Move Transfer Vote to Earlier in the Round

[RyverStyx]

This may be slightly controversial; but, I think that the current vote only being available at 2:00 is somewhat detrimental to our current play style. If the vote were to be available earlier with the end of the jump coinciding with the two-hour mark it would be a lot more friendly to individuals who work full time or have a busy schedule (of course we keep the option to continue).

This is anecdotal on my end- I work nine hour days most of the week. When I finish, I eat dinner and sometimes go to the gym. I know this is my lifestyle and I choose to do these things but it would also be nice for rounds to be just a liiiittle bit shorter so that I can experience more antags, RP, and play different characters.

 

Regarding some concerns I expect to see:

• Antags won't be able to do anything with shorter time.
  • Antags should be doing something BEFORE the 1 hour mark anyways.
  • In our current balance antags either die very quickly or get captured and spend the rest of the game in medical or in perma.
    • Most either die at 1:00 or are lame ducks by 2:00
  • When this happens the round just turns into extended with dead crew. I haven't seen a lot of rounds with the antag engaging for ALL two hours of it (unless it's just playing catch the shadow stepping vampire).
• There won't be enough time to RP
  • I think this actually will increase the amount of people who vote extended; allowing more RP to happen in place of continual antag rounds
    • People won't see extended and go "Oh great over two hours of bar rp".
    • They'll see the shorter rounds as times to play extended and hop on to talk before the next round of chaos.
      • I think this will also help our crew manifest from looking like a skeleton.
  • If you hate extended then IDK it would still be good for population health ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

I'm open to hearing others thoughts on this. I think it'd be great to just shave off that little time and have it actually END at two hours (unless continued). More people who are busy will hop on, extended may get some more votes, and it should keep rounds from getting that stagnant half-afk feel that happens when an antag is caught and the ship is FUBAR or there's nothing left to do.

 

PROPOSED NEW VOTE TIME WOULD BE 1:45

Edited March 8, 2023 by RyverStyx
Making the point clearer

[Fluffy]

I support this suggestion, an alternative or ontop implementation would be an "immediate transfer" option:

 

• Someone starts the crew transfer vote
• You get 3 options: "No", "Yes", "Immediate", to choose to
• "No" wins: continue the round, as usual
• "Yes" wins: start the bluespace jump procedure, as usual
• "Immediate" wins: jump directly to the bluespace jump (call it wormhole travel, invent an alternative name, whatever), 2 minutes later endgame screen, another 2 minutes later the server restarts

[limette]

As a xenoarch player, I think I'd sooner delete my character than start playing shorter rounds. I already hardly finish up with my anomalies by 1:30, assuming the best (not spending 40 minutes searching for a site.) This would leave me with essentially no time to roleplay on-duty due to how the job can be.

Further, there's a lot of antags that don't really take off until 1:00; mercenary in particular often takes a lot of time to prepare, and I've seen them only arriving at 0:40-0:45 more often than not. The pace of SS13 just isn't really good for this; there's a number of jobs that spend 15-20 minutes setting up, antags that take even longer to setup (particularly those high-effort gimmicks I'd want to see more of, not less of) and so on.

However; I have a fuckton of free time and can acknowledge that maybe this would be a good idea. It'd just require retooling a lot of things to work quicker, which I'm not certain whether or not its desirable.

Edited March 8, 2023 by limette

[Boggle08]

We actually moved at a faster pace several years ago. Antagonists would escalate faster, escape shuttles were called, and rounds could end at or before the 1:30 mark. Malf was mostly to blame for this, but other gamemodes could hustle too. Rounds would be quick, fast, and explosive, and then people would immediately follow them up with an extended as a cleanser. 

In theory, we don't have to change anything but ourselves. The escape shuttle's been traded with an abandon ship button.

[RyverStyx]

This is what I’m thinking too. People will adapt to the quicker times and peform as needed with the added bonus of getting more rounds into the day.

1 minute ago, Boggle08 said:

We actually moved at a faster pace several years ago. Antagonists would escalate faster, escape shuttles were called, and rounds could end at or before the 1:30 mark. Malf was mostly to blame for this, but other gamemodes could hustle too. Rounds would be quick, fast, and explosive, and then people would immediately follow them up with an extended as a cleanser. 

In theory, we don't have to change anything but ourselves. The escape shuttle's been traded with an abandon ship button.

