CFWMagic, Oct 07 2021 or "Acacia is too dead"

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So, I wanted to clarify what happened and why, as well as make sure things are clear for me from here on out.

I was originally noted and warned for essentially provoking a Deathmatch in Acacia. Which, I’m not even contesting it. Now, the reason I did what I did is due to how Acacia works. There’s barely ever 20+ players on the server, ever. And at all times, about 1/3rd of those are not crew.

What happened is that I roleplayed a PTSD Head of Security, who basically called out Syndicate and engaged them in a 1vs1 battle, which they subsequently lost.

Normally, that’s not a thing one would do. Still, Acacia has a VERY common tendency to have one or two antags who never get noticed, simply because … Well, when there’s 5 people, running 5 departments, and just one security officer, without AI, borgs or backup … Well. What happens in 90% of the cases is that there’s no conflict at all. A single sec officer simply isn’t enough to track down a stealth antag without veering into shitsec territory where one has to search everyone, regardless. And even then, it’s often a waste of time.

Now, I see how this would be wrong on sage but … I genuinely do not understand why it is wrong on Acacia, considering 90% of Acacia rounds are exactly the same: Antag wanders through empty departments, steals what they need to steal, get a free objective, wear gloves so sec doesn’t have a proper DNA/Fingerprint, and the round ends without the lone officer being able to figure out who the perpetrator is, if able to figure out there’s a perp at all.

I won’t contest the ban, in fact, I personally insisted that it be carried out instead of a warning or note.

So then, why this thread? Because I genuinely do not understand why some of the players get pissed off by this. Is it entertaining to replay the same round again and again? Is it Sage players who get banned and get sent to Acacia without realizing that Acacia is essentially low-pop, high stealth server? I want to understand why people are so opposed to any sort of non-standard play, especially if it gives an opportunity for in-match characters to roleplay out scenes they wouldn’t have otherwise.

But. Beyond that. I suppose I’d like to apologize to whoever got offended by this. I didn’t mean any harm. I legitimately do not understand why you would want to replay the same round for two weeks in a row. I don’t understand what drives this anger. Is it bee coins? Is it being banned off of sage and not understanding that 10 players are simply not enough to interact with the traitors to a degree which would make an engaging investigation? Is it lack of experience? Is it Acacia itself being a problem?

I do not know. But if I have offended you … I apologize. I genuinely wanted the round to be something unique. And I wanted to see the players interact with each other in a situation which normally doesn’t happen. Simply because … Well … 70 hours of 5 playes, 1 traitor who never gets notices, over and over again … It got boring.

Thankyou for reading the rant (if you did), inb4 “bruh”, inb4 “autism”. Thankyou to winterdarkraven for acknowledging my request and properly banning me, as if I truly caused anxiety, I do believe that is only fair.

Consider this an open letter, too. How would YOU make Acacia have some sort of variety, beyond the stealth tator who never gets noticed?

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A potential solution was already suggested by another person and I think it needs more support as doing it is very easy and just involves fiddling with a few settings, while rules don’t change.

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Wasn’t the given reason for Golden being shutdown (besides admins getting asshurt about people having fun) was that maintaining two different versions of the code was “too complex” or something?

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Among other things. I’d rather not talk about what I think the real reasons are because I don’t like losing accounts. However the code thing really was a part of the issue.

The thing is, the proposed solution as linked above has no code changes. It’s a game config change.

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Thanks! That does sound delightfully useful.

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I will say that I don’t play on Acacia because I enjoy it. The game mechanics simply don’t work on such deadpop and most jobs are literally useless. But at the same time, waiting for 20 minutes in the Sage queue, for the chance to get 20 WHOLE SECONDS to pick a role I don’t want to play because 90% of them are taken, and then being hit with “The server is full” when I do is even worse.

As it stands the only time it’s notably enjoyable is either if you really want uninterrupted RP with someone specific, to learn/play a new role, or as something like Captain (Let’s be real, there are never going to be two heads so any head role tends to be Cap) / AI because you can at least hope for something to do.

