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Shifted Community?


TrickingTrapster

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Right, hello everyone. TT here. I have a point to bring up, but I have to preface it with something. This mainly applies to players that have been around for longer, mostly since the Exodus. I won't mind if you have some input if you're new, but keep in mind that this is mostly directed at the older playerbase.


Now, I'm sad to say, but I think the community has shifted for the worse since the Exodus. Maybe it's just me, I don't know, but I've asked a few people, and they've been seeing the same thing. Back then, I don't know if it was because of the smaller community or just because of a few laxer rules, but people were more engaging. A lot of cross-departmental friend circles existed, in every combination possible. If a new character was introduced, it usually only took one or two shifts for them to get accepted into one friend circle or another. People tried to actively talk with eachother, helped out if asked, were actually asked to help out, and generally helped to make the Exodus (and the starting days of the NSS Aurora 2) a very welcoming and cozy place. Characters were recognized, talked about when they weren't on shift, and if you dropped a name generally everyone knew who you were talking about.


After a while, however, I can't exactly pinpoint when, this started to fade away. Nowadays it seems doing your job, preferably by yourself with no outside help, comes first and foremost before any type of character interaction. Sure, a scientist will say thank you to a miner or a cargo tech that brings them materials, but not much more than that. People seem a lot more self-centered than before. If you make a new character now, it can take weeks before you have one consistent on-station friend, let alone a circle of those. If you ask someone if they want help, they go "I'll be fine" and you're waved off in 90% of the cases, even if you're a trainee of their department. People don't know eachother anymore, and if you drop a name no one really knows who you're talking about unless they're on-shift or you're talking to their personal friend, or maybe if they were on last shift. It saddens me to see this change, really.


My question is, has anyone else been seeing this change? I would love to go back to how it was before, with less job tunnelvision and more character interaction. And please, don't take this as offense if you're new, it's just an observation I've made. I just don't think the server has the same charm or personality it once had, but I don't know if it is because of a shifted playerbase, or the constant 'evolving' of our mechanics, or both. Please, let me know.

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one of the things you have to sort of take in account is that the exodus was much smaller, not just that but it was only one level; so everyone ran into each other more often.


the other problem is an inherent view of what HRP is; there is like two different sides of HRP that dont meld together well.


some people think Heavy Roleplay means playing an INDEPTH character, with a lot of aspects to that character; regardless of realism.


then other people think Heavy Roleplay means playing a realistic character.


Previously there were more "realistic" characters, with some deviations; I remember playing with [mention]Something Vile[/mention] and [mention]AmoryBlaine[/mention] in security, [mention]Dragonspare[/mention] in robotics, [mention]The Stryker[/mention] in Surgery and [mention]Pratepresidenten[/mention] as CMO.


eventually a lot of these people who played these characters that had a big impact on rounds sort of left or played less; ontop of that when the lore develops it changes a lot of interactions.


On the flip side you dont see the Indepth and fun characters like [mention]SleepyWolf[/mention] Toronto-88 Offten or their CE Diona because these people do get busy and the combination that initially made the server what it was for a lot of people obviously can't be the same.



I don't think the server has gotten worse, apart of it is how big the ship is; you really really don't get a chance to interact with people as often.


I do know what you're saying by it _feels_ different,

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I'd say I'm still relatively new considering how long some people here, and for the start of my time I had made a social group that I hanged out with every round, it was a decent 4-5 person strong small friendship circle, it started with me hanging out with the bartender, then I met a Librarian who was quite cool, then I met J.A.I.S, then I.P.A. It was a really rad time for me, we all had our different lores and we all just hung out. like friends irl. (I wish) But I took a big month break after I had been playing straight for like months, when I came back none of the people I really knew were around anymore, none of them play much which I thought really sucked, but being as I am, I adapt and move on, I think I just came to understand that all good things come to an end, and all though it sucks you just got to persist and move on, since that group. I've made plenty of friends ic but I've never had the same social circle of consistent ic friends to hang out with. That's just my personal experience on the topic of what was once good and what is now.

