Or in other words: A Comprehensive Analysis of Lowpop on BeeStation
I’ll preface by stating outright that this post is a summary of my views regarding the state of BeeStation and its continuity and stability as the SS13 server we all know and love, while additionally (very very important) serving as a place of discussion for other members to discuss their views and thoughts as well. It’s a long one (post-writing Sylx here, it’s a REALLY long one, if your name starts with Raspberry, get your signature reading glasses on), so if you really really like our community (and have a lot of time on your hands), I hope you like reading. However, I have put a TL;DR section at the end, but it’s more summarizing than truly comprehensive and getting into the deep, important details like the post’s entirety is, so I would still encourage you to try and read it.
So, you know that saying about how a frog will freak out and jump away if you put it into a pot of boiling water, but if you bring a pot of normal water that it’s already in to a slow boil, it won’t realize anything’s wrong?
Yeah, that’s what this feels like. I haven’t seen any posts on the forums about the state of Bee’s obvious population issues, and while I’ve had several discussions about it with various members, I’ve similarly seen very few outright discussions about it on the BeeCord. Everyone knows it’s happening, but no one moves to bring it up first, and I’ve contemplated doing it multiple times, but I’m only doing it now because it genuinely looks like no one else will, and time is precious. Yes, it’s a depressing topic to bring oneself to directly acknowledge and confront, but that is exactly what we should be doing; talking with each other about it, and working to fix it, because this is the kind of situation that kills servers, and it has killed many a server already.
Now, I’m sure several of you are already thinking that I’m overreacting, because Bee goes through natural cycles of high and low population over a year, and that we’re due for a rebound, and yada yada, but I wouldn’t be so sure. I came to Bee in the Christmas break rush of ‘24, so I’ve been here for approaching a year, and therefore haven’t been around long enough to see many of these natural cycles, and so I would love for those that have to give their thoughts in reply to this post. However, this time does feel and look different, for several reasons which I will get into.
The many ways that consistent lowpop destabilizes round dynamics and the server is kinda complex to get into.
- For one, if Dynamic for calculating which antags are rolled and appear in the round isn’t good enough, antags that are allowed to cause high enough levels of destruction will either end the round altogether, or make the round so unfun to play that it kills further server population for the given day (this is especially true if it’s repeated and untreated by external addressal), because lowpop crews have a much less reflexive response capability to threats due to there simply being less people in critical roles.
- Less round population quickly creates a lot of stress on the few people in critical roles because there’s less people to help them in doing it, and more expectation from the general crew for them to do it right, because failure directly affects all of them. So, you get less people choosing to play these roles so they don’t have to be busy/perfect 24/7.
- You see this with Command most prominently, people stop rolling Command because they always end up being the only Command member and therefore Acting Captain, and burdened with all the responsibilities that come with it, rather than being able to simply manage their department by itself. And when in a role that already has high expectations to be good, in a round population that will create an environment where you are always having to be perfect or trying not to die from antags that you can’t sufficiently defend against, why would you play? It’s a losing game, right? This hurts so much more due to how impactful Command is to the general health and flow of the entire round and the crew, and when they’re gone so much, the game isn’t as fun anymore.
- You also see this Security, because as you might be able to guess, having to play as the lone Security Officer responsible for defending the entire crew from all antags, maybe even having to take up the Captaincy if there’s no Command, as a role that is frequently killed anyways but now has a much higher impact and failure of expectation since you’re the only guy, is NOT FUN. Why do you think no one rolls Detective roundstart anymore, when they can’t confirm an officer will be aboard so they won’t be given Sec duty? Why do you think it’s not all that uncommon for a lone SecOff to go to cryo after another officer or a Detective joins, because they’re done with the round after having to do so much already and can now hand off the responsibility? Playing a team sport that the entire crew expects you to manage really well because it’s critical to the entire round, by yourself, is torture.
- On the flipside, for antags that actually want to roleplay more and don’t want to steamroll the crew just because they technically can, this makes it harder for them to orchestrate interesting gimmicks. Harder for higher-impact gimmicks for sure, because then the round just ends soon after or the crew is unhappy, but also, if you know nobody will even be able to do anything in response to you killing the only officer (who’s already stressed out), where’s even the challenge or fun in that? ‘Yeahhh, let me go make the round worse for everyone else because I know they can’t stop me!’ Surprisingly, not all antags want this.
