Longer Rounds?

[Scrumpys]

Admins have been pushing for longer rounds for quite some time now and it caused some chagrin among the player base. There are several admin complaints that resulted in a player being punished or insulted by an admin for simply wanting a round to end before an arbitrary amount of time has passed. Until recently they're have been no in-game mechanics to force rounds to continue and it was simply the opinion of the admins that the round should last longer. But that has changed now that killing all the antags of the current game mode does not end the round, but only spawns more antags who will continue to rampage until the entire crew is dead. This does not only extend rounds, but gives the crew no winning conditions and forces them to eventually flee. This is most evident in the new nuke-ops where the rounds will continue on as normal traitor rounds after the entire crew has already lost life and limb fighting the nuke-ops agents; thus forcing deadman to watch the feeble resistance of a few survivors against the incoming horde of traitors for the rest of the hour.

I have seen this precedent of longer rounds talked about in many threads, so I wanted to create a thread specifically for its discussion.

Personally, I think round length should be left up to the crew to decide. If they all converse and decide that they should call the shuttle since it has been 80 minutes, that is fine, this is not a roleplay server.

[Rhydic]

i dont know why the round doesnt just end if all antagonists are dead. i get having late-joining antagonists if there's one antagonist putzing around being boring an hour in but if all the antagonists are dead i dont see the point in continuing. if people wanna screw around with their jobs they can go to us 1

[Dr_Bee]

One hour honestly is the perfect round length in my opinion. The problem with rounds being any longer is you end up with ALOT of people dead over the round. And with no really 100% way to get people back into a round to add fresh faces, eventually rounds get kinda empty. Usually by one hour the station probably has a few areas who are unlivable due to fire, explosions, insta-kill mobs, or other hazards so continuing after that point would be frustrating for both the dead and the living.

[Ed Venture]

Personally, I think round length should be left up to the crew to decide. If they all converse and decide that they should call the shuttle since it has been 80 minutes, that is fine, this is not a roleplay server.

One hour honestly is the perfect round length in my opinion.

Most of the time a round gets to the one hour mark alot of the crew is dead or nothing is happening. But sometimes the station is in good health and the round last to a hour then they tend to last a tad longer. But if nothing is happening by the one-hour mark then there is no guarantee that anything will happen at all. I think it's fine for rounds to last alittle long if stuff is happening. But I think it is fine to call the shuttle if most of the crew is dead or if most or more of the heads are dead. But trying to force the players alive or dead to play a round for over an hour is dumb and some game modes are suffering for it. Leave it player choice and put back and give winning conditions again. If you want rounds to last longer then a hour then at game modes that are made to last that long. It just does not work sometimes for traitors and it most certainly does not work for syndie rounds.

[Ed Venture]

If you want rounds to last longer then a hour then add game modes that are made to last that long.

[Sex_Robot]

I think the main problem is that there are many different players who play SS13, and consequentially there are a lot of views on how the game should be played, sadly the majority of views come with the caveat that as much as the game deserves to be played their way, all other ways deserve to be thwarted and mocked as much if not more. Some players just like to make the station tick and a short period of time of seeing that feels like a reward for overcoming the threats to the station.
People who complain that stations go dead when the initial threat is gone, are usually the people who go braindead or just flat out suicide when the action stops for 30 seconds.I totally agree with the Ed Venture quote above, but no amount of planned game modes will work if half the playerbase gives the collective finger and refuses to try something new, which makes me sad.

[Vitatroll]

I think it should be the crew's call. If the crew decides to call the shuttle as early as possible because Heisenbee got killed 1 minute in, then I think it should be perfectly fine for them to do so. This could bring up situations where a head decides to call the shuttle because his sandwich got eaten by the clown, but we have 5 other heads to negate that call. Hell, you could probably have an MD declare to the AI that so and so isn't mentally sound and have the AI recall it based on that.

I do think the dead should be considered too. If this were years ago we might have enough people to hop servers, but unless it's prime time we'll only have about 10 people to start on another server, which leaves 10-15 people for when 4 restarts. Not really all that fun. You also have people like me who just like to watch sometimes, so that's even less.

[Convair880]

Support for this push and all it entails (nerfing existing features, certain upcoming or planned changes, enforcing RP elements etc) is not unanimous, so throwing "all admins" or "all coders" into one pot isn't necessarily representative of the actual situation. And as was pointed out, some of the changes tend to not work well in practice (such late-joining antagonists in nuke rounds) or are peculiar in light of Goonstation's history and player base.

[Scrumpys]

Support for this push and all it entails (nerfing existing features, certain upcoming or planned changes, enforcing RP elements etc) is not unanimous, so throwing "all admins" or "all coders" into one pot isn't necessarily representative of the actual situation. And as was pointed out, some of the changes tend to not work well in practice (such late-joining antagonists in nuke rounds) or are peculiar in light of Goonstation's history and player base.