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An important thing to realize is that a large portion of the server plays to obtain relationships. There's such a focus on them that people will solely join rounds depending on whether their current characters have a fling with somebody or not, and it influences their play throughout the round itself. Whether it's by ignoring their job and sitting in the bar, or joining as roles that don't require much work so they can further ignore their jobs (if they have one) and go hang out with their friends. If you're not willing to forsake your job, you're already alienated by a large chunk of the server because you're not looking for the same thing they are.

However! If you're willing to get through the fact you'll never make any IC friends because you actually roleplay the station as a workplace like it actually is, you'll be able to stave off the crippling loneliness you get from overhearing and seeing people flirting over the ratio, making vague sexual remarks to each other, and neglecting to do their jobs, hindering your own ability because they're managed to spend the round doing everybody and everything but their job itself!

The important thing is to design a background character. The sooner you realize you're not important ICly or OOCly, the easier is it to come to terms with understanding you're an avenue to accent the roleplay of others. You're the backbone on which antag rounds are built on, and the guiding force behind the ability for others to enjoy the game.

So long as you're able to make it a fun experience for others, your time here isn't wasted.

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You're entirely right in seeing it. The reasons for the shift are a multitude of factors that can be summed up briefly.

  • Map design impacting the natural flow of the gameplay, whether overly large z-levels,  too many z-levels (station should never have more than one), or even just the general layout of a station and how the departments themselves are designed.
  • The attitude/culture of both playerbase and administration affecting the attitude of new players, for better or worse. As well as the attitude/culture of new players potentially clashing with the old. This is the dominant reason for these shifts in a majority of RP servers, the 'new player experience' of 4+ years ago is nothing like that of today.
  • Changes in mechanics (or setting) affecting the flow of gameplay, similarly to map design. This is most immediately seen in how massive adjustments to Medical/Security produce an immediate change in playstyle in these departments, as further pressure is added to said departments.

tl;dr: New people, new attitudes, new (poorly designed) maps, new game. This affects every server.

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1 minute ago, Menown said:

An important thing to realize is that a large portion of the server plays to obtain relationships.

This is also a major factor worth pointing out, ties in to my 'attitude/culture' bulletpoint. A good deal of people care very little about the gameplay and see this as a medium for escapist fantasies (aka dating sim). It's incredibly detrimental yet entirely unavoidable due to the nature of a continuous roleplay setting.

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The gargantuan map certainly contributes to the complete lack of interaction between players one can receive for entire rounds, yes. The vast majority of the station does not receive any traffic for the larger part of a day, and during lowpop you'll rarely see anybody anywhere. Not much can be done about that without a whole new map.

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I figured it was just me. I've been playing a lot of my newer characters recently and a lot of my older characters went without love for some months while I was consumed by retail hell. The result is that now I struggle to worm my way into the new breed of cliques, especially since most of my old pals have retired their older characters or stopped playing. I guess the insight I'm giving is that, ICly, I'm functionally getting the new player experience which typically means being the stranger who isn't up to date on the latest gossip, and lacking any social currency, excluded from the typical chair RP chit chat. I can't really say, "and it's all your faults!" If I'm not creative enough to leave an impression as my characters, but "who is dating whom?" type gossip seems to be the big thing outside of antag interaction or sec infighting.

I dunno, I can't pretend I'm not still having fun. Whether it's two old character friends bumping paths again or ALA gangs forming in maint, a lot of exciting and interesting roleplay is still going on and is still promoting inclusivity and engagement. I just figure I'm an oldman who needs to evolve and adapt to the modern crowd.