- A more general reason is that for all roles, if antags aren’t the main issue, it’s the destruction of a focused function to properly serve. Do you like the idea of a staffed space station where everyone has their niche role that they can fill and focus on, while working with each other in a fun display of communication and roleplay? Well, lowpop destroys this! All of a sudden, the Medical Doctor can no longer choose to simply reside in Medbay and treat patients, but must also create chems (and know how to) when needed, and go out to bring injured crewmembers to Medbay when needed. The Lawyer is completely useless because there’s never enough security to facilitate an actual trial or crew to watch and enjoy it, and the sole Command member is incentivized to expedite dealing with the antag by skipping to punishment/resolution. The Detective has to perform officer duties rather than solely focusing on forensics, the CE as Acting Captain can no longer solely focus on doing fun projects with his department, and the Roboticist has to break into Cargo in order to go and mine for ores because there’s no Shaft Miners. Yada yada, you get the idea. And the worst part is, when everyone is stressed and busy with additional critical roles, they are very unlikely to be able to spend time on quality roleplay.
Now, for what is actually causing this consistent lowpop, it’s a similarly complex interaction of several issues, some more straightforward than others.
- A really big one, in my eyes, is staff presence, and this is in terms of what they could do but often don’t. It can be justified that the staff team can’t do as much as it potentially could because there’s not that many people on the staff teams (that being, Administration and Development respectively), and that ‘more people just need to apply,’ but this line of thinking feels more dismissive than anything, and it definitely does not help work to improve things in the now.
- Admins have generally been absent from rounds, period. Even in rounds during peak pop hours, the presence hasn’t always been consistent, and this is bad because admin presence is another critical requirement for a healthy round. If someone wants to ahelp to check something, but they see that no staff are online, then they likely won’t and won’t attempt that thing but will instead do the more boring alternative—and this isn’t in regards to discipline or rule concerns, but for unique and niche actions, ones that require admin assistance to facilitate or CentCom interaction. It also means that any complications rules-wise that comes up would otherwise need a forums report to be handled, and having an admin help you solve an issue in-round by making an ahelp is much easier for a lot of players than bringing oneself to create an entire forums post report, so some just don’t do it at all. This worsens the quality of the server overall and will naturally make some people less likely to play as often.
- While admins are usually only regularly present during peak pop hours, there have been some exceptions with admins like @BotTierPC and @Ruko trying to help players in lowpop rounds have fun by being present and active, but it isn’t easy to keep engagement like this consistent on their own.
- Admins spice up rounds. They are part of what makes them special because their actions have the invaluable potential to strengthen the feeling that some rounds are unique for the better, and uniqueness is the counter of repetitive monotony that so many rounds have felt like lately. When this doesn’t happen, rounds don’t explicitly suffer, but they lose their strength and shielding that protects them from becoming just outright poor in quality.
- I fully understand that every admin and staff member has a life of their own that obviously comes first in terms of focus and situations, and that they can’t always be present and active within the server because of this. However, I think we can all agree that a good, ideal admin is an active member of the community that both knows it well, AND, and, cares about it enough to be as present as they can be to the best of their ability. I don’t want there to be this sense that the admin team is a select few of ‘elite’ that sit on ivory thrones up above but never actually come down to do anything. Admins are held to a rightfully higher standard of conduct than the average player, and this should encompass the effort they put into their frequency of presence. An admin that is only ever present in a round once a half-month, without any other effortful contributions, is an admin in technicality only. The hardest part about this is that there’s no doubt in my mind a big reason why admins can be so absent is because they too are affected by lowpop rounds (a Threshold system that I explain further down); some might view lowpop rounds as less fun to moderate than highpop ones because there’s less overall that they can do, often because there’s less critical roles filled that could otherwise respond properly to more severe (and fun) situations.
- Events are rare, and I mean really rare. They’re such a useful tool too, for getting people online and breaking a sense of hesitation that many people feel towards joining a round due to lowpop (Threshold), but for whatever reason, whether it’s too much effort on a sole admin’s end to put on, or no admins feel like hosting any, or the timeframe is already outside of peakpop hours to try and host one, they don’t happen. What’s worse is that the rare ones that do happen have either been code-based events, i.e. testmerges that are commonly more chaotic than fun, or major changes, such as Corg being retired from map rotation. I think creating an Eventmin listing from existing staff would be a great idea, so as those listed have more incentive to try and host events, but whatever solution is proposed, it needs to happen because events don’t happen anymore and they’re fun!
