. Come back tomorrow.

"As for the human resprite, personally I like the new sprites, but I can understand that this is subjective. I do think we had a thread up for several months were one could give feedback on it, even if one was not on the discord?"

It's possible but I never really felt like these forums wanted me so I never bothered coming back.

"All in all, what I think I am trying to say is, there *are* people who these changes are for, I like most of them. Some of the past changes, like the removal of pathology, went against systems I was quite fond off, but I do think that it made the game better for the average player. Of course, not everyone will like the changes, but I think most of the people like most of our changes."

I don't have any problem with the community consensus shifting to something new, but I really feel like this place is losing something. I didn't even know pathology was removed until right now and that's another incredibly unfun anti-player element that is adding to the pile here. It seems overall like anything that can actually be used needs to be nerfed into the ground until anything more intense than a light slap is relegated to syndicates.

"Overall, I think there are plenty of ways to bring input? Like, I don't wanna literally say "you aren't on the discord, so how are we supposed to get your input?", but it's not completely out there, is it?"

It's not, but I never felt welcome in those and I feel like trial-runs, a testing server, or any other way to say "We're going to be bringing this in, this is what it will look like," would have been a lot better than just coming in one day and here's your new icons, you had your chance to speak up so shut up it's too late.

"I'm reading your HoS app and I don't see any disgusting negative responses. Just people unhappy that you targeted players who specifically wanted to learn."

I brought this up because it's the entire reason I disengaged to begin with. Trying to get involved with the community, starting to mentor sec officers and be the best I could be, eliminating worse reactions. This was a period of months leading up to it, friends on the server had suggested I sign up so I could better mentor officers- and then the thread was a bunch of people bringing up ancient stuff with the conclusion of "You're not good enough, you never will be, you can beg for it again if you want but fuck you."

There's no reason to waste my time trying if that's the reaction I get when I do.

"Ass day was removed because player count dropped significantly on those days because experienced players just mudered newer ones."

I still fail to see how this is a problem because "You'll get toolboxed" is a core part of SS13. Why are we so set on eliminating the risk of bullshit deaths? Bullshit deaths with rapid rounds is the entire reason this server was fun to begin with. Easy in, easy out, anyone that gets upset at that can go somewhere else. Why are we bending over to the salty people? Experienced players dunking on newer ones is a problem and has been since day one, and it's not something that getting rid of ass day addresses. The fact that you can chem-bomb blobs (I think this was finally fixed) if you happen to understand chemistry was probably the worst power-gamer thing and that's completely distinct from Ass Day. What are you going to do there, power game people with a toolbox?

"Tasers being nerfed is pretty whatever. It's okay to be upset about this, but you're an officer - you have a team. You can't call for backup if you think your single taser won't be enough?"

Why bother being sec at all if my tools are completely useless and got more useless over time? What if I don't have a team, as is often the case? It's not worth the frustration if someone can just decide to ignore me and dealing with a single grey shirt takes just as much time and effort as an actual traitor due to inane nerfing. It's really not worth it.

"I have no comment on the sound synthesiser, except that it's extremely annoying when broborgs spam the gunshot noise to make me look around the area for no reason."

'course it is, but there must be a middle ground between that and "it's now absolutely worthless". That's my overall thing here, things get nerfed without any thought beyond "just nerf it." and then another feature goes right out the window. We have less now than we used to.

"All in all, the community is very kind. If you feel like main might not be your jam, rp is full of very kind people willing to pull you into gimmicks on a whim.
To be clear - I WANT you to feel welcome. I don't feel like anyone should feel like they don't belong. You'd be welcome back anytime."

Maybe things changed and people are more kind than they use to be, that's possible. The admins certainly are- but I have trouble getting over that first experience.

Honestly, Ass-day really boils it down. Why is the server bending over, even if it's a majority demand, to remove something that's only in place 1/30th of the time? Come back another day, explore another server, go use the _literally three other goon station servers that don't have ass day_. There's an endless amount of options, but instead of going with any of these it was removed, and that was it. People complain tasers are op. They're nerfed, move on. Pathology is gone. Move on. Just keep chipping away at anything that made this place stand out to begin with until it's just Baystation or whatever with better movement. Heck I even took a pass on some Ass Days but I appreciated that we had it and would just come back on not-ass-day.

