Nuke certain ready details and the manifest feature of the dicord bot

[Roostercat]

Right what it says on the tin. I think we should nuke specifically the manifest feature of the discord bot and the ready-up details that shows characters and their names (the number of players readied can stay imo).

Why? Because I've noticed quite a few rounds where there would be around 10-15 readies, then a lot of people evacuate if one of the departments (usually sec) is an overwhelming majority. I'm not saying sec is the problem here obviously, I'm saying that people tend to look at that list and make their decision to join purely on whether they see names they like or not, and pop for the day dies in a fire the moment there's a round with no readies. This isn't anyone's fault, that's just how people work.

Similarly I think people look at the status on the discord bot and decide not to boot up the server because of the same reason. At least if people boot up the game they will be more likely to just join the damn game anyway since they took the effort to launch it. 

 

[Acetrea]

Honestly, I don't think this will have the effect you want it to, unfortunately.

Firstly, I don't think it'll work out to take away the ability to see what characters are readied. Majority of people either weigh the satisfaction they will receive readying up for a new round by who will be in the round and/or by the antag readies. That makes sense: some people want some enjoyable rp, and others want some enjoyable gameplay. It's fine to prefer playing with certain characters and not with others. I find it more likely that people wont ready if we take this away. They'll wait for the round to start, then check the manifest, which will have less people because those ones didn't ready up so they could check the manifest. It's like a positive feedback loop, exacerbating itself.

Secondly, removing the discord bot still probably won't do anything. Hypothetically, say they did remove the discord bot. 1) Now people can't look at the manifest when they aren't home, which I normally do when I'm getting ready to come home from school/work and want to see if I should rush over or not. 2) Personally, having to wait the 30 seconds and join the server to check wouldn't create any more incentive for me to play if it's dead. It's just as easy to hit the little X in the corner and do something else. All that removing the bot does is make checking lengthier.

edit: also, it wouldn't give players the necessary info to decide if they'd rather roll for a different slot because the one they are initially going for might be contested

Edited April 27 by Acetrea

[Girdio]

I think this COULD work, but has to be implemented well. I don't know if flat out removing it is the move, but I don't know what is.

I do agree that we have an issue with people wanting to play only when certain characters/players are on. I can understand why it happens, and why people might not want to hang around certain characters, but I don't think it's good for the server overall. It's how we get cliques, which has been severely determental to the server in the past, but it's been better recently. I say that as someone who tries to avoid it, but HAS had times of being "I can't think of any interactions with these characters so I won't join."

Ideally, this would be cutting down on people not interacting with an array of characters. If you don't know who's playing you might just have to roleplay with someone new, or that you don't typically. 

An additional benefit is making things a little more secret. If you didn't know security was full, you can't guess it's merc now that the manifest is divided by half.

The thing is, not everyone has the desire or energy to do that. There are some players that wouldn't simply want the stick around in the round, or might just hang around and wait for certain characters to join. At that point, I don't know if anything changed.

That said, I feel like the manifest checker could be removed from the Discord bot without substantial loss, but I think having the round timer at the very least would be nice to keep around. I don't know how customizable the bot is though.

 

Edited April 27 by Girdio

[Roostercat]

I doubt taking this away will lead to everyone on the server wholesale not playing the game. This hasn't always been a feature and it worked fine before it was added. Besides, still having the amount of players readied is fine. 

31 minutes ago, Acetrea said:

 

Secondly, removing the discord bot still probably won't do anything. Hypothetically, say they did remove the discord bot. 1) Now people can't look at the manifest when they aren't home, which I normally do when I'm getting ready to come home from school/work and want to see if I should rush over or not. 2) Personally, having to wait the 30 seconds and join the server to check wouldn't create any more incentive for me to play if it's dead.

This proves my point. People look at the bot and then don't even interact with the server if they don't see the manifest they want. People might decide to give it a go anyway if they at least have to boot up the server. All the bot serves to do is discourage people from actually joining the server.

 

As it stands, barely anyone currently readies up anyway to begin with. Most of the server already waits for after round start to decide on joining. 

[Carver]

As someone who’s not always on my PC, being unable to check the manifest via the bot would be quite terrible. I don’t have much of an opinion on the ready screen, but the loss of bot functionality would be bothersome when the presence of service (or medical, or engineering) personnel can be a deciding factor for if I have the energy to set aside the time to play. At the very best you may simply exacerbate the issue of more people idling in the lobby so that they can check the manifest.

I see no value in depriving people of information. If players are choosing not to join then there is almost certainly a far stronger underlying factor than the exact characters on the ready screen or the bot manifest.