- Admins have generally been absent from rounds, period. Even in rounds during peak pop hours, the presence hasn’t always been consistent, and this is bad because admin presence is another critical requirement for a healthy round. If someone wants to ahelp to check something, but they see that no staff are online, then they likely won’t and won’t attempt that thing but will instead do the more boring alternative—and this isn’t in regards to discipline or rule concerns, but for unique and niche actions, ones that require admin assistance to facilitate or CentCom interaction. It also means that any complications rules-wise that comes up would otherwise need a forums report to be handled, and having an admin help you solve an issue in-round by making an ahelp is much easier for a lot of players than bringing oneself to create an entire forums post report, so some just don’t do it at all. This worsens the quality of the server overall and will naturally make some people less likely to play as often.
- Every player has their own threshold, and this is another big one. Now, what do I mean by threshold? The threshold number of people already actively playing on the server that is ideal enough for a player themself to choose to join. This is the direct cause of lowpop itself; it’s a self-feeding cycle of players who would otherwise join and enjoy playing, choosing not to because not enough people are already playing, and oftentimes they don’t think enough additional people will join to play before the round is over—and they’re usually right. The partner system of Threshold that is equally as important is Distribution, or how many people are in what critical roles that need filling for any healthy round; this is especially important for Command (Captain/Acting Captain) and Security (Security Officer), but also for the other critical roles, those being Station Engineer, Medical Doctor, Scientist, Shaft Miner, and Cook. A shiftpop of 22 people where seven are Assistants and three are Prisoners might as well be a lowpop round, and it is still bad.
- The main counter to Threshold is peak population hours, since the server as a whole generally knows when this is and will automatically join to play. However, this range has been getting narrower and narrower as of recent, which makes it harder for people to join and enjoy rounds, especially for those in time zones where this narrowed peak pop range is during unideal times (I’m sorry Yoshi, but being an Aussie has its downsides). Another strong counter is the hosting of events, as they are also a period of general knowledge of likely highpop that is not fixed to a specific timeframe like peak pop hours is, but these are so rare that they’re not useful (yet).
- Distribution (or instances of a lack thereof) hasn’t really been given any strong counters. Aforementioned critical roles could be automatically set to prioritized on lowpop rounds, Assistant and Prisoner as roles could be disabled entirely on lowpop rounds, and I’m sure other solutions could be thought of, but right now, a crew’s composition is completely free to the whims of players. This is good for servers that regularly have a higher average pop, but that is not Bee, at least not currently.
- An issue that’s been around for a while is the way that Security and Antagonists have been stuck in an unpredictable death battle against each other, while trying to manage the two main dynamics of Roleplay and Gameplay. The issue lies with the intent of the involved players, as does many other issues; on either side, if the players try to roleplay, and the other side reciprocates well, then this is the best-case scenario. However, if the other side takes advantage of this to snipe an easy gamer response and gain the upper hand, then it’s unfun for the initiating side and they have to resort to gaming as well, and they’re also less likely to try roleplaying again in the future. And if the initiating side just decides to game right out of the get-go, well, you can imagine why the other side would not want to try a roleplay response to that after experiencing being dunked on many times in the past. Team members of both sides find it hard to do much to help, too, because if you’re a Security Officer and your buddy goes straight to shooting the ninja instead of talking, what are you supposed to do? If your cultist buddy immediately attacks the engineer you lured into maints rather than having a roleplay discussion with them, your hands are similarly tied. In my eyes, both sides need some form of roleplay standard to be implemented because BeeStation is a MRP server, but even an idea like that is controversial to many.
- In some ways, BeeStation is a little outdated. This is a difficult issue not in its complexity but in its ability to be addressed, because obviously the server can only update as fast as its coders and Contributors/Maintainers (the Development team in general) can keep up, and this is naturally slowed with the less people that are in said positions. To be more specific though, there are certain elements other servers have that Bee doesn’t, such as certain roles, certain GUI changes, certain system elements, and any number of other miscellaneous aspects that you can think of. This isn’t even explicitly bad, it’s part of what makes Bee the unique server it is, the fact that we choose to prioritize certain other systems and implementations rather than these ones, but it’s important to keep in mind the relationship between the quality of the entire collection of systems that are available for players to enjoy, versus the potential interactions that are lost from other systems not existing.