[zjdtmkhzt]

Saying stuff like "pathology is gone, move on" hardly seems accurate. I coded a lot of changes for it to try to bring it more in line with what I think is a good vision for a department for the server, and we even had a week-long test run, as you suggested in your post!
In the end pathology was disabled again and after reading some feedback (on the forums) I decided to not try to develop it further to get it reenabled (for various reasons).
To me it feels like the system worked well, I got lots of feedback, some from admins, some from regular players, and some from people who I hadn't really seen before.

You say stuff like "bullshit deaths with rapid rounds is the entire reason the server is fun", but I absolutely do not agree. I do not like my rounds being cut short much, and I do not like short rounds, which is why I play on the rp server. I even preferred the 2 hour rounds, which were recently changed to be 1.5 hours instead.
That is why I enjoy changes that reduce the chances of a random, unavoidable death. Of course, one could say that we could just have those changes on the rp servers and not on main, but I think that a lot of players on main also prefer having the levels of power between crew-sec-antags be more equalized.

And sometimes the devs feel the need to make unpopular balance decisions that they think will be good for the health of the game, like nerfing things. As was probably the case with tasers, you just gotta consider that those tasers are shot at people too, people who wanna play the game, not be completely at the mercy of any player who has a taser.
Similar situation, earlier today there was a fair amount of discussion about nerfing artifact gun cells in some way. And sure, at first I was a bit bummed that it might be nerfed, but when you think about it - someone coming up to you with basically infinite shots of an egun that can permastun you or do a bazillion damage is pretty bs.
Facing someone like that in battle probably wouldn't end in a fair or enjoyable experience for me. So I am ok with it being nerfed.
But there are different shapes that such a nerf can take, and I am trying to push for one that I think will keep things more interesting while potentially giving people who would be against someone with an artcell a more level playing field, instead of pushing for the change that would remove using artifact cells that way.
To me, that feels like I have a good shot at making my input on this change heard, and even if I wouldn't have gone and nerfed artcells myself, now that I considered it I do feel like it would overall cause more fun for players.

Personally, I have played on, or tried to play on numerous ass days, back when it was still around. I honestly can't say I remember any fun moments from them, I just remember joining on cog1, walking around for a minute or two, then randomly being stabbed to death in maint near the chapel. I logged off thinking, "well, that was a waste of a few minutes, and now I need to wait for the round to be over". Wasn't a great feeling.
You can hardly just say to go to another server. The other populated server is the rp server, lots of main players do not wanna rp.
The other two servers have basically no players most of the time, playing with like 3 people would not be considered a "real round" by most people, certainly most main players.

I do fondly remember shaking the bushes during ass-jam for the random items, but that's just because I always enjoy gambling.^^
Anyway, that's why I definitely did not mind ass-day being removed. Not sure how I feel about the lack of ass-jam, it was a neat way to test some changes you'd normally not be able to get in, but all-in-all, I like playing boring 2 hour rounds on the rp server.

You're not alone in disliking new changes though. I think a lot of people have fond memories of times when the server used to be different, some people even liked the really old versions (with a questionable three letter feature) better.
I do get that it sucks when the direction of a game drifts away from what you liked it for, but these things just happen, you can't please the entire playerbase, so you gotta please the majority sometimes.

Overall, my advice would be, since you clearly seem invested in what kind of changes are made to the game.
Well, the best way is to give your input on the changes before they happen. A lot of them don't make it to the forums though, because that would be really spammy, so only the bigger changes get a forum thread.
And I do get if you don't wanna join the discord, the random chatting isn't for everyone.
So why not make a github account and check the PRs every once and again, and you could give your input if you feel a proposed change is not good?
https://github.com/goonstation/goonstation/pulls

Also, wow, I am really prone to rambling on today.^^

[Mordent]

'course it is, but there must be a middle ground between that and "it's now absolutely worthless".

