Is CM declining?

[ThesoldierLLJK]

It should be Head Dev + Managers cooperating and communicating for the direction of the game.

I can point my stick at the devs and say stuff but fact is I have zero power to change the game, all I can do with the developers is listen to their concerns when rule enforcement is needed in lieu of game mechanics or if something is intended so I can tell the mod teams “yeah this isn’t exploiting per the devs.”

[BurningMetal]

I also hate on 30 minute speed run... but those 30 minute speed run are DIRECT RESULT of shitty ass updtate that happend since permanesting.
its not ''players fault''

PERMANESTING, xeno STRUCTURES & MOBA xeno update is killing the player base.

why?
-Updates created a huge amount of lags. (why i dont know, i dont care, its just is, devs, your last updates since 2019 made cm way more laggier)
-Updates completely wrecked the balance between xeno and murheens. (classic xeno wasnt perfect, but they were way better than moba)
-Roleplay is not beeing put on the front; instead admins seems happy with meta rush and speed running...

so therefor, becaus of permanest and moba updates, we got a laggier, less fun game, where RP is going down the sink to profit 30 minute speed runners....
thats why players are leaving... updates shat on their good game...

so ye, final words... devs need to listen to player base, when a poll say that over 60% of the players dont want permanest, devs need to god damn listen and act acordingly.

Bump up.

[CallunaBorealis]

preptime needs to get obliterated, not rapidfire rounds. 30m or 60m of good content is great, but since most rounds have 30m prep, 30m choke gameplay and 10m content it's very diluted.

Also it's become very clear to me that CM shouldn't continue towards a more MRP path because its playerbase is simply not MRP and doesn't have the capabilities for it. 99% of people just play self inserts and think that saying "sarge" is good RP. Funny milsim RP haha. And since we can't have any good RP, I'd rather the game become as mechanically fun as possible.

IMO, the playerbase isn't RP focused now because of the speed runs. They literally don't have time to RP because talking too much means missing out on prep time.

As a support pleb that has lurked for half a year in CM, my experience is that TDM is fun at first, but after a while, if players derive their satisfaction only from the gameplay mechanics, players are going to lose interest quickly because it will get repetitive after a while. Also, I think the devs can't always be expected to constantly pump in mainstay new features every time in the long run, especially when working with BYOND. Like recently, the above-head text feature was cool but was suspected of causing lag and disabled in one round. It seems like there can only be so much cool new mainstay stuff that can be added into CM without problems arising. Encouraging the playerbase to create their own fun through RP can make a difference and lessen the burden and expectations on the devs too.

The mega shift towards TDM has not helped in the slightest. Losing more and more RP elements each month is sad to see, and I believe quite a few other players agree with this.

Yeah, completely agree. Some players and my friends play less CM these days or have left because they got bored with the mechanics and because speedruns are structurally discouraging to RP. Speedruns are also a big fuck you to any one playing a support role like engineers, researchers, doctors, IOs, OTs. Why go through the trouble to build up towards making medicine, prepare for field surgery, make custom ordnance, find and process intel, analyse chemicals when the round will end at 13:00 anyway?

You're not wrong. Something needs to be done from a dev perspective to fix the rapid fire rounds.

Nothing we can do as Admins are going to solve this issue, unfortunately, other than enforce briefing, which is what it is.

I also don't think the CO of the round can do anything about this either without getting calls for mutiny or being OOCed shamed for late-dropping.

My suggestion is to delay the minimum drop time to 12:30 ~ 12:45, and also make xenos wait longer to get T3s in their hive and increase the current restrictions to prevent them from expanding weeds too far from the hive core.

From my observation, the first half hour sets the momentum of the game. The faster the marines drop, the faster the game ends because both sides have less time to prepare for each other's advances. Marines will have more time lining up to get attachments, getting prepped, so they may even have time to make idle chit chat and even late join before the first combat drop. Yeah, of course there will be some mute marines who will just get prepped and buckled in the DS and AFK cause they only wanna get some, that's alright. But hopefully, there will be others who actually walk around the ship and talk to each other, make shady deals with the CL, or doing other stuff like play basketball or boxing before the main action. Hopefully they'll even get into trouble from their impatience which creates demand for MP mains to actively enforce law and order, brig said marines and release them in time for the first combat drop.

Support roles will also have more time to prepare. Doctors will have more time to make and dispense chems and unga juice for medics and even give time for RP on the side. CO/XOs have more time to form better strategies based on the strength of their forces and actually conduct a proper briefing as they now will have the time. Xenos will also have more time to gather smalls, make traps, weed the colony, and build their defences and slowly spread out into the colony. I know survivors will probably hate this as they wanna be rescued ASAP, so probably they need some way for them to either hold out for the extended duration or a way to hide from the xenos to give them a better fighting chance to survive until the marines drop.

[CABAL]

Longer prep time means that beans are fucked. 45 BYOND minutes to alt+tab some shit is a bit too long. Especially it impacts T3's that were made so powerfull (at the expense of other beans) to the point of "metarush" now being applied AGAINST marines, when usually it was benos, who got kicked in the ainis. 10-15 additional BYOND minutes for T3's to wait so marines build FoB etc, so entire BYOND hour of waiting.
Currently we already face sweaty PWRgamers who have macroed evo into T3. With long prep time it would only discourage anyone from picking T3s roundstart, anyone but the most sweatiest of disguisting benomains into those roles.

No fun both ways.

[Destrok]

12:30 is absolutely ridiculous as a minimum. The game gets laggier and shittier as it goes on. We ALREADY have a ridiculous amount of preptime. Marines can get ready in 3 minutes, heavy loadouts like medic in 9 at most. And IMAGINE playing xeno. I don't have to, but when I do I never actually g et to play the game, I have to alt tab in the hive for 35 minutes or more before it becomes playable in a non-death funnel, but then the server starts lagging so what's the point?

[CallunaBorealis]

Ehhh I didn’t really think so much about the xenos alt-tabbing until marines drop, being a beno main.

I still think speed runs are a problem for support players and anyone doing any form of RP.

Seems like the existing maps need more variations in order to throw both sides off balance in order to slow down the round. Like how LV have a map without a hydro road and vine infested hydro dome. That but more variations. I think the official maps need to be less detailed too (e.g. remove caves from LV map, which I recalled weren’t so detailed half a year ago) in order to restore some mystery to the AO. That will surely slow down the rounds as players will be less confident to push into no man’s land based on a less detailed map.

[CABAL]

snip

That would only fuck up marines and currently they are not the only speedrunning faction there is. Benos with their T3s are arguably more guilty of that.

[Frood]

Here's an idea, maybe like a map built around RP and longer term mechanics too be hosted as an event?
>Town with attached military base
>Civvie population with traitors selected to be CLF
>Random beno spawn on map, they can choose how too nest and go about
It would be the duty of the marines initially to find and apprehend the CLF elements on the civilian population. The CLF's goal would be too survive to end round without being found. The end of all this would be the xenos slowly preparing themselves in the background and then attacking both factions. I know this would be like, a mega bitch and a half to make so I'm not even seriously suggesting it. Moreso food for thought then anything.

[ChainsawMullet]

Far as I can tell devs are in no hurry to fix the speedrunning "problem" simply because the server cannot handle full rounds right now.

Past the hour mark, even if lowpop, and it starts to just splutter and die and become completely unplayable. Fixing that should take way more priority than lengthening rounds.

[Cimo]

you know what? I think I am declining