 

[RyverStyx]

40 minutes ago, limette said:

As a xenoarch player, I think I'd sooner delete my character than start playing shorter rounds. I already hardly finish up with my anomalies by 1:30, assuming the best (not spending 40 minutes searching for a site.) This would leave me with essentially no time to roleplay on-duty due to how the job can be.

Further, there's a lot of antags that don't really take off until 1:00; mercenary in particular often takes a lot of time to prepare, and I've seen them only arriving at 0:40-0:45 more often than not. The pace of SS13 just isn't really good for this; there's a number of jobs that spend 15-20 minutes setting up, antags that take even longer to setup (particularly those high-effort gimmicks I'd want to see more of, not less of) and so on.

However; I have a fuckton of free time and can acknowledge that maybe this would be a good idea. It'd just require retooling a lot of things to work quicker, which I'm not certain whether or not its desirable.

I think this may be more of an issue with xenoarch than with round time (something that should be independently fixed). I feel for these roles and wouldn't want to harm them but at the same time we shouldn't balance the server on the needs of these roles (definitely in favor of giving them their own fixes though).

As for antag gimmicks- I had a round just last night where we were on station before the 30-min mark and we had substantial crew involvement, a stand-off, and a shoot-out that ended just over the hour mark. It's definitely doable and I think a lot of people currently just sit and brainstorm for an eternity instead of getting their gimmick going in a timely manner.

[Sheeplets]

I'd like to at least try this for a while. There's no harm in giving it an attempt, even if it doesn't work out. I don't like commiting upwards of three hours of my day to a single round with how things are now.

[Gem]

not having time for a full round is why anyone can leave the round at any point.

Edited March 14, 2023 by Gem

[ImmortalRedshirt]

Considering how much of an impact the overmap(especially following the reworks) has had on the pacing of a round, this is a pass from me. A xenoarch player has already brought that up here, and the issue would hurt mining too. Even on the Aurora, the average mining run would wrap up at about 30 to 40 minutes in. If you were looking at going back with some fancy tools, or maybe getting a longer RP scene in, you'd be shit outta luck with a shorter timer, and this time has only increased since you actually have to sniff out a planet on the overmap and fly there. On the Horizon, it's often about an hour in before we get back to the ship and watch as no one uses the resources because there's nothing important they're needed for within the next hour, but that's another issue.

[RyverStyx]

5 minutes ago, Gem said:

not having time for a full round is why anyone can leave the round at any point.

I don't think leaving is a great experience for those who have a busy schedule. Most want to be able to finish the round out.

 

3 minutes ago, ImmortalRedshirt said:

Considering how much of an impact the overmap(especially following the reworks) has had on the pacing of a round, this is a pass from me. A xenoarch player has already brought that up here, and the issue would hurt mining too. Even on the Aurora, the average mining run would wrap up at about 30 to 40 minutes in. If you were looking at going back with some fancy tools, or maybe getting a longer RP scene in, you'd be shit outta luck with a shorter timer, and this time has only increased since you actually have to sniff out a planet on the overmap and fly there. On the Horizon, it's often about an hour in before we get back to the ship and watch as no one uses the resources because there's nothing important they're needed for within the next hour, but that's another issue.

This vote would happen at 1:45 with the round ending around 2:02, The change is not major and given the time-frame you mentioned mining would be unchanged.

[Fluffy]

I forgot to mention, this might also end up increasing the people that ready up at roundstart, thus selecting better modes on average, as this would cater to the players that latejoins either selectively or exclusively, while giving them relax/downtime when the extended mode is explicitly selected.

 

39 minutes ago, limette said:

I already hardly finish up with my anomalies by 1:30, assuming the best (not spending 40 minutes searching for a site.) This would leave me with essentially no time to roleplay on-duty due to how the job can be.

Shorter round times means you can spend the next round completely RPing, the xenoarcheologist is (to my knowledge, at least) a standalone role that makes no difference to the round flow if it has dug up anomalies or not, so I see it as perfectly fine if they do not go out digging every, or even most, of the time.

 

43 minutes ago, limette said:

Further, there's a lot of antags that don't really take off until 1:00; mercenary in particular often takes a lot of time to prepare, and I've seen them only arriving at 0:40-0:45 more often than not. The pace of SS13 just isn't really good for this; there's a number of jobs that spend 15-20 minutes setting up, antags that take even longer to setup (particularly those high-effort gimmicks I'd want to see more of, not less of) and so on.

We all like high effort gimmicks, and this does not remove them, as the option to continue is always there (vote "no" to the crew transfer prompt).

