This is going to be somewhat rambly and inconsistent, but I think it’s a good idea to post this here where it wont get buried. Key point being whitelisting of players in regards to Salamander and Grasshopper. (Also tagged this with SS14 servers, remove if not relevant.)
In general, the RP quality of Salamander has gone down considerably from what I’ve observed and discussed with other users on Discord since the introduction of Grasshopper, and things have generally been shaky before then as well, usually coinciding with whitelist waves.
I’ve seen cases where players with over 2300 hours on the game specifically go to Grasshopper and roll over the new players on Grasshopper, because of the shared whitelist.
On the other side of the fence, I’m seeing Grasshopper players who initially got whitelisted intending to play Grasshopper end up joining Salamander “because there’s slots” and frequently ending up breaking Salamander specific server rules such as EORG and NLR.
Initially I was thinking of just suggesting that the whitelist be purged and start over. However, a better, but more complex solution would be implementing a seperate whitelist for both servers with different basic criteria to qualify for getting whitelisted.
For example, playing on Grasshopper with the intention to dunk on new players should get you removed from the whitelist for the server.
Server rule violations on Salamander should be enforced more harshly with a Salamander whitelist removal if it’s clear the person in question hasn’t read the server rules.
There’s other issues I’m thinking of offhand, such as the raider issue on Hopper (which is somewhat the same as the 2300 hour loneop killing everything) but I can’t really think of it right now. (Something, something, metagaming.)
I’d kind of like admin feedback and feedback from the rest of the community on what they think too.
tbh there’s a few things I agree with and don’t. It’s hard to expect every player coming from LRP to MRP to be well adjusted immediately, and people do forget or maybe miss the rule - I will say. The way the rules are organised on the wiki right now aren’t great for noticing the differences of MRP and LRP. MRP adjustments are hidden inside of the drop-down along side the rule or in a SMALLER box below the main rule. Which I think could be done better. Or maybe just have a better MRP page with basically the same rules and the adjustments for more obvious reading.
What you’ve said about hopper is almost 100%, people even on the discord yap about how they “get antag on hopper and destroy the newbs” - I personally hate it, and I wish they’d piss off and do something else. I wish command was vetted in some sort of way, and I do wish the whitelists were separated, not only for the reasons you mentioned but also that people can’t just hop back and forth with no intention of partaking in that servers goals "Sala for MRP, Hopper for helping new players)
The raiding issue has been an issue across servers right now honestly.
I feel like a huge chunk of the issue is how many people apply for a whitelist for the express purpose of continuing to play Grasshopper, and then later on join Salamander while keeping their lrp play style and culture expectations. I assume it’s made worse by the whitelist waves making many new lrp players join all at once, and then just making an echo chamber that makes rp quality worse for everyone overall.
To be clear, I’m fine with new players joining Salamander, but when they join, Grief at the end of the round and say “there’s no rules against it”, that’s what usually rubs me the wrong way, in regards to that specific comment.
If you’re not going to read the rules, that’s an actual problem.
I will say the wording could be better. I dunno why they removed “End of round grief” from the ruleset, it kinda makes more sense. Especially when we say it community wise. From what I saw the current rule for MRP says
“Rounds are not over until the game returns to the lobby. All of these rules apply fully whenever the game is not at the lobby unless it is in an exempt game mode.”
Some of these people just also refuse to RP any any way, as well as metagame as much as they can ignoring the rules. They seem to just completely ignore metashield and not follow the MRP rules for being dead or crit. They don’t really seem to want to even stick to their jobs at times either. There’s a lot of abuse going on in terms of people using the whitelist to abuse the new players on hopper. Many of the whitelist people don’t even go there to teach either. I admit i don’t always teach but I always give tips and help people get a good first experience. That’s the goal of whitelist people on hopper was helping new people learn and get familiar with the game
I’ve seen a decent chunk of people apply for the whitelist not even knowing Salamander exists. They just think they need to get whitelisted in order to keep playing their newbie server, never having any intention to teach the newbies. Maybe it’d be a good idea to have the whitelist require hours on the other four LRP servers, instead of players just hitting the baby jail cutoff and asking how to get back into the newbie server.
maybe we should make whitelisting a bit more complicated? right now it’s just post your username and get in - maybe we could make a small application reiterating on MRP rule knowledge or something
that way we both gather a bit more information regarding who is getting on MRP servers, and require players to be somewhat more motivated to get in (so, to actually play on MRP and not just have a backup server)
if we would do that, though, i am not sure what we can do about already whitelisted people
Wanted to add my two cents in on this: it’s difficult to remember or know what you can/can’t do/say after being in crit or revived. I sort of know the dead rule, but after reading this I quite literally just learned there’s a rule apparently for crit as well and I, once again, will have to read the rules to go see.
It would be very nice if the “you are being revived” message on MRP+ servers included the death rule and/or when you’re in crit it will also have a pop up message with the rule. It’s a reminder and teaches new people. I feel every time I play MRP servers I would have to keep checking rules for this and other specific MRP rules and that to me is not fun. I didn’t come to play DND where I gotta check rules every 5 minutes to see if I can do something after playing LRP for so long.
I would say at the overall quality of rp both in lrp and mrp are the reason why more experienced people play on hopper and also the main issue. In my case i do play in hopper for teach new players but i also ONLY play in hopper because shitters/rulebreakers get punished fast (most of the time) and people are (also most of the time) roleplaying in the ROLEPLAY game unlike the other servers where people play to win most of the time (bring powergaming as a rule again please) and where if you call them out you are called a motherfucking crybaby.
I came to ss14 to play a funny spess game where i roleplay as x guy on y job department and sometimes get to be the hero or the villian of the round. Not a game where i have to deal with the same shitter command/sec or even normal crew players who are playing to win and go out of they way for validhunt antags (or even neutral roles like skelly or ratking) just for be the hero of the round every round until i am sick of it and go back to hopper.
We need to seriously enforce the roleplay rules (even on lrp) either through server rules or gameplay limitations or this problem will never be fixed no matter how many changes we make to the whitelist.
Whitelist being tied to the void that is Discord is absurd. Forum already exists for other administrative purposes, I see no reason why it can’t be used for whitelist applications.
As someone who has been whitelisted, I personally wouldn’t be opposed to having to take an MRP rule test to get it reinstated if it means that the RP quality goes up. But then again, I’m just one voice, a small one at that.