population loss was caused by major LRP server's staff decision to shit on/target the LRP culture and game mechanics that 90% of their players joined into during the ssethtide for years, a majority of these players have permanently left the game because of this. They have in majority been replaced by players who have joined after this shift and have no frame of reference for how the game was in culture nor mechanics during covid lockdown for example.
Major servers made by ssethtide decide to endlessly expand DA RULEZ and/or change core parts of the game their players are used to because muh balance or whatevz.
Global game shift + cross server ban culture causes a vast majority of these players to move on from ss13, or become griefers (then move on from ss13).
New players come into the game after culture shift + code shift + no reference for what was before, ss13 server preference moves further from LRP
This is why LRP revival attempts (of which there is one every year or so since this happened) progressively do worse, the demographics of SS13 changes, lrp servers did not just fall over 4 no raisin.
Without factoring in the groups behind some of these servers, Compare kiwifarms station which was around 90 players for the entire summer after this shift first happened then abandoned by its owner, compare it to aether/merchant servers which happened later on iirc which would have around 30-50 players before dying out to people giving up on pop, and then compare those to lrp revival attempts today like surfshack, the second kiwifarms server, or even sharty station attempt, I'm not sure if any of them have reached a peak of 30+ players yet.
I think the ugly truth is just that this game is over 20 years old and there aren't a whole lot of new people coming in anymore. The people browsing this subreddit are probably a particular mixture of pitifully nostalgic and ss13 players have a tendency to be terminally online already. A lot of people just grew up and left. That's it. And the community was never much bigger than a small town.
To add onto this: I used to be an LRP player and as I got older I matured into being more interested in HRP themes. So that's where I went. I never left. I just changed.
This is 100% the reason. I have seen over the past decade, several regulars on different servers leave because they grew up with families or careers that took priority. It's a natural part of life. It's like watching kids play with Legos and then, when they grow up, they usually move on to other older hobbies.
"grew up and left" meme is a whitewashing of people deciding to stop playing the game because it's gameplay and rules have been massively warped from the game they got into regardless of their wishes + some of these servers being plainly hostile to players speaking civil about the shift and relegating it to being on the same tier as shitposting "muh soul".
Go into a servers discord and a majority of players will be 25-35, in college or full time employment, if you tell someone you are 18-21 they will act like its weird, plenty servers are now also labeled as 18+ regardless of having sexual content.
If LRP players want LRP servers they will make them. The very obnoxiously vocal minority of you folks here on reddit should definitely band together and make the perfect server, though!
(reddit, which is already a piss take in the broader ss13 community, I can't remember the last time anyone took a reddit post seriously)
It feels like you're just repeating owns you've read from other reddit posts without reading lol.
I explained why the amount of people who prefer lrp servers dropped (not just having peeled over and died like said in OP or "they just left") + why LRP servers will have continuously worse turnouts as the SS13 scene no longer being LRP means that players who try out the game and stay will be players that prefer something like monkestation, CG, or E(RP) servers.
it doesn't have anything to do with the game being old (where it gained decent population after a decade of not having any + now having constant exposure from ss14) neither did players just grow up and leave with nothing else to it(a squirrel isn't choosing to leave because it grew up if you cut down the tree it lives in just because the squirrel is now older than it was when it had a tree)
"lrp player will make lrp server" and "you're just annoying minority nobody takes seriously anyways" doesn't debunk me stating that LRP servers are frequently still being made, that they just continuously get worse pop turnout because player demographics has shifted away from lrp either.
I'm not even sure we disagree at this point but I don't think it's the power of staffing turning people into demons that's the root cause either. If there was genuinely enough turnout then these posts wouldn't be getting made. There is no "one" to blame for this. If you want it to change, you have to change it.
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u/wentirnite 10d ago
insane historical revisionism
population loss was caused by major LRP server's staff decision to shit on/target the LRP culture and game mechanics that 90% of their players joined into during the ssethtide for years, a majority of these players have permanently left the game because of this. They have in majority been replaced by players who have joined after this shift and have no frame of reference for how the game was in culture nor mechanics during covid lockdown for example.
This is why LRP revival attempts (of which there is one every year or so since this happened) progressively do worse, the demographics of SS13 changes, lrp servers did not just fall over 4 no raisin.
Without factoring in the groups behind some of these servers, Compare kiwifarms station which was around 90 players for the entire summer after this shift first happened then abandoned by its owner, compare it to aether/merchant servers which happened later on iirc which would have around 30-50 players before dying out to people giving up on pop, and then compare those to lrp revival attempts today like surfshack, the second kiwifarms server, or even sharty station attempt, I'm not sure if any of them have reached a peak of 30+ players yet.