If the gimmick failed to engage the players enough to acquire more than a third of them to vote to continue, after an hour and some, regardless of how high effort it might have appeared, it was not engaging enough to be considered a success (if people are voting to transfer, they're likely uninterested in it in large) and it's fine for it to finish.

 

2 minutes ago, ImmortalRedshirt said:

the average mining run would wrap up at about 30 to 40 minutes in

This sounds like all the more reason to support this? 40 minutes mining, 40 minutes RPing or mining again, new round? Also, the time can be shortened to whatever arbitrary number we wish, it's not a "either it's 2 hours or it's 1 and nothing in between".

 

3 minutes ago, ImmortalRedshirt said:

and watch as no one uses the resources because there's nothing important they're needed for within the next hour

Having a more explosive rounds, as Boggle said, would address this too. As well as more robust antags that have a solid chance to come out victorious.

[Gem]

13 minutes ago, RyverStyx said:

This vote would happen at 1:45

i suggest putting this in the OP.

Edited March 8, 2023 by Gem

[Captain Gecko]

I agree with Limette and Redshirt, I don't think we should get the vote to happen earlier. Putting aside issues for antag, off-ship, and any other position that may suffer from this change, something I agree with. In truth, I'm not even fond of the idea of making rounds shorter or voting earlier by itself. It's not rare for me to have to leave early when timing doesn't allow it, and though I personally never really mind it, I can definitely imagine that some people might not like it. But I don't think that making rounds end earlier will guarantee that these people will always get to see the end of a round... That and of course, to try to make it better for a section of a playerbase, do we risk making it worse for a bunch of others (those who play for the full rounds and would like to do so.) what I'm trying to say here is that no matter when we end up doing, a section of the playerbase will like it, another won't, so making things better for one at the expanse of another sounds unproductive to me.

I also don't think this will solve the issue of people not wanting to play extended. Most of us do not have the time to just wait for the next round, the fact that it lasts two hours or two hours and thirty minutes doesn't make much of a difference.

I think the issue here that there is a difference between ending rounds earlier and voting earlier. It doesn't matter what happens afterward, once a vote is made, it's made. Making votes happen earlier can cause some issues and actually have rounds last longer. Voting earlier means more chances of votes happening during climactic antag action, or during when players are not done with their RP or even jobs, this means more chances of people voting to play longer to make up for that, and round actually ending up lasting even longer than before.

 

IF we really want to do something, though... Well I think Fluffy's idea of just adding a third option in votes is much more interesting. Simply having this option for skeleton shifts where nothing happens or when the ships is horribly damaged (some people don't like roleplaying in these situations) justifying some sort of "emergency jump", feels like a good middle-ground. Of course, we'd have to find a way to make it so it doesn't split the votes of people who just want to leave generally (maybe have a first vote between "continue playing" and "leave", and if the latter option is selected, have a second vote between "standard jump" and "immediate jump.)

[niennab]

I don't think we should lower the counter. In the few times I've played as traitor, even by hitting the ground running in executing my plans with little deviation to chat between characters, I still find myself racing against the clock. A lot of the off station antags take about 45 minutes to be seen at best and I think that in terms of organizing a group of people it's no fault of the players but simply an added feature of what is involved.

What we'll likely see is less upgrades within Engineering and in Science, less of a willingness to execute expeditions or mining ventures as well as less antagonists readying up due to the increased difficulty of them hitting the ground fast. Also, people who complain about extended will always complain about it regardless of the timer.

I get that people will feel like they should ride out a round and that it's tieing it up in a nice bow but no one has to. If you have to leave for whatever reason, the elevators are there. The server is likely in a 'lull' as of late due to school schedules and whatnot. 

[Scheveningen]

Lowering the counter would put too much pressure on antagonists to make conflict happen when things can be unfixably disorganized with how little control an antagonist really has over who staffs the round in terms of competent characters and such.

[RyverStyx]

I understand wanting to leave people with enough time to do their research/upgrades/RP/gimmicks but is 15 minutes really going to make or break it? The round will still be 2 hours at least with the option to continue. The vote would just happen 15 minutes earlier. Plus if the antag is still in-action the round will almost certainly be continued.

Edited March 8, 2023 by RyverStyx

[Fluffy]

10 minutes ago, Captain Gecko said:

That and of course, to try to make it better for a section of a playerbase, do we risk making it worse for a bunch of others (those who play for the full rounds and would like to do so.)