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I've personally had the same feeling ever since the map change, and I think there's been already a lot of good points for why already put in the thread regarding how the design may be contributing to that. Another factor I think, was the introduction of mixed secret and the host of gamemodes that came with it, this coinciding with the change to the new map. A few of my favorite old players jumped ship around that time and I'm of the belief that the atmosphere of mixed secret being constant with all of the gamemodes that smashed non-complementary antags together shaped "the new player experience" (as Mofo put it) in a way that changed the server culture quite considerably. There have also been a number of direction changing development updates, and the staff teams have for the most part cycled through to new groups of volunteers with different outlooks. The server has certainly shifted in culture from how it was years ago, but I don't think that should be any surprise, it's inevitable.

Regardless of whether or not the current server culture/atmosphere/community is up to your personal preference, it's going to be reflective of the majority who play here. Is it worth trying to change the server culture as a whole if it's against the interests of the new majority? As much as I'd like to see otherwise, probably not. 

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12 minutes ago, whiterabit said:

Is it worth trying to change the server culture as a whole if it's against the interests of the new majority? As much as I'd like to see otherwise, probably not. 

This is an important thing. It's largely why I'm being driven out of the "culture" of the server. The climate's changing and I'm no longer suitable for it, so I've learned to just try to help make the round enjoyable for others in my time here.

People need to either adapt to the new climate or move on.

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Well, at least I'm not the only one seeing it. I'm not going to tell people how to have fun, but in my opinion this new environment is less... Let's call it cohesive. I personaly see it as a bad shift, because I can't enjoy myself in it anymore. I just hope some other change comes along that maybe gets back some of the older players, or gets the current 'meta' to shift back to the way it was.

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Guest Complete Garbage

Been around for a while. I saw at least a few months of the exodus and I do really see where this post is coming from. I noticed a shift myself and just sort of quietly started playing less and less because it didn't suit me as well. I've made an effort to come back from time to time and I still try to be active on the discord because I do actually for the most part like the people in the community, (or at least on that face of it,) but I suppose the shift in ingame atmosphere set by character interactions is what turned me away. I still might try to come back with a new perspective at some point and put in effort to enjoy actually playing Aurora again, but Real Life(TM) is currently being a huge enormous bitch so it might be a while.

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The shift is fault of the older generation.

Every single issue people have named can be traced to the oldguard complaints.
Take a drink each time you heard the following pre-2017:
"People aren't doing their job and instead ERPing in a closet somewhere." = People started doing their jobs instead of constantly taking RP breaks.
"Mechanics are roleplay." = RP jobs such as chaplain, chef, bartender and psychologist got a mechanical rework.
"Miners don't give me materials and just sit in a bar all day." = Science and Miners now live in equilibrium, balanced, as all things should be.
"Security patrols too much." = Security now sits in their lobby, trains in the holodeck or shoots at dummies waiting until an antag happens.
"Apprentices are way over-skilled for their level of training, they should be less skilled." = People rarely remain as an apprentice for longer than a week.
"X job has nothing to do." = See point 2
"X character with Y disability shouldn't be on the station, that's not realistic." = We set up guidelines for them, vast forum, server, and overall staff majority agreed on this.
"Extended is boring and gameplay is stale we need more gamemodes." = We added mixed
"The station is too small I can barely fit with the players." = Main level is about the size of Old Exodus, the two other levels are barely used.
"Ling is a bad gamemode for HRP." = Ling is still bad game mode for HRP nothing has changed please kills this cancer garn is stupid for defending it.

About now you should recover from the alcoholic coma you just entered, the fact is people, developers and administrators have responded exactly to the issues ye olde players raised and everyone assimilated them passively, it wasn't a sudden snap and everyone changed.

The simple fact is jobs got actual mechanics so people are now playing them, antags have gotten more subtle since people wanted that so now there is general less chaos, people hated how quickly others jumped on revolution gimmicks so now people double-take everything.

The boomer generation is blaming the millennials for doing exactly the situation the boomers setup, it's poetic really.