Okay, now that this post has already gotten long enough, it’s time for me to get to the potential solutions section. Lowpop is the main problem that is facilitating all of this, and solutions should be created with focusing on resolving the many factors that are causing it. I’ll specify that these are the solutions that I believe would be good from my logical viewpoint and understanding of this entire situation, you will not agree with all of them and shouldn’t, I am instead putting them here primarily for reference and discussion.
- Dynamic for antag rolling needs to be improved to an extent where the antag presence is not so severe so as to consistently overwhelm critical station roles (Command and Security) in a lowpop environment in an unfair manner, because this causes undue stress on said important roles that rounds really need to be good, and discourages players from playing in them. This has largely been addressed with recent dynamic alterations (at least in my eyes), and it will be further addressed with @PowerfulBacon’s proposed Antagonist overhaul, so I’m mainly listing this here for reference’s sake.
- Staffing of critical roles (Captain/Acting Captain, Security Officer, Station Engineer, Medical Doctor, Scientist, Shaft Miner, and Cook) should be actively supported from a more external format, such as setting said roles to prioritized automatically during lowpop rounds, and disabling particularly useless roles such as Assistant and Prisoner on lowpop rounds. Extended implementations of this could include population minimum requirements for certain roles that are otherwise a lot less useful on lowpop rounds, such as the Lawyer or GIMMICK ROLES ESPECIALLY. This helps to reduce critical role stress and improve Distribution, which makes round health better and rounds easier to join.
- Admins should be more present in rounds in general, and be more active to the best of their ability in creating round flavor and being available for creative requests and answering ahelps so players aren’t discouraged from reporting/asking about bad sportsmanship from having to create a forums report post every time.
- Events, events, events, more events in general and a greater variety of events that aren’t exclusive to code implementations or major changes, but instead Admin/Eventmin-facilitated interactive and unique rounds that attract higher pop because they’re fun and unique. Whether this includes the installation of an Eventmin role or Admins just being more proactive with interacting with rounds in general, or something else, is up for contemplation.
- Staff teams, both for Administration and Development (I am intentionally excluding Mentorship, we have enough mentors even if not all of them play frequently, and they are not critically important to the population dynamic of a round (outside of like, training of newer players maybe)), desperately need more people so that more things can happen and more easily. Outside of consistently asking and encouraging people to apply or learn how to code, additional avenues of attraction would be helpful, but I can’t think of any, so feel free to come up with ideas.
- The two core influencers that determine whether a player will join an ongoing round and therein improve its population is the Threshold of current active players already playing, and the Distribution of playing characters throughout the manifest in critical roles that improve the round’s health and decrease its stress. This is a placeholder topic for any other solutions anyone else can think of that could improve both of these values.
- The Security-Antagonist Roleplay-Gaming conflict issue needs to be addressed in a way that works to encourage both sides to trend towards engaging and fun roleplay, rather than jump to pure Gaming that is usually more skill-central and is generally less fun. One potential solution could be implementing a more direct roleplay standard for interaction with the other side for each team that justifies Bee being an MRP server. I’ve seen a point raised that not having a requirement for antags to roleplay allows newer antag players to learn the roles better (and this is likely the case with Security as well, in terms of combat RP), but I feel like there’s a way this could be preserved better while still encouraging players more directly to roleplay. Antagonists are the minority of a round, the stakes are already against them, and it makes sense that they should not have an equal likelihood of winning against the larger majority that is the crew; they should logically have to work for it (this scales with the antag’s allowed impact on the crew). Bacon’s aforementioned antag rework would likely address this some as well.
- Some valuable systems present in other servers are absent from BeeStation, and this is simply due to Bee not getting around to certain elements in favor of others due to Development preference. This isn’t even necessarily an issue, part of it is Bee adopting its own unique server vision with the systems that are present, but it’s important to make sure that the loss of unimplemented systems isn’t so detrimental that it decreases the potential quality of the server by a large amount, or that it pulls away Bee’s pop to servers with said systems. Open to solution ideas. No, typing ?wyci to every person who suggests a coding-based idea is not helpful; there are many people who do not know how to code in the slightest, and coding takes a really long time to learn for some, sometimes so long that it’s impractical for their personal livelihood; many people will never learn how to code, and that should be recognized.