Unless it's been further changed, you can make a sound every second. It's still incredibly obnoxious without being ear-destroying.

It's a sound synthesizer, what worth did it have before that wasn't "apply a stun effect by proxy as the player rips their headphones out"?

You're welcome to PR e.g. variable cooldown lengths dependent on the selected sound (some could be okay shorter, some could use being a little longer).

This is one of the strangest takes to something I've ever read, to be quite honest.

[Cal]

Nobody told you fuck you. People were put off by actions you did. The best course of action would have been "You're right. Targeting new players trying to learn the game was not a great move, but I was an antagonist."

On top of that, that alone was not the deciding factor. You had two large, several paragraph posts from two admins that gave you honest, well thought out feedback that pointed out that your tone was "Ugh, these new nerds are so bad." and additionally they had seen you be rude to newer officers.

Why did they stop doing a thing the majority of people hate (assday) so a small subset of mega power gamers can be happy? I dunno. Do you really want to come back or are you just venting?

Goonstation is made for people who want to have fun. For you and me. Players have a say in what's fun. We currently have one of the highest population spikes in a while, -right now-. This morning we had -90- players on RP. 

If you want to come back, stop by the discord. Chat. Get involved. We would be happy to welcome you.

[kyle2143]

Allow me to offer an admin perspective on some of the things here. To start out, why did we removed ass day/jam? I don't remember everything exactly, but we didn't remove it so as to cater to the demands of a vocal group of players who hated it or bend over backwards to appease someone.

I suppose there were two reasons as to why it was removed:

(1) As a general stance, the administration likes people to play the game. A majority of players disliked it and showed their dislike by not bothering to play on that day. Yeah I suppose it was a pretty unique event for the server that changes core gameplay, but its uniqueness didn't really carry it since it was once a month, and only a small minority of players really would play it as often as most players would play a regular game.
As for ass jam. The project was good in theory, but required way way way too much work to maintain an event that runs once a month, and that most players don't like.

(2) Many admins just didn't enjoy dealing with ass day. I forget if we voted to remove ass day or not so idk how many, but my general impression was that we were pretty bored with it. We probably did though and I just forget. We tried to use it as an "admin event day" for a while I think, but that was hard to do because ass day lasts for 24 hours and you can't really fill that whole time slot with fun events every single month. 1 day a month is pretty frequent after all.
I think we did discuss doing it every friday the 13th or something instead, but we just never followed through because of a lack of interest by anyone to do so. I think that such a thing might work to bring it back. Cause the biggest problem with Ass Day IMO was that it was so frequent, and lasted a full 24 hours, when most people could only stomach a couple rounds of it. Now that I think about it, I think we did add an "ass day" mode that an admin could press to give a round ass day rules and there might have been a pitch to make ass day rules only run for like every other round on ass day so as to not run it into the ground.

Might still do, nothing is set in stone after all. There just has to be a want for it.

---

 As for this big taser nerf you mentioned a couple times, I've got no clue what you're talking about there. My best guess is a change a few months ago that capped the stun time a taser could stun for to about 4-5 seconds iirc. 
Which does sound like a big nerf to sec until you change your playstyle slightly from "tase em from afar, then pointblank, then cuff" to "tase from afar, then stun baton/flash/pin then cuff". Adds a bit more nuance imo and makes sec a bit safer since you need more than just a taser to 100% garantee stun/cuff someone.

---

I've got no comment on the pathology removal except that I never particularly found pathology fun and that it was 99% of the time either completely irrelevant to the round or a round ender based on if someone who knew how to do path was an antagonist had the inclination to use it. 

And yeah. I guess we have moved away from the things that just let players instantly kill/permastun people with no effort, there is something to be said for a gameplay mechanic of dying easily, I think that's still there for the most part it just takes a bit longer or allows for you to save yourself with prepatation or friends.

I'm not sure what other features you're referring to as having been removed from the game though. Personally I am pretty against simple deletions of features before any attempt has been made at fixing it.