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While coalf is right in some regards, it's still a kick in the nuts to me because I was not having even half of those complaints. VERY maybe the "X job has nothing to do", but other than that, none of those complaints were really complaints I had, and now it feels like (but not necessarily is the case) a vocal minority got a culture switch off on this server and now most of the old players got driven out because they didn't fit in with the new culture, which is pretty stupid imo. I'm pretty sure we're in a bit of a player decline too, though I haven;t really looked into stats at all so that could just be my time of day speaking.

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In terms of cross-departmental interaction, there has been no changes that would discourage that, a significant amount of PRs have actually relied more on cross-departmental interaction. I think the map is not an issue but it certainly doesn't help. There are some occupations and roles on the server that just outright prevent socialization. Medical and security never really get any socialization. Engineering and supply gets inter-departmental socialization. Service gets "people who bother to go to the bar" socialization.

I genuinely mostly blame the players for this issue. People are generally hostile and unwelcoming of new players, and existing players to the point where they feel it's necessary to form metacliques. People also tend to create characters who are incredibly hostile or depressive with either mental disorders or just assholish; I'm not singling out anyone because I could think of like 8 characters who have this trait and are always on the station.

tl;dr I don't feel like interacting with anyone when most of common chatter is just absolutely fucking garbage and filled with snowflakes who scream at other players.

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1 hour ago, BurgerBB said:

Service gets "people who bother to go to the bar" socialization.

The bar/kitchen. Fixed that for you.

Library, Chaplain, Hydroponics, all rarely get any interaction with anybody. They offer no rewards to their interaction that makes any form of IC justification outside friendships plausible for interaction.

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There is no culture switch, that's a myth, server culture moves at a very slow pace but you took a break long enough from the game to not notice or influence it.
People can always stop or influence a slow gradual culture shift.
Also, not everyone is guilty of the above, plenty of people didn't complain about those things but they were a minority back then and nobody really listened to them.

 

As Burger said some occupations aren't as suited for certain things, that's how the game works and always worked.
Security is going to get more antag fuckery while a miner is going to have longer-quieter interactions with other miners.

Such is the nature of those roles.

Also, consider the following:

7 hours ago, BurgerBB said:

I genuinely mostly blame the players for this issue. People are generally hostile and unwelcoming of new players, and existing players

I don't feel like interacting with anyone when most of common chatter is just absolutely fucking garbage and filled with snowflakes who scream at other players.

1
Spoiler

 

 

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6 hours ago, Coalf said:

There is no culture switch, that's a myth, server culture moves at a very slow pace but you took a break long enough from the game to not notice or influence it.
People can always stop or influence a slow gradual culture shift.

To say there's no switch is absolutely wrong. Rather there have been multiple switches over the years, with everyone recalling a different period from when they'd joined/actively played/etc. I've seen a great many events that ultimately impacted things for better or worse; generally a change in management, maps or a group of people simply moving on and being replaced. Before these events, things often stagnate and that's when people notice the worst of their own cultures and what they had bred. It's in this stagnation that people often simply leave.

As many have probably learned over the years, you can't really prevent the switch. No matter how hard a server tries, even the most exclusive/anti-change group will eventually experience some manner of event (And often die out, in the case of particularly exclusive groups/servers). Best you can do is roll with the punches and keep changing things up in regards to keeping the server interesting and active, to minimize stagnation (This requires very active and inventive administration or antagonists, you'll never find the latter these days).

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History is a myth, the fall of Rome wasn't caused by a single event it was caused over centuries.
Sure it was a big event that caused massive waves but that event was built up to, similarly how Mixed Secret caused big waves but it was led to by players complaining about stale rounds, inactive antags and extended being too boring.

The best part? Right now if I check the ckey of everyone on the server I am 100% confident at least 15 out of those 25 people played when people in this thread played too, the difference was they were complete randoms who were trying their heart out to fit these made up criteria and jump through these artificial hoops the previous generations setup for them.