- In my opinion, a very underrated and underutilized method of attracting newer players to the server to increase population is advertising! In fact, when I returned to SS13 a year ago and saw my former server (Fulp) shut down, the driving factor for me choosing Bee was a singular Reddit comment I saw saying that Bee was a good server, and I remembered that. GoonStation literally has an account on the subreddit dedicated to advertising, so whether Bee’s approach is on Reddit, YouTube, or anything else, we should definitely take advantage of advertising!
Another one of the main reasons why I made this post was the fact that Christmas break is coming up, which is a very important event where Bee often gets a population resurgence that lasts it for much of the year. When I first started getting worried about Bee’s pop issues a while ago, I told myself that Thanksgiving break and Christmas break would fix it, and to see how Thanksgiving went, since it’s essentially Christmas-lite and a good indicator of how population inflow is. Well, Thanksgiving break happened, and it didn’t hardly improve things at all. I feel that if we really want to have a good chance at revitalizing Bee, we need to make some big, quick, and important changes to facilitate pop growth before the Christmas season comes and goes.
Of course, none of this can happen without true, consistent effort from those that care. This is true for Admins and Contributors/Maintmins especially, but it’s just as true for the average player and community member, and the more you love the community, the more you should try to help and make it better. I made this post because I love this community and the people in it, and I don’t want to see it slip into irrelevance and die a quiet, sad death while no one even attempts to say anything or stop it. Even if you just give your thoughts or ideas and don’t ever produce anything concrete to be implemented, that is an infinitely more valuable use of your time than doing nothing.
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===============TL;DR HERE===============
BeeStation has severe and extensive population issues that I’m worried could irreparably harm the server if they go unaddressed; this is especially true with the upcoming Christmas break, which is an important population resurgence time that Bee should be ready for to maximize the newer players we gain.
Lowpop already destabilizes the server’s ongoing dynamics by enabling antags to have a much higher and less controllable impact on crew, which stresses out and arguably ruins the dynamics of Command and Security due to frequently sole staffing and work overload, as well as giving roleplay-aiming antags less low-impact opportunities and rewarding gameplay due to a lack of challenge, and eradicating the relevance and purpose of many niche roles, as they are expected to do full-departmental duties instead of focusing on their specialty.
The cause of lowpop can be attributed to many factors, such as a narrow and infrequent presence of in-round admins that harms ahelping for potential scenario creativity that keeps rounds fun and makes questions/reporting harder due to not all players wanting to make a relevant forums post regarding such, a complete lack of events that contribute to making rounds feel special and attracting more players to increase pop in a reliable manner, players not joining due to their personal threshold preference of current active players being too low or the distribution of players throughout critical roles for the station being poor, Security and Antagonists being stuck in a known deadlock-scenario where roleplay attempts can collapse uncontrollably into pure responsive gaming (which is usually unfun) at a moment’s notice, and certain features common on other servers being absent from Bee that might otherwise increase the enjoyability of playing in rounds or prevent Bee from becoming ‘outdated.’
Some various solutions to help combat lowpop could include revamping antag dynamic so it isn’t as severe for lowpop crew (which is kinda already happening), external encouragement being given for critical jobs to be staffed per priority and redundant jobs on lowpop to be disabled, Admins being more present during rounds to enable more round flavor and unique rounds, events being hosted more often than they currently are (which means, being hosted at all) and not being exclusive to testmerges or major changes, a way to encourage increased applications and staffing for both the Administration and Development staff teams, the Security-Antagonists deathmatch issue being eliminated effectively (possibly through the implementation of a general roleplay standard for both sides), finding a way for fun systems from other servers not present in Bee to be brought to Bee within the reasonable capabilities of the Development team, aaaaand increased advertising for BeeStation on social media!
I’ll clarify that I am not explicitly stating all of these things should happen or are the outright truth, they are what I have observed and come to view as logical conclusions from my time and experience within the server and its community. You should not agree with all my suggestions unless you genuinely like them all (which I would find surprising 
), and should instead utilize them as an intelligent base for further continued discussion. Additionally, none of the improvements that I am hoping for are possible without effort from many people in the community, staff and non-staff alike, and so if you care a lot about this community, try to contribute! Even just sharing your thoughts and ideas is enough!