[Roomba]

I think the question of 'where am I supposed to leave my input' is a valid one. Currently, whenever someone goes 'I have an issue with something that changed/should be changed, where should I go to discuss it', they get one of four answers:

- the Discord is the place where the most active discussion on what needs to be changed, go there to talk about it

- Discord is too ephemeral, make a thread on the forums, that's the only way to get good feedback

- nobody pays attention to those, go to Github and check upcoming PRs, then leave feedback on those

- the only useful change is the one you code yourself, code a fix and then we can talk about it (this last one most often by admins)

That's a lot of potential avenues of discussion people have to keep abreast of if they want to stay on top of everything, and once stuff gets actually implemented in the game, then they get told 'well, you had your chance to leave feedback and you didn't, sucks to be you'.

Granted, there's not much that can be done if you refuse to engage with any option at all on the basis of 'this community doesn't like me'.

[UrsulaMejor]

The server is for the hundreds of players who still play it. We have more players every year, we must be doing something right.

---

One thing of note: we made ass day an optional thing at one point where it was enabled on one classic server but not the other one.

The ass day server barely broke 10 players. We were killing server pop fire the enjoyment of a very small group.

"It's only 12 days a year" isn't a good argument. A single bad day can kill server growth momentum for several days, sometimes even weeks, afterward.

There are two main reasons that I believe were behind this based on experience

First, we have an extremely high churn rate on new players and we constantly need fresh blood in every day to keep at playable population. Forming an early daily habit is important to turning a fresh player into the kind of person who will come back after long breaks. Purposely driving them away once a month is bad for retention, which is bad for everyone because nobody likes to play on empty servers.

Second, having a higher pop puts us higher on the hub, which is where we get a large number of players. A significant portion of our players actually join us from there every round instead of using other methods, and giving them more to scroll through makes then more likely to server hop.

All in all, this is a lot is words to day "intentionally making the game worse for the majority of your players is bad for long term health of your game"

[SRQ]

Doesn't the fact you have such large scale player turnover signal something is rotten in the state of Denmark to begin with? The way I see it, Goonstation is watering down everything that made it interesting and that nurtured the original community to begin with.

I don't see anybody I remember from years ago, just a constant ever-shifting bunch of new faces. Why is growing the player base the most important aspect? I remember when this place was happy to have 50 people on at a time, and then found the sudden doubling of that funny. So what if people server hop or we don't have as many people, why is this an inherently valuable metric?

I can absolutely accept the loss of ass day, even though I will forever disagree with it. It's the smaller things, the constant cuts and nerfs and reversals, that really detract from what it has been and could be. If it's found a new balance that's not what I'm looking for then all I can do is lament the loss of what I once had.

I do also think there's you know, some better ways to community incoming changes. Don't tell me about any PR or GitHub that's atrociously deep for a regular player. Just post up a hyperlink to a thread, or mention that a change is planned and link to the discord. Give players that just _play_ some way to know things are happening, instead of them only showing up one day and it's too late and already done.

By not doing so you are implicitly creating selection bias by only having players invested enough in these changes also be the only ones giving input on whether they're good ideas or not. There were a ton of people actually in game surprised by the new icons, and who disliked them. None of these people had any idea what was happening and certainly weren't asked- why was there no trial period? Why were we never told it would be a thing, and simply expected to keep track of pull requests? To me, it feels, Goonstation isn't for the players- it's for the coders. 

It's the death of pathology, the nerfing of the taser, the nerfing of the Borg soundbox and such that really put me off coming back, because every time I do the experience is less than it was before. I started taking security seriously again only to be nerfed into complete uselessness by a change imposed on me. There's no reason for me to invest as I once did, or even keep coming back- I like my memories of how it was more than how it is.

You can definitely say this is just a problem with myself, and things have evolved past me, but as I said before I care enough about what I had to want to speak up when I see it slipping away. Ultimately all I see is a special space in a neat game slowly crippling what once made it special chasing ephemeral delusions of popularity, and burning itself away until it will become nothing.