I think the summary of the reply for this is: you can vote continue, if you want a longer round, and more than a third of players wants that too, voting continue makes it a longer round, easily.

11 minutes ago, Captain Gecko said:

what I'm trying to say here is that no matter when we end up doing, a section of the playerbase will like it, another won't, so making things better for one at the expanse of another sounds unproductive to me.

Not changing it is also unproductive, for the same reason, just inversed, the section that would like shorter rounds will be the expense in doing nothing.

What this counterargument sounds like, is that we should decide for the people that are playing, in advance and in a fixed way, how much they have to wait before they can say they lost interest in this round and want a new one, all of this to guarantee that a section of the playerbase has a long round as we suppose they always want, and the wish of those who wants to transfer earlier, which to trigger it have to be 66+% of the current players, do not matter.

 

13 minutes ago, Captain Gecko said:

Making votes happen earlier can cause some issues and actually have rounds last longer. Voting earlier means more chances of votes happening during climactic antag action, or during when players are not done with their RP or even jobs, this means more chances of people voting to play longer to make up for that, and round actually ending up lasting even longer than before.

The vote can be recasted again at the 2 hours mark, just like it is now, if the first vote is to continue. Ideally, to me, the first vote should be callable at around an hour and half.

 

15 minutes ago, Captain Gecko said:

Of course, we'd have to find a way to make it so it doesn't split the votes of people who just want to leave generally (maybe have a first vote between "continue playing" and "leave", and if the latter option is selected, have a second vote between "standard jump" and "immediate jump.)

The "Yes" option counts both "Yes" and "Immediate", if neither "Immediate" nor "No" wins alone, the standard transfer is initiated, seems an easy enough solution to this.

 

13 minutes ago, niennab said:

I don't think we should lower the counter. In the few times I've played as traitor, even by hitting the ground running in executing my plans with little deviation to chat between characters, I still find myself racing against the clock.

The only racing against the clock is to make your presence known and the round interesting, at which point people will vote continue as long as the gimmick proposed by the antags remains interesting; If the antags failed to make the round interesting after an hour and half, the issue isn't the time, but the gimmick that is not interesting the players enough to vote to continue, I believe.

 

15 minutes ago, niennab said:

A lot of the off station antags take about 45 minutes to be seen at best and I think that in terms of organizing a group of people it's no fault of the players but simply an added feature of what is involved.

Meaning you have another 45 minutes, before anyone can start a transfer vote, to make yourself known and setting up something interesting for a third or more of the players, which I feel like is plenty of time (?)

 

 

[Girdio]

26 minutes ago, RyverStyx said:

I understand wanting to leave people with enough time to do their research/upgrades/RP/gimmicks but is 15 minutes really going to make or break it?

I mean, you could ask the same thing regarding the positive changes presented. I don't think I'm understanding how fifteen minutes is going to make a drastic change on how people view extended, RP, and rounds in general, and how it's going to be impact someone's schedule that well. While I think I understand the intention, I feel like it isn't something really worth changing. Personally, my schedule isn't the best as is, and when I do play I'm having to take into account "ok, now how long will transfer take, how long will the next round take to start", and going from there to see if I can play a round or not. I don't think an extra fifteen minutes would really mean anything, unless I was letting myself run right into the time I had other things arranged, or needed to do something else.

4 hours ago, Fluffy said:

I support this suggestion, an alternative or ontop implementation would be an "immediate transfer" option:

I can not at all support an Immediate Transfer vote. In case of an IC emergency, that can be arranged ICly. I feel like a transfer vote causing an immediate end to a round absolutely ruins the flow of RP or anything else going on at the time. Immediate Transfer votes would make any in-depth role-play suddenly over without any way to wrap it up neatly, mainly since the players can't be prepared for the round to just end.

Edited March 8, 2023 by Girdio

[Fluffy]

17 minutes ago, Girdio said:

I can not at all support an Immediate Transfer vote. In case of an IC emergency, that can be arranged ICly. I feel like a transfer vote causing an immediate end to a round absolutely ruins the flow of RP or anything else going on at the time. Immediate Transfer votes would make any in-depth role-play suddenly over without any way to wrap it up neatly, mainly since the players can't be prepared for the round to just end.

Immediate as in, there's not the 15 minutes wait for the bluespace drive procedure or the spooling up, you still have the 3 minutes of bluespace drunkiness and the 2 minutes (at least) afterwards, it's not like "Immediate transfer won bye~ - You have lost the connection because the server is restarting [...]"