Pity-partying in threads about this is pointless, it's a collective result of everyone's influence be it direct or indirect.
Times like these remind me of my favorite poem:

Spoiler


               "For who has served more faithfully?
               With your coward's hope." said He,
               "And where are the others that might have stood
               side by your side, in the common good?"

 


Inaction is as influential as action, those who leave cannot be blamed for leaving but they can't be surprised if they don't come back on the same server.
Similarly there is a lot of suggestions in the forum that nobody has commented on, a lot of answers in discord nobody talked about, plenty of ahelps that were never sent and an infinite amount of IR's that "I didn't want to bother with."

tl;dr this whole thread

image.png.c8c3c13380ba0b4e751f9974d4bfe0dc.png

Edited by Coalf
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Usually this feeling occurs when you take a break from an RP server and come back. You fall out of the loop and since you were used to being part of the in group you feel left out. Not just RP servers to be honest but all communites, especially online ones as they tend to have a higher attrition rate.

 

As some one who has trouble finding time to roleplay but observes often I can tell you the actual changes to server culture are so minute over such long periods of time they're unnoticeable. Not much has changed. Just make new pals or talk to the old guard and make group character concepts, that'll fix what ails yah.

Edited by Zundy
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Man, it's gonna take awhile for me to see these forums be legible, if that makes any sense. No insult to the thread or the thread-maker but this is gonna be the first occasion I make a seriouspost on the New™ New New Forums. Not that it's important or anything. I love being able to press Ctrl-B for boldening, it saves sooooo much time.

Now, I'm sad to say, but I think the community has shifted for the worse since the Exodus. Maybe it's just me, I don't know, but I've asked a few people, and they've been seeing the same thing. Back then, I don't know if it was because of the smaller community or just because of a few laxer rules, but people were more engaging. A lot of cross-departmental friend circles existed, in every combination possible. If a new character was introduced, it usually only took one or two shifts for them to get accepted into one friend circle or another. People tried to actively talk with eachother, helped out if asked, were actually asked to help out, and generally helped to make the Exodus (and the starting days of the NSS Aurora 2) a very welcoming and cozy place. Characters were recognized, talked about when they weren't on shift, and if you dropped a name generally everyone knew who you were talking about.



Might I also remind you we also had the likes of certain cliques with a very toxifying determination on how gameplay resulted. Now this is not so much an issue, it's unfortunate it came at the cost of a lack of the "friend circles" that were purportedly benign to the roleplay environment, but I personally don't see it as if we drove the friend cliques and the metafriend cliques away per se, just that the prevalence of both shrunk to almost nothingness. And when metafriend cliques become almost nothing, they have no influence on the server. And the more benign 'friend cliques' themselves? They're not necessarily nothing such as the metacliques are right now, but they've always tried to avoid ( whether actively or passively) forcing the limelight upon themselves.

That's good news and bad news, at the very least, but more good news than bad, frankly.

After a while, however, I can't exactly pinpoint when, this started to fade away. Nowadays it seems doing your job, preferably by yourself with no outside help, comes first and foremost before any type of character interaction. Sure, a scientist will say thank you to a miner or a cargo tech that brings them materials, but not much more than that. People seem a lot more self-centered than before. If you make a new character now, it can take weeks before you have one consistent on-station friend, let alone a circle of those. If you ask someone if they want help, they go "I'll be fine" and you're waved off in 90% of the cases, even if you're a trainee of their department. People don't know eachother anymore, and if you drop a name no one really knows who you're talking about unless they're on-shift or you're talking to their personal friend, or maybe if they were on last shift. It saddens me to see this change, really.