[Banditoz]

What would stop somebody from DMing their friend in-game and asking them "what's the manifest?"

[Girdio]

Just now, Banditoz said:

What would stop somebody from DMing their friend in-game and asking them "what's the manifest?"

This is something I was considering as well. On a similar point, people could still DM their friends and ask if they were playing a certain round.

[GeneralCamo]

Even if we do remove the discord stuff, it is near impossible to enforce people not just sending stuff via DMs. As for the in-game ready menu, I often use it to gauge departmental interest, to decide which of my characters to play. I can't imagine I'm the only one to do this.

[Merlin1230]

Quote

This proves my point. People look at the bot and then don't even interact with the server if they don't see the manifest they want. People might decide to give it a go anyway if they at least have to boot up the server. All the bot serves to do is discourage people from actually joining the server.

Ive seen this take before on other servers, but I personally feel like convenience makes it easier for people to decide to join, not make it so less people join. Even with all the information someone can have before joining, it is still a gamble if youre gonna have a round where youre doing a lot of stuff, or if youre gonna be sitting around for 2 hours yapping and making small talk. As it is, our server is currently designed around antags driving the round and making it stand out from other rounds, but we have a very small population of antag players (at least for not merc), so theres a very real chance that a round doesnt have one and ends up being fairly quiet and blending in with every other round. 2 hours is a lot of time to commit to, and having less information wont make people decide to commit themselves to that gamble for 2 hours and seeing if it pays off. Really, the big issue is that current design requires antags for things to be interesting, which is already something NBT2 wants to work away from so that rounds can stand on their own more- and once they can, itll be less of a gamble of if joining a round wont be interesting.

From personal experience, the manifest definitely influences my joining decisions, but not in a negative way. I can look at a department and go "Oh, theres a bunch of people in X department. I know I can at the very least have a lot of interaction with others in that department if I join it, even if the round as a whole ends up being quiet". I suppose I can technically be influenced into not joining if the department im in the mood for doesnt have players, but if Im not also in the mood to deviate and switch up what im playing, then I was already barely in the mood to play in the first place. The vast majority of times I dont end up playing, is because I wanna spend my time elsewhere for today, or anxiety. Actually, its mostly just anxiety.

TBH, I think the fact we can see people visibly check the manifest and not join because checking the manifest is entirely done in a public access bot channel on the discord makes it FEEL like the manifest makes less people join, but I have a hunch that its close to the same if you couldnt see the manifest, just because beforehand you couldnt see people making that decision as it was entirely within their heads. Im curious just as a experiment if you had the server status and manifest get periodically updated in a channel no-one could post in so people didnt have to run commands to see the up-to-date status of the server if itd feel like less people make the decision to not join, just because you dont see people running the command and not joining.

Edited April 27 by Merlin1230

[Acetrea]

Kinda seems like the problem here isn't about people seeing the manifest and deciding to play, but it's that the only incentives people have to play are who they are playing with. The solution wouldn't be to remove the ability to see who readies, nor who is on the manifest from the bot, but instead to add more aspects that draw people to play, even when there isn't someone in the round the person would particularly like to play with.

Just as an example, the introduction of the skills system was particularly exciting because it's implementing new gameplay. I had brought this up in the feedback post about having hours played on a certain character increasing the amount of skill points given (the dev team didn't want that but that's neither here nor there, I still think it's a good idea). Why does anyone invest a lot of playtime into World of Warcraft, Slay the Spire 2, Elden Ring, etc? Because people naturally love having a goal, and leveling to max level, or reaching a high ascension, are great incentives.

So instead of removing these features of the game in the hopes of increasing pop (I still don't think it would help), we should be adding new features to draw people in.

[Omicega]

20 hours ago, Roostercat said:

People might decide to give it a go anyway if they at least have to boot up the server.

Nope. A bad/boring/empty manifest is still bad, boring, or empty no matter whether I check it via the bot or the lobby screen. You won't see me joining either way.

[Stripes]

Hard disagree on the basis that the manifest is, at least on my end, what I use to help decide who I want to play to spot-fill a department. I've been on rounds where there are no surgeons/no hangtechs/etc. and being able to plan around it to improve the quality of the round and also be able to fill a slot I know it going to get some activity in is half of my decision-making for joining the round and as who. Flying blind not knowing what department is filled and what isn't (ESPECIALLY if the ready list is removed) just makes it harder to build manifests so you don't find out midway into the first 30 minutes that there are no engineers or there's no doctors right after getting something that can only be cured with an operation, etc. .