Sorry bout that. It's difficulty to tell who's for what when I only see the fallout after someone gets burned. I would like to see why some admins want longer rounds and their reasoning behind their decision.

[Mageziya]

I've never been in support of extending rounds. The game's already long as hell and pushing it further. You shouldn't be punishing people for calling the shuttle at 60 minutes for the reason of "nothing's happening." This is a game where it's gameplay is dependent on its players. If nothing's happened/happening after an hour of preparation, then nothing will happen, be it in the last 10 minutes of this now forced 70 minute round or 30 minutes later. Not to mention, if something IS happening, a recall can be forced 7 times out of 10 by the people who are making stuff happen.

The push to extend rounds, however, has actually been "successful" in that it's more common for the shuttle to be called at the 70 or god forbid the 80 minute mark. It's also been a failure, because most of these round extensions are generally boring lulls where nothing happens.

I suppose my main disgruntlement with longer rounds is how I've never lived to the end of an 80 minute round. Also, given my luck, rounds where I die in the first 15 minutes are guaranteed to be 90 minute rounds.

Yes, I'm salty.

[thehman03]

i never understood why admins ever needed to say how long the round is. Seriously, i don't see why this was ever a thing, was it to protect the people doing the solarium or was it to encourage roleplay or was it just an ill-fated idea.

who knows

[Roomba]

I think the recent game mechanic changes geared toward longer rounds...could frankly use some work, but at least it's a step in the right direction for encouraging longer rounds, as opposed to the trend where (certain, but not all) admins just punish and insult people for the temerity of calling the shuttle when there's no rule against it, especially if a large majority of the crew actually do want the shuttle/are dead. It feels like you're being punished for not wanting to play a certain way, and that doesn't really encourage people to stick around. A lot of people don't really have all that much videogaming time, and if the crew decides a shuttle call is what's needed to liven up the game, I don't see the issue with it. Right now it just feels like rounds go on artificially long because no one wants to be the first to go 'how about that shuttle guys' only to face the wrath of a voice from above.

[Sundance]

I'm one of the many people who would spawn as a head of sorts and call the shuttle when needed. There's often been a time where I've late spawned and called the shuttle straight off the bat due to the circumstances that I've landed myself in. Lately, I've been enforcing an "RP" perspective (loose on the RP), of using the head channel, asking if anyone disagrees with a shuttle call. If nobody answers, then I assume either all the heads are dead, or do not wish to divulge an opinion because busy/lazy/complacent, in which the latter I would completely ignore them if they complained when it's called. If more than 1 person disagrees, then I don't call it. If just 1 person disagrees, then I challenge them on the matter. If they're excuse is solarium, then they can go fuck themselves honestly. Take your notes, and prepare better next time.

Essentially my method is the no-nonsense form of shuttle calling, the "executive decision" as such. To be honest, i've been doing it because of the agenda of this longer round stuff, so when it's called at least I put something on the table rather than just for my own volition. An in-game voting system hard coded would potentially force people to have a democratic vote. If everybody's dead, nobody can say no to a shuttle call, but if theres a bunch of people, then they can veto the shuttle via vote. I had a more fleshed out idea on the suggestion forum, not bothered to revive it though.

Right now it just feels like rounds go on artificially long

Just quoting this because I feel like this sentence alone hits the nail on the head. The prolonging of rounds feel forced. Sure nerfing things here and there will reduce deadliness and efficiency of antagonists (btw, I don't disagree with that particular agenda), but as far as other servers go we still have a fairly disastrous and fatal-minded crewmembers in comparison to most, so at any time there's always going to ghosts and people bored as absolute fuck. It's a tricky situation because if your dead with little hope of being cloned/borged then you'll want to go do stuff, but you can't mute byond and go do other stuff, because you can't mute byond! So you can close the window, but then if round restarts, you wont really know about it unless you're on the IRC! There's also the issue of why can't the game continue in some form of manner if you're a ghost, with the recent idea grumblings, it seems like the attitudes have changed to favor this. There's also the argument about going to another server, despite other servers being dead in the water for a while now.
So yeah! Complicated issue really, but like others have said before me, I don't think most people have a problem with longer rounds, it's just that there's literally no incentive for doing so.

[Noah Buttes]

So yeah! Complicated issue really, but like others have said before me, I don't think most people have a problem with longer rounds, it's just that there's literally no incentive for doing so.

I'd like to add to this that syndicate and wizard rounds should always still be short.

[Mageziya]

Right now it just feels like rounds go on artificially long because no one wants to be the first to go 'how about that shuttle guys' only to face the wrath of a voice from above.

This is also a very important point, because this is how artificially long rounds are being implemented.