[RyverStyx]

21 minutes ago, Girdio said:

I mean, you could ask the same thing regarding the positive changes presented. I don't think I'm understanding how fifteen minutes is going to make a drastic change on how people view extended, RP, and rounds in general, and how it's going to be impact someone's schedule that well. Personally, my schedule isn't the best as is, and when I do play I'm having to take into account "ok, now how long will transfer take, how long will the next round take to start", and going from there to see if I can play a round or not. I don't think an extra fifteen minutes would really mean anything, unless I was letting myself run right into the time I had other things arranged, or needed to do something else.

The main draw for the shortening isn't to get people to play extended. It's to get more rounds in the day and have them move quicker. Plus, it's a lot easier to keep track when the minimum time they can run is 2:00 give or take a minute.

[Garnascus]

-1

As others have said i just think it would put too much pressure on antagonists. We can all day long that antags should do something before X time but its just not how it works. Its really stressful playing antag and trying to not get flamed. If you have less time to try fulfill the already very tall order of playing antag you just arent going to ready up and our small antag population will get smaller. 

[Carver]

As someone who'd honestly prefer rounds to go on for longer than they do at a minimum, my opinion on this is probably quite apparent.

To explain, I prefer longer rounds where people instead can cryo when they're tapped out and those who stay can carry on their interactions/stories for extended periods. Often I've had some great interactions unfortunately cut short by the round length as it already is - and in 10+ years of playing around on servers ranging from 30-45~ minute length to 4+ hour length, I personally consider the ideal duration to be placed at about 3 hours. Anything shorter just leads to disappointment, and Aurora rarely votes to continue as it is despite how often the crew insist upon never cryoing when they're tired/bored.

[La Villa Strangiato]

-1. Just cryo if you're bored of the round.

[LordPwner]

tl;dr -1 doesn't really fix the 'issue' presented. More in-depth messy writing below you have been warned. 

Spoiler

as someone who does antag... merc and raider foeverrrrrrrrrr and also plays roles that are depending on round times BC mainly (Because sometimes we move at a .16 Acce so it takes an hour+ to go where we want. And going on Xenoarch missions as pilot/muscle/stupid guy to pull stuff)

15 minutes will not do anything but add MORE pressure. I.E if you can ONLY play two rounds right now due to full time? You get an extra 1/4th of a round out of it? In our raider gimmick last night, we had what- a ten-twenty minute discussion on trying to figure out what our gimmick was- sure we ended up dying at like 1:20-1:30, but that also allowed me to come back after twenty minutes of waiting in death land to get 20 minutes of 'lasting' rp. Only really died because space combat, so that was a rip bozo on us honestly lmfao But if rounds were 1:45 or 1:30 No, God, Please No. I wouldn't have gotten that after action RP, and honestly would probs disable my pref to raider and merc if we did had less time.

I know I'm one of like six people who actively play daily who have it on because I've had multiple back-to-back rounds as merc/raider.

While it was the OP, the 'no wait' transfer is not really constructive to an HRP. It feels very MRP at best, but more often falls into LRP. I get it the demonic 'chair RP' is not for everyone, but we are an Heavy RP server. There has to be standards and consistency on what players CAN expect out of a round. If two or even more players are deep in discussion and the round just goes, BAM BLUESPACE in the middle of them trying to wrap up because they KNOW people won't continue for whatever reason: Dead, new round, new antags, etc. They now, can't really. They have to put a pin in and RP it out later which is disruptive. (Let us not ignore if someone got LATE ROLLED antag vamp/tator whatever you've just removed their ability to do anything as a tag)

 

Now I do think it would make rounds 'faster' honestly, and that could be a good thing, but the reasoning seems somewhat off- and as said-

On 08/03/2023 at 08:53, limette said:

The pace of SS13 just isn't really good for this; there's a number of jobs that spend 15-20 minutes setting up, antags that take even longer to setup (particularly those high-effort gimmicks I'd want to see more of, not less of) and so on.

[Sycmos]

There's not much else that I can say that others haven't already said that I'd simply be mirroring, so I'll just leave my commentary at this:

15 minutes is the difference between the primary engine being left at round start and being set up. A tremendous amount can be done in 15 minutes, and given that at times rounds tend to end earlier than what's comfortable for character interactions and gimmicks once they're finally spun up in round taking away that 15 minutes will likely make a negative impact.

-1.