I personally don’t see any solution or future improvement to the server because most people would rather just not play at all rather than being forced into a 3 hour game with five people…

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To be honest, it is the exact opposite for me. Acacia’s low pop is much more fun to me because … Well, the way I see it, the game mechanics work much better with dead pop due to less external factors. Each job not only becomes much more useful, but I get the opportunity to do multiple jobs at once every now and then.

Then again, I always have something to do, be it a head or even an assistant. Due to the lack of population, there’s always a need for someone to check wires, set up and monitor SM, do paramedic work, rescue stranded explo, give backup to the only miner being overrun by swarmers, help the only warden investigate, mine for materials or plain and simple build new sections of the station.

But this does shed some light on how other players think. If you don’t mind me asking, are you simply not interested in anything but crew vs antag? Do you find building, PVE, maintenance and support of other crew members boring? There’s a lot of that going on in Acacia, so I’m really surprised when you say there is nothing to do. Perhaps there’s just nothing that you want to do because it’s simply not the kind of fun you like?

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Some of this might be my (frankly way too big) playtime speaking, but I feel like your assessment is a bit reductionary. The fact is I enjoy building, PVE, maintenance and supporting other crew members, and I basically don’t even play antag or sec in most cases, and I don’t think any of these points are especially satisfying on Acacia:

Each job not only becomes much more useful

Yes and no. Some jobs become a lot more essential like having at least one miner, at least one person to set up the SM and so on. If you don’t have those, then the station is straight up crippled from the get-go. In the other cases, the jobs have little to nothing to do. A janitor won’t really have anything to clean, a chef can fill the kitchen with food and have like two people visiting to eat it the entire shift and even an Engineer will set up the SM in 10 minutes then have no major issues to deal for the rest of the round (unless something like meteors or Kudzu happens) because of the low entropy of the station.

I get the opportunity to do multiple jobs at once every now and then. There’s always a need for someone to […]

That ties in to what I said about playing something like head roles or AI since you end up with AA and from my experience one or two generalist “problem solvers” are more than enough to keep the entire station running through most of the very minor issues that come up on such a low pop, and that’ll keep them busy enough. Even so, there’s a lack of real satisfaction when you spend two hours building a cool bar only for something like three or four people to even see it or when you run around the station as a glorified door opener only to not really see anyone else around.

crew vs antag

And that brings me to the last point which is the fact that crew vs antag is more or less nonexistent. A stealth antag, as you yourself pointed out, has little to no opposition, and their impact is so minimal they might as well not exist, on top of making it very easy to round remove their assassination objectives. If an antag were to go loud, they can easily take out their target, or any shreds of what passes off as “security” or even kill most of the station with ease, which will just lead to complaints of pointless murderboning and vibe ruining.

So that leaves RPing which is the only really good thing Acacia excels at, as long as you can stomach doing it with the same five people every time, as antag or otherwise. For me the ideal crew is something like 30-40 where there’s enough crew to cover all roles decently without oversaturating them, where antags have enough leeway and opposition (sometimes) to be a bit more bold without it turning the station into Cuban Pete’s theme park and where you have a good chance to see some new people around from time to time or the occasional rare antag to spice a round up.

This is a bit long-winded and might come off as whiny but I do wish the best for Acacia and it definitely has the traits to set it apart from Sage. I just don’t think it can really do that when most of the time it doesn’t even reach ten pop.

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Thankyou for a detailed and in-depth response. I deeply appreciate the insight. It doesn’t sound whiny at all. Very articulate and makes perfect sense. It actually makes me realize that, after all, I am an HRP player. Especially the last part … I realized that I prefer when crew vs antag is non-existent.

I now realize I started playing security so I can minimize the impact antags have on the round and go back to roleplaying and/or PVE. I think BayStation and the previous iteration of WorldServer rubbed off on me too much. With the new perspective you’ve given me, I must admit, I should probably rethink my approach to playing on Bee.

Once again, thankyou for a detailed response.