Well, yes, and allow me to offer my insight as to why things started to change:

*Rounds are on average, 33% shorter than what they used to be.* What was an average of having 2:30 rounds before, is effectively a 2:00 now. It's a constant rush to get what needs to be done, which leads into having a...
*Really big map, and really big problems.* It takes an incredibly long time to get around the current Aurora than with the Exodus or the old Aurora before, thus there are major timesinks of movement that you have to invest into to get anything done in the round. There's even a section for the station shields topside on the surface level now, since it became the established 'meta' that engineers HAD to set the shields up, else they'd punish the entire server in inaction whenever deadly meteor showers or space carp spawned in at the harkened 1:30 mark. Ironically, despite that maintenance was designed to be constantly winding and long to benefit antagonists, it often works to their detriment, as there are few convenient paths that take little time at all to cut through the various departments. The inexperienced with the map has a guarantee to get themselves killed if they dare get lost in that maintenance maze.
*It's in-character to be suspect of total stranger no-names you've never met before.* It's the major reason why my characters prioritize their job over having social interactions, sans having a loyalty chip which also makes them even more dedicated to that end; most people IRL dread altercations with complete strangers. There's very few people with charisma and comfort to openly interact with people like you suggest. When no one is familiar with each other, they have no interest to even get familiar with one another.

My question is, has anyone else been seeing this change? I would love to go back to how it was before, with less job tunnelvision and more character interaction. And please, don't take this as offense if you're new, it's just an observation I've made. I just don't think the server has the same charm or personality it once had, but I don't know if it is because of a shifted playerbase, or the constant 'evolving' of our mechanics, or both. Please, let me know.



Oh, yes, I've certainly seen this constant changing of the server ever since I started playing here. It's just a phase like any other. Even the harkened-for 'golden good old days' were just a phase. Things will change even as times go on, perhaps a pretty decent chance that this server recedes in popularity and gets some 'quality' of the kind that the RP elite liked so much back in the day.

I await the next kind of change just to see how this server turns out. Aurora's a beacon for change... and drama. The way the former and the latter interact with each other makes every particular situation just so interesting come the next hot topic of the month. Forecast: Cloudy, with a chance for friendship.

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Trust me, the server doesn't stop shifting. I played (and modded) back in 2015. Back then, I was a huge proponent for the idea antags were meant to tell a story, not play to win, and sometimes you let little things go to not shut them down. I was ignored by a lot of people. When I graduated high school, I jumped ship from SS13 because I realized I didn't want to be a part of the community in the next stage of my life.

 

Fast forward to 2017, it's like an entirely different place.

 

Antags aren't just encouraged to interact and have a gimmick, they're expected to. I was very excited to play SS13 again! How cool was that? An entire culture change in just two years. Maybe I wasn't puffing air after all. Maybe when I felt like no one was listening, people were. (Plus I remember Alb when he was a snot-nosed human miner pleb, and I find it amusing).

 

I eventually dropped again around this time as my exams got tough and the classes the semester after got even tougher and my dear friend didn't enjoy the game anyway, so we played what we both enjoyed.

 

And then I got a craving again, so I came back at the end of this past summer.

 

It was all different again.

 

And you know what?

 

A year from now, it'll all be different yet again. Maybe it'll be to your liking, maybe it'll be to my liking, maybe not. NBT is coming. Even if we don't go full monty on it, some bits will end up with us. And those bits will cause another change in how things go. There is no "Good old days." The good old days were terrible, too, you just didn't see it (or remember it that way). There is only the now and the future from now. Change is happening right now; go be apart of it and make your mark!

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8 hours ago, Coalf said:

There is no culture switch, that's a myth, server culture moves at a very slow pace but you took a break long enough from the game to not notice or influence it.
People can always stop or influence a slow gradual culture shift.
Also, not everyone is guilty of the above, plenty of people didn't complain about those things but they were a minority back then and nobody really listened to them.

 

As Burger said some occupations aren't as suited for certain things, that's how the game works and always worked.
Security is going to get more antag fuckery while a miner is going to have longer-quieter interactions with other miners.

Such is the nature of those roles.

Also, consider the following:

  Hide contents

 

 

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